Becoming a Writer - Thoughts?

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I am thinking about becoming a writer, and I am looking for perspectives on this - especially from those here who are
either writers themselves or have some other insight in the profession.

This is something I have been pondering for quite some time… actually for about 25 years, come to think of it. I wrote my first book draft in middle school - unsurprisingly, I was mocked and bullied at the mere mention of it.

I have also begun reading up books about the "art" of writing itself by Stephen King, Steven Pinker, Strunk & White (as per my current signature), Lisa Cron, Anne Lamott etc. I am currently reading John Truby's The Anatomy of Story, and I feel like the steps required to actually sit down and write a book are starting to "make sense".

I am at a loss, though, regarding whether this would be a smart career move or not...

On the plus side, I have always found great joy in both reading and writing, and - based on both academic results and job performance - I possess exceptionally strong writing skills. I also largely write for a living already - management reports, legislation, speeches, etc. - so I am already experienced in the art of wordsmithing. I also have a very good imagination - a perk of being completely batshit.

On the other hand, I already have a stable and reasonable well-paid job, which isn't exactly the hallmark of the writing profession. And I'm not sure it will be possible to become a succesful writer if I can only do it in my spare time while having another full-time job.

And having good technical writing skills ≠ good storytelling skills. For instance, H.P. Lovecraft was a mediocre technical writer (try comparing his writing with Poe, for instance), but a great storyteller. At the same time universities spit out thousands of graduates each year with impeccable grammar and prose who nonetheless couldn't write a remotely interesting 400 word article for a tabloid even if the fate of both the universe and coffee depended on it.

Finally, my writing interests largely lie in science fiction (of the harder kind), and I fear (=know, based on sales) this genre has a more narrow audience appeal than romance, drama, crime etc. Many topics in science fiction have also largely been "done to death", so it might be an uphill battle to write anything original these days.

Any thoughts?

I can advise you on journal articles?

I am also thinking about a book but probably non-fiction

Kriachgauer is a successful author....you could get tips from him.

I would be interested to see some of your ideas and/or writing. I have had a few nonfiction things published, but trying to write fiction is something else entirely. I can write lots of fascinating paragraphs in my head, while driving for example. Nothing comes to mind when sitting in front of a computer.

Can you save up enough cash to last you three years without a paycheck? I would say that would be the minimum requirement for starting off.

I have read a lot of articles and books by a lot of authors, but sure... why not?


I will gladly send you a signed copy of my Hugo/Pulitzer/Nobel award-winning pentalogy which has been adapted to the big screen as a multi-Academy Award (and two Palme d'Or) winning series of feature films, a 10 season Netflix series, and a Broadway show which is still sold out every night after 20 years…

… but I have to write it first.

I'm still at the idea stage trying to decide if I should move on to the actual writing stage.

Jokes aside, I am leaning towards both traditional sci-fi and the addition of cyberpunk/social realist fiction etc. I am a big fan of William Gibson's early work (Neuromancer, Burning Chrome etc.) wrt. both theme and writing style.

Since I am also a major history buff, I am thinking about using historical societies, cultures, economic systems etc. as inspiration for a an off-world sci-fi setting with a focus on resource scarcity and social conflict.

But herein also lies the problem: A lot of writers have done this already (and a lot of sci-fi writers have read and taken inspiration from Gibson), so I would probably have to come up with something quite remarkable to be succesful.


Probably not. I think I *could*, but I would probably not be willing to walk away completely from my current career before I had at *least* some success as a writer first.

This may be my biggest concern; I've gotten used to a comfortable living standard, so I don't know if I am motivated enough to make such a risky career change. If I had been 15 years younger, It would have been a different matter, but back then I was so immature I didn't even know what shoes to wear… The left shoe goes on the left foot, right?

If you're not sure about making a career change until you see some success, is it possible for you to write as a hobby? Maybe start off with a short story or two that could be related to a larger piece you have in mind. Or try flash fiction. Join some critique groups, send your short pieces off to magazines/publications that are suited to your writing style/themes.

