Chris Ward's Blog, page 15
March 9, 2012
The Tube Riders first teaser snippet
Well, it's time to get the promotion ball rolling, so here is your first teaser snippet from my forthcoming novel, The Tube Riders, a sci-fi epic set in near-future dystopian Britain.
The Tube Riders
Chris Ward
Chapter One – Breakfall (excerpt)
The roar in the tunnel grew louder.
The noise came from far back in the dark, building from a low, distant rumble into a rolling, thundering crescendo like a thousand hurricanes colliding, tearing each other apart. Marta, squatting in a sprinter's crouch, closed her eyes as she always did, concentrating, seeing in her mind something monstrous, untamed. She let out a slow breath, looped her wrists through the leather safety straps and closed her fingers over the cold metal handles of the wooden clawboard.
Bring it on.
She smelt engine oil, heard the hum of the vibrating rails on the track below. She grimaced and shifted her wrists as the straps rubbed against the old marks on her skin.
Seconds, just seconds . . .
Come on. I’m waiting.
The roar was almost deafening now. Marta’s eyes flicked open, her concentration sharp. Muscles tensed in her legs and arms. Fingers clenched so tight she thought they might break. She glanced up, saw Paul standing further down the platform, one arm raised into the air.
Marta waited. Three . . . two . . . one –
‘Go!’ Paul screamed, as the wind rose to wrap itself around her. His arm dropped, and the fear, the exhilaration, the sheer adrenalin rush struck her like a hammer.
She dashed for the platform edge. Behind her, she heard Simon, Switch and Dan – the new boy – fanning out as they followed. She hoped Dan made it, of course, but in the moment of the ride it was only herself that mattered.
Racing across the cracked, dusty tiles, Marta pressed her wrists against the leather straps and squeezed the metal handles until her fingers hurt. The wood creaked, and she prayed today wasn’t the day the clawboard failed her.
She held the board up, the metal hooks on the outward facing surface angled down.
The train exploded out of the tunnel. Glaring headlights blasted through the dust curtain hung over the station’s pallid emergency lighting. The engine roar filled the air. Marta looked up as it came level with her and then rushed ahead, one, two, three carriages clattering past. She saw the thin metal drainage rail that ran along the top edge of the nearest carriage and she steeled herself for the mount.
‘Now!’ she screamed, a war cry partly for herself, partly for the others behind her. Then she was leaping at the train, the clawboard arcing in towards the rail. Her heart slammed against the back of her ribs, the rush of adrenaline so great she thought it might burst out of her chest. Eyes narrowed, teeth gritted, she stared down what in these moments was the Reaper, was Death. Don’t fuck up, her mind screamed. You fuck up, you die.
The metal hooks, two of them, four centimeters wide, dropped towards the outer lip of the drainage rail. Marta’s feet brushed the side of the carriage, and for a second she was flying. Then the hooks caught, a massive jolt shuddered through her shoulders and upper arms, and Marta had won, this time.
Her scream rose over the rushing wind: ‘Yeeeeeeesssss!’
With her feet apart, she braced herself against the side of the carriage. Her battered, often repaired trainers left tread smears in the oily dirt coating the metal. In front of her, from the carriage window, a reflection of her own face stared back, thick dreads of hair fanning out around her like columns of smoke fleeing from an explosion.
Behind her Marta heard two metallic crunches as first Simon and then Switch caught. In a group ride you rode in order of seniority. That was the rule. And I’ve survived the longest so that makes me leader. She listened for Dan, but there was only the roaring of the train and the rapid clattering of the wheels over the rails.
Something had gone wrong.
The Tube Riders will be released Monday, 19th March 2012.
A second excerpt will appear Sunday.
The Tube Riders
Chris Ward
Chapter One – Breakfall (excerpt)
The roar in the tunnel grew louder.
