I know folks are trying to be helpful by listing all the handbooks on the mechanics of writing, or on the creative process (closer), but it's off topic. The author is talking about 'being a writer', as in the title. As in:
"What do you do?"
"Oh, I'm a writer"
Not like:
"Should one _ever_ begin a sentence with 'but'?"
"No, you should _never_ do that. I'm a prig!"
It seems that sitting down to write every day and telling people you're doing it brings with it a wrath of psychological goop that sane people need to cope with if they're going to keep remain sane. That's more what this essay is about.
All that finger-waggingly-said, some great books recommended. Thank you for that!
By comparison, there are many schools which teach (or claim to teach) programming, but few which cover the details of being a programmer: addressing employment contracts, valuing stock or equity options, non-competes, project management, vendor management, operating as an independent contractor, client (or boss) management, etc., etc.
There are similar observations made of the medical profession, law, engineering (particularly where independent / small firm work is common), etc. The nuts-and-bolts of the business.
Much of what's discussed (in the context of startups) on HN, for example.
That said: there are some guides, several mentioned below. The Writers' Handbook is the long-time classic. I'm looking at a few of these now based on their mentions here.
I actually think the headline, which the writer may not have chosen herself, is a bad description of the post. The irony of a article about writing somehow missing le mot juste... It's not about handbooks; it's about the blurry edges of the writing profession, where people tip over from "someone who writes" into someone who self-identifies as a writer and is dubbed a writer by others.
This is partially because writing, like coding, is an open profession. Unlike medicine for a example. Degrees may be helpful, but they are not mandatory. So there is no clear symbolic threshold separating the hobbyists from whoever deserves to be called a writer. There is no officially accepted imprimatur, no government-certified club that doles out memberships.
But there is a clear practical threshold, and that is money. If you make a living writing, then you are a writer as long as you do that.
There are also other good indicators, which may involve less (social) currency: If you spend a lot of time writing or thinking about writing, until it becomes your daily and predominant activity, then you are a writer.
Being a writer does not mean someone is a good writer. Personally, I don't think Stephen King is a good writer, and I wouldn't read him for advice -- but he is indisputably a writer, regardless of that subjective judgment.
It's interesting that the author pursued a degree in literature and that's what ultimately pushed her away from that career path. It seems to be a common theme where a formal education in creative arts makes people want to do something else in life, anything else.
I've had acquaintances with a musical background and eventually they went to do something else, including IT. From what an old buddy told me once, most graduates of a musical school learn to hate music and quit that vocation past graduation.
In the opposite fashion, I've never had a literary education and I'm feeling more and more drawn to this line of work. I'm not sure if I want to make a complete switch though, software engineering and startups are just too exciting to give it all up. Somehow it feels I can accomplish more and make a better contribution to the society with my honed programming skills than with words, but I might be wrong about it. For now, I'm just writing essays every now and then, publishing them on my blog and that seems to be enough.
One word of advice in relation to all of this. Don't shy away from reading foreign literature. I know that for many native English speakers other languages simply don't exist in their world, but you're missing out on an incredible body of thoughts and ideas that might expand your vision borders. Don't be stuck in your English silo, learn some foreign language and go exploring. And no, a translation is not the same, it's devoid of the original energy. That's why people are often unimpressed by what before a translation was a profound piece of work. You can't translation energy.
I majored in literature and minored in philosophy by taking an interdisciplinary programme.
As you suggest, the ideal path is majoring in something that will get you a job that pays decent to handsomely; and minor in something that will feed your soul. It sounds trite, but it is the best option and one few take from the people I've encountered.
I don't mean to burst your bubble but you might be romanticising a liberal arts education. It saddens me to say but I know UC Berkeley lit grads who still write like high-schoolers.
Literature doesn't teach you to write. Creative writing doesn't teach you to think. Forget about journalism. University writing style guides don't keep up with modern society. You have to tailor your liberal arts experience. Classical education taught the trivium to students at an early age so they can get a head start on teaching them how to think.
