I have complained on numerous occasions about the ridiculous things that I see constantly on writing forums. It’s just not that often that I see a perfect example of why I have a problem with it.
Until now. Read on to see just how absurd some people can be and why I desperately want to get away from it.
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.
Now that I’m sort of kicking around Facebook again, and trust me, I’m doubting that decision every single day, I’m starting to see different perspectives and different ideas and, at least some of the time, it’s starting to look very similar to what I’ve faced before.
Take this as an example, something that’s going on right now. It’s really one of the problems that writers face and why so many people never actually go anywhere.
So I finally gave up and created another personal Facebook account, thinking that it had to be better than Reddit, at least if I stuck to the more “professional” sounding groups and yeah, it really isn’t.
What the hell is wrong with people to day? Here’s yet another story.
So we’re finally at the point where I know my exact numbers for 2021, after all of the books have been written and all of them have been edited, at least through the beta-stage and I have a good handle on what I actually accomplished last year.
Let’s go over it and I’ll let you in on a couple of things that are going on for 2022, for anyone who is interested.
This is one that just bugs me, mostly because amateur writers tend to be so absurdly touchy about just about everything. They will ask for advice and when you offer it, no matter how delicately you do so, they will freak out because they don’t want to do what you’ve suggested. They want to continue doing all of the “bad” things they’ve been doing, they just want a “good” outcome.
Reality doesn’t really work that way!
I tried. I really did. Then everything went wrong!
I said, back when I was tracking the last book, that I was planning on taking a well-deserved week-long vacation between Christmas and New Years. It seemed like the perfect time to do it. My wife would be home two of the five days anyhow (I was off the whole week) and I wasn’t going to get anything done regardless. Therefore, time to take it easy, right?
Yeah, not so much.
However, I hadn’t done anything with it because I was still rolling it around in my head and it hadn’t reached a point where I had a firm idea of the outline or the characters, just a vague idea that I thought sounded good.
All that changed this morning though and I finally pulled the trigger. So here’s why.
So here’s where it all ends. This is the end of the 8th book I’ve written for 2021. Everyone says “you can’t do that!”, yet I do it regularly. I’ve never hit 8 before but if I pushed myself, I figure I could do 9 for 2022. I don’t know if I’m that crazy. I guess we’ll have to see.
Just finished off week three and I’m really impressed by how it’s going. Everything is flowing and I could just keep writing through the end if I let myself. I just don’t have that much time.
So here’s where I’m at right now and what my goals are for the last week of work. Let me know if you have any questions, I’ll try to help.