The noise came from far back in the dark, building from a low, distant rumble into a rolling, thundering crescendo like a thousand hurricanes colliding, tearing each other apart. Marta, squatting in a sprinter's crouch, closed her eyes as she always did, concentrating, seeing in her mind something monstrous, untamed. She let out a slow breath, looped her wrists through the leather safety straps and closed her fingers over the cold metal handles of the wooden clawboard.
Bring it on.
She smelt engine oil, heard the hum of the vibrating rails on the track below. She grimaced and shifted her wrists as the straps rubbed against the old marks on her skin.
Seconds, just seconds . . .
Come on. I’m waiting.
The roar was almost deafening now. Marta’s eyes flicked open, her concentration sharp. Muscles tensed in her legs and arms. Fingers clenched so tight she thought they might break. She glanced up, saw Paul standing further down the platform, one arm raised into the air.
Marta waited. Three . . . two . . . one –
‘Go!’ Paul screamed, as the wind rose to wrap itself around her. His arm dropped, and the fear, the exhilaration, the sheer adrenalin rush struck her like a hammer.
She dashed for the platform edge. Behind her, she heard Simon, Switch and Dan – the new boy – fanning out as they followed. She hoped Dan made it, of course, but in the moment of the ride it was only herself that mattered.
Racing across the cracked, dusty tiles, Marta pressed her wrists against the leather straps and squeezed the metal handles until her fingers hurt. The wood creaked, and she prayed today wasn’t the day the clawboard failed her.
She held the board up, the metal hooks on the outward facing surface angled down.
The train exploded out of the tunnel. Glaring headlights blasted through the dust curtain hung over the station’s pallid emergency lighting. The engine roar filled the air. Marta looked up as it came level with her and then rushed ahead, one, two, three carriages clattering past. She saw the thin metal drainage rail that ran along the top edge of the nearest carriage and she steeled herself for the mount.
‘Now!’ she screamed, a war cry partly for herself, partly for the others behind her. Then she was leaping at the train, the clawboard arcing in towards the rail. Her heart slammed against the back of her ribs, the rush of adrenaline so great she thought it might burst out of her chest. Eyes narrowed, teeth gritted, she stared down what in these moments was the Reaper, was Death. Don’t fuck up, her mind screamed. You fuck up, you die.
The metal hooks, two of them, four centimeters wide, dropped towards the outer lip of the drainage rail. Marta’s feet brushed the side of the carriage, and for a second she was flying. Then the hooks caught, a massive jolt shuddered through her shoulders and upper arms, and Marta had won, this time.
Her scream rose over the rushing wind: ‘Yeeeeeeesssss!’
With her feet apart, she braced herself against the side of the carriage. Her battered, often repaired trainers left tread smears in the oily dirt coating the metal. In front of her, from the carriage window, a reflection of her own face stared back, thick dreads of hair fanning out around her like columns of smoke fleeing from an explosion.
Behind her Marta heard two metallic crunches as first Simon and then Switch caught. In a group ride you rode in order of seniority. That was the rule. And I’ve survived the longest so that makes me leader. She listened for Dan, but there was only the roaring of the train and the rapid clattering of the wheels over the rails.
Something had gone wrong.
The Tube Riders will be released Monday, 19th March 2012.
A second excerpt will appear Sunday.
March 4, 2012
My Journey to the top of Stephen King’s Dark Tower
Introduction
I just finished reading the entire series back to back. This is the first time I have done this for a major fantasy/sci-fi epic ever. And it was quite a journey. I’d like to share a few of my thoughts on the series here. However, if you haven’t read the series and want to, you might want to stop reading now, because I’m going to talk about the end. Just to clarify, I will write about SPOILERS, including THE END OF THE BOOK.
There, now that’s out of the way, let’s begin.
Six months
It took King 34 years to write the Dark Tower series (and judging by the new book he’s got out soon, he’s not going to give up yet). I read the whole thing in just under six months, which for a slow reader like me, is an incredible achievement. I figured it would be easy to see the changes in King’s writing style over the years by reading it that fast, but it wasn’t that easy. It seemed to split neatly into two sections of three books, the Gunslinger, Drawing of the Three and The Waste Lands, then Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower, with Wizard and Glass sitting somewhere in the middle as a bit of an interlude (albeit a very long one).
