All The Way

By Billie Sue Mosiman

Unlike some professions, writing is for a lifetime. Unless an author has brain impairment or disease, she can write until the very last day. If you're a doctor or a fireman, a politician or a park ranger, there are going to be finite years for employment. It's rare even a doctor might work into his seventies or eighties, but a writer certainly can.

What this has to do for your future as a writer is that you should think of it as a lifetime pursuit and not one where if you don't make it for a while, it's all over. If your memory and creativity remains, so can the writing. Young writers are all in a rush to “make it.” I know I was. It's an occupational hazard.

I remember it took eight years of submissions and three agents before I sold my first novel. I thought at the time it was forever. It really wasn't. I had a whole lifetime ahead of me to do my work and eight years of practice and learning was really nothing. It wasn't any more time than it takes to become any other professional. Once I got rolling, I was on a rocket ride.

Once your work is accredited and verified as being publishable, nothing can really stop you but yourself. If you grow lazy or slow, if you over reach and fail, or if you become a prima donna people don't like to work with, then you're sabotaging your own career. Yet if you see the road ahead as a long string of years, you can see what you must do is work hard and grow.

I've seen young novelists burst on the scene and flame out. I've seen young writers grow so bitter and evil, it filters into their work and makes it too ugly to be readable. I've seen young authors overvalue their accomplishments and walk around as if the world belongs to them, only to be brought to earth with a few hard knocks. 

As a working writer who has been publishing for thirty years my advice looking back is to think of this as not just a job, not just a hobby, but a way of life. A life involved with the imagination and creation. Whether that works out as well as you think really isn't the point. If you're giving it all you've got, you're not in a crazy rush where you put out unremarkable work, and you realize you've signed on for the long haul—all the way to the end—then the joy of being writer, even into old age, can reward you in ways no other profession on earth can compare.

Billie Sue Mosiman Bio:
Billie Sue is an Edgar and Stoker Nominated author of  more than 50 e-books. She’s had 13 novels published with New York major publishers and recently published BANISHED. Her book of short stories is releasing soon in 2013, SINISTER-Tales of Dread, and her new suspense novel, THE GREY MATTER, to follow.

Billie Sue is the author of at least 150 published short stories that were in various magazines and anthologies. Her latest stories will be in BETTER WEIRD edited by Paul F. Olson from Cemetery Dance, a tribute anthology to David Silva, a story in the anthology ALLEGORIES OF THE TAROT edited by Annetta Ribken, and another story in William Cook’s FRESH FEAR. She’s an active member of Horror Writers Association and International Thriller Writers.

Connect with Billie Sue:
Blog: The Life of a Peculiar Writer

Twitter: @billiemosiman

Amazon page.

You can find all of Billie’s works on Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, or Kobo.

Going Pro by NY Times bestelling author Jonathan Maberry

When I was a newbie writer, before I was established or even professionally published I used to believe that ‘the writing life’ was exactly how I saw it on TV or in movies. You know, where the author is a tortured artist who craves a midnight visit from the muse; then he gets drunk, strips to his wife-beater undershirt, and hammers out an incredible book that leaps to the top of the bestseller list. His agent and editors treat him like royalty and he buys a big house, a sports car, and is the darling of the social scene.

Then I became an author. I won some awards, had some bestsellers, even wound up on TV.

But, kiddo, the real world ain’t like it is in the movies.

Shocker, I know.

The truth is, however, more interesting because it’s more real.

First and most important thing to know is that, while writing is an art, publishing is a business. Writing is an intimate conversation between author and reader; even if it’s a conversation repeated many times with many readers. Both writer and reader are there for the story, for the art.

Publishing is about selling copies of art. It’s not about art itself. If you grasp that truth, if you understand it and accept the reality and practicality of it, then you won’t get your feelings hurt. And you’ll probably do better as a working writer.

It’s not that everyone in publishing is a cold and heartless whore. That’s as propagandized a view as the movie version of author as tortured artist. The individual people in publishing–from agents to editors, from book salesmen to booksellers—may have been drawn to their vocation out of a love of books. But their job is to sell them. 

They are not the enemy, as many writers seem to think. They are not backstabbing cheats, as too many frustrated writers suggest in their blogs. They are in a business whose product is copies of written works. To accomplish this end, they need to make decisions about whom to publish, how many copies and in what format to publish, who to promote, and who to gamble on. Viewed from a distance, there’s no villainy. They are not trying to hurt the feelings or stifle the career of fledgling writers.

Are they always right?  Of course not. If anyone actually knew the absolutely right way to publish every book so it would be a guaranteed hit, we’d all be gazillionaires. Like any business it’s largely trial and error, learn from experience, guesswork and statistics.

It is not, however, about art. It’s not about supporting the artist.  It’s not about making guarantees that each work will be successful. That business model does not, and could not, exist.

Given this, it’s important for all writers–especially newbies—to work with the system. Doing so does not require that you sacrifice even a drop of your artistic integrity. It does, however, require that you step away from the propaganda and mythology about being an artiste and act like a professional, working writer.

That doorway opens onto success.

  ********* 

EXTINCTION MACHINE by Jonathan Maberry (St. Martin’s Griffin) The President of the United States vanishes from the White House. A top-secret prototype stealth fighter is destroyed during a test flight.  Witnesses on the ground say that it was shot down by a craft that immediately vanished at impossible speeds. All over the world reports of UFOs are increasing at an alarming rate. And in a remote fossil dig in China dinosaur hunters have found something that is definitely not of this earth. There are rumors of alien-human hybrids living among us. Joe Ledger and the Department of Military Sciences  rush headlong into the heat of the world’s strangest and deadliest arms race, because the global race to recover and retro-engineer alien technologies has just hit a snag. Someone—or something—wants that technology back.

 

BIO

Jonathan Maberry is a NY Times bestselling author, multiple Bram Stoker Award winner, and freelancer for Marvel Comics. His novels include EXTINCTION MACHINE, FIRE & ASH, PATIENT ZERO and many others. His award-winning teen novel, ROT & RUIN, is now in development for film. He is the editor of V-WARS, an award-winning vampire anthology. Since 1978 he’s sold more than 1200 magazine feature articles, 3000 columns, plays, greeting cards, song lyrics, and poetry. He is the founder of the Writers Coffeehouse, and co-founder of The Liars Club. Jonathan lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania with his wife, Sara Jo. www.jonathanmaberry.com