How many of you are writers?

Just wondering because when ever there is a question regarding writing, there are a lot of replies.
Personnally I do not write, but if I were to become a writer or even dabble in writing one day, I would want to write cop storys in a science fiction universe, kind of like those seen in The One starring Jet Li, or Minority Report with Tom Cruise.
What do you guys write about, if you are writers? Sci-Fi? Fantasy? Detective Stories?
Erotic?

I write as part of my job (memos, evaluation reports, etc) but I have written countless travel articles, editorials, etc. for "Stars and Stripes" "Army Times" local newletters and other newspapers and magazines most WF folks have never heard of. No, I never saved any of them - I don't think it's that big a deal. I just enjoy doing it. Editors love me, because they rarely have to change anything.

No, I'll never write a novel, because I don't even read novels. I'm a "get to the point" kind of guy. Short stories and commentaries are my cup of tea.

I was a reporter, both print and radio, for years. I was also a political columnist and content writer for a website (now dead, a casualty of the dotcom collapse) and do a lot of writing in my current job.

I'm also up to 11,000 words in my NaNoWriMo project. Gaining ground...

Yeah, I gotta stop doing that. Sorry.

Well, I've never discussed it on here but I write screenplays as a hobby. Not sold anything yet though.

I've written quite a bit- several full length novels, but nothing publishable as of yet. Even my 'closest to being finished' needs at least one more darn near full re-write.

Actually, I don't work much on that stuff anymore, but every so often I get the urge to go back and work more on it.

I have written many unpublished short stories. Alas, most of them were on an old-fashioned typewriter and I don't have them in electronic form. There's also a bunch that I wrote longhand . . . there's something very satisfying about pushing a pen across paper. And I love those "blank books" that you can fill up with your own content. I've bought several of those just because I liked the book itself, not to actually write in, tho I suppose I will eventually.

I've not had anything published. At one time, in my youth, I wanted to write comic books and so many of my older works deal with the characters I created for that purpose.

Then, on the professional side, I've written the usual collection of reports, statements of work, contract reviews, appraisals, and so forth. Done plenty of editing, too . . . you wouldn't believe how poorly most government employees write.

Well, I wrote a formal essay that won second place at the Southern Literary Arts Festival; I wrot several peices of short fiction that won prives and publication in my college literary journal; I wrote social/political commentary columns for a local Christian Monthly that went under when the publisher died; I used to write columns on the Toronto Blue Jays for a couple of now defunct small time websites;

And I wrote about half of a first draft of a novel I was very pleased with...but I lost the original in a crash and when I tried to load the backups I found the disk currupted and useless. That event has traumatized me a bit concerning writing and for the last year or more I've written virtually nothing...always intending but eventually procrastiniating.

Ever considered using some OCR software and getting them onto your computer?

Holy shit dude! I got OCR software when I bought my new printer/scanner/copier!

*Lanz runs off giggling fiendishly*

AFAIK, only one of us is a published writer, by which I mean having a novel published. But many here write and probably hope to be published one day, and I am one of them.

I am still working towards that Great European Novel, but I've been writing stuff since.. well, since I could write. Horrible 'poetry' at first, then a children's story (about a seal, don't ask), then bits and pieces, then a short novel in my teens in which I worked through my 'issues' (I ultimately discarded 150 pages and kept 30) and I've been working on a new story (fiction) over the past 2 years.
I have always known this is what I really want to do, but I've sidetracked several times in my life, occupying myself with computer programming, arts management and even more futile tasks. I am extremely critical of my own writing and in the past vowed not to try and publish anything before I am 50. We'll see. If I finish something I am still satisfied with after a year, I might start sending in stuff sooner. I used to discard about 80% of what I wrote, but that's slowly improved. However, although I am certain that what I will finally decide to try and get published will be 'really good' in my own view, I do constantly fear ultimately being exposed as someone who can't write at all

I used to not tell anyone I write, as I thought it to be presumptuous unless I actually was a published writer, but recently I found that it is a good way of pushing myself to get back to work when I haven't written for several days/weeks/months (I am extremely lazy and easily distracted). If friends ask me if I have made progress, I can't lie, and feel terribly ashamed if I haven't. Usually I then get back to work the same day. Weird, perhaps, but it works for me.

p.s. relax.. I don't write in English.

