JCB's Ruminations on the Craft of Fiction #74
October 21, 2021
The industry of fiction-writing is a scam. The ratio of aspiring writers to paying markets is something like ten million to one. Editors can send off a form rejection without bothering to finish the first page of your manuscript, but they’ll insist you read their complete back catalogue in order to understand what they like. Agents require you to learn how to sell your novel in a query letter, even though selling the novel is the job you’d love to pay them to do. Even when you get briefly noticed, the percentage of authors who never get a second story or novel published is astonishingly high. If you write fiction with the goal of making money, you’re probably better off begging for change at the freeway exit ramp, which gives you more or less the same feeling as trying to sell your fiction, but without the heartache.
But if knowing this, you continue to write every day despite never or rarely getting a few scraps tossed your way as recompense, then you’re probably doing it for the right reason.