Agents and Careers

[erazmus]

Deam Wesley smith's newest myth buster:
http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=816#comments

Its about Agents helping your career.

Of course, having an agent that works for you and listens to you and just tries to sell what you write could help a writer's career. I don't think Mr. Smith knows any agents like that, and he knows a lot more agents than I do. I know two. I don't know of any that fit my description of one who would be a help to a writer's career.

Like a lot of the agent myths Dean has been addressing, the myth and the trap is built around writer expectations and understanding of the business. Check it out.

Mike

[nathan]

Lots of thought provoking stuff here. And permission to write what you love. Food for thought.

[BethS]

Way, way late in commenting on this, but personally, I take anything Dean W. Smith says with a large grain of salt. He has a certain perspective on things, and he tends to reject anything that contradicts his world view.

One of those world views is about writing speed, which I notice that he mentioned in the article you linked to. He is utterly convinced that the only way to write creatively and write well is to write fast, never slowing down to edit or apply any sort of critical analysis to what you're writing. If you do write slowly, you'll get nothing but crap.

He stressed this over and over in a workshop I once attended, given by him and his wife (Kristin Kathryn Rusch), who was in complete agreement with him.

It's funny to me that he's all about busting writing myths, but one of the most prevalent myths he clings to is that the right (creative) brain and left (logical, analytical) brain cannot function together in the writing process.

Well, I'm here to prove him wrong. I not only write slowly, but editing and revising, which I do at the same time as producing new words, are very much a part of the creative process for me. I'm not the only writer I know who does this, and none of us produces crap.

Having said that, he's right about writing what you love and not trying to write to market.

P.S. In reading the article more carefully, I see that he does grant that each writer writes at his or her own natural speed. Compared to what he was teaching ten years ago, this is a great concession.

[John M. Whalen]

Hear, hear! I agree with you on DWS. He's pretty glib about the whole writing process. The idea that if a story is rejected you should just send it right back out without considering whether it should be revised is ridiculous. Some stories come out out the gate near perfect. OThers take a lot of revision. To think that EVERYTHING you write is written in concrete is prety egotistical. Sounds like a good way to become a hack writer. The worst idea of his is his point system, which a lot of people here say they have adopted. He advocates keeping track of your submissions with a point system that gives a different number value to short stories, novels, book proposals, etc. The higher the number of points the better off you are. Seems kind of unnecessary and a bit obsessive compulsive if you have to keep constract track of your submissions that way. All that signifies to me is that you have a lot of product out there that isn't selling. He also claims that there are just tons of people out there making a fortune writing. That just isn't true. Maybe in his close circle of friends but not generally. I admire his chutzpah, but like you I take it with a grain of salt too.

[BethS]

One of the workshops he and his wife gave (at the conference I attended) was how to make a lot of money writing. And short of writing a mega-bestseller, their method was: write a lot of stuff fast and keep lobbing it out there until it starts to stick.

This appears to have worked for them (and I will say that his wife, Rusch, has become a very respected, award-winning author of spec fiction), but I can't say it should be the method of choice for all writers.