Shep - for NaNoWriMo I bought a 32MB Flash Memory stick for that very eventuality. $7.95 at Staples. It's the bomb and would hold a novel quite easily.

I hear ya about procrastinating.

I've written six novels, all of which have gone through extensive editing, but since none of them has been published, I don't consider myself a writer.

I wrote for a music magazine for several years, but don't consider that a big deal.

I'm waiting for my big break!

Let me just slip in here and say: If you write, you're a writer.

No qualifiers on that word. You could be a brilliant writer, you could be a lousy writer, but if you write, you are a writer.

There are many, many reasons why a piece of crap will get published, and sometimes even manipulated into best-sellerdom, and even more reasons why a carefully crafted and truly interesting work will never get past the slush pile.

Being published should not be the arbiter for whether or not you're a writer. Naturally the goal is to be published, but that involves forces beyond your control. If you write, you are a writer.

Of course, if you lack the confidence to submit your work for publication, that's an added level of complication. But it doesn't detract from the fact that you are a writer.

It's the people who talk about what they're gonna write someday that I have no patience with. To them I say: Stop bending my ear, go home, and write.

And, BTW, I store my novels on my hard drive, copied on not one but two floppies (in case one of them goes sour *and* my hard drive dies, all at the same time, which has never happened to me). Don't need no fancy software or gizmos, just a Word file and a coupla disks. Unless you're illustrating the damn thing, you don't need anything bigger.

Just write. The rest will fall into place later. "You must have faith...that the universe will evolve as it was intended."

Until it gets scratched...

Well, with due respect, I disagree. I view the title "Writer" as a professional title. You get it, since you're a professional Writer. I do not, since I am not.

It's ok. I do my thing regardless. But I would never, for example, introduce myself as a writer. Can't do it.

As for publishing, I spent a solid year trying, and all I had for my efforts was a stack of generic rejection letters. And to be honest, this part of the effort sickens and disgusts me and I can't stomach it. Yuck!

I've got my ace in the hole ( ), but I can't play it. Not yet, at least. I suspect I never will.

The solution, obviously, is to use as many different backup mediums as possible.

I use everything I can: Floppy, CD, USB drive, multiple hard drives, and finally, print outs. My greatest fear would be to lose a book due to an accident -- any kind of accident. Hence my ownership of mutliple fireproof safes.

I prefer nonvolatile mediums, the best example being flash drives.

Well, I have a CD burner, but I haven't used it yet. But I'll take all advice under consideration.

The other thing is that I always have hardcopy of all my manuscripts, some from the Ancient Times when I used to write first drafts in long-hand and type revisions on typewriters using - gasp! - carbon paper copies. Nowadays I print as I go, because I get a better feel for what needs correcting on paper than I do on a screen.

Nevertheless, one of these years I intend to scan all that paper and reduce at least some of the boxes I have in storage.

And of course whenever I submit a manuscript, my editor's got it on his hard drive, my agent (who's a bit old-fashioned) has a hard copy, and I've archived a copy of the email I sent to the editor, with the ms. attached.

So unless my house burns down *and* my agent's house burns down *and* there's a global catastrophe which wipes out everybody's hard drive, I'm covered.

Once the thing is published, of course, there are actual bound copies out there - in warehouses, at the publisher's offices, in my agent's office and mine, on Amazon and Abebooks and sometimes, most amazing, even in brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Then, in that blink of an eye before they go out of print (was it Harlan Ellison who once said the average novel has a shelf-life equivalent to a container of yogurt?), readers actually buy them and read them and keep them on their bookshelves.

Libraries order my books, too. Whenever I browbeat an editor about why there was no marketing done on my latest volume, he'll mumble something about "Yeah, but you're selling real well to libraries." As if that somehow excuses the fact that he can't be arsed to attend an occasional marketing meeting to promote his writers because he had to go pick up his kid at soccer...

Anyhoo, long digression by way of saying I haven't really worried about losing parts of my work since a particular editor called me about 20 years ago (back in the long-hand-and-typewriter days) to say "Hi, um, I got your correction pages but, um, I can't seem to find the rest of the manuscript. Could you possibly make me another copy?"

