See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. #5: If a publisher accepts my novel for publication, I’ll be rich. Ha! Don’t quit your day job just yet. This is one of the most ridiculous myths of all, and it’s fueled by those glossy back covers of New York Times-best-selling authors in their expensive clothes and watches, hair perfectly coifed, wrinkles air-brushed away. For whatever reason, this image propagates in the general public, including newbies who don’t know better, the notion that anyone who publishes a novel must get paid a lot of money. The fact is, most published novelists aren’t rich—not even close. Once in a while, we hear about a struggling author like J. K. Rowling suddenly making it big. But those stories are definitely not the norm. The Reality Most published novelists I’ve gotten to know online (because I know few up here in the woods) continue the rat race…
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Do you ever feel insignificant . . . not even on the map? Sometimes I get introspective, melancholy, and wonder if there’s any meaning in these key strokes as I type t-h-i-s. Do you ever feel like a minnow lost in a sea full of sharks? Well, maybe not sharks but bigger fish than you are? Do you ever feel like, Someday when I grow up, I’ll be . . . but hold on, I’m already grown up? Do you ever feel like you’re supposed to be something—to be doing something—more than you are, but you’re not there yet? I do. Almost every day. Maybe you do too. Sometimes I wonder if life has passed me by. If I was meant for greater things. Things more significant than this simple life I lead. Do you ever feel that way? Sometimes, I admit, I fail to see the significance of each day.…
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See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. #4: If I write it, they will come. Some wannabe novelists have watched Field of Dreams a few too many times. They can hear that mystical voice whispering across the cornfields. If you write it, they will come. Readers won’t be able to get enough of you. They’ll gobble up whatever you write and beg for more. You’ll be famous. You’ll be rich. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration for most of us, but when I was a kid I had this silly notion that if I just published a novel, I’d be instantly famous, and the road ahead of me would be paved in gold. No, I didn’t hear voices (otherwise I’d probably be locked in a padded room by now), but I seriously thought authors were famous people who just kept publishing novels and had no financial anxieties. For proof all I had to do…
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