Mark Terry talks a lot about his life as a writer. In this post he talks about other people who write as a hobby (like me), and also asks if people think that writers are all rich because it seems like everyone is a New York Times Bestselling Author, or poor, beret-wearing, coffee shop haunting, struggling artists.

I recently interviewed a couple physicians who also write novels. It was a pleasant enough interview and their recent novel sounds interesting. What threw me a tiny bit–but probably shouldn’t have–about the interview was their acknowledgment that writing novels for them was essentially a hobby with relatively small financial gain.

Well, I know for me, writing is still essentially a hobby with relatively small financial gain. I’ve made some decent money from totally selling out Give Me The Rock, but other than that, I’m only breaking even on writing ($0 in, $0 out), and running a large negative time deficit.

As for the Rich vs. Poor argument, I feel like I read enough blogs by authors to see the gray area in between. Not sure if that makes me unique, or just enlightened, or just in a small minority of people polled.

I didn’t have a WCW last week, and the results then were more impressive than they are now. Last week, I at least managed 429 words. This week, 0.

I spent the holiday weekend traveling to Nebraska to help clean out my grandmother’s house, and the 9 hours in the car each way didn’t really help get a lot of words written. I did come up with a couple more scenes to write when I actually get the time to do that writing, so all was not completely lost.

I’m tempted to throw out the excuses I have for not writing, but at this point, I’m sure no one cares but me. And really, I probably could have gotten something written if I’d had more motivation. It’s just all on me. I know that.

I’ve got 9 drafts of other posts started, but no time to write them… so here’s a handy table charting my progress for the last week… Not a great week to start the new Word Count Wednesday thing… but my excuse this time is that I’ve had a ton of work to do for my day job. And if you go back one more day, I had 717 words on the 7th.

5/8: 0
5/9: 0
5/10: 302
5/11: 97
5/12: 354
5/13: 0
5/14: 0

For all the aspiring writers hoping upon hope for a glance into the life of a published author, Jeff Vandermeer delivers a photographic essay on the writing process.

Assembled: notecards with individual fragments of dialogue, phrases, ideas; more formalized bullet point character and story notes already typed up; partial rough draft scenes housed in notebooks; additional notes on the inside of a folder; and the thick, black cover of the moleskin tome in which I tend to do more rapacious and complete rough drafts.

And for the super-observant stalkers, there’s even a glimpse of blinds, chairs, and linoleum. More pictures at the link above (with relevant explanations).

I have over the past few days developed such a man-crush on Richard K Morgan that I left the Hub Issue 52 page open in a tab just so that I could get the Feature article written by him. Of course, after a day, I realized that the article is the same one that’s posted here on his website, which I’ve already read, and was the effective genesis of my crush.

In an interview I came across while researching Morgan, he gives the most basic of advice, but they are words which bear repeating (over and over and over). From the interview on Fantasy Book Critic:

Q: What advice would you give an aspiring writer?

Richard: Two things:

(1) Have it clear in your mind from the beginning what you want out of this. If it’s money, then like I said, there are easier ways. If it’s fame, then just get hold of a camera and film yourself doing something stupid or obscene. If, however, neither of those are what it’s about for you, if it’s really about the writing, then go to (2) below:

Don’t Give Up. It’s a long, tough road, with very little sustenance along the way. Even once you’re published, it can still be a surprisingly tough and lonely way to live. But if you really are a writer, then what the hell else were you going to do with your time?

I am now barreling through A Game Of Thrones (barreling at the speed I read is not saying a whole lot, though), so I can get to Altered Carbon which has been wating patiently on my shelf for some time now.