Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash
Meme words added by Erin Penn
House Fire or Hot Property? Why not both? That pretty much is the publishing industry in a nutshell, and those that like to hang out in it. An living example of this metaphor is Chuck Wendig.
On his birthday in 2017, Mr. Wendig did a retrospective on his blog – Terribleminds – “What I’ve Learned After 5 Years and 20 Books: 25 Lessons.”.
Three pieces that grabbed me from the twenty-five on the list:
- Writing advice is … largely the product of survivorship bias.
- A writing career is a little bit jazz.
- Give the proper amount of fucks.
You can find the list here: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2017/04/18/what-ive-learned-after-5-years-and-20-books-25-lessons/
WRITING EXERCISE: Read the whole list of twenty-five and choose one that really strikes home. Write it up in a comment below explaining why it is important to you. By processing it out, explaining it, the concept will stick with you longer.
***
A writing career is a little bit jazz.
I’m a plotter. Jazz is scary, improvisation jazz is even more scary. It’s structure isn’t a structure as much as a growth, layers of paint building from a pencil sketch which may or may not match what is in the mind but ends up so much more than I thought possible – or total dreck. Wendig wrote “You plan what you can, but the rest is experimentation.” Eek!
And yet, jazz has its own beauty. Something beyond any plan. Adding a bit of jazz, a bit of music to a page to a book to a sentence. Create a canvas which people get lost in. The concept of a career having the same unsteady base is frightening and freeing.