You’ve probably heard this writing truism: “you have to write a million words of crap...” before, I guess, “...writing something worth reading.” Or maybe “...writing something worth publishing
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Ha, but does that count academic writing and whiney emails to your mother and grocery lists and post-it notes and. (Except that sometimes I think it does, I think being in a writing group while I was doing undergrad helped with writing essays because we were still thinking and talking about mechanics and tone and narrative flow and so on.)
Good question! Maybe the million words does include your grocery list!
But seriously, yeah. I sold the second story I wrote to a pro market, which had absolutely everything to do with the fact that I wrote it at the same time that I was working on a dissertation, which is like an unfair advantage. Also, I'd done six years in the freshman comp mines, which taught me a huge amount about how to take sentences and paragraphs apart and put them back together again.
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the corollary: "I have written my million words, so now everything is golden." Or, as Haddayr put it, "nothing but roses from here."
That Next Hot Young Writer story is a sad one. I ask, though: she hasn't sold another story, but has she continued writing?
I don't know for sure, but from what I hear...shunnApril 25 2007, 15:07:56 UTC
Occasional fitful attempts at novels, from the little I occasionally hear, but mostly concentrating on other things and planning to come back to writing someday. The problem with "someday" is that it rarely arrives on its own.
I have little doubt, though, that as long as the success was coming with relative ease, the writing would have continued.
I do think the more you write, the better you get at it.
Do we count nonfic? If so I reached the million mark a while back, but I've got a ways to go fiction-wise.
And there is -nothing- like teaching comp to make you think about writing. I think every writer should do a three-year stint in that particular trench.
Oh I've easily written more than a million words. Some of us take longer to learn than others and we learn in different ways. I've written since I was 7 or so. I walk away from it, I come back to it. I've journaled for many, many years. That's the umpteen million words of crap, in my case. My journal is definitely crap-words. Purposely so now to clear out my head. (Not to be confused with lj, which is a journal that has been heavily edited for public consumption
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But seriously, yeah. I sold the second story I wrote to a pro market, which had absolutely everything to do with the fact that I wrote it at the same time that I was working on a dissertation, which is like an unfair advantage. Also, I'd done six years in the freshman comp mines, which taught me a huge amount about how to take sentences and paragraphs apart and put them back together again.
(yay for writing group!)
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That Next Hot Young Writer story is a sad one. I ask, though: she hasn't sold another story, but has she continued writing?
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I have little doubt, though, that as long as the success was coming with relative ease, the writing would have continued.
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Exactly!
My elephants are invisible, but they leave big footprints all over my pages...
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Do we count nonfic? If so I reached the million mark a while back, but I've got a ways to go fiction-wise.
And there is -nothing- like teaching comp to make you think about writing. I think every writer should do a three-year stint in that particular trench.
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I don't know if non-fiction or academic writing counts.
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