(no subject)

[pepperlandgirl]

There's a pretty prominent reviewer/blogger in Romanceland who hates my work with eurydice72. She literally will not pass up a chance to bash our work. Even when she's reviewing one of my solo titles! The crazy thing that drives me absolutely insane? She doesn't read the books she reviews. She skims them. I know this is true because she regularly gets names wrong (really wrong, and consistently. Think "John" for "Jack"). Not only that, but she gets facts of the stories wrong. The last time she reviewed a story of ours, she claimed that the plot was so "cliche" because "a bitchy queen" wanted to stop his best friend from getting married. The "bitchy queen" in question was neither bitchy, nor a queen. But that's irrelevant, because the real problem is that nobody was getting married. Nobody was engaged. The guy in question didn't even have a girlfriend! Where did she get the married thing from? I don't know. Maybe she's on drugs.

But the real problem is that she thinks we're hacks. Because we publish a book a month. You see, we have the audacity to write as a career. That's a combined total of writing 50 hours a week, as well as editing and promo work. We struggle with every book to write the best we can, to make the characters strong, and the plots believable. But we still write for money. Because I'm poor, and this is my job, and if I didn't get my quarterly checks, I literally would not be able to pay my rent this month.

A part of me wants to feel bad about being a hack writer. After all, doesn't every author resist and fear that title? Is there a more grave insult?

But then I read my new Stephen King, and he mentions how he used to write short stories to sell so he could pay the bills. Of course, I don't have two young children, but I do have my sister living with me and two cats.

And then I remember that every author you know of writes to pay the bills.

Where does this view come from where writers only write for the love of the craft? Is it just because most people aren't exposed to the stories of Coleridge and Poe, desperately penning poems to sell so they can fend off the wolf for another month? Do they forget that Shakespeare went to London to make money to support his wife and young family? Even the novelists and poets who sacrificed everything for their "art" relied heavily on their "art" to survive. They either had patrons--and thus needed to please said patrons--or they fought and scratched for every penny. Even Charles Dickens was paid by the word.

I think people would be stunned by the number of current, popular writers who actually pen stories under multiple names. That's because they can generally publish only 1-2 books per year, but they need to eat, too. They need to make a living. And they have more than one or two stories every year inside them. The reason they're popular and the reason you know their names is that they work very, very hard. They're consistent. They write a lot and they're reliable.

The Romantic poets believed it was a little gauche to publish--a gentleman didn't get paid for his work. As a result, many of their poems were passed around in personal pamphlets and correspondence. Also, as a result, they often published under assumed names and anonymously. Now, I'm not Dickens, or Poe, or King, or Shakespeare. Nobody is going to remember me when I die--hell, if I stopped writing for a month, people will probably forget about me. That's fine. I don't actually need to make myself immortal. I'm just doing what I can to eke out a living in a very cold, very difficult profession. I do this because I don't want to do anything but write. But I won't apologize for treating it like a career and not a hobby. Because even when that was the ideal, it wasn't workable. And if that means there are a couple of reviewers who turn their noses up at us, then oh well. Hell, there are people who are disdainful of ol' Willy. If he can't please everybody, then I haven't got a prayer.

But I do have an OK check, and that'll pay our rent and our groceries for another month.

Comments

[makd.livejournal.com]

Dude: Shakespeare was "a hack". He wrote for $$$, not for art. He spewed out plays - think about the output, over a lifetime - at a jaunty pace that would've killed Moliere or Racine or O'Neill.

Dickens was paid by the word, and his books were published first as newspaper serials, later to be published as novels.

You're in good company; you're working; the writing pays the bills. :-) If there's someone who's down on your work, don't ask what's wrong with the work; as what's wrong with the critic.

IOW: you're fabulous, and don't you forget it!! ::hugs::

[empresspatti.livejournal.com]

I agree with EVERYTHING that makd just said !!

You are supporting yourself doing what you love. You GO girl, and don't let some pinhead critic with too much time on their hands get to you.

[pepperlandgirl4.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Sometimes I do forget my fabulousness. :)
Not only that, but I know there are thousands of people who would positively love to be in my shoes.

[lawyergirl15.livejournal.com]

My guess would be said reviewer is jealous because she isn't a writer and wants to be. Thus, she's jealous not only of your stories, but of the quantity of amazing stories you guys can think up.

[pepperlandgirl4.livejournal.com]

I don't know if she's a frustrated writer. She's definitely a crazy old lady, though.

[icemink.livejournal.com]

You know what's also funny about that. There's an implication that by doing more art, the quality must be worse. A strange notion which I think only applies to writing. In acting my other art, every agrees that the best way to get better at it is to do more acting. In fact a funny thing about acting, you often learn more from being in a badly done play, than a well done one. But anyway, my point is, if you are writing more, you are bound to better than you would be if you were writing less. So I don't know why there is this notion that writing a lot of stuff is bad. Sure not all of it is going to be great, but it's better than not writing at all.

[pepperlandgirl4.livejournal.com]

You're right. I actually mull over this a lot, because a lot of reviewer/reader blogs have bloggers who bemoan the sheer number of romance books, as though quantity and quality have an inverse relationship. My theory is that for non-writers, the process of writing seems so large. And then of course there are authors who encourage this view by writing very slowly and who happily encourage the notion of the tortured artist, suffering for their art. But the reality is that it doesn't matter if you write quickly or slowly.

You're right. Apparently, practice makes perfect, unless you write books.

[cat-eyed-fox.livejournal.com]

Some people suck. Some people are just vicious, and some people don't care about the meaning of the words they use to describe someone, or the truth of those words, just the emotional result. I'm sorry one of those people have it out for you.

[drknit.livejournal.com]

I gotta agree with everyone else here. I see the same sort of thing happen in academia, too. Those people who publish a lot are often seen by others as publishing poor-quality work, in second-rate journals, not making a "real" contribution, are publishing in an "easier" subfield, etc. In that case, and yours, it seems like the criticisms are ways to make the criticizer feel better about their own work and production ("I could publish a book a month if I didn't care about quality," etc.).

Still, it's really difficult to get those sorts of critiques. They really rattle around in your brain and it's easy to let them drown out all the really nice and positive compliments!

[pepperlandgirl4.livejournal.com]

They really rattle around in your brain and it's easy to let them drown out all the really nice and positive compliments!

God, you're right about that. It's frustrating, because I know that she's wrong, and I know plenty of people like our work, and I know that I like our work and yet....it rattles around. Exactly like you said.

[http://users.livejournal.com/mazal_/]

The only thing I can add to this is ... I am in awe of how much you hve written and published, especially at your young age, and that you have actually earned enough money from it to pay major household bills. This is something to really be proud of. I haven't had a chance and probably won't ever to read the bulk of your work, but I like what I have read so far.