In this space we’ll occasionally post a quote about writing for your consideration. Comments welcome.
“Anybody who can be deterred from writing should be….If I were on the proverbial desert island I would write things and attach them to the back of a Galapagos tortoise in hopes they would get out somewhere.” — Harlan Ellison
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
The skillful handling of dialogue is the fastest way to improve any manuscript. And the fastest way to improve dialogue is to get rid of bloat (unnecessary fat; words that don’t add anything except to slow things down).
When you cut bloat you tighten talk. Agents, editors, and readers notice this. It boosts their confidence in the writer.
One place where I often find bloat is in the beginning of a newbie’s manuscript. That’s because the author is anxious to feed expositional material to the reader, thinking the reader needs to know this to understand the setup of the story. Here is an example from the old Perry Mason show, circa 1958. A couple is in their compartment on a train:
HARRIET
I still wish I were going to Mexico with you instead of staying here in Los Angeles.LAWRENCE
This trip’s going to be too dangerous, Harriet. It’s some of the most rugged terrain in the Sierra Madre mountains. It’s no place for a woman, especially my wife. It’s almost no place for an amateur archaeologist, either. Thanks for coming with me as far as Cole Grove station.
You see what’s happening? It’s an example of the writer shooting information to the viewers through expository dialogue. In fairness to the writer, that was done all the time in those old days of television.
But it’s death to dialogue if you do it in your opening pages.
Dialogue has to sound like it’s coming from one character to another, in a way that both fits the character and the moment.
The first thing to look out for is a character saying anything that both the characters already know.
In the above example, they both know they live in Los Angeles. They both know she’s his wife. They both know he’s an amateur archaeologist. They both know he’s going into the Sierra Madre mountains. And they both know they’re going as far as Cole Grove station.
Don’t do that, especially in the opening. But bloat can happen anywhere.
I was at a conference once mentoring some students. One of them turned in a manuscript with the following (used by permission). A woman (Betty) has been planting bombs to avenge the death of her son. She now has a forensic investigator (Kate, who has been closing in on her) tied up, and is threatening to kill her:
Betty looked down at Kate. The triumphant smile on her face faded into a snarl at the mention of her son’s death. “Why do you care?”
“Because if my son had died as a result of finding out about something terrible that had happened to him that I had kept hidden to protect him, I would want to blame the person responsible.” Kate thought she would try the empathy tactic. She did feel a great sorrow for Betty and her tragic story. She watched as Betty returned her statement with a hard stare.
Here in this tense moment, Kate has revealed to Betty facts about the case, but the dialogue sounds unnatural. The long line has information stuffed into it, and feels more like it’s for the reader’s benefit rather than the character’s.
I told the student to go back and cut all dialogue that is not absolutely true to the character and the emotional beats. What would either of them really say?
She came back later with the dialogue much improved. A tip: If you find a bloated section of dialogue and you think the reader absolutely needs the info, break it into short, tense exchanges. Turn information into confrontation.
In the Perry Mason example above, we could render in fiction like this:
“Let me come with you,” Harriet said.
“That part of Mexico’s too dangerous,” Lawrence said.
“It’s dangerous in L.A., too, if you haven’t noticed.”
Lawrence laughed and stroked her hair. “The Sierra Madres are no place for—”
“If you say a woman again I swear I’ll file for divorce.”
“Honey—”
“You’re an insurance salesman, not an archaeologist! The only rocks you should be looking at are in your head.”
“Now, now.” Lawrence looked out the window. “Here’s Cole Grove Station.”
“Don’t make me get off,” Harriet said.
“See you in two weeks,” Lawrence said.
Great dialogue keeps readers in the fictive dream. Bloat pulls them out of it. So never have a character answer the door and say something like, “Oh, hello Arthur, my family doctor from Baltimore. Thanks for coming to my home here on Mockingbird Lane.”
Comments welcome.
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.” – Robert Benchley.
