NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/misc/writing/2550

Text File | 1992-08-13 | 2.8 KB | 58 lines

Newsgroups: misc.writing
Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!torn!watserv2.uwaterloo.ca!watmath!thinkage!jim
From: [e-mail] (James Alan Gardner)
Subject: Re: "Wow, You're a Writer!"
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Thinkage Ltd.
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 16:43:37 GMT
Lines: 47

Public attitudes toward writers involve a wondrous amount of
double-think.  I have met a degree of awe when I say that I'm
an SF writer.  Then they ask me where I've published, I say,
"Amazing and F&SF," and they say, "Never heard of them."  Kind
of hard to understand why they're awed if they know nothing
about pro SF magazines.

There's also the tendency for many people to believe they too
could be writers if they only sat down and did it.  They have
"great ideas".  Some of them even offer to give you their ideas
and all you have to do is write them up.  (Wow, such a deal.)

I think part of the problem is that people really don't sit
down and try to write.  Compare writing to art -- almost
everyone sits down and tries to draw something early on in
life, and you soon find out that drawing is trickier than
it looks.  From that, most people figure out that art in
general requires the disciplined development of skills and
you can't just be brilliant immediately.  (Disclaimer: I grant
that many people have no appreciation of what goes into abstract
art and are quick to say, "My kid can do better than that.")

On the other hand, few people ever try to write more than a note
to the babysitter.  In addition, few people are ever exposed to
really amateur writing, the way they might be exposed to rinky-dink
art.  Sure, there's a lot of wretched stuff being published, but
even the worst goes through an editor and a proofreader to clean
up the messiest bits.  Furthermore, the average reader is only
exposed to work done by authors with some claim to national or
international stature: best-selling books; glossy magazines on
the newstand; major TV and movie productions; wire-service articles
in the newspaper.  These are all written by people who have made
the big-time in their fields...the work may still be crap, but
the writers have at least learned to give their crap a reasonable
amount of polish.  Because most people don't really encounter
truly amateur writing, they don't recognize how bad bad writing
can be so they don't know how much work good writing requires.

I meet a lot of people who seem to think there's some magic trick
to being published: some secret handshake that will get them in
the door without having to put in much time at the keyboard.  It's
hard to convince such people that it's actually the opposite
that's true -- you have to work your butt off for a long time,
and even then, you have to get the breaks before you can make
that first sale.

        Jim Gardner, Thinkage Ltd.