Do you have to be a masochist to be an author today?

Question

I wrote a novel.
Took about four years to write it while maintaining my full-time job. Late evenings, weekends, vacation time spent writing.
It got rejected again by an editor after the nth review. This is a common experience.
Editors roughly publish 1 percent of what they receive.
Even if you do get past the publication stage, less than 10 percent of authors can really afford to quit their day job.
Given all this, why would anybody go through the trouble?
Sorry for ranting, I'm just rolling with the latest punch.

So anyway the question, in its multiple facets:
Is literature a dead art?
Do you have to be a masochist to write today?
When do you know it's time to throw in the towel and get a normal life?

Answer 1

Sure. Sell out.

That's it! Just don't anymore.

Throw out every pen, pencil, anything and
everything to do with the love/art/discipline
*PASSIONATE ALL-ENCOMPASSMENT*
of writing.

Toss all books, or better yet, burn them.

Cancel every subscription you take.
Except of course those real exciting
ones involving the 'net and computerese.

Throw yourself into meaningless work
that "everyone else" is doing, whether
or not you're interested.

Become a drone. Never ask yourself
anything, zap-out all curiosity. Be just
like the rest.

Get one of those flatscreens which never
turns off. Watch commercials and reality
TV and talkshows, cuz that's what now
is all about. Listen to music you describe
as outright atrocious.

Get with it.

Yeah, I think my work here is done.

EDIT: Also, change your avatar's name,
and phase-out the standpoint of even
having an opinion. Read less.

Look with disdain at any adamant holding
to one's ideals.

Unless of course, you want to be True to Yourself.

In THAT case, remember with Thunderous Echo
the quote, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"!!!!

Answer 2

Is literature a dead art?

No.

Do you have to be a masochist to write today?

No. If you view writing as punishment, why are you writing?

When do you know it's time to throw in the towel and get a normal life?

Isn't being a writer having a normal life? I don't think my life would be 'normal' without it.

You know as well as the rest of us do that no one made you write your novel. No one said it would be a guarantee of anything. I'll presume.

Write because you need to. Because you love it even though it'll never earn you any money.

MAN it's easy to write stuff that I don't believe. I'll do some more! Orange = elephant! 2+2=banana. etc.

Have you considered self publishing? Lulu's pretty cheap.

Answer 3

When Henry Miller was questioned about writing he has said, "It's a curse. Yes, it's a flame. It owns you. It has possession over you. You are not the master of yourself. You are consumed by this thing. And the books you write. They're not you. They're not me sitting here, this Henry Miller. They belong to someone else. It's terrible. You can never rest. People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it"
what do you think now? are we normal ppl or not? normal is not normal to us. ok, you are struggling to get published. so i got published, and then what? i got happier ? hell no. did i make money ? no. i took all kinds of insults for the stuff i wrote (and some good things were said, ok). but your next project is going to be more difficult, just so you know.
when i was a child, i prayed to be a writer because i thought that was the most difficult thing to do. i thought it as 'courageous'. so my wish came true and now i am a masochist like you. i had a date with a famous writer, a total scoundrel, and he told me that after five or ten books he felt secure in his position as a writer.
literature cannot be dead because it sucks our own blood to keep herself alive. when you throw in the towel, it's the time when your greatest novel is going to come out.
so rant away. after you get published, only after, you will know you had it easy. you know what a good review is that says 'you're talented but we expect a whole lot out of you?'
you want to take it easy? write something like 'the merry divorcee of manhattan and her jimmy choo shoes' and put the ad at vogue. instant hit. but it's not literature. and you know it.
actually ranting is not so bad. you can use ranting to write. it's anger.
i feel your pain. i am struggling too to finish something and my knees go weak thinking that when the editor sees it he's gonna say 'get out of my office'.
but i am doing it anyway. i guess the main thing is not to get published. the main thing is to have some deep inner exploration of some kind while you do it. to feel that what you write is the kind of thing you want to read but you can't find on the bookselves. so no bookstore sells it, you have to provide this to yourself.
in the end it's not masochism, it's daring to say things that other ppl are too happy to overlook. you gotta love fiction with passion, that's all. success, failure, getting an editor, is nothing in front of this deep and personal thing, this passion. embrace your fate. if you do it out of sheer vanity, don't even bother.

Answer 4

Writers write because they HAVE to write, not because they have dreams of quiting their day job per se. In fact, the majority of successful writers do in fact have "normal lives." Their writing is part of their lives. If you feel writing is a chore, if you do not enjoy writing for the sake of writing, you are not a writer in your heart. You are another wannabe who thinks all authors are Rowlings. Just because you can't find a publisher doesn't mean literature is dead, it means either you haven't looked in the right places...or you absolutely suck. Neither has anything to do with the industry itself.