What makes a successful writer these days? Is it money, fame, production, staying out of trouble (like the author whose book was pulled by a Big 5 publisher for using A.I. in the writing, or the author who asked ChatGPT to rewrite text in the style of a bestselling writer, then copied and pasted it in without removing the prompts)?
Is there even such a thing as a common definition of writerly success?
In the not-so-distant past, the answer was pretty simple: Success = published by a publishing house that gave you an advance, and you sold enough books to keep on publishing with the publishing house. In the 1990s, you could even score a crazy-high advance for your very first book, like this fellow.
Author Tasmina Perry describes that era:
It was the age of mega-deals, huge advances, long lunches, glossy author photos, and multi-book contracts that didn’t just pay the mortgage but paid it off. A time when a writer could, with a straight face, describe being an author as a solid, stable profession. Many writers really did live entirely off their novels. A lucky few even made fortunes.
However:
But that golden era was just that – a moment. A blip. A historically unusual spike in the long, wobbly line of author economics. The conditions that made it possible simply don’t really exist anymore. The industry reshaped itself faster than the mythology surrounding it, meaning many writers kept clinging to the old idea, the full-time author who earns a living from novels alone, long after the scaffolding had dissolved.
Because things ARE different now.
Attention is fragmented.
Retail is unpredictable.
Reading competes with scrolling, streaming, gaming.
Publishers take fewer risks.
Editors feel safer commissioning celebrity books.
Algorithms drive discovery more than posters at train stations.
A single viral BookTok can outmuscle a year of curated marketing, yet no one really understands how to make that viral magic happen.This is the new reality of 21st-century publishing and it’s time we rewired our expectations.
And there’s this from Jane Friedman’s The Bottom Line (subscription required):
What might the traditional industry look like in 10 years?
This commentary by publishing-industry vet Paul Bogaards focuses on editors and acquisitions but also includes some sobering observations. He writes, “I could point to books that were acquired for seven figures but sold under 10,000 copies on BookScan . . . Also, the track of many brand-name authors is in decline. I could point to several (many) brand-name authors whose tracks are experiencing double-digit declines but will not, because, you know, it is what it is, but it being what it is doesn’t explain why it is, and that’s what makes it so unsettling when you think about what the industry might look like in 10 years.” It reminds me of the last Authors Guild survey that revealed top authors have been seeing a decline in their earnings.
Perry finds a silver lining:
We are not witnessing the death of the full-time author.
We are witnessing the death of a myth, and the rebirth of a new, more resilient, more expansive kind of writer.Instead of betting our entire livelihoods on one book every year – which, when you say it out loud, is an absolutely bonkers business model – you can, and should, build something sturdier:
A portfolio career.
Multiple revenue streams.
Multiple creative outlets.
Multiple ways to reach readers.Maybe the ‘career author’ is fading.
But the writer?
The writer is evolving.
Let’s go back to money as a measure. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with writing for money. Dr. Johnson famously said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” Over the top, as the good doctor was on occasion, we must admit we all like to see income from our output.
And if we create a desirable product (a good book) it’s a fair exchange for readers to pass us a little lettuce. But paradoxically, the chase after money alone often negatively impacts the quality of the writing.
That being so, maybe we need to hitch ourselves to a more stable definition of success, one that can survive the seas of change, no matter the size of our bank account.
In high school I attended the John Wooden Basketball Camp at UCLA. Wooden was at the apex of his career as the greatest basketball coach of all time. He had developed his famous “Pyramid of Success” and gave one to all of us. I have mine framed. His definition of success is as follows:
Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.
I like that. To it I would only add this, from author Michael Bishop: “One may achieve remarkable writerly success while flunking all the major criteria for success as a human being. Try not to do that.”
So how do you define success as a writer?
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
There’s an apocryphal story about a fellow admiring Michelangelo’s magnificent statue of David. He asks the artist how he produced something so divine. Michelangelo answers, “I looked at the block of marble and chipped away everything that was not David.”