Luckily computer science teaches logic indirectly, but philosophically, it is only one type of logic. Writing involves many types of logic. But logic alone is not good writing. That depends on your audience and purpose. Good writing sometimes requires writing grammatically incorrect sentences. Good writing mirrors the natural flow of your reader's language, including phraseology, diction, and cause and effect. It has to jibe with them. But again, there are different purposes for a given writing composition.
When I got my first writing job, I was naively proud to say I was a writer. Now I'm embarrassed by it and just say what field or department I work in.
> but you're missing out on an incredible body of thoughts and ideas that might expand your vision borders.
Have to disagree here. Yes there is a lot of good stuff especially written in the past but looking at today I see high caliber English writers and books in every category I do not see in that quality and quantity in any other language. Ok I do not know how it's about Chinese but that's my perception regarding other in particular European languages.
Always when I look for something, literature, fiction or non-fiction I switcch after seconds to Amazon.com from my local Amazon and find way better and more stuff. Frankly, the local selection feels like written by amateurs comapred to the US, I know this might sound bold and is probably too generalizing but the general perception is that you do not miss out anything if you stick to English based literate, rather the opposite. Of course therr are exception and genious writes not from the US like Unberto Eco and others but still nothing to the vast majority English based literature offers. Heck, even my Kindle account is US only.
If one country produces excellent media it's the US.
I was an engineering major and switched to Creative Writing because of noted 'creative draw'. Loved the courses. Useless degree. Now I am a software engineer wish I had only minored in a creative field.
After all, college is just a place to pay for a degree, right? Might as well pay for something that will get you past HR.
> It's interesting that the author pursued a degree in literature and that's what ultimately pushed her away from that career path. It seems to be a common theme where a formal education in creative arts makes people want to do something else in life, anything else.
I can only speak for myself, but I have a MA in literature (creative writing and poetry specifically) and am now a developer. The career path for that type of degree is often teaching and I wanted to be creative. Developing allows me to remain creative day to day. So while it may seem like I've moved away from my original field, I actually feel much closer to it compared to when I was teaching.
I always hated literature and writing classes, because it felt wrong to force people to do things which are meant to be pleasurable. At the time, I thought the only point of such classes was so that students could pretentiously be considered "cultured".
Finally, after years, I'm finally able to enjoy literature and writing. I had similar experiences with math.
Beautiful article though. I've met a couple recently-turned full-time authors and have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for the author/artist life. It's such a lifestyle sacrifice that their love for the craft must be incredibly deep.
This idea is cute, but it’s a poor substitute for a real writing tutor/coach/teacher.
It repeatedly returns: “Your response seems incomplete, so we set your score to the length of the original sentence. If we're mistaken, please drop us a line with a screenshot of this screen”, without any indication of how to fix the solution to be acceptable. I suppose it’s fishing for some specific keywords?
It doesn’t seem to have any full natural language model or conceptual model of the idea of the paragraph, so it can’t point out awkward or confusing phrases.
The proposed “par” and “record” sentences are not especially clear or elegant prose, or even especially short for conveying the ideas in the paragraph, and the metric (fewest characters used) is in general a weak heuristic for clear writing. The prompts don’t offer any list of essential vs. superfluous information, or even an explanation of the paragraph’s context and audience, so a proofreader/rewriter has to guess precisely what the author needed to say, and what the appropriate tone/style is.
I ultimately don’t understand how this game teaches writing any better than just trying to rewrite random sentences found in a book. Or for that matter, just having an email conversation with a friend about some random topic.
The best advice on writing I've come across in 40 years of reading about writing is a "pithy maxim" from Cato the Elder: Rem tene, verba sequentur. (Grasp the thing, the words will follow.)
The best advice on being a writer is mostly reading how others did it and then avoiding their mistakes. Thus, I hope I don't end up kicking a can up a lonely road in Idaho or showing up drunk for an interview by Buckley or marrying my too-young cousin or winning any kind of prize.
Edit: I forgot to say what I came here to say: "Being a writer" is socially awkward and a little embarrassing, especially in this society. I've had feelings similar to the author's and had to learn to deal with them. Almost no one talks about that part of writing.
