This is from Jon Gibb’s weekly round up of interesting writing articles from around the web, and I thought I would broaden it’s audience, because it’s pretty damned sane. Thank you, Jon and you especially, T.J. McIntyre!
And if you’re not reading Jon’s journal yet, you should be. He does one of these every week, as well as writes insightful blog entries.
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I was anti-twitter for some time, but I joined recently because a bunch of the Fighting XIII’ers were on there, and I didn’t want to miss out on a lot of their writing fun. It also gives me a chance to keep up with some folks of my general acquaintance, which is very nice. I am a reformed twit, then.
This morning I was struck by a twit from Nnedi Okarafor . I had the good fortune to hear Nnedi read at Fantasy Matters in 2006, and was immediately struck by her work, which I happily went out, bought, and devoured.
It’s folkloric science fiction from Africa. You should devour it too. One of life’s great injustices is that she didn’t have a book last year, but she will have two out next year, so I guess I’ll be mollified.
Anyway, here’s Nnedi’s tweet:
got one more chance to look over the ending of Who Fears Death one last time…then it’s the final final. i think it’s done.
You know, we finish novels, and we have this urge to send things out and publish. We work on our writing, we strengthen our abilities, and we send things out. Every working writer I read does the same thing–revises, recasts, reworks, resends, and gets rejected.
I am coming to believe that the process is more organic than I thought. If you go through these steps, eventually, the writing career cannot help but grow. All the worrying and hand wringing we do changes nothing. We should just buckle down, go to work, and wait for the manuscript to be done. We’ll know when it is, if we trust our instincts.
It’s the same with the rest. A career isn’t a big break. It’s persistent craft, hard work, and nurturing. Intellectually, we say we know there’s no overnight success. We always hope, but you know, maybe nurturing my writing, turning the soil, letting it grow as it was intended, maybe that’s good enough.
Before this totally lapses into a religious tract, I’ll stop. 🙂
Catherine