That quote is so good I wish he’d actually said it. He did have a real zinger for the impatient Pope Julius II, while working on the Sistine Chapel. “When will you be finished?” shouted the pope. “When I am done,” Michelangelo replied. (Writers with a contract and a deadline may not be so cavalier with their quips.)
The art of sculpting blows me away. How can you make something so beautiful from a great big formless slab? How may slabs do you have to go through to get competent in your craft, where one errant stroke means disaster. With sculpture, you an add something back. How did Michelangelo do it? I mean, one false chip and David loses a nipple.
I thought of the David quote the other day as I was going over a hard copy of my WIP. I found myself doing a lot of this: taking out a word here, a phrase there, substituting one word for another. Chipping away, as it were, whatever wasn’t my book.
This is what I call polishing. It’s my last step before publishing.
My first draft is for getting the thing down. I don’t do heavy edits. I go over the previous day’s pages, correct obvious mistakes, make some quick changes, and then get on with it.
I let that draft sit for a couple of weeks, to get some distance, then make a hard copy and put it in a binder. For fun I put a mock cover on it with a fictitious blurb on how great it is.
Then I read it as if I were a harried acquisitions editor on a commuter train. I keep asking myself, Are there places where I’m tempted to put this book aside?
I put a big old checkmark √ in the margin, and read on. I don’t make detailed notes. In addition to the √ mark I use:
• parentheses ( ) around confusing sentences
• a circle O in the margin where I think material needs to be added
• a question mark ? for material I think is confusing
When I’m finished, I analyze, asking questions like:
• Does the story make sense?
• Are there any loose threads?
• Does the story flow or does it seem choppy?
• Do my main characters “jump off the page”?
• Are the stakes high enough?
• Is there enough of a “worry factor” for readers?
I make any major changes, then print out another draft. That goes to my first editor, the lovely Mrs. B, and a trusted beta reader. They give me valuable notes, because I always miss things on my own. I make the changes.
Then comes the polish. Here’s what I’m looking for:
Scene Openings
• Does the opening scene have a disturbance?
• Can I begin a scene a little further in?
• Do my descriptions do “double duty?” (visual and tone)
• Do many of the scenes begin the same way? Vary them.
Scene Endings
I’ve found that sometimes cutting the last lines or even paragraphs of a scene gives it more momentum. Or I may need:
• a line of moody description
• an introspection of fear or worry
• a moment of decision or intention
• a line of dialogue that snaps
Dialogue
• Is there plenty of white space in the dialogue exchanges?
• Can I cut any words to make the dialogue tighter?
• Is there a line I can “curve” to make it more memorable?
[Note: More tips, and my Ultimate Revision Checklist may be found in Revision & Self-Editing for Publication.]
And that’s how I chip away at what isn’t my book. Are you a chipper? Do you have a standard revision plan you follow?
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
It’s almost a commandment among fiction writers: Cut the adverbs!
Sol Stein called adverbs a form of “flab” and advised cutting them all in a manuscript, then readmitting only “the necessary few after careful testing.”
Mr. King famously wrote: The road to hell is paved with adverbs. He did, however, add this:
I can be a good sport about adverbs, though. Yes I can. With one exception: dialogue attribution. I must insist that you use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special occasions … and not even then, if you can avoid it.
I’m all for active verbs doing the work. Instead of He walked angrily out of the office the better choice is He stormed out of the office.
I am also hostile to adverbs in dialogue attributions. An action beat or the context should show (not tell) how something is said.
Not:
“I’m going to rip your lungs out,” he said threateningly.
This:
He got in my face. “I’m going to rip your lungs out.”
All well and good. The other day, however, I wrote this in my WIP:
He nodded. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
I stopped, because what I saw in my mind wasn’t a mere nod. It was one of those exaggerated head bobs you do when you really (adverb!) agree with somebody. I paused and thought about how to “show” rather than “tell” this. But it seemed like overkill, as in:
His head bobbed up and down like an oil rig.