Thanks for the "pithy maxim" - I have never seen it before, but the idea has always been my key to giving a decent presentation. It goes straight into my quotes-file!
People mean different things when they say "writer," and it's worthwhile untangling a few different types.
* Writers who make a living writing
* Writers who don't (yet)
* Fiction writers: Novelists and short-story writers
* Poets
* Journalists: reporters, war correspondents, editors
* Bloggers
* Corporate: Technical writers, Marketing copy writers, etc.
* Academics all stripes
These categories aren't mutually exclusive, but they each represent a different type of writing, which itself requires a different practice, approach or method.
There are, in fact, many handbooks for being a writer, and almost all of them are written to serve a particular type of writer and not others.
The creative writing departments of America have produced piles of writing about writing (about writing -- gaah ... self-referential recursion! No one escapes a medium describing itself.).
* Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style - Erasmus (the opposite of Strunk...)
* And so on...
The best handbook of all, though is simply the study of great writers whose work you love, as the author points out. Anyone serious about fiction or prose should dive into the 19th-century Russian and French novelists, Virginia Woolf, an annotated Shakespeare, etc. It's all there just waiting for us. In that sense, every piece of good writing is a handbook on writing.
(Fwiw, I made a living as a reporter and editor for about 10 years.)
Not that Strunk and White is bad, but it's a peculiar choice to list first because it is mediocre and there are so many other options which are better. At the very minimum, Strunk and White is a very contentious entry, and people (like me) will come out of the woodwork to attack it.
* Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, Joseph Bizup
* The Chicago Manual of Style (depending on what kind of writer you are, a different guide may suit you better)
>> The best handbook of all, though is simply the study of great writers whose work you love
That is definitely the way to approach things. If you come into writing by choice then it's because you've been drawn to it. Which in its turn means you have read works of others and have been inspired by them. Use those as your handbooks then, learn from the great, imitate them and eventually discover your own path.
It's not like you've never read anything of consequence in your life and all of a sudden you decide you're going to turn into a writer. Doesn't work that way. There are no "Writing for dummies" or "Learning writing in 20 days" manuals. You just start writing because you can, when you become ready for it.
Of course, what most writers will advise is that you just write a lot, and get good writers to critique your work. Writing, like most arts, takes years and years.
Today, there are various web sites that will "crowd-source" critiques of your writing, in exchange for your critiquing other people's work (also good practice). I've used critters.org quite a bit but there are several other big ones these days.
The title is a bit more precise than commenters in this thread are giving credit for. There is no handbook for "being a writer", but there are many handbooks for writing.
You could translate this to another field. I've read lots of books on programming, but very few on "how to be a programmer". Mostly a few short blog posts with contradictory information.
Too many people want writing 'hacks' and 'tips', without understanding that writing is a market, which means that for writing to be read, it typically has to meet some sort of demand. Famous people can create their own markets, but unknowns have to latch onto existing ones.
Long-form seems to be very popular online these days. Anyone can hammer out a 500-word essay, but a it takes a 5,000 word one to stand out. Long-form may be the best approach right now for writers hoping to gain visibility.
Also, I think IQ plays a role, too. You need to be smart to make a career at writing (assuming you're not a celebrity), and few are sufficiently smart enough, sorry to say.
it's pretty funny that the author takes so long to get to their point :P, given the title
Anyone want to post a tldr?
as a paid author, given the title, i was hoping for an article that touched on drinking, lallygagging, and partying --- then getting all your work done in one day at the end of the month.
The article's also evidence of the temptation to write about yourself, as I suppose that's what you know best. I have seen a lot of successful authors who inject themselves into the narrative.
For example, this successful author (David Wilcock) who failed to make a documentary, and wrote about it and turned it into a NYTimes bestseller. It's sub-par book with silly claims but he has an audience and it provided a story structure with interesting ideas and alleged facts. Eat Love Pray is another example.
And I suppose if you can write about outrageous things you do, it probably makes people all the more motivated to read you.
Hey, I'm a second career writer too! That's a fantastic piece.
My background is in software and I still freelance to pay the bills. I have been writing on and off since I was old enough to hold a pen. Little fits and starts here and there, but by the time I was in my early twenties I focused on making a living instead of learning how to write. I dreamed of one day making enough money to retire and maybe write a few books.
