Fanatical Pupil

I mean, in this post about getting her latest book published (DarkShip Thieves which is available now and sounds pretty cool) she talks about how she went through at least 4 agents in order to get stuff published that publishers actually wanted to publish. Each one has a distinctly terrifying personality, and the story (even slapped together for a blog post as it is) will probably scare anyone who is even thinking about trying to become a writer.

I’m glad she persevered though, and not just because it gives me hope, but because it’s a fascinating story that is probably a good read for any aspiring novelist… and because Darkship Thieves sounds like it’s a lot more like something I’d like than her other books (no offense, since I haven’t actually read any of them, of course).

You hear how all the Great Writers (okay, yeah, not all of them) were big time drinkers, right? Here’s me after a few glasses of wine trying to compose a sentence:

propelled by a massive amount of compressed air and magnoelectricity were absorbed by a Quietwater shield around Jensu.

MAGNOELECTRICITY?

What the Eff did I study in college? Certainly couldn’t have been any combination of Physics, Quantum Electronics, or – I don’t know – Electromagnetics!

No more drinking and writing.

I believe I had what I consider my first real experience of what life would be like (most days at least) as a writer over this Labor Day weekend. Although I sometimes do extra Work work on the weekends, this time I ignored Work for 3 days (except for some intermittent email checking), and instead tried to focus on writing in my free time.

The reasoning was in part – aside from getting more words written – to see if I could simulate what life would actually be like as a real (or perhaps professional) writer. Well, in summary, it was pretty awesome.

In more detail…

I got at least 300 words a day written without feeling a lot of pressure. As I’m sure just about every author [or writer] with a day job knows, it’s pretty easy to put pressure on yourself when you’ve got a WPD (Words Per Day) goal and have to spend 8 or more hours of the day putting in time at your real job.

This time I got to just do my normal weekend stuff, but for 3 days straight instead of just 2, which, again, relieved a lot of pressure in doing errands and house projects and the like.

I have added this one to my To Read list:

Not because I don’t enjoy my job – I love it. It’s just not the kind of job that will really ever lend itself to working less than full time. At some point in the future, I want to find a job that will still be as fun as the job I have now, but will be something I can do part time while I use the other part of that time to write.