©2024 Harvey Stanbrough. All rights reserved.
Writing fiction is a journey, not a destination.
That’s why I so often say what’s important is THAT you write, not WHAT you write.
Above, subscriber HG asked a question about discoverability. I said not to worry about it. Why worry about discoverability when you have nothing out there to be discovered?
Common wisdom in the fiction-writing community says you must have at least several published novels or short story collections or several dozen published short stories before discoverability will even begin to kick in.
In a recent guest post, Vin Zandri talked about Hybrid Publishing. In it, he addresses discoverability via reviews, etc. If you missed it, you might want to check that out.
Of course, if you were a marketing major in college or the president (CEO, whatever) of an advertising agency like J. Walter Thompson (“Coke adds life,” “The Marine Corps Builds Men,” et al ad nauseam) your results might vary.
Similar to HG’s questions in the previous segment, writers who are newer to the craft (and some who are myth-bound even though they have been around awhile) often say they’re frightened of publishing a “bad” story or novel. They express that fear with some version of, “After all, what will that do to my career?”
I say up front, I can’t help the myth-bound writers. I’ve wasted a lot of valuable rope trying to pull them out of that acid-ridden cesspool of a river.
But my response to the newbies, every time, is “What career?”
If you want a career as a fiction writer, and if you want to thoroughly enjoy that career and discoverability—vs. constantly b*tching about what sheer drudgery writing is just to hear your own voice—you must publish often.
And to publish often—and here I’m talking about your own original work, not some AI-generated or otherwise purloined work—you have to write as much quality fiction as you can as “fast” as you can.
Finally, the best way to learn to write quality fiction is to write a LOT of fiction as “fast” as you can. (Here you may cue the grand entrance of Heinlein’s Rules and Writing Into the Dark. Of course, you don’t ‘have’ to follow either of those. See the Quote of the Day above.)
In other words, you have to PRACTICE.
Writers practice just as doctors practice. Practice, not hovering over one story or one sucking chest wound, begets quality. (More on this in a guest post tomorrow.)
Then
- publish each story or novel as you finish it,
- forget it, and
- move on to write the next story or novel.
That is the best way forward if you want to build a career and enter into the realm of discoverability.
But that word “fast” (I used it twice above) is a horribly misleading adjective.
To be a professional fiction writer, you don’t have to put more words on the page in a given hour than other fiction writers do.
To be a professional fiction writer, you only have to
- adjust your priorities to move fiction writing higher on the list,
- be more devoted to practicing the craft, and
- spend more time in the chair.
There is no more valuable way forward.
Of course, if you are strictly a hobbyist or if you are writing a story or novel just to strike writing it off your bucket list, none of the above pertains to you.