Three years ago I realized that was crazy. I wanted to write, putting it off until the end of my life not only increases the chance I'd never get to do it, but also means that I'd miss out on years and years of practice. I decided to do with writing what I did with programming—set aside nearly half my time to learn how to do it, then keep doing it until I could make a living.
I'm not making a living anytime soon, but after three years I've written a couple novel manuscripts, published a short story collection, and am due to publish a novel at the end of the year. But I'm still hesitant to answer, "I'm a writer" when someone at a cocktail party asks what I do.
My litmus test for being a writer is fairly simple. How many completed items do you have lying around. I don't care if they are published but they need to be finished (as in a cohesive and typed out whole).
It's basically the same as being a programmer except programmers tend to self publish their work rather quickly. I feel like writers should generally do the same (and solicit feedback).
I would say most jobs or careers have no handbook. The ones that SEEM to have handbook are the same jobs where they'll tell you that the handbook means little in the real world. Think policing, firefighting, paramedic. Jobs with certifications such as medicine or specific highly regulated trades such as electrician, HVAC. These jobs have large ramping up periods, apprenticeships because the 'handbook' is guided experience.
What I don't understand is did the author think that most people new to writing expected it to be more straightforward? Because I would have thought people like writing because the career is what you make of it, where you hustle and for what.
Him sitting next to author reminded me how I always think you are a writer when you pay your bills through writing, same with art etc. I find so many that say they are an "artist" yet thats not how they pay their bills. Sure you may make fantastic art but you are not an artist.
You never here someone say I am a basketball player just because they play basketball as a hobby. Doing something that pays your bills is totally different than it being a hobby or even being great at it.
Not everyone defines themselves by what pays the bills, plenty of artists do menial jobs to make ends meet. How they pay their bills is a bad measure of who/what they are, you shouldn't reject someone's self definition because you want to judge them by how they make money. You are not your job.
William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens are good examples of brilliant authors who couldn't support themselves with their work alone. (In fact, economically, almost no poets can support themselves by book sales alone. They tend to go for grants or teaching gigs.) They were better artists than the vast majority of those who put out writing which can support them.
Not really that interesting if main point is that there is no easy "follow the instructions" way to become a writer. It is true for everything like there is no "follow the instructions" way to have a good life, build muscles, etc. It is all about showing up doing mistakes, learning not to make same mistakes poof after quite long time maybe you achieved your goal, but you are never certain.
I agree to the topic's message...but...who is a writer? Realeasing a book (and especially in that travel genre) - in my opinion - does not make you a (good/belletristic) writer.
But if it is just about writing for living / journalism and similar stuff, then yes, handbooks exists and do work.
ps: worked as journalist and studied literature, but don't feel like i could write books that come close to what i like to read.
Just don't be the d\* whom people are wary about meeting in person for the fear of being used as a (usually unpleasant) character in any of the future writings.
assuming you have the funds for the hiring of said editor. otherwise remixing of existing stories will be lonely and frustrating and soul-killing. issues, luckily, that often lead to being famous.
[+] [-] methehack|9 years ago|reply
All that finger-waggingly-said, some great books recommended. Thank you for that!
[+] [-] dredmorbius|9 years ago|reply
By comparison, there are many schools which teach (or claim to teach) programming, but few which cover the details of being a programmer: addressing employment contracts, valuing stock or equity options, non-competes, project management, vendor management, operating as an independent contractor, client (or boss) management, etc., etc.
There are similar observations made of the medical profession, law, engineering (particularly where independent / small firm work is common), etc. The nuts-and-bolts of the business.
Much of what's discussed (in the context of startups) on HN, for example.
That said: there are some guides, several mentioned below. The Writers' Handbook is the long-time classic. I'm looking at a few of these now based on their mentions here.
[+] [-] vonnik|9 years ago|reply
This is partially because writing, like coding, is an open profession. Unlike medicine for a example. Degrees may be helpful, but they are not mandatory. So there is no clear symbolic threshold separating the hobbyists from whoever deserves to be called a writer. There is no officially accepted imprimatur, no government-certified club that doles out memberships.
