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To: NorthMountain

I’m an author in the zombie genre but I’m an independent writer. I would KILL to have two years to write my next book, and have people waiting for it. That’s the advantage of getting paid in advance by a proper publishing house. Plus, he’s obviously a great writer.

To cut it as an indie author you do have to crank out books in much shorter periods of time. Readers forget about you for good if you wait 2 months, much less two years. That’s just the way it is in the trenches of Amazon.

I get a chuckle over statements like “it ain’t like digging ditches.” That’s a pantload. Just like the ditch digger can’t say “aw hell, I’m just not feeling it today. I’m not going in,” a professional author can’t say “I don’t feel creative, so I’m going to skip today.” That’s the very definition of a professional author. You write even when you don’t feel it. AND you write the equivalent of a good ditch. You can’t make it too shallow or too narrow or the audience is going to bail. In most cases big time authors get paid in advance to write books, on deadline, and even though they’re bored of their world they have to phone in a book because they have a legal obligation to do so. That’s why later books in a series can suck.

Charlie Mike. This thread just caught my interest.


17 posted on 05/12/2017 12:17:33 PM PDT by siberianheat
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To: siberianheat
That’s the very definition of a professional author. You write even when you don’t feel it. AND you write the equivalent of a good ditch. You can’t make it too shallow or too narrow or the audience is going to bail. In most cases big time authors get paid in advance to write books, on deadline, and even though they’re bored of their world they have to phone in a book because they have a legal obligation to do so. That’s why later books in a series can suck.

I never cease to be amazed at the talent of great writers, be they novelists or songwriters. It would be one thing to be a great writer of non-fiction, as Winston Churchill was. But to create the entire story (or musical work) from nothing, and to do it regularly seems quite miraculous to me.

19 posted on 05/12/2017 12:31:21 PM PDT by Sans-Culotte (Time to get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US!)
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To: siberianheat
Diana Gabaldon [the Outlander series] is an example of a VERY professional writer.

She's not going to let the TeeVee series catch her up in her books.

Go Tell The Bees [book 9] is on track, and I think she might have one more in the series after that.

24 posted on 05/12/2017 12:52:58 PM PDT by kiryandil (Americ)
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