The first three were just action-packed and very streamlined. There was very little fluff in the writing. Of the latter three, in particular Wolves felt overly drawn out, while Song of Susannah did very little for me, stretching out a day into 430 pages. The final book, I felt, was like King trying to write in the same way he wrote the first three, but unable to shake the shackles of his later, more garrulous works. The result was a fast-paced but 1000-word monster.
The best book?
It’s a tough one, but I would have to go with The Waste Lands. It was just relentless all the way through. Hardly any backstory or grinding exposition, just story, story, story, and action. It was great and really made me respect King as a writer. The whole Lud part and Blaine the Mono, was just excellent. Second would be Wizard and Glass, which I really expected to suck. It didn’t and was glorious, a sprawling, action-packed Western/Sci-fi adventure sandwiched between two sections of the main story, the first of which was great but the second, in the emerald castle, was a bit meh, losing it a point.
SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERS
(Yes, here they come. Did you see what I did there?)
The characters
For the most part I really liked them. Eddie was cool, Susannah sassy, Jake earnest. My favorite was Oy, and the part in the last book where Oy swears in the car was probably the funniest moment of the whole series. I was really hoping Oy would survive, but well. That was probably the only downside to everything, the way King felt it necessary to jettison these central characters so quickly. Oy had a useful death, so did Jake. Eddie just popped it at random but Susannah was the strangest – suddenly she realises she can leave, so … she does. A bit like, thanks for the last five books, I’m off now. What? Roland is left to reach the Dark Tower in the company of a character who had only been in the book for about 100 pages, Patrick Danville. Um, what? More on him later.
Stephen King as a character
King has taken a lot of flak for this, but I actually quite liked it, even if the execution was a little clunky at times. I could see what he was trying to do – something different, something that would set the Dark Tower series apart from other fantasy/sci-fi series in the same canon. He was trying to break the fourth wall as they say in the theatre business and see if he could get away with it.
And did he? Well, I thought certain sections, such as Jake’s death to save King’s life, quite good. Others were a little convenient, like the way King “wrote in” a note for Susannah to save her from Joe Collins/Dandelo. If could do that, why not just write in other stuff? Why not shift the Dark Tower a hundred miles closer? It didn’t make a lot of sense.
Patrick Danville?
Apparently the star of Insomnia (which I read about fifteen years ago and thought sucked), Patrick Danville randomly showed up as a captive in Dandelo’s basement (with very little explanation) and then was able to “draw” the Crimson King out of existence. I loved the character, I thought he was great (even if Insomnia sucked so bad I couldn’t even remember him), BUT I felt it was a cop-out. Big style. Dropping him in there right at the end, implying too that we needed to read Insomnia to understand what was going on (after I had just read the first six Dark Tower books) was a little frustrating to say the least.
Roland in the Tower/the end
Before you read the final section Stephen King drops in an afterword to “warn” you that you might not like the end. He says that readers should take pleasure in the journey, not the end. While I understand his point, it’s not an end, but rather a conclusion that the reader wants. I actually thought the whole Ka-as-a-wheel thing was really clever, however, less clear was why the Tower felt Roland was deserving of such punishment. However, the fact that he begins the next journey with the Horn of Eld made a lot more sense, and you get the impression that eventually on one of his cycles he will have everything he needs to finally bring the cycle to an end.
Conclusions
Overall, I really enjoyed the series. There were some low points – the rubbish battle at the end of Wolves, the reliance on items from other writers' series (sneetches, lightsabers) and the whole Susannah/Mia dirge section which took up most of part 6, but in general it was an excellent read. I think time will judge King on whether or not he has pulled off what he was trying to do, but I personally think it is a massively impressive piece of work, one any writer should be proud of, and if a few fans don’t like it, then so be it. I felt that King achieved what he wanted, and as a writer I know that the hardest person to please is often yourself.