But there is a clear practical threshold, and that is money. If you make a living writing, then you are a writer as long as you do that.
There are also other good indicators, which may involve less (social) currency: If you spend a lot of time writing or thinking about writing, until it becomes your daily and predominant activity, then you are a writer.
Being a writer does not mean someone is a good writer. Personally, I don't think Stephen King is a good writer, and I wouldn't read him for advice -- but he is indisputably a writer, regardless of that subjective judgment.
[+] [-] bobwaycott|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AndreyErmakov|9 years ago|reply
I've had acquaintances with a musical background and eventually they went to do something else, including IT. From what an old buddy told me once, most graduates of a musical school learn to hate music and quit that vocation past graduation.
In the opposite fashion, I've never had a literary education and I'm feeling more and more drawn to this line of work. I'm not sure if I want to make a complete switch though, software engineering and startups are just too exciting to give it all up. Somehow it feels I can accomplish more and make a better contribution to the society with my honed programming skills than with words, but I might be wrong about it. For now, I'm just writing essays every now and then, publishing them on my blog and that seems to be enough.
One word of advice in relation to all of this. Don't shy away from reading foreign literature. I know that for many native English speakers other languages simply don't exist in their world, but you're missing out on an incredible body of thoughts and ideas that might expand your vision borders. Don't be stuck in your English silo, learn some foreign language and go exploring. And no, a translation is not the same, it's devoid of the original energy. That's why people are often unimpressed by what before a translation was a profound piece of work. You can't translation energy.
[+] [-] kafkaesque|9 years ago|reply
As you suggest, the ideal path is majoring in something that will get you a job that pays decent to handsomely; and minor in something that will feed your soul. It sounds trite, but it is the best option and one few take from the people I've encountered.
I don't mean to burst your bubble but you might be romanticising a liberal arts education. It saddens me to say but I know UC Berkeley lit grads who still write like high-schoolers.
Literature doesn't teach you to write. Creative writing doesn't teach you to think. Forget about journalism. University writing style guides don't keep up with modern society. You have to tailor your liberal arts experience. Classical education taught the trivium to students at an early age so they can get a head start on teaching them how to think.
Luckily computer science teaches logic indirectly, but philosophically, it is only one type of logic. Writing involves many types of logic. But logic alone is not good writing. That depends on your audience and purpose. Good writing sometimes requires writing grammatically incorrect sentences. Good writing mirrors the natural flow of your reader's language, including phraseology, diction, and cause and effect. It has to jibe with them. But again, there are different purposes for a given writing composition.
When I got my first writing job, I was naively proud to say I was a writer. Now I'm embarrassed by it and just say what field or department I work in.
[+] [-] greenspot|9 years ago|reply
Have to disagree here. Yes there is a lot of good stuff especially written in the past but looking at today I see high caliber English writers and books in every category I do not see in that quality and quantity in any other language. Ok I do not know how it's about Chinese but that's my perception regarding other in particular European languages.
Always when I look for something, literature, fiction or non-fiction I switcch after seconds to Amazon.com from my local Amazon and find way better and more stuff. Frankly, the local selection feels like written by amateurs comapred to the US, I know this might sound bold and is probably too generalizing but the general perception is that you do not miss out anything if you stick to English based literate, rather the opposite. Of course therr are exception and genious writes not from the US like Unberto Eco and others but still nothing to the vast majority English based literature offers. Heck, even my Kindle account is US only.
If one country produces excellent media it's the US.
[+] [-] kampsduac|9 years ago|reply
After all, college is just a place to pay for a degree, right? Might as well pay for something that will get you past HR.
[+] [-] Outdoorsman|9 years ago|reply
This is a good point...a good translation depends heavily on preserving the writer's "voice", which is unique to each writer...
Masterful translations are among the most underrated examples of human linguistic skill that I'm aware of...
