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This interview with Lois McMaster Bujold made me want to cry, because she started writing original fiction when she had two preschoolers (please, Lois, tell me how you did that!) and sold her first novel after six tries (I got bored and frustrated with the submission process and gave up after three) and never even got an agent until she'd sold seven books and won the Nebula award (and here I'd thought finding an agent might actually help me get my foot in the door).
I suspect I may not be cut out to be a professional writer. I don't mean in terms of raw ability to write, I mean in terms of self-discipline and willingness to market myself.
Admittedly, though it would be wonderful to be able to point people to a nicely bound and professionally published copy of a book that I wrote, and pleasant to get a bit of money for doing it (and for genre fiction "a bit" is about right), what makes me happy more than anything is to get feedback from people who read my stories and appreciate the same thoughts and ideas that meant the most to me as I was writing them. Finding "kindred spirits", if you will, and making friends. Which is something I'm doing already, writing things I enjoy, at my own pace, without having to spend a lot of time on the bane of my authorial existence, research.
I am not sure that if I were professionally published I would get more feedback than I get for writing fanfic -- indeed, possibly less. And I would certainly have to be more careful about my personal privacy and my interactions with readers.
Hm.
Still not quite ready to give up and put Knife (my original fantasy novel) up on the web, though.
I suspect I may not be cut out to be a professional writer. I don't mean in terms of raw ability to write, I mean in terms of self-discipline and willingness to market myself.
Admittedly, though it would be wonderful to be able to point people to a nicely bound and professionally published copy of a book that I wrote, and pleasant to get a bit of money for doing it (and for genre fiction "a bit" is about right), what makes me happy more than anything is to get feedback from people who read my stories and appreciate the same thoughts and ideas that meant the most to me as I was writing them. Finding "kindred spirits", if you will, and making friends. Which is something I'm doing already, writing things I enjoy, at my own pace, without having to spend a lot of time on the bane of my authorial existence, research.
I am not sure that if I were professionally published I would get more feedback than I get for writing fanfic -- indeed, possibly less. And I would certainly have to be more careful about my personal privacy and my interactions with readers.
Hm.
Still not quite ready to give up and put Knife (my original fantasy novel) up on the web, though.
