Support for Indie Authors discussion

I’m working on a book. Will not be ready for a while. Will need beta readers when ready.
Genre= Science Fiction

Update: The likely hood of it ever coming out is next to nothing as it will probably never be finished.

Why?

I can probably guess why. You have discovered that writing isn't as easy as you thought. The whole process to make it a good book is lengthy and you have to learn a whole set of skills you weren't expecting to have to learn. Writing isn't something you can sit down and do a first draft and expect it to be ready for publishing. Over all, it will take way too much time and effort to make it into a viable book. That's okay. Not everyone is like Dan Brown and willing to work for 15 years to get his breakout book published. Or like JK Rowling who took 8 years to get the Harry Potter series published. Steven King wrote for over 5 years before writing a novel that sold well. He even threw it in the trash. His wife pulled it out and make him finish Carrie. Like at lot of people out there who want to write, it's not worth taking the 5 to 10 years to learn the craft and become that good writer. Too much like hard work for them so they quit.

The other reason would be that writing isn't want you really want to spend your time doing since it doesn't hold your attention. Like 90% of the people who begin a book, the need to write isn't a calling for you, so you shove it into a folder and say it was fun for a few months and a nice dream.

If you are getting a lot of negative feedback and decided to quit because of that, you would never make it in this field, so quitting is a good thing. When you think your book is going well and someone rips it apart, that is difficult, but that is also how you learn. So give up and don't finish the book. Join the ranks of the wannabe writers who don't want to put in the work to do it right.

So, yeah, I get the quitting part. Time, learning new skills, and no guarantee of success along with someone pointing out all the errors isn't easy to handle. Good luck with whatever you end up doing. At least you had fun for awhile.

Akindle wrote: "Update: The likely hood of it ever coming out is next to nothing as it will probably never be finished."

Writing is a tough art to master, possibly the toughest. You never stop learning. You never stop growing. Writing even a halfway decent novel can take months, even years. My current work in progress is done in six parts. I've been at it for about a year and a half. Only the first part is good enough for my wife to see. Otherwise, the whole thing is still a steaming pile of shit. But, I have a passion for the story, I love the characters, I love the vision behind it, and the themes are things I truly feel the need to convey. So, I keep at it. Not for the fame, because that will likely never come. Not for the money. That's likely never going to be enough to brag about. I do it because I can't imagine spending this much time doing anything else without some kind of pay off. You can't just kinda sorta like doing this. You can't just kinda sorta like your characters. You've got to get to the point where you can't imagine life without writing and get to the point where you miss your characters like you would miss your children or close friends when you're not with them. You can't just sit and string a bunch of letters and words together. You've got to love the craft and learn it inside and out. It will take a lot of time, so much time people will think you're crazy. You have to get to the point where you don't care if you're crazy. Hemingway once said, "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." Until you understand what that really means, you can't be a writer.

I hope you don't give up on it that easily. There must have been some spark that made you want to write. Don't let the realization that it's tough snuff that spark. Nurse it and bring it to a full blaze.

Hi Akindle,

If you enjoy writing, stay with it. Whether you know it or not, you are ahead of many in the writing game. I was researching ToCs for ebooks and a thread popped up that asked for advice: I want to write a book but don't have any ideas. In my opinion, that's kind of a hard thing to do (that's what writers' prompts help out with) but you already have an idea so you have something worth writing about.

Good luck

I have under 10k words written on First Contact. Might get back to it someday.

Update: I’m still trying to write fiction, but am taking am indefinite break from the first attempt at a story.

I have a second attempt at a story as a WIP.