[+] [-] adregan|9 years ago|reply
I can only speak for myself, but I have a MA in literature (creative writing and poetry specifically) and am now a developer. The career path for that type of degree is often teaching and I wanted to be creative. Developing allows me to remain creative day to day. So while it may seem like I've moved away from my original field, I actually feel much closer to it compared to when I was teaching.
[+] [-] calebm|9 years ago|reply
Finally, after years, I'm finally able to enjoy literature and writing. I had similar experiences with math.
[+] [-] m52go|9 years ago|reply
Because no writer has the patience to sit through a grammar class...and no reader wants to read wordy, confusing writing no matter what the topic.
http://writeonpar.com
/shameless plug
Beautiful article though. I've met a couple recently-turned full-time authors and have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for the author/artist life. It's such a lifestyle sacrifice that their love for the craft must be incredibly deep.
[+] [-] jacobolus|9 years ago|reply
It repeatedly returns: “Your response seems incomplete, so we set your score to the length of the original sentence. If we're mistaken, please drop us a line with a screenshot of this screen”, without any indication of how to fix the solution to be acceptable. I suppose it’s fishing for some specific keywords?
It doesn’t seem to have any full natural language model or conceptual model of the idea of the paragraph, so it can’t point out awkward or confusing phrases.
The proposed “par” and “record” sentences are not especially clear or elegant prose, or even especially short for conveying the ideas in the paragraph, and the metric (fewest characters used) is in general a weak heuristic for clear writing. The prompts don’t offer any list of essential vs. superfluous information, or even an explanation of the paragraph’s context and audience, so a proofreader/rewriter has to guess precisely what the author needed to say, and what the appropriate tone/style is.
I ultimately don’t understand how this game teaches writing any better than just trying to rewrite random sentences found in a book. Or for that matter, just having an email conversation with a friend about some random topic.
[+] [-] sverige|9 years ago|reply
The best advice on being a writer is mostly reading how others did it and then avoiding their mistakes. Thus, I hope I don't end up kicking a can up a lonely road in Idaho or showing up drunk for an interview by Buckley or marrying my too-young cousin or winning any kind of prize.
Edit: I forgot to say what I came here to say: "Being a writer" is socially awkward and a little embarrassing, especially in this society. I've had feelings similar to the author's and had to learn to deal with them. Almost no one talks about that part of writing.
[+] [-] henrik_w|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vonnik|9 years ago|reply
* Writers who make a living writing
* Writers who don't (yet)
* Fiction writers: Novelists and short-story writers
* Poets
* Journalists: reporters, war correspondents, editors
* Bloggers
* Corporate: Technical writers, Marketing copy writers, etc.
* Academics all stripes
These categories aren't mutually exclusive, but they each represent a different type of writing, which itself requires a different practice, approach or method.
There are, in fact, many handbooks for being a writer, and almost all of them are written to serve a particular type of writer and not others.
The creative writing departments of America have produced piles of writing about writing (about writing -- gaah ... self-referential recursion! No one escapes a medium describing itself.).
Some of the classics are:
* The Elements of Style - Strunk and White
* Politics and the English Language - Orwell https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
* Hemingway on Writing https://www.scribd.com/doc/156100470/Ernest-Hemingway-on-Wri...
* Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style - Erasmus (the opposite of Strunk...)
* And so on...
The best handbook of all, though is simply the study of great writers whose work you love, as the author points out. Anyone serious about fiction or prose should dive into the 19th-century Russian and French novelists, Virginia Woolf, an annotated Shakespeare, etc. It's all there just waiting for us. In that sense, every piece of good writing is a handbook on writing.
(Fwiw, I made a living as a reporter and editor for about 10 years.)
[+] [-] klodolph|9 years ago|reply
* Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, Joseph Bizup
* The Chicago Manual of Style (depending on what kind of writer you are, a different guide may suit you better)
* Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
* On Writing, Stephen King
[+] [-] AndreyErmakov|9 years ago|reply
That is definitely the way to approach things. If you come into writing by choice then it's because you've been drawn to it. Which in its turn means you have read works of others and have been inspired by them. Use those as your handbooks then, learn from the great, imitate them and eventually discover your own path.
