We’re about halfway through the “So You Wanna Be A Writer” series. Scott gives his own advice about writing in short videos hosted on YouTube. It is fun, and give us a place to direct most questions that come in from new writers looking for advice.
Today we talk about some of the questions we’ve received after someone’s seen the videos.
SHOW NOTES:
Check out all these cool folks we talked about:
- Myke Cole
- Pierce Brown
- Lee Child
- Douglas Preston / Lincoln Child
- Kevin Hearne
- THE EXPANSE
- Abercrombie and Martin
- Stephen King
- Jeremy Robinson
- Chuck Wendig
- Delilah S. Dawson
- James Meltzer
- Chris Hardwick
Don’t see a “play” button above? Click here to download.
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Regarding “The trap of perfect,” I can tell you one thing that has really honked me off with self-publishers: Publishing what essentially should be labeled a draft. There’s really no controls over quality for what can be self-published; but I would think that serious writers owe it to themselves to find someone who does not just play them lip service and say “EVERYTHING YOU DO IS GREAT!!” because they won’t be getting honest feedback when they really, really need it.
I’ve bought a number of books that were self-published, and could barely get through them. They were rife with grammatical errors, copyedit mistakes and various other types of things that just made it un-readable. I rail on the book in a review, and the author comes back with “Oh, you must have read an earlier version of the book. Give the latest one a chance; a lot of edits have happened since the one you read.” Really? I don’t think so. Do that work up front, and do it before you publish. Respect your readers enough to give them a product that you can honestly say is your best effort. As you say, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be a good representation of your effort and a good reflection of your desire to be a writer.