I understand where your concerns are coming from. It's a great idea to go and follow your dreams, but dreams don't pay the bills either. If you have a schedule that gives enough free time to play around with writing, maybe start there and see how it goes. If it's something you enjoy and want to do, even if nothing ever gets published, it won't matter if you did it for you. Besides, you can always self publish these days.

I'm no professional writer. I merely like writing stories. I recently described my current one as 'Basket Case b movie style'. It's beautiful in all of its ridiculous glory. and I'm having so much fun with it.

I wouldn't worry much about originality (plot wise), agreed, there's nothing much that hasn't been done. My two cents, every story has been told, but the characters/setting can bring a new spin on that from your view of things and make it different from the rest.

I'm an unpublished fiction writer, mine are soft sci fi / fantasy.
I too came from a technical writing background and it took time and practice to convert my writing style to work with fiction. My advice would be that it takes a long time to get your work to publishable standard alone, let alone make any money out of it.

So my suggestion is not to make any assumptions about being able to earn any money out if it, but if you still find the urge to write, and you enjoy the writing process, then go for it.
See if you can take a chunk of time off as unpaid leave to get the first draft done if that works for you, that's what I did. But when I went back they were making redundancies and because I'd taken so much time off they decided they didn't need me and I got axed. So you need to be careful.
Anyway, I would suggest getting at least one novel finished before seriously contemplating making a career of it.

I second this. The magic is not in the idea itself but in the way you write it.
Admittedly in hard SF there's an expectation of having a few futuristic concepts and/or tech in there, but you can take something new and extrapolate a bit, you don't need to go overboard.
I tell people my novel ideas all the time, I don't care if they steal the concept, because even if they did, they're not going to write it like I would.

I would continue with your present job, while writing on the side.

People like:

Franz Kafka (worked at various levels of an insurance company).
Wallace Stevens (vice president of an insurance company)
Archibald MacLeish (head librarian of the Library of Congress)
William Carlos Williams (physician)

just to name a few off the top of my head.....had "day jobs" in addition to being famous writers.

Another few questions...

- Is it better to focus on short stories vs. writing a full length novel?

I'm guessing a short story is a more surmountable tasks than writing a "400 page brick", and it's easier to do if I have to write in my spare time next to my main job. But I'm not sure if it qualifies as "serious" writing - and definitely not serious income - and the heyday of short stories seems long past. The sci-fi market also seems to be flooded with these.

- Self-publishing vs. traditional publishing? What is best?

I have little or no knowledge about the practicalities (legal, technical etc.) of writing a book. I've read that you can in principle earn a lot more per book via self-publishing, but then you'd also lose a lot of market access via traditional distribution channels...

It is better to focus on the format which suits your style and personality better.
It does help to experiment with different formats.

It helps the most to just go write!

That's how you find out which format you have a more natural connection with.

A thing which can be very helpful, depending on the personalities involved, and on your own personality, is to find and join a local creative writers group.

A couple years ago I just chanced across the one in our midwestern county seat farm burg.
We have quite an assortment of members all the way from grandparents to grandkids.

Among them:
Several published authors, both locally and nationally.
A retired literature professor who was an actual honest-to-goodness Beatnik in her younger decades.
A gal who has become a regional newspaper columnist in the time since I joined.
An older fellow who is still working on recovering from a stroke and recently started writing to keep his mind exercised.

As far as I know, none of them have writing as their only source of income.

We only just recently were able to have our weekly in-person meetings again and it has been a wonderful thing to have in life again.

They know I'm autistic and have several chronic illnesses.
They've seen me have a meltdown.

Almost all of them are not science-fiction fans, but they enjoy the scenes from my story I have read.
And have offered ways to improve my work.
Which is the primary purpose of the thing.

An exercise we usually do at meetings is a 20 minute timed writing based on several provided prompts.
You can write fiction, nonfiction, poetry,
Then we'll read what we got.
But you are not required to read.
Sometimes you might be told, "Ya know, a good story could be built on those 2 paragraphs ..."

It is a lot of fun to see what my mind can come up with on short notice.
And it allows writing in different genres from my sloooooooooooooowly progressing sci-fi novel.

