"You write to fit in," says Steve Salerno in the article Welcome to the Real World: 10 things college writing classes don't teach you--but should.
This does not scare me.
I've been published before, entirely off the notion of giving publishers exactly what they want. I may well have never read a romance novel in my life, but I've published around ten. Writing romance--for the money, when not only are you not a fan of the genre, but you'd rather be Stephen King than Danielle Steel--is generally a service industry. Also, like the "front of the book" magazine pieces Salerno says professors scorn, I doubt any creative writing class of mine would encourage writing similar to what I have published in class. Hell, I'm 100% certain anything I published, in a creative writing college setting would probably barely skate by with a 'C'.
But it also plays into one major fear, Salerno's third piece of advice: "You're going to need a clip file." Well, I have clips, and ten published works to my (pen) name, but none of them can get me a job after Rowan. As well and good as being published is, I doubt being the writer of "A Romantic Werewolf in Paris" (not a real title), is going to get me a job at any literary agency outside of Ellora's Cave (no, I have not been published there). And, I can assure you, I do not want to live in the Red Light district of writing my whole life.
"So write something other than romance!" seems to be the easy suggestion out of my predicament, but taking time from writing things that make money (romance, and Rowan's admissions blog, as it were), means opening up for a lot of uncertainty and probably a lot less money. And when I do stop writing for pay, I write what I actually want to write--particularly violent horror stories, which once more falls into "genre" writing, unloved by potential employees and professors alike. In the end, when all is considered, I feel as though in order to be readily writing in a job once out of here, I'll need about two more hours in a day.
And, well, that scares me.
This does not scare me.
I've been published before, entirely off the notion of giving publishers exactly what they want. I may well have never read a romance novel in my life, but I've published around ten. Writing romance--for the money, when not only are you not a fan of the genre, but you'd rather be Stephen King than Danielle Steel--is generally a service industry. Also, like the "front of the book" magazine pieces Salerno says professors scorn, I doubt any creative writing class of mine would encourage writing similar to what I have published in class. Hell, I'm 100% certain anything I published, in a creative writing college setting would probably barely skate by with a 'C'.
But it also plays into one major fear, Salerno's third piece of advice: "You're going to need a clip file." Well, I have clips, and ten published works to my (pen) name, but none of them can get me a job after Rowan. As well and good as being published is, I doubt being the writer of "A Romantic Werewolf in Paris" (not a real title), is going to get me a job at any literary agency outside of Ellora's Cave (no, I have not been published there). And, I can assure you, I do not want to live in the Red Light district of writing my whole life.
"So write something other than romance!" seems to be the easy suggestion out of my predicament, but taking time from writing things that make money (romance, and Rowan's admissions blog, as it were), means opening up for a lot of uncertainty and probably a lot less money. And when I do stop writing for pay, I write what I actually want to write--particularly violent horror stories, which once more falls into "genre" writing, unloved by potential employees and professors alike. In the end, when all is considered, I feel as though in order to be readily writing in a job once out of here, I'll need about two more hours in a day.
And, well, that scares me.
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