This was not a moment “big” enough for something like that.
Finally, my fingers fighting me somewhat, I wrote:
He nodded heartily. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
This triggered my adverb alarm. I was about to change things again, but started asking some of the essential questions of our trade: Is this going to bother the reader? Is this a “speed bump” or “flab”? Or is it a simple and efficient way to paint the picture I saw in my head and give that to the reader without muss or fuss?
Such are the little things we writers brood about. (Note: I’m not of the ilk that believes the first way you write something is always the best way, the purest way, the way that should never be trifled with. That is an exceedingly misguided view, alarmingly facile, and I mean that most earnestly.)
My advice then is simply, engagingly, and precisely this: Use an adverb only when it does the job faster and more efficiently than any alternative.
Also: Give your readers the respect of a little brooding about your prose.
Do you think readers care? Or is all this talk about “brooding” just a waste of time?
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
The other morning I was in my back yard with my laptop, ready to do some writing on my WIP. I was close to the end. I knew what the climax was going to be. I always know (or at least have a good idea about) my endings. This allows me to map out a “shadow story” that gives me all sorts of possibilities that are organically connected to the plot.
The ending is, of course, subject to change without notice. But usually when I’m 3/4 done, it’s pretty much set.
I was at that point. But I needed a few more scenes to get me to the climax. More of what I call “connective tissue,” meaning real scenes with conflict and suspense, not just “filler.”
So I sat sipping espresso, prompting my imagination with possibilities.
I use that word prompting on purpose. For I could have been prompting ChatGPT or Claude or Grok. I could have turned over this brainstorming completely over to the machine. Instead, I was prompting my own brain. I would set up a scene and watch it unfold. I’d tickling it a bit to get it to improvise, and when I thought, “That’s good!” I’d jot a one-line note about it. Then I did the same with another scene, and another.
And realized, after twenty minutes or so, how much fun I was having.
To play around in your imagination is one of the great pleasures of the writing life. Bradbury describes it this way:
“Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper. Make your own individual spectroscopic reading. Then, you, a new Element, are discovered, charted, named!” – Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing.
Now, I’m not going to make this another jeremiad about the deleterious effects of AI. I know many writers use it for various purposes, including as a virtual brainstorming “partner.”
I do issue a warning, however. The more imaginative play we hand over to the bot, the more our own capacity for same atrophies. This, in turn, affects all of our writing. It affects our voice, and our ability to produce delightful surprises in everything from dialogue to characterization to all the sinews of plot. And it’s just not as fun.
Paul Newman, The Hustler
Of course, all play and no work makes Jack a dull writer. Craft is work. But work is fun when you know what you’re doing and how to make good things happen on the page.
It’s like that speech in the great movie The Hustler, where Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) asks his girl Sarah (Piper Laurie) if she thinks he’s a “loser” (like the character played by George C. Scott has called him). Then he explains the exultation he feels when he’s in the flow of a pool game. He tells her anything can be great, even bricklaying, “if a guy knows what he’s doing and why and if he can make it come off.”
“When I’m going, I mean when I’m really going, I feel like a jockey must feel. He’s sitting on his horse, he’s got all that speed and that power underneath him, he’s coming into the stretch, the pressure’s on him, and he knows. He just feels when to let it go and how much. ‘Cause he’s got everything working for him—timing, touch. It’s a great feeling, boy, it’s a really great feeling when you’re right and you know you’re right….You feel the roll of those balls and you don’t have to look, you just know. You make shots nobody’s ever made before. I can play the game the way nobody’s ever played it before.”
Sarah looks at him and says, “You’re not a loser Eddie, you’re a winner. Some men never get to feel that way about anything.”
I love this craft of ours. I love figuring out “when to let it go, and how much.” I love it when I pull something off, when I feel the flow of those words, and just know. I play my game the way I’ve never played it before.
I’m not about to trade that in.
How about you?
