Earlier today, I found myself in a discussion with a professional author friend of mine, someone who is part of my writing critique group. It isn’t like we get to talk a lot, in fact, I don’t think I’ve seen him face-to-face in a couple of years. However, we got to talking and the conversation rolled around to dealing with amateur writers and I was rather surprised at the response, because he seems to think pretty much like I do.

Here I was thinking I was alone.

I don’t really remember exactly how we got around to it, I know we were talking about recent issues with writing and before I knew it, we were talking about non-professionals and the real problems that we have in that realm. I think it was something about a prospective writer wanting shortcuts to success, someone who got upset when my friend said that there weren’t any.

That, of course, is my experience as well. In fact, I think I brought up an unrelated discussion I’d been having, about daily word counts, and the amateurs seemed inordinately confused by anyone who could write more than a thousand or so in a sitting. When I said that I wrote a minimum of 5k a day, they effectively crapped themselves.

“It can’t be done!” they said. “Not if you’re not just writing crap!” Of course, if they can’t do it, it’s impossible, right? Yet isn’t that what growth is about? A lot of things that I do every day now, I couldn’t have done a handful of years ago. It’s only through hard work and perseverance that I’ve gotten where I am today and I’m not done. I’m still trying to improve.

No, that can’t be it, they concluded. How can you possibly come up with a story while keeping that pace? It’s simple. You do it beforehand. You learn the craft of telling stories and then you tell them. Story structure isn’t that difficult. It becomes second nature. Yet they don’t seem capable of understanding that. It’s one of many reasons why their output is so poor, because they are neither organized, educated nor interested in treating their writing like a job. They fail to follow best practices and then, when they fail, they pretend that nobody else can do it either.

My friend agreed with me, which is why, he said, he tries not to hang around with amateurs as much as possible. They will ask him questions, he will provide pat answers and move on because most amateurs aren’t actually interested in the truth. They want the easy path and there is nothing in writing that’s easy.

This seems to be insanely common among pro-level authors though. Some will try to sell courses to the amateurs as a way to make a buck, but mostly, it’s aimed at people who are really serious about it and far too many just aren’t. They think that writing ought to be simple. It ought to just magically show up on the page without effort. No matter how many times they are told that it doesn’t work that way, they persist. It’s why I really don’t want to be around most of them either.

I wouldn’t say if they’d just listen but most don’t. They expect the kind of answers that make them happy and when those answers don’t come, they get mad. The latest insanity has been trying to put together a Kickstarter for your books because Brandon Sanderson made millions doing his. Sure, but Brandon is a best-selling author with millions of built-in readers. These people probably haven’t strung together a dozen coherent words. Why would anyone ever support such a venture? Because the amateur wants them to!

Or, in another case, someone was posting that they’d half-assed a book, got about 30k into it and then dropped it. It’s been sitting there gathering dust for years. Now, they want to sell this incomplete disaster and they’re looking for simple ways to do it. Here’s the reality. You can’t. If you didn’t care enough about this project to finish it, why would anyone else?

Obviously, they didn’t like the reality of the situation so they complained. They somehow deserved money! It was a crap project that they didn’t care about at the time, but they deserve to make a buck off of it! Yeah, reality doesn’t work that way, but these people don’t want to live in the real world.

It’s one reason I’ve just walked away from most forums. I might look in from time to time but the number of posts that I make are minimal because honest advice is not what they are looking for. They just want pie-in-the-sky fantasy and anyone who dares to tell them the truth, they’re going to get mad because their comfort is all that they’re looking for. Therefore, I don’t bother.

I even went to Facebook, thinking maybe, if there is a somewhat older, more mature audience, I might find something worthwhile. Nope, it’s the same. You can’t dare tell anyone what’s really going on. Someone posted recently that their book was getting published and it was only costing them $5000! That’s a scam, I told them. Their book isn’t going to be published in any real way. It’s not going to wind up on bookstore shelves. You’re getting ripped off. Of course, they didn’t like that either. They got mad at me for pointing out the truth and spoiling their fantasy. When  they finally figure it out, will they remember that I told them the truth? No, certainly not. In fact, they’ll probably get mad at me for showing that they were acting foolishly.

I don’t know why I bother. Mostly these days, I don’t anymore. It’s just sad.