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You Don't Want to Be Published
ots of people offer aspiring writers easy answers and helpful tips, designed to get them started and focused on the basics. You Don't Want To Be Published takes the other path: offering real tips from the trenches of the writing life, including some counter-intuitive advice that will help focus your practice and business on what really matters to you.
This is a book about the mindset and psychology at the heart of making a living as a writer: learning to think of your business as a business, building a network, setting smarter goals, and dealing with the realities of earning your living through words. You Don't Want to Be Published collects together sixteen of the most widely read blog pieces and essays from Peter M Ball, based upon his own experiences writing, organising conferences for authors, and working with new authors to figure out where they're going.
This is a book about the mindset and psychology at the heart of making a living as a writer: learning to think of your business as a business, building a network, setting smarter goals, and dealing with the realities of earning your living through words. You Don't Want to Be Published collects together sixteen of the most widely read blog pieces and essays from Peter M Ball, based upon his own experiences writing, organising conferences for authors, and working with new authors to figure out where they're going.
132 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 1, 2018
5 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 5, 2018
Disclosure: I know Peter personally, and as a subscriber to his newsletter I got a free copy of the ebook (but then, almost all of the content is free on his website anyway, this is just a nicely collated format).
Most advice books for writers are about the actual writing process. As a man who is very much focused on "making writing a viable career", Ball instead focuses on all the scary stuff outside the creative process: understanding what you want to get out of your writing (because it's almost always not just "to be published"), recognising that the writing business is a business (and what that means to the writer), how to adjust to and mitigate the common financial pitfalls of being a writer, how to keep working when it all seems too much, how to handle rejection (Ball has five reasons rejection letters are awesome), how to handle success, and how (and why!) to network - especially if you're an introvert. It is, in other words, really really good info to get your hands on if you're looking to get paid for sticking words together.
Most advice books for writers are about the actual writing process. As a man who is very much focused on "making writing a viable career", Ball instead focuses on all the scary stuff outside the creative process: understanding what you want to get out of your writing (because it's almost always not just "to be published"), recognising that the writing business is a business (and what that means to the writer), how to adjust to and mitigate the common financial pitfalls of being a writer, how to keep working when it all seems too much, how to handle rejection (Ball has five reasons rejection letters are awesome), how to handle success, and how (and why!) to network - especially if you're an introvert. It is, in other words, really really good info to get your hands on if you're looking to get paid for sticking words together.
July 16, 2018
Peter Ball has collected and updated several years' worth of advice on the business of becoming a beginning writer who thinks they want to be a working writer, based on his experience of (among other things) working in the Queensland Writers Centre. It's really good, no-holds-barred advice for building a career, which also explains to you why you might not want to do that after all.
Also, Peter swears a lot, which is just fine by me, but be warned.
Disclosure: I read a pre-release proof copy
Also, Peter swears a lot, which is just fine by me, but be warned.
Disclosure: I read a pre-release proof copy
July 12, 2023
This little gem of a book by Peter Ball from Brain Jar Press is a great summary if you're a new writer getting your head into the writing game with a long term vision of making writing a career.
You know you love writing, but do you know how to sustain it? Peter gives you a guide into getting a few steps into the darkness of the abyss and feeling your way around.
4 out of 5 Raging Tyrannosaurs of the Internet
You know you love writing, but do you know how to sustain it? Peter gives you a guide into getting a few steps into the darkness of the abyss and feeling your way around.
4 out of 5 Raging Tyrannosaurs of the Internet
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews