FREE KINDLE FOR PC

FREE KINDLE FOR PC
So you can read my books

Saturday, June 11, 2016

STAY LIT!


Writing is precarious

Amazon seems to want to prune its ranks of unknown Indies. 

 Struggling Indie writers find their novels lost in an ever-growing sea of self-published prose.

Twitter, Facebook, and Blog Book Tours offer fewer and fewer dividends to authors.

It’s a time when it would make a lot of sense to quit 

— and a time when simply not quitting is becoming its own art form.

Academics who left the scholarly world that no longer seemed relevant have invented their own genre --  

Quit Lit.

 Many creative writers today seem to be writing what you might call  

“STAY LIT — 

accounts of how the publishing world has bruised and sometimes bloodied their egos, 

and why they’re still writing anyway.

Read the early letters of Mark Twain, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Raymond Chandler --

And you will read the same thing:

Those who quit never win.  
Those who stay the course 
always win their self-respect ... 
if not their dreams. 

Writing lives and writing careers are very hard-won even when they’re successful.

If it were easy, everyone would do it.  Stay the course.

7 comments:

  1. Hi Roland - stay true to your true literary ideals ... there will be break throughs - good luck to you all ... cheers Hilary

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If nothing else, our dreams give us focus and quicken our minds. :-)

      Delete
  2. It also seems that many 'creative' writers are writing whatever is selling, and to many, that is YA or NA. What happened to just 'Adult' writing? Or are there no adult readers left? There seems to be fewer and fewer books that make you think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just to clarify, by Adult, I'm not referencing Erotica, that seems to be alive and well, but stories written about somebody that isn't a teen.

      Delete
    2. "Adult" has become what I call a wagon word that brings with it more than when it first was created.

      You are an adult; I am an adult, so when we want something to read, we go to an adult bookstore, right? :-)

      Some words have been ruined by injudicious use of them. :-(

      I am with you. Where are the books that make you think, that appeal to ALL ages?

      Delete
  3. I hate the categorizing that has to be done to market books to the public, but it's the reality of the business, and writers are stuck with it.

    What's interesting is that so many adults are reading YA and NA that I'm wondering how long these categories will remain distinct. Why not just call them books about teens or college-age youth? Guess that wouldn't work, but it's an idea.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The categorizing is to help the bookstore owner know where to place the book and to help the reader know where NOT to look.

      How many good books are overlooked due to this? :-(

      Thanks for visiting and talking to me! :-)

      Delete