By Frank Weber
Copyright ©2024
Everybody wants to be a teacher. It’s like they gain a modicum of success and suddenly they believe they have a crucial knowledge to impart to the masses.
It seems that all you have to do is self-publish a couple digi-books on Amazon and – PRESTO! – you have become a literary authority! After all, once you see their digital, self-published efforts what else are you going to think? They’re obviously instant literary authorities.
I guess, it’s not so bad that folks can get so hyped-up on themselves. A little self-confidence can take you a long way. But that doesn’t mean that everyone in the free-speaking world is going to be much better off if they will only listen to those kernels of wisdom.
Certainly, such sage advice cannot go unnoticed. It can’t be ignored. It MUST be noticed.
After all, they self-published a digi-book about nothing in-particular.
Here’s the thing…if you didn’t do it, you don’t know it.
If you’ve never waged an unending battle against stand-offish, sometimes belligerent, self-important editors and publishers, you don’t know a thing.
Buk had it right: ‘If I ever question what I write, I have only to read other writers and I know I’m ok’
I am, of course, paraphrasing him, but you get the idea.
I don’t want to hear your opinions on the state of modern literature. They have no substance.
Why aren’t they writing what they’ve actually learned and experienced and just write what they feel?
Why? Because very few of the so-called authorities have ever learned or experienced anything. They only want all of us to believe that they have because their name is on a digi-book that they paid for, that they promote and that only they support.
There’s no value to “lists of how to publish” and there’s no value to “how to structure your book”.
Any fool can do that nowadays. No one needs unsolicited – and uninformed – advice like that.
Any fool can post on Facebook to promote sales of their attempts at story writing.
But, hey…maybe their self-published digi-books are good. Maybe they have some substance.
Then again, maybe they’re nothing more than steaming piles of self-indulgent words.
No…no one cares, people. And no…no one ever should.
Writers – true writers – have a need to write, not a want for it.
Writers have a need to let all those pent-up words out, no matter what any pompous critic or self-important editor or any internet troll has to say about it.
Who cares what they think?
The biggest part of the writing experience is in the creation of something so personal and internal, that maybe someone else might enjoy it.
I write down the words because I love the thoughts in my head that become those words and I don’t want to lose them. I’m not writing them to impress anyone, especially not so many troll-like authority-type figures flitting around the literary world.
Some literary authorities believe that all words must be laced with flowers and vines and be intertwined with some long-forgotten Victorian view of literature.
Me? I don’t believe you have to write 100 pages to describe the color blue just to validate your book. If you can describe the color blue in a sentence or a few words or even one, well-set word, then you’ve done good by your writing.
We can never lose sight of the real reasons behind the words. If you stay true to that, sooner or later, the words you collect into stories and poems and books will have a definite value to the people that read them. But you can’t force it on people.
Just write until you run out of words.
If you don’t like them, toss them out.
If you do like them, try to get them published.
But until you’ve done either of those things, don’t presume to believe that I need to hear your philosophies on the subject.
I do not.
That is not why I write.
If what I just wrote enrages you or aggravates you in any way, then guess what?
I did my job.
I chose the correct words to tell my story and invoke the exact emotions and response I wanted to foster.
Isn’t that what real writing should be about?
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