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Raymond Chandler
“Trouble is my business.”—Raymond Chandler
There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can’t. And there are two things every novel needs if you want to please readers—Conflict and Suspense. Let us examine.
Conflict
What is the goal of your novel? Is it to entertain? Teach? Preach? Stir up anger? Change the world? Make you a lot of money?
It might be any of these things, but in the end, none of these objectives will work to their full potential unless they forge, in some way, a satisfying emotional experience for the reader.
And what gets the reader hooked emotionally? Trouble. Readers are gripped by the trials a character goes through. It’s a human response called empathy. We “see” ourselves in a character’s problems, and follow the story from there. And story has to include a problem that arises from plot.
Someday I’ll do a deep dive into when plot, once proudly championed by writers, became a “four-letter word” to many in the writing game. At some time or other it became fashionable to assert that character is primary over plot. It’s actually the exact opposite: True character is only revealed in crisis. Plunge your character into big trouble (plot) and then we’ll see what he or she is made of (character).
If you don’t believe me, imagine a 400 page novel about Scarlett O’Hara where she just sits on the porch all day, sipping mint juleps and flirting with a variety of of beaus. Gone With the Wind only takes off (on page 6) when she finds out Ashley is going to marry Melanie (trouble). And then the Civil War breaks out (big trouble!).
Another way to think about it is this: We all wear masks in our lives. A major crisis forces us to take off the mask and reveal who we really are. That’s the role of conflict in fiction, to rip the mask off the character.
Now, this conflict must be of sufficient magnitude to matter to readers. That’s why I teach that “death stakes” must be involved. Your Lead character must be facing death—which can be physical, professional or psychological.
Genre doesn’t matter. In a literary novel like The Catcher in the Rye, it’s psychological death. Holden Caulfield must find meaning in the world or he will “die inside.” Psychological death is also the key to a category romance. If the two lovers do not get together, they will lose their soul mate. They will die inside and forever have diminished lives. (That’s the feeling you need to create. Think about it. Why was Titanic such a hit with teen girls? It wasn’t because of the special effects!)
In The Silence of the Lambs, it’s professional death on the line. Clarice Starling must help bring down Buffalo Bill in part by playing mind games with Hannibal Lecter. If she doesn’t prevail, another innocent will die (physical death in the subplot) and Clarice’s career will be over.
And in most thrillers, of course, you have the threat of physical death hanging over the whole thing.
That’s why, novelist friend, trouble is indeed your business. Without sufficient conflict readers aren’t going to care enough to finish the book.
Suspense
The second element is suspense, and I don’t just mean in the suspense novel per se. Suspense means to “delay resolution so as to excite anticipation.” Another way to say this is that it’s the opposite of having a predictable story. If the reader keeps guessing what’s going to happen, and is right, there is no great pleasure in reading the novel. It will, in other words, be boring.
We’ve all had the wonderful experience of being so caught up in a story that we have to keep turning the pages. This is where writing technique can be studied and learned and applied. For example, there are various ways you can end a chapter so readers are compelled to read on. I call these “Read on Prompts,” and it was one of the first things I set out to study when I got serious about writing as a career. I went to a used bookstore and bought a bunch of King, Koontz and Grisham. When I’d get to the end of a chapter I’d write in pencil on the page what they did to prompt me to read on.
Again, genre doesn’t matter. You have to be able to excite anticipation and avoid predictability no matter what kind of book you write. Suspense technique helps you to do that. (See also Brother Gilstrap’s post about tension.) I even wrote a book for Writer’s Digest Books with the clever title Conflict & Suspense.
The prodigious pulp writer William Wallace Cook put it this way back in 1923: “Plot…is life responding to environment; and not only is this response always in terms of conflict, but the really great struggle, the epic struggle of creation, is the inner fight of the individual whereby the soul builds up character.”
Believe it.
Comments welcome.
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
It helps to think of writing as a game.
We all want to make some scratch from our efforts to tell a great story. We all, at one time or another, have a dream of appearing on Today touting our upcoming #1 NYT bestseller. Then we wake up.
