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Welcome, everyone! Here's where I blather about writing, life with my wife BA, and my two basset hounds! I love to hear from readers, so comment here or email me!

Friday, February 03, 2012

what people don't want to know about writing for a living

top five, maybe? I love tip lists, and we had this talk in a chat the other night

what are the top five things, in my experience, that folks don't want to know about what it takes to do writing as a day job?

5- that it's not glamorous - nope. No Misery-like when I finish a book I go to a spa in the Rockies and smoke and drink. Just "yay, next book, please"

4- you have to make changes. Oftentimes lots of changes. no one is Mozart, doing first drafts that are perfect. Sometimes it makes us cry. But we do it.

3 - sometime stories don't work. sometimes they get rejected, or you just don't finish them or whatever. Not every idea even gets a start

2 - a lot of really famous authors have more than one pseudonym. no one wants to think a writer can write more than 2 or 3 books a year, so people diversify. Or some folks have different names for different genres. One of my favorite authors is Barbara Mertz, Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels...

1- word count. to make a living an author has to put out a lot of words. Every day. It's a job. Really. Luckily for me, it's the best job in the world.