An inept writer trying to become more epter
I have ideas coming out my ears. What I don’t have, in my ears or anywhere else, is the ability to see any of them though to the end.
How Not To Write has a post that pretty much nails me to the wall.
One of the hallmarks of fear is tendency to surround ourselves with more projects, more responsibilities, more stuff. Taken together, this bricolage forms a buffer to the real work that needs doing.
Ouch.
“Being published” is the holy grail for people who think they can write. It’s the goal set before us to let us know we’ve arrived.
I was published pretty early on. That was mostly because I knew people through my family. I have been published in over 100 articles at this point.
This isn’t much considering this has been over 16 years of “writing.” Add in the fact that about 15 of those articles were published by places I had no connection to.
All that being said, I have been published and it’s not as fulfilling as one would think. Here are my top disappointments with being published.
* It never pays nearly what I think it should.
* Most of the time your rights to your material are gone.
* There are times when editors pretty much rewrite the whole thing, making your used to be masculine sounding article read like a third-grade girl’s book report.
* It is very rare that you ever hear feedback from your readers.
* It takes a long time before your list of past publishing credits add up to anything that does not inspire a tinge of embarrassment.
* Once you get published, you just have to start the whole process all over again.
On July 1st I made it public that I was going to send in 50 articles before the end of the year. Today I sent in my first two article submissions.
I can’t tell you what they are because then you’d steal my idea and get it in first with a better spin and then I’ll blame you when I get rejected. Hey, it’s a dog-eat-dog market. No carry-outs here.
As I’ve stated before, I don’t like giving advice on things I’m not good at. I have no idea how to use commas. My wife, who is my English Major editor, ridicules me for my comma usage.
I can’t tell you how to use commas, I’m no good at that. What I am good at is putting them in the wrong places. Here are my tips to guarantee you will misplace your commas.
1) If you haven’t used one in a bit, you’re due.
2) Put one in wherever you would breath.
3) Put them around clauses, and since I don’t know what clauses are either, just throw them in when it sounds like there might have been a clause.
4) Since I don’t know how to use semicolons or colons either, commas work fine there too.
5) You can use commas for parenthetical statements, but usually there I use parentheses marks (so you can remove a parenthesis and stick a comma in there too).
6) Stick commas before and after quotes and inside and outside of the quotation marks. One or two are bound to be right.
If you found this list to be highly annoying, relax, that’s why they invented editors. If you want to really learn about comma usage, try this place, over here, at this site.
Inept as I am at getting published, I feel bad giving people writing advice. Something not right about that. You should only give tips on how to do things you personally have experience doing.
That being said, here are my tips for making sure you never get published.
1) Write about stuff no one cares about in a way no one cares to read.
2) Include the phrase “I’ll make you famous” in your queries.
3) Rely on God to persuade editors to publish your work rather than your writing skills.
4) Spend your writing time going to writing conferences and reading writing books.
5) Write blogs about writing rather than writing.
6) Never finish editing.
7) Don’t write.
I guarantee, if you follow these tips closely, you will never ever be published.
I’ve thought of making money on-line with my writing for a long time and to this point I have had varying degrees of minimal success! I came across the Thirty Day Challenge, a program that helps people make money by showing them various ways to do so, walking you through step by step to make some money. It comes highly recommended. I’m anxious to see how it goes.
My writing would be a lot better if I wrote. I’m beginning to see that.
In order to get my writing going again, I’m making a goal of sending in 50 articles between July 1 and December 31.
I wrote it down in public so I gotta do it now.
Anyone who leaves me a comment on this post will receive $20 if I fail to send in my 50 articles!
