{"id":11517,"date":"2017-11-21T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=11517"},"modified":"2017-11-16T21:29:20","modified_gmt":"2017-11-17T03:29:20","slug":"response-to-correias-awesome-rant-on-fans-vs-authors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/response-to-correias-awesome-rant-on-fans-vs-authors\/","title":{"rendered":"Response to Correia’s awesome rant on fans vs. authors"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Larry Correia wrote an awesome rant<\/a> the other day about fan entitlement and writing professionalism. The thing that set him off was a discussion on his author Facebook page where a bunch of readers were castigating Patrick Rothfuss for taking 6+ years to write his next book. A bunch of them started arguing that authors have a moral obligation to their readers to finish their books, and Larry called bullshit.<\/p>\n

Do I have opinions? Why, yes, thank you for asking.<\/p>\n

For the most part, I think Larry is spot on, especially about how free market capitalism is the best solution to this problem. Basically, books are just a product\u2014nothing more, nothing less. Readers buy the product, and authors create it. When a reader buys a book, that’s all they’re buying. When an author writes a book, that’s all they’re creating. The free market works things out. The problems only arise when readers think they’re entitled to something more than what they’ve bought, or when authors think they’re entitled to more than what they’ve earned.<\/p>\n

As a libertarian sci-fi writer, I could go on and on about the virtues of the free market and how capitalism is the best and most righteous economic system ever invented by man, but for now I’ll save that zeal for my fiction. In particular, there’s a short story recently I wrote for a $12,000 writing contest<\/a> that is sure to lose because it shows just how evil and destructive a universal basic income would actually be. But I digress.<\/p>\n

I know people mean well. I know people think they are helping. I know that you think it is a compliment. Maybe the first couple hundred times, but then after that it becomes a continual droning whine.<\/p>\n

If a writer still bothers to post on social media to interact with their fans, and they post about them doing anything, literally anything<\/em> other than writing, somebody inevitably is going to jump in and say \u201cYOU SHOULD BE WRITING!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

The really sad part you helpful entitled types don\u2019t get is that other stuff non-writing stuff is a vital part of the creative process. Since most of what authors do is in their heads, they never really stop working. So when I\u2019m shooting guns, or painting minis, that is the activity that I do to uncork my brain, so that I can go put in another day of creating imaginary stuff tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Authors either have a life outside of writing, or they burn out. Or, alternatively, they just check out and don\u2019t interact with their fans anymore. Because even though there are a hundred cool fans for every entitled whiny douche, the entitled whiny douche is the one that sticks out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I’m not at a point in my career yet where I have thousands of rabid-at-the-mouth fans screaming at me constantly to get back to work, but I can definitely see how it gets old.<\/p>\n

Also, writers genuinely do need to refill the creative well from time to time. To an outside observer, it might look like we’re dicking around, but in reality we’re noodling out our next story, so that when we do sit down to write, the words actually come.<\/p>\n

If you think that writing is as easy as sitting down at a keyboard and mashing out words, you might as well kidnap your favorite author, break his legs, and chain him to a typewriter in your basement.<\/p>\n

To My Fellow Authors <\/strong><\/p>\n

Get your shit together.<\/p>\n

Seriously, act like a professional. In any other job in the world, if you wasted all your time fucking around and didn\u2019t get any work done, you\u2019d get fired. Writer\u2019s Block is a filthy lie. I couldn\u2019t have Accountant\u2019s Block. Oh, woe is me, I can\u2019t make these spreadsheets because I\u2019m just not feeling it today\u2014FIRED.<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re honestly working, and you\u2019re doing the best you can with what you\u2019ve got, you don\u2019t have to take shit off of entitled douches.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The trouble with writing is that it isn’t always clear when the work is done. I’ve had multiple award-winning author friends tell me at conventions that they’re impressed with how prolific I am, and yet I never\u2014NEVER\u2014feel like my work is done.<\/p>\n

I totally agree with Larry that if you want to write professionally, you have to treat it like an actual profession. Right now, I’m retooling my writing process so that I can put out two or three times as many books. “Writer’s block” is not an entitlement or a badge of honor. It’s a disease.<\/p>\n