[HN Gopher] Novelist as a Vocation
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Novelist as a Vocation
Author : lermontov
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-11-08 06:21 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| georgex7 wrote:
| I wrote a pretty detailed blog post about Murakami's background
| and how he was able to create an emotionally powerful masterpiece
| in Norwegian Wood: https://backtohumanity.substack.com/p/reading-
| guide-norwegia.... Hope you guys enjoy :)
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Many articles and books make it seem as though it might be
| reasonable to try and be a novelist
|
| The truth is that most short story publishers pay about 3-10
| cents per word, so the pay for your work is usually less than
| $300-500. Most novels sell less than 1000 copies, and often far
| less; even then, the author might only get 10% of the price tag
| unless they self publish (but then sales are apparently 1/10 as
| high)
|
| If you earned half minimum wage, you would have cause to
| celebrate!
|
| Even authors of bestsellers often have day jobs unless they have
| a string of huge successes. That's why we see so many sequels --
| less risk to the author who sees their chance to finally be a
| full time writer
|
| There are so many sites out there right now hosting free fiction
| that it's hard for many to find readers, even if the work is
| released for free. Many authors I know spend more time on self
| promotion than in writing due to this: otherwise, nobody will
| ever read their work in the first place
|
| Publishers are now preferring authors who already have large
| followings, which reinforces this dynamic
|
| For some people, writing is a vocation, but for 99.999% of the
| others, it's a dream or a hobby, or a way to meet like minded
| people and enjoy being part of a community
|
| Anyway: go out and read some small publisher books. Many are
| fantastic! There are a stunning number of great books around with
| 0-3 reviews that never had a shot -- look for them sometime!
| jseliger wrote:
| I think something did change in culture and literary culture
| somewhere in the 2012 - 2015 range:
| https://jakeseliger.com/2021/09/30/the-death-of-literary-cul...
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| > What killed literary culture? The Internet is the most
| obvious, salient answer, and in particular the dominance of
| social media, which is in effect its own genre--and,
| frequently, its own genre of fiction. Almost everyone will
| admit that their own social media profiles attempt to
| showcase a version of their best or ideal selves, and,
| thinking of just about everyone I know well, or even slightly
| well, the gap between who they really are and what they are
| really doing, and what appears on their social media, is so
| wide as to qualify as fiction. Determining the "real" self is
| probably impossible, but determining the fake selves is
| easier, and the fake is everywhere. Read much social media as
| fiction and performance and it will make more sense.
|
| What an interesting thought
|
| Edit: great article, thanks for sharing!
| syndacks wrote:
| Don't forget Zlib!
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| +1
|
| If money were no object, I'd love to be a novelist. I'd love
| nothing more than for books to be my main focus in life. But
| money is an object, and it seems tremendously hard to acquire
| as a writer. To make a decent living, you're basically banking
| on becoming one of a few dozen celebrity writers. Even then,
| you'd expect to make be making pennies compared to the elites
| in almost any other field (music, business, sports, etc). The
| only serious money to be made is franchising your IP into a
| more-monetizable medium, like movies.
|
| I know art isn't supposed to be about making money, but being a
| full-time novelist seems too precarious for all but the most
| foolhardy among us.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Other ways people make a living as a "novelist" or just
| author I guess:
|
| - ghost writing (very common, most books by celebrity or
| popular figures for instance)
|
| - not writing literature (not to be crass about it, but a lot
| of authors that make a living doing it find a template that
| works and beat the living daylights out of it as quickly and
| as much as they can; art is secondary to speed, smash and
| grab plots, and simplicity; each book might not be a top
| seller, but the total sales can be livable; think airport
| departure lounge books)
|
| - they spend almost all of their time outside of writing on
| marketing
|
| - they work in the publishing industry (increasingly common
| to look at some debut young author to see that they actually
| work in the industry, or were in some way affiliated by way
| of employment with the publishing industry)
|
| - video game writing and or speech writing
| cableshaft wrote:
| This is less true in self published romance, btw. My wife saw
| almost 3x that many book reads/sales (Kindle Unlimited pays
| nearly as well as a sold book) in just two months of her first
| self-published book. It's kind of higher than expected but
| there's decent number of few romance self-published authors out
| there making good money, often in the six figures, in their
| first year. In order to do that they often write 4-8 books
| during that year though, writing fast and building giant series
| is pretty much required for romance.
|
| My wife also has a day job in marketing, so she utilized that
| knowledge for market research, writing to market, learning what
| types of self-promotion works, and promoting aggressively, so
| that helped a lot as well. Also me being willing to do pretty
| much all the housework while she focuses on getting this off
| the ground (not doing an amazing job, things are slipping, but
| at least we have clean dishes :).
|
| I like to write also, but just silly humorous fiction books
| (I've yet to actually publish one also, but hopefully in the
| next year or two), and I'm not expecting to be anywhere near as
| successful as she is. For me that will likely always stay a
| hobby (it's competing, and often losing, to my other dream of
| making games, anyway).
| vidarh wrote:
| In fact, the median salary for UK full time writers is well
| below minimum wage.
|
| That is mitigated by the median _household_ income for full
| time writers in the UK being well above average.
|
| In other words, most people who write full time can afford to
| because of a partners income.
|
| And as you point out, most writers don't write full time.
|
| I've sold more than average of my two first novels, but still
| tiny amounts and there's no way I would consider writing full
| time - it doesn't even cover my monthly takeaway spend.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Was it Dorothy Parker who, when asked for advice for writers,
| said, "Marry money."
| robinjhuang wrote:
| Many years ago I considered being a novelist. Until I read this
| quote by an acting professor at Yale that I'm now paraphrasing:
| you should only act, if acting is the only thing you can do.
