Your job is to write the best book you can. Period. Every time. Don't 'save' anything for later. Don't leave anything on the mat. If the idea sweeps you up in its fury, ride the dang wave.
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Quotes tagged ‘Writing As A Career’
Your career isn't over until you stop writing. If your book flops, if they drop your contract, if they don't buy your next book-- it's not over. Pick a pseudonym, switch genres, self-publish, hybridize. It's not over until you are.
A writing career is like a pangolin driving a semi truck through a taco bell. Everyone is very impressed, but no one stops to think how many fortunes had to align to make that happen.
Everyone gets rejected. From a story idea that gets quashed to the pitch that doesn’t resonate to the deal that falls apart. Thing is, successful/established creators shrug it off. A creative career is a marathon, not a sprint.
I’m hearing from lots of aspiring writers, and I just want to remind you that what you see is oftentimes a highlight reel. What someone reveals on social media can still be sincere, but it is curated. Nothing is overnight. Nothing is guaranteed. I 100% understand how the dream of being a bestseller,…
My happiness, my abilities, and every possibility of being useful in any way have always been in the literary field.
It can be hard, during the solitary years of writing a book, to imagine it might ever find its way into in the lives & hearts of others.
You know what to say, though you may have buried it so deep it needs excavating. So no more excuses, dispense with the wordplay, don't waste time being timid. Unearth it, write it.
Trying not to cry. when i cry while writing, the writing turns broad. But if i can stave off the tears, stand at the exact horizon where they well up but don't quite fall. . .good thinking lies there, clarity & fullness, at that border.
I personally think a good agent is invaluable not merely for helping you sell work and negotiate contracts but for protecting you after the sale re: touring, cover design, promotion and marketing etc.
There is absolutely zero way to predict how your creative career will go. You could be read by a producer and get a movie tomorrow. You could hit it big 10 years from now. No one knows. The anxiety, of course, comes from the fact that it's hard to plan a future around something no one knows anything…
Realtalk: Writing is a career. It has a community. You have colleagues. To suggest that you don't need or shouldn't want any of these things is ridiculous. Colleagues help each other out.
It is good that for the moment you are going into a profession which will make you independent and mean you only have yourself to rely on, in every sense. Have the patience to wait and see whether your inmost life feels confined by the form of this occupation. I consider it a very difficult and a ve…
...admit to yourself whether you would die if it should be denied you to write. This above all: ask yourself in your night's quietest hour: must I write?
That’s all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.
Here's a brutal truth: Career novelists aren't the most talented writers. They're adequately talented writers who finish what they start.