Being good can be a shortcut. There is no shortcut to being good.

[scott_lynch]

The give-and-take with the audience at any bookstore or convention appearance I make usually comes around sooner or later to the topic of publication. How to get published, how to stay published, what it’s like working with publishers; all that inside baseball. It’s probably a dreary subject to the folks that just love the stories or the genre, yet

Comments

[alexvdl]

"If Step 1 is “write something,” Step 2 is “write something new while you shop it around,” not “sit on your ass for the next twenty years and keep petulantly holding out the Only Thing You Ever Wrote.” " may be the best writing advice I've ever heard.

[sinboy]

Good essay. Just make sure you don't tell them about the *actual* secret.

Wait, this was a locked post right?

[kassrachel]

Word. Well-said. :-)

[xraytheenforcer]

[halfmoon_mollie]

You need to come to our writers group and tell all the people who see self publication as the *shortcut* exactly what you said here.

[jcfiala]

I can't see how "Doing all the work yourself" translates into "shortcut" myself, but then I may not be clueful.

[houseboatonstyx]

Maybe it means you don't have to wait X months to consider even politely asking an agent if they got your stuff ... or wait two years for one publisher to reject it, before you can send it to another?