Editors -!

And, trinity, I disagree. You're a writer. You've gone realms further than most people who say they want to write: You've completed several manuscripts, and you've spent a year submitting them.

'course, it took six years for me to sell my first manuscript, and that was in the Glory Days when editors actually read more than the first page and were willing to, you know, actually *edit* instead of only buying mss. that were "camera ready."

Yesterday evening I helped put up our annual book flea market, the single most important fund raising event of my ai chapter. It's incredible what crap gets published and obviously read ... I only found 3 books out of 10.000 I actually wanted and took home with me (didn't scan in depth tho).

Since then, my hopes are up that I will be published too one day. Of course I've had hundreds of thousands of readers already when I worked in advertising, but that never had my name on it except for when it went to one of those self-praising award ceremonies. So I'll refrain from calling myself a 'writer' ... until I have actually published something under my name. Or finished something of considerale length (mostly shorts by now, like 5 unfinished novels)

Not really.

I used to write a lot of silly stories in grade school. Me and some friends had a spell book where we just wrote down zany spells and and passed them around class for people to laugh at.

In college I wrote two short stories for my creative writing class. The teacher said I had some potential and she encouraged me to enter one of the stories in a writing competition. But I never did.

I've also written some essays for school/scholarships/essay competitions that have done pretty well.

I was BRIEFLY involved in my high school newsletter...

Actually, now that I think about it, I have written quite a bit of stuff.



My skills are definitely rusty though. I might have to fire up that Word and start typing again.

Ironically, participating in message board discussions (here and at TBBS) has helped me with my grammar and wording.

I dabble. One of my goals in life is to get a novel written and published - but I know I can't make a living and support my family at that right now.

Had a college professor tell me I had to give her a signed copy of my novel when
I finish it, because she thought it would be worth something as a collector's piece someday. That's what you call positive feedback.

Of course, I still have to write it! LOL.

I've been writing trying to get published in paleontological journals. Nothing yet except a couple abstracts.

Well, some poetry in some Uni publications.

I write music, does that count?

Writing music is fun. For some strange reason, I have country songs in my head all the time.

As part of another story, last year in a weekend I wrote 12 songs for a space-country album -- trucker songs, essentially, except the truckers are driving space ships into deep space. Good times!


There's this new country song bouncing around my head since last weekend. It starts:

"It's too late for whiskey,
it's too late for beer,
God knows I been missing
what I ought to hold dear...."

Sing it real twang-y and ya got it!

Well, I say thanks.

But as we've discussed before, and as you say here, the "Industry" seems brutal. Like winning the lottery, really.

And I wonder, truly, what's my motivation? It used to be fame and glory, I'll admit it. Payment for these fires.

However, I no longer think that's the case. In fact, I'm fairly sure the purpose, my real motivation is simply to create, in whatever form or medium. And that's it.

I find the act itself to be the ideal, not the result, and I can't even fathom that far off step, publishing.

Why do you write? I suspect, for most, it's because they must. It's what they do. If this is true, than, what does getting published have to do with anything?


But this is a fairy tale, of course, for who would not want to be paid well for doing that which they must do anyway?

I usually write songs whle I cycle. The most recent country song went something like this:

"The woman I love just wants to be a whore,
She sure looks diff'rent than the way she looked before,
I guess I should just waltz right out the door,
'cause the woman I love just wants to be a whore..."

That's tthe chorus at least.

Getting published would be what would enable me to write. Right now I am unemployed, but that'll change within a year. Writing when you've got a job is much harder. So it's not about getting rich, but about paying the rent. Fame would be horrible, really. Imagine you're a writer who gets his ideas from watching people unobserved. Then switch to a situation where you can't go out for a drink without being recognised. It would be utter disaster. But if you add a note to your manuscript saying: 'if you want to publish this, then remember: no photo on the cover, no interviews, no signing sessions, no tv appearances', well, then you might as well not even try.

By the way, for the same reasons I think writing doesn't go really well with family life. A girlfriend/wife, fine, but kids? No way. Any opinions on that?