It's not like you've never read anything of consequence in your life and all of a sudden you decide you're going to turn into a writer. Doesn't work that way. There are no "Writing for dummies" or "Learning writing in 20 days" manuals. You just start writing because you can, when you become ready for it.
[+] [-] blisterpeanuts|9 years ago|reply
https://books.google.com/books/about/If_You_Want_to_Write.ht...
Another nice one is Stein on Writing
https://books.google.com/books/about/Stein_On_Writing.html?i...
Of course, what most writers will advise is that you just write a lot, and get good writers to critique your work. Writing, like most arts, takes years and years.
Today, there are various web sites that will "crowd-source" critiques of your writing, in exchange for your critiquing other people's work (also good practice). I've used critters.org quite a bit but there are several other big ones these days.
[+] [-] klodolph|9 years ago|reply
You could translate this to another field. I've read lots of books on programming, but very few on "how to be a programmer". Mostly a few short blog posts with contradictory information.
[+] [-] uberstuber|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielvf|9 years ago|reply
And I'd also recommend "On Writing" by Stephen King.
[+] [-] mad44|9 years ago|reply
http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2016/04/book-review-war-of-...
http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2016/06/nobody-wants-to-rea...
[+] [-] instakill|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tonyedgecombe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpauper|9 years ago|reply
Long-form seems to be very popular online these days. Anyone can hammer out a 500-word essay, but a it takes a 5,000 word one to stand out. Long-form may be the best approach right now for writers hoping to gain visibility.
Also, I think IQ plays a role, too. You need to be smart to make a career at writing (assuming you're not a celebrity), and few are sufficiently smart enough, sorry to say.
[+] [-] update|9 years ago|reply
Anyone want to post a tldr?
as a paid author, given the title, i was hoping for an article that touched on drinking, lallygagging, and partying --- then getting all your work done in one day at the end of the month.
[+] [-] estonian|9 years ago|reply
For example, this successful author (David Wilcock) who failed to make a documentary, and wrote about it and turned it into a NYTimes bestseller. It's sub-par book with silly claims but he has an audience and it provided a story structure with interesting ideas and alleged facts. Eat Love Pray is another example.
And I suppose if you can write about outrageous things you do, it probably makes people all the more motivated to read you.
[+] [-] JackFr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weeksie|9 years ago|reply
My background is in software and I still freelance to pay the bills. I have been writing on and off since I was old enough to hold a pen. Little fits and starts here and there, but by the time I was in my early twenties I focused on making a living instead of learning how to write. I dreamed of one day making enough money to retire and maybe write a few books.
Three years ago I realized that was crazy. I wanted to write, putting it off until the end of my life not only increases the chance I'd never get to do it, but also means that I'd miss out on years and years of practice. I decided to do with writing what I did with programming—set aside nearly half my time to learn how to do it, then keep doing it until I could make a living.
I'm not making a living anytime soon, but after three years I've written a couple novel manuscripts, published a short story collection, and am due to publish a novel at the end of the year. But I'm still hesitant to answer, "I'm a writer" when someone at a cocktail party asks what I do.
[+] [-] kriro|9 years ago|reply
It's basically the same as being a programmer except programmers tend to self publish their work rather quickly. I feel like writers should generally do the same (and solicit feedback).
[+] [-] jonhohle|9 years ago|reply
0 - http://amzn.to/28Z2K9e
[+] [-] michaelbuddy|9 years ago|reply
What I don't understand is did the author think that most people new to writing expected it to be more straightforward? Because I would have thought people like writing because the career is what you make of it, where you hustle and for what.
[+] [-] Mendenhall|9 years ago|reply
You never here someone say I am a basketball player just because they play basketball as a hobby. Doing something that pays your bills is totally different than it being a hobby or even being great at it.
[+] [-] gnaritas|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maldusiecle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gokhan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ozim|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d33d33|9 years ago|reply
But if it is just about writing for living / journalism and similar stuff, then yes, handbooks exists and do work.
ps: worked as journalist and studied literature, but don't feel like i could write books that come close to what i like to read.
[+] [-] etangent|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] p4wnc6|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nxzero|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pasquinelli|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charliemagee|9 years ago|reply