There are thousands of small presses, micro-presses, and electronic publishers searching for talent. Unfortunately, actual talent is hard to find. Everyone wants to write a book, but nobody actually wants to work at it. Everybody thinks they have the next million seller, so instead of submitting to small presses they flood the mailboxes of HarperCollins.

Writers are, sometimes, their own worst enemies.

Answer 5

You are hurting right now because of another rejection...but don't let that stop you. Don't throw in the towel if you truly love to write & it is your passion! If you have received constructive criticism with the rejections, decide if they are warranted & change what needs to be changed. Critiques from professionals are often good advice to follow & improve your writing.
Do you have to be a masochist to write? hmm....no, but it might help! *wink*
Do you only write fiction/novels or can you also do articles or poetry or something you can get published freelance online or in magazines? Sometimes that is a good way to start out & get your name out there. I wish you luck my friend. Don't give up!

Answer 6

Commiserations on the rejection. A common literary adage is that you have to write "a million words of crap" before you get anything really good.

To look at your questions in order:

1. Is literature a dead art?
Definitely not! But the face of literature *is* changing. Bear in mind that there are more literate people living today than ever before. Even though people are buying fewer novels per head of population, *someone* has to write all the text you read on the Internet, in newspapers... Moreover, someone has to write scripts for all the stuff you see on TV and in the cinema - plus of course, all the fiction in magazines and on the bookshelves.

Even better than that, changes in publication technologies offer small presses, micropresses and a big range of self-publishing options. It may not be easy to get wealthy and famous, but it's easier than ever to get read.

2. Do you have to be a masochist to write today?

No, but you do need to be brave and patient if you want to learn to write *well*. For most people, writing fiction well takes years to develop. I would say that if your first attempt at publication is via a novel, then that is rather risky - mainly because of the time it takes to develop a novel, and the number of things that can go wrong.

I'd suggest a few things:

* Work on short stories and get consistently good at them before trying to write a novel. They're shorter to write, less painful to throw away the bad ones, and you learn more faster because you can work on a range of characters, situations, themes and styles.

* Definitely get involved in a good critique group of fellow authors. Get them to give you honest critique of each story or chapter you write. Heed what they say and learn from it. Critique their stories too; learning from other peoples' mistakes is far cheaper than making your own. (I've included a link to a reputable crit group below.)

* Don't ignore writing non-fiction as a way to build your writing skills and get published. There's higher demand for non-fiction than fiction.

* Set realistic expectations for success. Everyone would like to write brilliance effortlessly and be published on first attempt. In practice, hardly anyone experiences this.

3. When do you know it's time to throw in the towel and get a normal life?

Firstly, because you've held your day job you don't have a financial reason to throw in the towel. That's a plus.

The rest comes down to why you're writing. Do you want to be your own boss? Do you like working at home? Do you like the creative aspects of it? Are you writing as therapy? Do you delight in exploring ideas? Do you want to be rich or famous?

Only two of these are strong reasons to write (i.e. you like the creative aspects and you delight in exploring ideas). The rest are reasons that can be met in other, faster and better ways.

Author Jim Van Pelt says that you need three things to be a successful writer: the ability to observe; a felicity with language and something to say. The first two can be taught; the last one can only be learned. So another question for you is: do you have something to say, or are you just writing in hope of the benefits?

Below, I include a link to a tongue-in-cheek quiz written by author Holly Lisle. It's a "Do you have what it takes to be a writer" sort of quiz. It's humorous, but also insightful and it may give you some thoughts about whether it's really worth it for you.

Good luck!

Answer 7

Wicca is around 70 years old. Why would we claim it was older? Older does not mean better! We have documented Gardnerian stuff from the 1940s, people. No one, not even Gardner's Wiccans, called themselves Wiccan, with an n, until the 1960s. Indeed, British Traditional Witches spurned the word Wiccan, in favor of the word Witch, right up through the early 1990s, referring to people who used the word Wiccans as poseurs and claiming Wicca was pronounced Weesha. With the popularity of Wicca in the 1990s, many of these same British Traditional Witches now wish to claim the word they spurned and label those they formerly called Wiccan as "Neo-Wiccan." ...and those of us who were there for the initial spurning of the term "Wiccan" laugh in their faces. Those Wise men and women of the long past, before Wicca, by the way, did not call themselves Witches, Wiccans or Wica.... religiously, most of them were Christians, practicing one of the hundreds of forms of Christian magic. Edit: And "Witta" was invented in the 1990s by Edain McCoy and is a proven, demonstrable hoax. Edit: Witta (and wita) is not pronouncable in any Celtic language. Not the p-celtic languages, not the q-celtic languages. The languages lack both the W and the double t. Look it up.

Answer 8

How do you know it's time to throw in the towel?

The moment it becomes a quest to become published instead of a quest to become a better writer. You should, must, write to write. If you're writing to get attention, do bungee jumping instead--it's less painful.