Side story: I was once in a Starbucks when Bruce Jenner, the Gold Medal decathlete, came in. I’d been a Decathlon fan as a boy after watching The Bob Mathias Story (starring Bob Mathias himself) on TV. Mathias was the first two-time Gold Medalist in the Decathlon, and one of the greatest athletes we’ve ever produced. So, wiseacre that I am, I sidled up to Bruce and said, “Say, aren’t you Bob Mathias?” To his credit, he cracked up, and we had a nice little conversation, in which I said, “I dreamed of being a Decathlete.” Bruce: “And then you woke up?”
I relate that because part of being a champion in any sport is a matter of two things: natural talent and hard work. I could have worked harder at the Decathlon than anyone in the world, but I just didn’t have the industrial springs in my legs that Jenner and Mathias were born with. My sport was basketball and I worked at it, got to be good enough to play in college, but I didn’t have the hops of a Michael Jordan, though I humbly assert that had I been six inches taller I might have given Larry Bird a run for his money (I could shoot lights out).
So there’s talent and work involved in any successful enterprise. Which is why I often think of this writing gig like my favorite game, backgammon.
This ancient game has been around for 5,000 years, and is brilliantly conceived. Dice are involved, so there’s always an element of chance. A player who is way behind still might win if the dice give him a roll he needs at just the right time. But there’s also strategy, which means you need the ability to think, which is something you’re born with. You can develop the latter through work, which is what education used to be about. (Don’t get me started.)
There’s one other element of backgammon—risk. The “doubling cube” allows a player at any point to double the stakes. The other player may decline and forfeit the game for the original bet (playing for penny stakes is enough, which is a good reason to keep pennies in circulation!). Or he may accept the risk and later, should things change favorably, double back.
So someone who knows how to think strategically, can calculate odds, and take risks at the right time will win more often than the average player who depends mostly on the rolling bones.
Early on I studied the game by reading books. I memorized the best opening moves for each roll. I learned how to think about what’s called the “back game,” what the best “points” are to cover, and when it might pay off to leave a “blot.”
And I played a lot of games with friends and, later, on a computer. I discovered a couple of killer, though risky, opening moves. I use them because they can pay off big time, though when they don’t I find myself behind. But I’m willing to take these early chances because they are not foolhardy and I’m confident enough in my skills that I can still come back.
This, it seems to me, is analogous to the writing life. There is luck involved. I sold my first novel because I happened to be at a convention with an author I had met on a plane. This new acquaintance showed me around the floor, introduced me to people. One of them was a publisher he knew. That publisher just happened to be starting a new publishing house and was looking for material. I pitched him my book and he bought it a few weeks later.
But I was also ready for that moment. I had been studying the craft for several years and was committed to a weekly quota of words. I’d written several screenplays and at least one messy novel before completing the project I had with me at the convention.
Thus, as in backgammon, the greater your skill, the better your chances. The harder you work, the more skill you acquire. The old saw “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity” certainly applies.
There are different talent levels, but that’s not something you have any control over. And someone with less talent who works hard often outperforms the gifted but lazy writer.
Now, that doesn’t mean you’ll always win big in any one game. Far from it. If the dice are not your friends, things might not turn out as planned. That book you thought was a sure winner might not be.
But if you love writing, you don’t stop playing.
And don’t ever worry about the dice. You cannot control them, not even if you shake them hard and shout, “Baby needs a new pair of shoes!” The vagaries of the book market are out of your hands.
Just continue to work, write, play and take some risks. It’s a game, after all.
Comments welcome.
NOTE: This post partially adapted from and brought to you by How to Make a Living as a Writer and The Mental Game of Writing.
Social media started off so innocently, as a way to connect with friends and family and like-minded individuals. There was Friendster, then Myspace, then Facebook (which now has over 3 billion users). Along came Twitter (now X, with about 600 million monthly active users). There’s Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok. There’s even a YouTube-Twitter-Facebook spinoff exclusively for politicians called YouTwitFace.
