Defining Writing Success by Publishing?

There were some fascinating responses to yesterday's blog, mostly on Facebook here (just scroll down past the cool pic of Mercury). Some people, and successful professional writers at that, began as daydreamers with no thought of becoming published. Whether they wrote fanfic or invented their own worlds, they went through a long period of writing just for themselves. I want to cry when I think of some of the wonderful writers who had to hide their work because of parental disapproval or other reasons. I think that's one reason I'm so encouraging of people in those early stages...you never know where those early Mary/Gary Sue stories might lead.

Would You Write Anyway?

I've heard various versions of the question of whether you would continue to write if you knew absolutely-for-sure that your work would never be published. Self-publishing has made the question irrelevant. It's far easier to put together an ebook, a website, a blog, than it is to write a book in the first place.

The question is worth consideration, nonetheless, because it gets at some fundamental issues. For whom are we writing? How important is it to be told how wonderful our work is? Are we writing because we love story-telling or because we have a message we want to communicate (in which case, an audience is essential to our feeling of satisfaction)? Is our writing a way of generating income? (Don't scoff; I've met middling-successful writers who admit as much.)

Mary Sue and Pernicious Thoughts

I've been thinking more about that first stage of a writer's development. (See the previous blogpost.) We day-dream, following whatever romantic, adventurous, geeky or otherwise self-indulgent impulses strike us. And then we write it up.

So where does Mary Sue (or Gary Sue) fit in? The term is often used dismissively to describe a character, usually in fanfic, who is a thinly-disguised representation of the author, in many ways, "the author's pet." She or he can be wonderful beyond belief, or equally unbelievably ordinary, but every other character of the appropriately attractive gender falls madly in love with her/him.

Goodbye, Diana Wynne Jones

The news about the death of Diana Wynne Jones, one of the finest writers of Young Adult fantasy of our times, has been all over the 'nets. My younger daughter phoned me this morning to make sure I'd heard. Rather than reminisce about the importance of Jones's work, her inspiration, her humor and understanding of human nature, her wonderful characters, I'd like to talk about connection.

Stages in a Writer's Development

I don't know why, but beginning writers (and experienced ones, too) are often possessed--haunted, really--by the notion that we already know how to write. While few insist that this is something instinctive, that we were born with, there's a persistent and pernicious belief that "talent" will automatically produce great literature...or at least commercially successful work. I lay much of the blame for this on our education. We learned how to write in elementary school, didn't we? We turned in all those school papers, essays, book reports, didn't we? We write every day--shopping lists, emails, text messages, don't we? So how hard can it be to write a book? It's just a longer version of LOL, BRB, isn't it?