|
| Spoiler: I didn't become a novelist.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Unless you're planning to get an MFA, people should first try
| to write a novel before worrying about being a novelist.
|
| The experience of actually writing is much different than
| thinking up a story in your head.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| I often tell people that wonder about writing a novel the
| same thing: just try. Not to be a prick, but people
| simultaneously think it's way easier than it is and think
| it's way harder than it is. Most of the time is spent just
| getting through 2 hours-ish of writing a day, or 2-4 pages a
| day. Then rewriting a lot after the first draft. Most good
| readers aren't used to the rhythm of writing fiction, which
| is usually slower, and is far more about the accretion of
| detail rather than flying from plot point to plot point with
| seamless ease while you're reading. Making sure a novel is
| good is, almost always, very time demanding and requires its
| own set of skills (many mental). All that effort and time
| spent working alone is hidden from the reader breezing
| through a 350pg novel.
| klodolph wrote:
| I think so many different things are like this. I want to
| make a video game, or I want to make a movie, or I want to
| put out an album of music. The enemy of all these ambitions
| is attrition--you give up before you finish.
| caconym_ wrote:
| Yeah. "I was going to be a novelist, but..." doesn't really
| track. It's an investment of years and (at least) hundreds of
| thousands of words just to figure out if you're theoretically
| capable of writing a novel people might want to read, to say
| nothing of actually _doing_ it and then making a career of
| it.
|
| It also speaks of misplaced priorities. Writing has to be its
| own reward from the beginning, or you won't get far with it.
| only_papaya wrote:
| I remember watching an interview from a famous movie director
| who had a similar thought. Again paraphrasing but:
|
| When asked, "How did you become so successful?"
|
| He responded, "Movies are my only hobby. I have nothing else."
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| Was IQ84 any good? I meant to read it a while back but the wiki
| page scared me off - it won a "worst sex scene in literature
| award" and wasn't well liked by critics.
|
| I read two other stories by him (Kafka on the Shore and some
| short story about Yakuza). Neither really made me hunger for more
| though.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I had read a few of his works before that one, and found it
| didn't reach as high of a bar. But it was fine. Personally most
| enjoyed Windup Bird Chronicle, Hardboiled Wonderland, Colorless
| Tsukuru.
|
| The bad/weird sex is kind of a trope in his books
| elteto wrote:
| I haven't read anything else from Murakami but The Second
| Bakery Attack and absolutely loved it. It's a short story so
| quick to read, and thoroughly enjoyable. Might want to give
| that a try!
|
| [0] https://web.mit.edu/norvin/www/somethingelse/murakami.html
| zetazzed wrote:
| I personally enjoyed 1Q84 slightly more than Kafka on the
| Shore, but if you actively disliked KotS, you probably won't
| like 1Q84 either. It has a bit more forward motion to the plot,
| but it is still in my opinion best enjoyed if you embrace the
| Murakami-style dreaminess. I love all of his books enough that
| I try to limit myself to reading one per year on vacation when
| I can really focus on it.
| rockostrich wrote:
| I enjoyed it a lot although it definitely leans heavy on all of
| his usual Murakami-isms while trying to do something new. It's
| been almost a decade since I read it so I can't say I remember
| it with a lot of detail.
|
| It receiving a "worst sex scene in literature award" doesn't
| really surprise me that much considering most of his books
| could be given that reward...
| numtel wrote:
| It's a very long book. It was good when I read it years ago but
| if "Kafka" didn't make you want to read it, I have a hard time
| imagining you'd like 1q84. That said, after that long book,
| I've been good on murakami. I tried too but felt like I wasn't
| gaining anything anymore.
| [deleted]
| elihu wrote:
| > He describes it at one point as an "unadorned natural style",
| but one that was arrived at in characteristically unorthodox
| fashion: having failed dismally on his first attempt to write
| what would become Hear the Wind Sing, he began again from
| scratch, writing not in his native Japanese, but English. "My
| vocabulary was severely limited, as was my command of English
| syntax," he writes, and yet when he translated his words back
| into Japanese, the short, simple sentences created by those self-
| imposed limitations possessed "a distinctive rhythm".
|
| That's interesting. I wonder if he still does that at least some
| of the time for his more recent books?
|
| The English translations I've read seem to be really good; I
| wonder if this technique/style has made the work the translators
| have to do a lot easier when they translate back into English or
| if it doesn't actually make much difference? It seems like it
| would at least lead to a tendency to avoid linguistic
| constructions and idioms that don't have fairly obvious English
| translations.
|
| It would be fun to be able to read Murukami's initial English
| draft side by side with the English version of the published book
| to see how similar they are.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > I wonder if he still does that at least some of the time for
| his more recent books?
|
| Don't think so however I have heard he proof-reads and adjusts
| the English translations after someone else translates them.
| runevault wrote:
| I don't get the impression he expressly does this (aka writes
| it down then translates) but I think he does run through the
| mental filters to reach the same result. But I'm also still
| early into this book (only read the introduction and first two
| chapters).
| retrac wrote:
| When I am struggling to express myself in English (my native
| language) I sometimes speak to myself for a bit in French. It's
| my second language and I'm not quite fluent in it. When I wish
| to express something in French, I often find myself forced to
| think beyond the surface words. I must discard how I would say
| it in English, and go for the idea underneath.
|
| I get hung up on a particular turn of phrase in English. How
| would I translate a phrasal verb like "hung up" into French?
| And does the idea even translate that way? What I mean is
| fixated, stuck, obsessed, misled by chasing the wrong thing.
| There are many ways to express it besides "hung up on". Which
| is a very native English speaker thing to say, but bad style,
| now that I look at it. Fixated would have been better. Fixe.
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