Why We Write

[howeird]

Am reading John Scalzi's book on being a writer. One of the things he suggested was to build up a following at one's journal. I have no idea how to do that. Well, I have some ideas, but am wary of implementing them. One idea was to start allowing anonymous comments, which I have just done.

How did I discover Scalzi? Someone at BASFA said John had taped bacon to his cat, and there was a photo on John's blog. Months later, someone here or on FB linked to a book John had written, and was selling online. I figured at the very least it would be creative, so I went to Amazon and bought a paperback copy.

It was a very good book, well written, a couple of notches above creative, so I bought the next two in the series.

His book starts by suggesting a good plan if one wants to be a writer is to get a job writing. He walked into the Fresno Bee and got himself a job writing reviews. And the rest is history, and a lot of writing.

So where did I go wrong? I worked on my university daily newspaper for four years, got jobs on three different newspapers after that, and have yet to have a single book published.

Maybe I need to actually write a book.

Comments

[zyzyly.livejournal.com]

Do you have a cat?

[howeird]

:-)
It's already been done.

[caprine.livejournal.com]

Scalzi's route to fame was quirky. His AOL columns got him a huge online following (as well as getting him into stuff like the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader -- when I was working on that, my boss stumbled across some of Scalzi's humorous essays online and said "We have to buy this guy's stuff, it's good" -- so I can honestly say that I have edited Scalzi's nonfiction). He wrote an SF novel (Agent to the Stars) just to see if he could and put it on his website; it got so many hits that it got publishers interested in him. All this was long before the glory that was Bacon Cat.

[howeird]

Thanks for the great anecdote. He mentions his stunt at AOL as a fan-builder, and enjoyed the work for the bathroom reader. Agent to the Stars he says was a way to see if a book could be sold online. So far he has not mentioned bacon cat. But I think this book was written before that.