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Showing posts from October, 2004

But enough about me; let's talk about what you can do for me

With National Novel Writing Month coming up, various friends and LJ-friends of mine are gearing up to write novels. This disturbs me greatly. Please stop. Eighteen months ago, I somehow stumbled and tumbled into a paying gig as a full-time novelist, and let me tell you, it's a damn cushy job - but it's also fraught with risk. If I don't sell books, I'll be back out on the street, or worse yet, in the office. And the competition is killing me. Every time someone walks into a bookstore, I'm already fighting for their attention with Margaret Atwood, Dan Brown, John Le Carre, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, the list goes on forever. You think I want that list any longer? You think I want more competition? No freakin' way. There's this perception of the publishing business as a walled garden, protected by moats and spiky walls, whose denizens are for the most part actively hostile to wannabe writers and their attempts t