I once asked over fifty writers what their biggest fear was. Can you guess what the most popular answer was? It shouldn’t be hard. You’re probably afraid of the same thing.
Writers fear Rejection.
We’re afraid our story—the one we’ve been working on for years—won’t be taken seriously. Worse, we’re afraid our work will be ignored completely.
How do you deal with and the fear of failure and rejection?
Serialized novels are gaining popularity, both in the mass market and literary worlds.
Margaret Atwood is in the middle of her sci-fi novel Positron which is available for free on Byliner. (I read the first Episode. It was very fun!). Alexander McCall Smith, of The Ladies #1 Detective Agency fame, published his serial 44 Scotland Street in the Edinburugh newspaper The Scotsman a few years ago. (I read it much later, and enjoyed it immensely.) And Sean Platt and David Wright’s series, Yesterday’s Gone, was created by two well known writer’s in the blogging world who leverage their platforms to publish their fiction.
However, what most people don’t realize is that serialized novels have a long history, at least that’s what Yael Goldstein Love of Plymtpon Publishing says.
Is your writing fuelled by everyday life and experiences or by imagination? Of course, these two are often mixed together; yet, you probably draw more from one than the other. You may be the type of person who eavesdrops in coffee shops and later writers stories.
You may be shut down at home, pulled into a parallel world of other planets, creatures and sixth and seventh senses.
For every artist who struggles with transforming passion into actual and tangible, remember this:
There is no magic, no luck, no splash of momentary inspiration that will replace the call of the work in front of us.
We must be fully present in our practice.
How?
Not long ago in my writing career, my readership reached an all-time low. It was a pretty drastic drop. My writing was inconsistent, and so were my topics. I wasn’t giving anyone a reason to follow me. But even without the readers, I still had an urge to write.
It was then I made the mistake of making my writing about myself.
