So You Want to be a Writer (2016)(hughhowey.com)
hughhowey.com
So You Want to be a Writer (2016)
https://hughhowey.com/so-you-want-to-be-a-writer/
28 comments
I'd advise against following advice from individuals like this for many reasons, one to mention survivorship bias to basic things like being picked up by a publishing house. Advice from people like this is often just kind of useless if not actively detrimental to your quality of life. You can do all the things stated here and fail. The reality is that the way the writing industry works it is a very selective and closed door process that does not allow a majority of those or even a minority into it's industry.
I'm a writer. What you've said here is basically correct, but I disagree with your conclusion.
In 2009 I took basically the same path that Howey is proposing here. I started self-publishing on Amazon in 2011 and I've written five novels so far, and am working on a sixth.
Obviously I did not experience anywhere near the success that Howey did. This may be due to luck, but I've read Wool and it's also a much better novel than anything I've written (so far!) So it's not always about luck. An amazingly good novel can sometimes generate its own luck.
But my lack of success hasn't dissuaded me and I don't consider the journey I took in becoming a writer to have been wasted. On the contrary, it's been amazing every step of the way. I've learned so many things, met so many wonderful people, and even sold a couple of thousand books along the way, which isn't much, but it's not nothing either.
And at the same time, I've been writing non-fiction articles for Ars Technica, which has been considerably more successful for me. (An example would be my article on the history of OS/2, or my history of the Amiga computer). These articles have been read and enjoyed by orders of magnitude more people, which is very satisfying.
I guess what I'm saying is that there are more possibilities for being a writer than being a famous fiction author picked up by a major publishing house. There are all kinds of paths for writers to take.
Success is never guaranteed, and if you want to be a writer you have to be realistic about this. But if you really want to be a writer, nothing can stop you. In fact, that's kind of the only prerequisite for becoming one. If you feel compelled to write, regardless of any success or rewards, you will keep doing it. At the very least, you will become a better writer. And if you become a better writer, it's almost inevitable that, at some point, somebody will notice.
Don't expect to be famous. Expect to write.
In 2009 I took basically the same path that Howey is proposing here. I started self-publishing on Amazon in 2011 and I've written five novels so far, and am working on a sixth.
Obviously I did not experience anywhere near the success that Howey did. This may be due to luck, but I've read Wool and it's also a much better novel than anything I've written (so far!) So it's not always about luck. An amazingly good novel can sometimes generate its own luck.
But my lack of success hasn't dissuaded me and I don't consider the journey I took in becoming a writer to have been wasted. On the contrary, it's been amazing every step of the way. I've learned so many things, met so many wonderful people, and even sold a couple of thousand books along the way, which isn't much, but it's not nothing either.
And at the same time, I've been writing non-fiction articles for Ars Technica, which has been considerably more successful for me. (An example would be my article on the history of OS/2, or my history of the Amiga computer). These articles have been read and enjoyed by orders of magnitude more people, which is very satisfying.
I guess what I'm saying is that there are more possibilities for being a writer than being a famous fiction author picked up by a major publishing house. There are all kinds of paths for writers to take.
Success is never guaranteed, and if you want to be a writer you have to be realistic about this. But if you really want to be a writer, nothing can stop you. In fact, that's kind of the only prerequisite for becoming one. If you feel compelled to write, regardless of any success or rewards, you will keep doing it. At the very least, you will become a better writer. And if you become a better writer, it's almost inevitable that, at some point, somebody will notice.
Don't expect to be famous. Expect to write.
Yeah but are you writing what you love to write or writing what the world pays you to write?
Great writers can find jobs just about anywhere. The real question is whether or not you enjoy what you are writing.
Great writers can find jobs just about anywhere. The real question is whether or not you enjoy what you are writing.
I can honestly say that I love all the writing work I do. Every article I wrote for Ars Technica was a labor of love, even though I got paid. My novels are as well.
I still have a day job (although I did write full-time for Ars for a couple of years) so this is a luxury I can afford. But I’m still happy to be able to do it.
I would also posit that the only way to be successful as a writer is to write about things you love. If you try to chase popular topics or genres without loving them, this cynicism will show in your writing and it won’t be much fun to read.
I still have a day job (although I did write full-time for Ars for a couple of years) so this is a luxury I can afford. But I’m still happy to be able to do it.
I would also posit that the only way to be successful as a writer is to write about things you love. If you try to chase popular topics or genres without loving them, this cynicism will show in your writing and it won’t be much fun to read.
Your comment got me thinking about what I love to write.
And it produced this, which I am loving to write.
Because it is transformative (for me).
Because the realization that what I love to write is writing that transforms me -- a new reification of several ideas that oscillate in my low frequency thoughts.
Which puts writing for money in the light of is-the-money-tranformative? I mean the statistically likely best possible option is getting paid enough to write to quit a less satisfying way of making money. The choice is between proverbially pumping gas and writing for most people, not between two amazingly fulfilling creative options.
To me, the real question is is producing nothing more fulfilling than producing the best I can?
For me, it isn't. YMMV.
And it produced this, which I am loving to write.
Because it is transformative (for me).