What is your view of social media today? Do you use it, avoid it, or something in between?
by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
O quam cito transit gloria mundi. – Thomas á Kempis (“How quickly the glory of the world passes away.”)
How many people today have heard of Thorne Smith? Or Booth Tarkington? Or Carroll John Daly?
All three were wildly famous in the 1920s. Smith was the author of the popular Topper series of novels about a couple of fun-loving ghosts and their friend, Cosmo Topper. Tarkington won the Pulitzer Prize—twice!—for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. And in the world of pulp writing, Daly was as popular as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
They are mostly forgotten now, which is the fate of the overwhelming number of writers who ever lived.
Which brings me to Arthur Schopenhauer. Read any Schopenhauer lately? I read some Schopenhauer in college, and this is what my face looked like after I tried to understand him:
JSB, age 20 (or Arthur Schopenhauer)
But as I did some research in the library of Project Gutenberg, I came across Schopenhauer’s essay on Fame.
“As a general rule, the longer a man’s fame is likely to last, the later it will be in coming; for all excellent products require time for their development. The fame which lasts to posterity is like an oak, of very slow growth; and that which endures but a little while, like plants which spring up in a year and then die; whilst false fame is like a fungus, shooting up in a night and perishing as soon.”
If you write for fame, you’re writing fungus. Worth remembering.
However, we do want our name to be known as a “brand,” meaning a reliable producer of quality fiction. That’s part of a marketing strategy, which also includes self-promotion. Agent Barb Roos has some good advice on this topic.
The notion of self-promotion tends to send authors running from platform conversations faster than a politician dodging a direct question. We see self-promotion as something only self-involved people who clearly think too highly of themselves would do. Of course, we think ourselves too holy, too busy, or too sophisticated to engage in such activity. After all, we are writers, right?
Her bottom line:
If you don’t talk about yourself and what you write, no one else will.
My follow-up point will make you uncomfortable, but it is a truth you must wrap your mind around if you want to survive and thrive in today’s publishing world. Self-promotion is essential to the success of your product.
The trick is to divorce self-promotion from the desire for fame. Schopenhauer again:
“From the point of view of human happiness, fame is, surely, nothing but a very rare and delicate morsel for the appetite that feeds on pride and vanity—an appetite which, however carefully concealed, exists to an immoderate degree in every man, and is, perhaps strongest of all in those who set their hearts on becoming famous at any cost. Such people generally have to wait some time in uncertainty as to their own value, before the opportunity comes which will put it to the proof and let other people see what they are made of; but until then, they feel as if they were suffering secret injustice.”
The desire to have others recognize you as significant (which is what fame is) inevitably leads to comparisons, envy, disappointment, bitterness. Instead, put that emotional energy into writing the best book you can (you, not the machine), pour your heart into your material, and promote it wisely. Rinse, repeat.
And here’s some unsolicited advice for those public figures who violate the maxim: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.
“And so people who feel that they possess solid intellectual capacity and a sound judgment, and yet cannot claim the highest mental powers, should not be afraid of laborious study; for by its aid they may work themselves above the great mob of humanity who have the facts constantly before their eyes, and reach those secluded spots which are accessible to learned toil.”
But laziness and click-bait catnip is the currency of “influencers” today. For them, I offer Aesop’s fable “The Mischievous Dog.”
There was once a Dog who used to snap at people and bite them without any provocation, and who was a great nuisance to every one who came to his master’s house. So his master fastened a bell round his neck to warn people of his presence. The Dog was very proud of the bell, and strutted about tinkling it with immense satisfaction. But an old dog came up to him and said, “The fewer airs you give yourself the better, my friend. You don’t think, do you, that your bell was given you as a reward of merit? On the contrary, it is a badge of disgrace.”
Moral: Notoriety is often mistaken for fame.
Comments welcome.