And then on a different track, I'm going to suggest this Tumblr blog as a useful resource,

https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/

Oh! I wish I could recall Where I saw a conversation about that where several big and small writers contributed.

The general feeling of their conversation was that at this point on the calendar there isn't anything which hasn't been used for inspiration by someone, so let go of obsessing about that; what matters is does the story you offer the readers interest them and do they engage with the story you offer them?

also coming to mind, and I don't remember whether it was part of the above conversation or not;

It is known that there is a type of reader who wants the excitement of a new and different experience every book.
And ...
It is known there is a type of reader who is quite content to read what is pretty much the same plot in different settings with different characters because they want that stability and comfort.

This may, or may not, be of interest.
Several people in our local writers group get quite enthusiastic about it,
https://nanowrimo.org/

Which is "better" depends on what the operating definition of "better" is.

Let me wander off in to this anecdote about that ...

One day in 8th or 9th grade I was sitting in the school library reading a book of Star Trek short stories.
One of them had somewhere in its beginning the line "The ship was beautiful" about an unknown alien ship which Kirk and crew chanced upon.

That got me thinking, hmm, what would a 'beautiful' starship arising from my own mind and being look like?

A couple weeks later, I had a starship style.

Okay, now the ship needs people and the people need a story; if I were to write a sci-fi story what would it look like?

--> So, it was a thing in a short story which inspired me to write a novel!

I had already written a few 1 to 5 page stories based on translating my model trains in to real life.

So began a cycle of work on the sci-fi for a couple weeks to months, put it away for several years;
pull it out again, work on it a couple weeks to months, put it away for several years;
repeat, repeat.

In about the last 5 years I have been working on it more and more seriously; copying content from yellowing loose-leaf paper to colorfast electrons.
And creating new content as required.

* There are 2 well known archetypal styles of fiction writers & plenty of in-between variations.
There are those who plan and outline the book, sometimes to such an extent the outline is almost the text!
And there are those who go with the flow, fly 'seat of the pants', the "pantsers"; they write and whatever comes out is what the story is.

I love writing and editing on the computer.
both because of what it is & because my hands have problems which make writing with a pen or pencil for more than a few minutes quite painful.
I love printing the pages to hold and proofread, something about that change to solid object makes that job so much easier for my mind. Your mind and mileage may vary.

You probably shouldn't quit your day job to write, the amount of people who can write for a living is very small. But you won't know if you are one of them unless you try. And if you want to write for a living, novels are your best bet as there are very few paying markets for short stories.

So, what you can do is to set aside some time everyday to write your story. It doesn't matter how much time you set aside or how much you write, you will get a first draft sooner or later. If you write 500 words a day, you will get a 70k word first draft in 140 days. If you write 100 words a day, you will get a 70k word first draft in 700 days.

Now, this is actually harder than it sounds and if you do actually do it, congratulations! You are now one of the few people that have actually written a complete novel. Unfortunately, unless you are a freak of nature, this first draft will probably suck. At this point, some authors will just write the whole story again from scratch, others will pound the first draft into a workable second draft.

With a completed second draft, you can probably start proofreading it for typos and grammatical errors. If you have an outlook account, you can copy your story into a word online document and use their immersive reader to read your story back. I find that hearing it works better than just reading it for proofreading.

Then, you can send it off to some beta readers to get feedback. If you don't know anyone, there are some sites like Frost Bite Publishing where you can hire some beta readers. I used them for my upcoming novel and their feedback was crucial in cementing my decision to go ahead and self-publish it. But it is no substitute for feedback from an experienced developmental editor.

With beta reader feedback, you now have more information about whether you can write a good story or not and whether you want to continue with writing fiction.

P.S: Why 70k words? If you read through QueryShark, you will find that it is quite common for literary agents to reject a manuscript if the story is too short or too long. According to Queryshark, the sweet spot for SF is 70k-90k words.

Hope this helped you.

I've been having trouble finding the time to write, but I have a novel idea.
So I'm approaching the novel like a series of short stories.
It's easier to write then, knowing I can knock over a short story pretty fast.
And I think it makes for a good novel too, because the reader gets a series of climactic events (at the end of each story section), keeping them interested.