Because the realization that what I love to write is writing that transforms me -- a new reification of several ideas that oscillate in my low frequency thoughts.
Which puts writing for money in the light of is-the-money-tranformative? I mean the statistically likely best possible option is getting paid enough to write to quit a less satisfying way of making money. The choice is between proverbially pumping gas and writing for most people, not between two amazingly fulfilling creative options.
To me, the real question is is producing nothing more fulfilling than producing the best I can?
For me, it isn't. YMMV.
That’s beautiful to hear. I love the idea of writing transforming you based on frequencies.
Oh, ffs, I hate this idea that there is a monolithic writing industry with a closed-door process that’s meant to keep people out. It’s, to be honest, a load of bovine fecal matter.
There are problems, to be sure. There’s a tendency to chase after the latest trend, to assume that something won’t sell because nothing like it has sold before, or to dump a pile of money on someone famous because they’re famous (Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff), but that isn’t some publishing conspiracy, that’s human nature. And to pick a well-worn example, Harry Potter was widely rejected before it was finally picked up and became a media franchise. But none of this was some sort of conspiracy.
The fact of the matter is that publishing creative writing takes persistence and luck. Rare is the person who sends something out and gets a yes from the first place they sent it.¹ I’ve been through bios of over 5000 authors for the rankings that I publish at https://creativewritingmfa.info and many of the prize-winning stories/poems/essays were rejected multiple times before they were accepted, and these are presumably the best of their breed and are a small percentage of the nominated pieces.
It’s comforting to tell yourself that you’re not getting published because they won’t let you into their “club,” but truth be told, the bigger problem is likely that your writing just isn’t good enough and needs more work.
⸻
1. I keep stats on my own publications and of the 20 stories I’ve published to date, the lowest number of rejections a piece has received has been 3, the highest 67.² I've averaged 49 rejections for every acceptance over the last 16 years, but the past few years, that’s been closer to 25–28 as I’ve gotten better as a writer.
2. This most-rejected story got near-miss rejections from Granta and The Atlantic, both of which are highly prestigious publications.
There are problems, to be sure. There’s a tendency to chase after the latest trend, to assume that something won’t sell because nothing like it has sold before, or to dump a pile of money on someone famous because they’re famous (Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff), but that isn’t some publishing conspiracy, that’s human nature. And to pick a well-worn example, Harry Potter was widely rejected before it was finally picked up and became a media franchise. But none of this was some sort of conspiracy.
The fact of the matter is that publishing creative writing takes persistence and luck. Rare is the person who sends something out and gets a yes from the first place they sent it.¹ I’ve been through bios of over 5000 authors for the rankings that I publish at https://creativewritingmfa.info and many of the prize-winning stories/poems/essays were rejected multiple times before they were accepted, and these are presumably the best of their breed and are a small percentage of the nominated pieces.
It’s comforting to tell yourself that you’re not getting published because they won’t let you into their “club,” but truth be told, the bigger problem is likely that your writing just isn’t good enough and needs more work.
⸻
1. I keep stats on my own publications and of the 20 stories I’ve published to date, the lowest number of rejections a piece has received has been 3, the highest 67.² I've averaged 49 rejections for every acceptance over the last 16 years, but the past few years, that’s been closer to 25–28 as I’ve gotten better as a writer.
2. This most-rejected story got near-miss rejections from Granta and The Atlantic, both of which are highly prestigious publications.
If you ever read John Scalzi's story on how he got to where he is (mid-list author??), he frequently says that he got lucky. He posted his _Old Man's War_ story on his blog, and an editor saw it and threw money at him.
By the time he made his big sale, he'd been writing for years. If you have six minutes to blow, go to his Audible page for his latest[1], scroll down to the video John Scalzi: My Story, and he talks about it.
That said, he also says he likes to pay it forward by pushing budding authors when he can to spread the luck.
--
[1] https://www.audible.com/pd/Travel-by-Bullet-Audiobook/B0B838...
By the time he made his big sale, he'd been writing for years. If you have six minutes to blow, go to his Audible page for his latest[1], scroll down to the video John Scalzi: My Story, and he talks about it.
That said, he also says he likes to pay it forward by pushing budding authors when he can to spread the luck.
--
[1] https://www.audible.com/pd/Travel-by-Bullet-Audiobook/B0B838...
Now that Amazon will give you 70% if you price under $10 and sell on Kindle, it's a whole new world for writers who want to release independently. If you put your book on Kindle Unlimited, you get paid by how many pages people read. Sure, you have to do all your marketing, but giving out free copies of your book for reviews is a low-cost way to bootstrap a following. Once you get a decent number of reviews and climb in the sales rank, the rest takes care of itself.
Of course, your book has to be good, which is the very hard part. Since Kindle lets you read free samples, I've read some of the lower ranked stuff in the genre I write in and it's pretty awful. However, I've heard there are people who write in certain genres like erotica and write total trash, but they making a living at it anyway by targeting various niches.
Of course, your book has to be good, which is the very hard part. Since Kindle lets you read free samples, I've read some of the lower ranked stuff in the genre I write in and it's pretty awful. However, I've heard there are people who write in certain genres like erotica and write total trash, but they making a living at it anyway by targeting various niches.
