I struggle with every word and phrase, and although I get better with practice it's never going to be or seem effortless. I envy the fuck out of you.

Please, don't. Because each and every one of us is thinking the same thing about you. And everyone else in this forum. We all just have our own voices, our own way of coming at things, and those processes are totally opaque to the outside observer. It looks like magic. But, it's not. I've been sitting here for an hour and a half throwing words at a page. I've had two false starts and now I've finally got 100 words I find acceptable. That was just this particular topic, though. Sometimes, it comes like a brainstorm and totally takes me over; other times they're like trying to choke down a pack of saltines without liquid refreshment, each word more and more painful. This one, I forced a little, because I've been lying fallow for a while and I know if I don't force myself to write, all my words will dry up, again. Once I got my POV, though, it really flowed. But, it's never really easy.

But it's somewhere in between, so we're all stuck jiggling the key, and are equally befuddled when our door opens or when someone else's does.

So much this. I look at this forum and LJ as my doors. No, I'm not paid for publishing, but I am published. It's here, for other people to read if they choose and, I hope, to enjoy. That said:

Dawn's First Blush

His head appeared over the lowest branch. "You know he's hiding something from you."

She looked over at him. This was only the third time she'd seen him there, he didn't seem to be a regular denizen. He was always alone. Well, except for her.

"What could he be hiding?" She looked around at the trees, at the earth, at the sky. "I have everything."

"Do you have one of these?" He indicated the fruit on the branch next to him.

"But, that's not hiding."

"Then, it must be yours."

She took the fruit. She blushed.

"I have no clothes."

Maybe the issue is that I've never felt at home in short forms? I seemed to be wired for saga. I've never written a short story in my life, unless you count "deleted scenes" types of fanfic, and even those are insertions into the saga that is a long-running TV show.

I enjoy drabbles as a way of concentrating my prose and trying to see just how pithy and evocative I can make a tiny segment of description or characterization. But I don't know how to turn off my saga brain. If I weren't drabbling the WIP, I'd be drabbling the characters from my interconnected romance world, or that trilogy set in ancient Greece I mean to write one of these days, or the late 18th century British-in-India stories I've been dying to write ever since I started researching Wellington before he was Wellington, or that Civil War series I'm going to write just as soon as I figure out the right approach to take...sagas all.

This is not the "Blush" I expected, but it fits.

Today I blush to think about it; my first attempt at a novel. Now I can see what’s all wrong, like all the frantic jump-cuts when I couldn’t make snarky interludes into a narrative, the structure of a roach motel with dry-rot, the blatant thefts from smarter souls that my friends never caught because I was the bookish one. I was twenty, and an arty dork that thought she was cool, and who was getting a little stoned from getting praised like Koko the gorilla when she made anything anybody could recognize. My mother had it bound one Christmas. We all thought it was a sort of coming attractions. Maybe we were right; one of my attendants swiped one looking for porn(It’s only now I can laugh thinking of his disappointment in my nubile prose. It’s still hard to confess how long I thought he could rip it off and be a big star, or that I thought I could quit college and go on tour with Jean-Claude. Even though I only met one in the coffee commercials.)

This is also OT, but Barb, I'm reading It's Not About The Accent right now (you had me at Ohio!), and I just got to the part with Nichols the jerkface. You surprised me, lady! I wasn't expecting that at all, and you handled it very well!

You surprised me, lady! I wasn't expecting that at all, and you handled it very well!

Hee!! Yay!

Yeah, I'll admit it-- I'm also a shameless whore for the egostrokes. (And the letters I got from people who'd gone through similar who told me I got it right. Makes it so worth it.)

I don't think it matters why any of us write. We do, is the thing. There's absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to be published if we do, because like I've said a million times, getting paid to write is waaaaaay better than getting paid to ring up groceries, at least for me. That said, I've been on both sides of the desk, and I want to reiterate that it's really fucking dangerous for anyone to think that publication is a Golden Ticket. It so, so isn't, at least not when it comes to quitting a job or working part-time and counting on writing income to pay the bills. REALLY TRULY FOR REAL.

Lots and lots of people who aren't the next Faulkner/Austen/Morrison (pick your favorite canon author!) get published every day. Because publishing is a business FIRST. I gave contracts to romance authors who were sort of just-better-than-meh because I had slots to fill and they had finished manuscripts that didn't make me puke. Especially when it comes to genre fiction, a novel that follows the rules and gives readers what they expect is often the book that gets bought, instead of the one that's going to make readers (god forbid!) a little nervous because it breaks new ground. It's not a wonderful thing, but it is what it is. Breakouts -- such as Diana Gabaldon, who mixed historical novel with romance and used first person POV (gasp!) -- are a huge risk. In her case, it paid off FOR THE PUBLISHER. Same with Harry Potter. But the imitators to Rowling's throne are never going to enjoy the huge success of the original, and publishers know it. There are only so many chances publishers are willing to take when the bottom line is dollars, which aren't coming as quickly or as many as they used to. Books are in danger, for a lot of reasons.

Sail's got a damn healthy attitude, for the record. My only real advice to anyone who loves to write is to DO IT FOR THE JOY you get out of it first, just like baking a cake for your family or taking a great shot of the sunset on vacation. Because while there's still a place for a fabulously reviewed, bestselling novel from a first-timer ( Cold Mountain, say), publishing is much more often about P&L reports, open slots, and minimizing payout than it is about Art. For most authors, writing is going to be a part-time gig or a secondary income in a two-income family, and that's just facts.

I love writing, and I love people who write and want to talk about and share writing, but I also hate to see hearts broken. Everybody who writes with an eye to publishing needs to be aware that publishing, as Barb and I can tell you (in detail! ask us how!), often sucks rotting moose cock.

Everybody who writes with an eye to publishing needs to be aware that publishing, as Barb and I can tell you (in detail! ask us how!), often sucks rotting moose cock.

Not. Enough. Word. In. The. World.

::gropes Amy::

Sure I write for joy. But I want to get published too, and not just for the money (though I'd really like some money if I could get it.) Published, especially in non-fiction gets more readers. Also it gets your ideas listened to even by people who don't read what you say. I have been published in short form - my blog posts on Grist are edited, my articles in Z and other short magazines some of whom even pay. But I would like to be read by more people, and a book published by a respectable publisher gets read and reviewed and paid more attention to than something self-published, or published in a small magazine.

I think I'd feel the same even if my goal was fiction. Past a certain point part of the joy of writing is readers. Heard melodies are sweeter.

I write all the time, I can't not. Most of it is tripe, and it never reaches the stage of being published or even posted anywhere anyone could read it.

Yes, it makes me happy when someone likes the way I say something, here on b.org, on LJ, in a long and newsy email, as well as in a poem, or a bit of short fiction. But if I never got that much validation*, I'd still write. I'd explode if I didn't. I'm a writer in my own eyes, and some days, that's enough.

*maybe I need to rethink that writer thing, what with correct word useage and all