Akting Out

Life has changed a lot since I became published, not all of it for the better. Suddenly I’m fielding a lot of questions, none of them I mind, and none of them are stupid. What I do find rather grating, however, are the common misconceptions that writers have it easy. I’ve actually been told on a number of occasions that writing a book is easy. My personal favorite is; “I don’t see what the big deal is. You sit, you write a book. How hard is that?” Oh, I don’t know, about as hard as it is to keep myself from throwing you out the window. It’s pretty flippin’ difficult.

Thanks to Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Patterson, and the like, there seems to be some myth that we writers sit at a keyboard and whip out bestseller after bestseller with little to no effort and spend the rest of our days doing whatever we wish. We write these books, sleep till noon, and spend our free time doing whatever it is we nerds too. Well, I got news for you. Not even close.

So here, in my very first blog of 2011, I’d like to present ten hard truths about writers and writing. Those of you who labor under the delusion that your work will make you millions, I’m not saying it’s impossible, but consider this your reality check. Those of you who think we have it easy, read on.

5). Most of us never see a dime from our work. Most of us don’t do this for the paycheck. Most of us do it because of an impossible push from our imagination, to see our work in print or on screen, or both.
Once again; MOST OF US WRITERS DO NOT GET PAID FOR OUR WORK.

A little side-note to that last one; if you ever bought a book with the front cover ripped off, the author didn’t see a dime of that money.

4). It’s never, ever easy. We drive ourselves, and our families, crazy because we are perfectionists, what we do is never good enough, and we have to keep refining over and over until we’re too tired to go on, or if we’re lucky, it comes out right. Nothing of the process is easy.

3). Finishing a book is sometimes the greatest thing we can hope for.

2). It’s a 24/7 job. Very rarely are we doing something that doesn’t tie back to our writing. We can’t help it. It’s how our minds work. And we normally get the best ideas when we’re furthest away from anything that even resembles a writing tool.

1). Behind every bestseller is a killer marketing team. I mean the type of marketing team that runs on millions of dollars. For every “bestseller” you’re aware of, there are a million titles that may be a million times better that you may never heard of. If you’re a writer, there’s a very good chance that you will be one of the millions people never hear of.

Now, for those of you who’re new to writing or considering a career, please don’t let this discourage you. I love writing, I love everything about the storytelling process, I love the research, the rewrites, the late-nights, and the continuous refinement of what we do. But have no illusions. Unless you’re incredibly lucky, talented, or both, you’re not going to get rich doing this. At least, not right away. But you can indeed generate income as a writer, you can even make it a full-time profession if you’ve got what it takes to make it happen. But don’t think for a second that it will come easy, or overnight. It will take years. Maybe a lot of them.

And for those of you who think we have it easy…we don’t. In fact, there are times we envy you because you seem to be able to relax on occasion. We can’t, even if we wanted to. We do it because we love it, because we can’t imagine doing anything else. We don’t have dollar signs in our eyes, and pounding out sixty thousand words is as draining as an hour at the gym.

Those are my five hard truths about writers and writing.

Thanks for reading, and good luck.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Akting Out LLC

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We all have our moments, or places, when we do our best thinking. For me, it’s either on long walks, or when I’m doing the dishes.

In my socks.

On the tile floor.

But we’ll get back to that.
So there I am, doing the dishes, minding my own damn business when my old, familiar, finicky friend, the Muse, decides to drop by. And oh my, the things she has to say. Utter brilliance, they are. The kinds of things that would make old Will Shakespeare himself stand up and applaud.

It’s always a sequence. I freeze in mid-scrub. I no longer notice how hot the water is. My eyes widen as the Muse pours inspirational gold into my mind. The words. Such words. They must be recorded and now.

And I’m off. I’ve learned to keep my computers on for just such an occasion. I go racing out of the kitchen, looking like Daffy Duck going downhill. In fact, I’ve actually fallen flat on my face before. But the pain doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters but getting the Muse’s words on paper.

But I have learned that the Muse plays a dirty trick on you. As she speaks, she’s actually placed a time bomb in your imagination. There’s no timer, although it seems to go off the second you’re ready to bring her words into reality.

So I sit at the computer, raise my hands to the keyboard, and then…pleh.

The bomb goes off. The Muse is gone. The finicky little…we won’t go there…took her words with her.
I hate those moments; those first few seconds when my mind has frozen and I can’t think of anything to write. It’s like being abandoned on date night by someone you were really excited about seeing.

I have ways of coping. I pace. I talk out loud, trying to remember what she told me while questioning my own sanity. But it’s okay, I tell myself. I passed crazy a long time ago, but if I get these words out of my head and into the real world, it’ll all be okay.

So after wearing a groove into the carpet and having full-fledged conversations with myself, convinced that I’ve plucked the important aspects of the Muse’s visit out of the pit, I take my seat at the computer, and then…pleh.

At this point, I usually scream, cuss, moan, or turn on the 360 and lose myself in somebody else’s world, but since the latter isn’t an option anymore (yet) I had to find another way around it.

And then, just last week, it hit me.
The Muse may be finicky, but she demands hard work and total dedication. As well she should, considering what she brings to the table. You don’t just walk into the mine and picking gold off the walls. You have to dig for it.

So now, I sit down and just start writing. It only has to be relevant to what the Muse has told me; it doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to make sense. It just has to be out of my head and in the real world. I’ve churned out five pages of crud not even the sanitation department would touch. It doesn’t matter, because no one else has to see it.

Then, when all the crud is out of my head, I go back through it, sometimes tracing the words with my finger, and there. That one sentence, quote, or scene. That’s what I’ve been looking for. That’s what the Muse was trying to tell me.

When the Muse hits me now, I try to let it happen instead of making mad dashes for my computer (it keeps me out of intensive care). I get to my computer and pour my imagination onto the screen. I mine later and keep the good parts.

Thanks for reading, and good luck in your endeavors.

(c) Avery K. Tingle for Akting Out LLC

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