Don't listen to people who succeed at what you're trying to do because they're outliers? So listen to failures and wannabes instead? Or ignore advice period?
Don't listen to idiots. But do listen to the people who sincerely tried and failed.
Few people want to talk about failure. But I've been watching the publishing industry for a long time, and it's not as simple as pressing the "Publish" button and watching sales roll in. Algorithms have changed the way things work. Bots promote works that are already popular or trending. It's harder than ever for newbies to get noticed.
Few people want to talk about failure. But I've been watching the publishing industry for a long time, and it's not as simple as pressing the "Publish" button and watching sales roll in. Algorithms have changed the way things work. Bots promote works that are already popular or trending. It's harder than ever for newbies to get noticed.
Listen to me, I'm neither a failure nor an outlier, I am a non-writer. Completely unbiased, completely uninformed. My advice: write!
Listen to both people who succeeded and who did not. You actually need to learn from failures too.
I really like most of the advice given here, esp. "story > writing". The confusing thing about "writing" is that it's not about putting words on a page. It's about coming up with interesting plots and characters.
Once you have that, the writing will take care of itself.
Once you have that, the writing will take care of itself.
And in the future, writing will be about coming up with interesting prompts for GPT-3 and its successors. So "the writing will take care of itself" becomes true literally.
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Did anyone immediately look at the scrollbar and not read the article because of it?
Anyway, I hate articles that just say "hard work":
> So here’s the #1 secret to success and a career of working in your underwear: You have to work harder than anyone else. Period.
Imagine how many books have been written that have gone unread but the author "worked hard" to no success.
> I did most of my writing as a yacht captain, roofer, and bookseller.
Sounds like they had plenty of free time to write. Good for them.
> 7) Live fully and cheaply. Yes, this goes with the craft of writing. Writing is much more than putting your butt in a seat. It’s making sure you have the time and financial freedom to write, and it’s ensuring that you have something to write about when you do plant that butt.
I'm going to stick with Steven Pressfield's advice of "put your ass where your heart wants to be". You don't have to live fully nor frugally to be a writer. If you're writing to gain your financial freedom, then you need time. I like simple advice like "do at least something towards your book everyday".
Anyway, I hate articles that just say "hard work":
> So here’s the #1 secret to success and a career of working in your underwear: You have to work harder than anyone else. Period.
Imagine how many books have been written that have gone unread but the author "worked hard" to no success.
> I did most of my writing as a yacht captain, roofer, and bookseller.
Sounds like they had plenty of free time to write. Good for them.
> 7) Live fully and cheaply. Yes, this goes with the craft of writing. Writing is much more than putting your butt in a seat. It’s making sure you have the time and financial freedom to write, and it’s ensuring that you have something to write about when you do plant that butt.
I'm going to stick with Steven Pressfield's advice of "put your ass where your heart wants to be". You don't have to live fully nor frugally to be a writer. If you're writing to gain your financial freedom, then you need time. I like simple advice like "do at least something towards your book everyday".
As is often the case, the scrollbar indicates the number of comments on the article, not the length of the article.
Hugh Howey's Wool is one of the best novels I've read for a long time. His advice here, primarily to work really hard and to concentrate on a good plot with a catchy start, sounds eminently sensible to me.
The first story in the series was so good, that I couldn’t read the rest. It was so effectively oppressive, that I couldn’t bring myself to read anymore.
I'd recommend the second, too, at least: https://www.2uo.de/Books/wool/
There's a lot of great advice in this post, but this is the one I'll start with:
"Start a blog and post to it every day. It might be a single line from a story that doesn’t yet exist. Or a scene—maybe a first kiss or a bar fight. Maybe you write a different first kiss scene every day for a month."
I noticed that this post is from January 2016. It would be interesting if anyone followed his advice and succeeded or didn't. I also noticed he had another blog post from 2013 titled "My Advice to Aspiring Authors" that seemed to me to have a somewhat different tone.
The indie author gold rush was basically 2012 through now. It's still in full swing. But much like the California Gold Rush, it's beyond a saturation point. There are all kinds of sharks in the water, selling seminars and promising riches.
I'd long assumed that writing success was mostly a function of exponential returns on randomly-assigned initial success[0], so as someone who tries to practice Active Open Mindedness[1], I mentally noted this mere hours ago:
> I’m always suspicious that everything is fake and good writers aren’t actually good and it’s just a social conspiracy to believe that they are, but these results are a vote in support of our existing writer-identification-institutions (are they all Substack? I guess it’s just Substack)[2]
[0] https://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.... [1] https://rufuspollock.com/2017/12/10/tetlock-gardner-2015-sup... [2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-contest-20...
> I’m always suspicious that everything is fake and good writers aren’t actually good and it’s just a social conspiracy to believe that they are, but these results are a vote in support of our existing writer-identification-institutions (are they all Substack? I guess it’s just Substack)[2]
[0] https://www.princeton.edu/~mjs3/salganik_dodds_watts06_full.... [1] https://rufuspollock.com/2017/12/10/tetlock-gardner-2015-sup... [2] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-contest-20...