Feeling quiet inside

[pegkerr]

I will probably go to bed soon. As I said, I've been a bit distracted lately, and have had a bit of a problem of coming up with entries that I hope would be interesting (hope I haven't been boring those of you who are still reading). (Well, aside from entries about doing things like splitting my scalp open, I mean--and I want to stress that I don't do those sort of things to myself because I want to entertain my LiveJournal audience.)

Oh, I know; I could talk about this. I got an e-mail recently from corinnethewise, who is interested in writing and so sent me some questions:

How do you go about getting a novel published? Is it economically feasible to write for a living without trying to support a family? Do you ever write short stories? Is it more difficult to write novels or short stories? Is it easier to sell novels or short stories?

Think I'll answer some of these here, as others might be interested in the answers, too. I started out writing short stories. I had about a dozen short stories published before I started trying to write a novel, and it took me two years of floundering around before I figured out how to write a novel (it's quite a different technique). I did it this way because I sort of assumed that I had to do it this way, that serious writers "worked their way up" to novels. But I want to stress that in this matter, as in all other pronouncements I may make about the Process of Writing, I also add the caveat Your Mileage May Vary. I know many working writers who never did short stories at all, and in fact haven't the least clue how to write a 2000 word short story, because their natural length is the novel. That's the way they think of stories, in big chunks. You can start a career with short stories. You can start a career with novels. I will say that it is probably much harder to support yourself full time as a writer if you ONLY write short stories, but again, with this rule as with any other, there are exceptions. The reason for this is that there so many of the markets for short fiction which were present in the 40s and 50s (which supported many working sf writers) have since dried up and gone out of business.

Will stop there for now; as Pepys (pepysdiary) says, "and so to bed." Other published writers reading this, please feel free to chime in with any comments you may have on this topic for corinnethewise.

Cheers,
Peg

Comments

[anoisblue.livejournal.com]

I find (and have heard the same from many writers) that short fiction is much more difficult than novel writing. It's not just the length and therefore, the time involved. It's the importance of every word and how focused the writing must be to keep it moving toward a good conclusion in that length.