What do other people think? Please feel free to leave your comments below.
Chris Ward
If you are interested in my own writing, I have a book coming out soon called The Tube Riders. It’s not as good as the Dark Tower but it’s pretty damn good so look out for it.
I just finished reading the entire series back to back. This is the first time I have done this for a major fantasy/sci-fi epic ever. And it was quite a journey. I’d like to share a few of my thoughts on the series here. However, if you haven’t read the series and want to, you might want to stop reading now, because I’m going to talk about the end. Just to clarify, I will write about SPOILERS, including THE END OF THE BOOK.
There, now that’s out of the way, let’s begin.
Six months
It took King 34 years to write the Dark Tower series (and judging by the new book he’s got out soon, he’s not going to give up yet). I read the whole thing in just under six months, which for a slow reader like me, is an incredible achievement. I figured it would be easy to see the changes in King’s writing style over the years by reading it that fast, but it wasn’t that easy. It seemed to split neatly into two sections of three books, the Gunslinger, Drawing of the Three and The Waste Lands, then Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower, with Wizard and Glass sitting somewhere in the middle as a bit of an interlude (albeit a very long one).
The first three were just action-packed and very streamlined. There was very little fluff in the writing. Of the latter three, in particular Wolves felt overly drawn out, while Song of Susannah did very little for me, stretching out a day into 430 pages. The final book, I felt, was like King trying to write in the same way he wrote the first three, but unable to shake the shackles of his later, more garrulous works. The result was a fast-paced but 1000-word monster.
The best book?
It’s a tough one, but I would have to go with The Waste Lands. It was just relentless all the way through. Hardly any backstory or grinding exposition, just story, story, story, and action. It was great and really made me respect King as a writer. The whole Lud part and Blaine the Mono, was just excellent. Second would be Wizard and Glass, which I really expected to suck. It didn’t and was glorious, a sprawling, action-packed Western/Sci-fi adventure sandwiched between two sections of the main story, the first of which was great but the second, in the emerald castle, was a bit meh, losing it a point.
SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERS
(Yes, here they come. Did you see what I did there?)
The characters
For the most part I really liked them. Eddie was cool, Susannah sassy, Jake earnest. My favorite was Oy, and the part in the last book where Oy swears in the car was probably the funniest moment of the whole series. I was really hoping Oy would survive, but well. That was probably the only downside to everything, the way King felt it necessary to jettison these central characters so quickly. Oy had a useful death, so did Jake. Eddie just popped it at random but Susannah was the strangest – suddenly she realises she can leave, so … she does. A bit like, thanks for the last five books, I’m off now. What? Roland is left to reach the Dark Tower in the company of a character who had only been in the book for about 100 pages, Patrick Danville. Um, what? More on him later.
Stephen King as a character
King has taken a lot of flak for this, but I actually quite liked it, even if the execution was a little clunky at times. I could see what he was trying to do – something different, something that would set the Dark Tower series apart from other fantasy/sci-fi series in the same canon. He was trying to break the fourth wall as they say in the theatre business and see if he could get away with it.
And did he? Well, I thought certain sections, such as Jake’s death to save King’s life, quite good. Others were a little convenient, like the way King “wrote in” a note for Susannah to save her from Joe Collins/Dandelo. If could do that, why not just write in other stuff? Why not shift the Dark Tower a hundred miles closer? It didn’t make a lot of sense.
Patrick Danville?
Apparently the star of Insomnia (which I read about fifteen years ago and thought sucked), Patrick Danville randomly showed up as a captive in Dandelo’s basement (with very little explanation) and then was able to “draw” the Crimson King out of existence. I loved the character, I thought he was great (even if Insomnia sucked so bad I couldn’t even remember him), BUT I felt it was a cop-out. Big style. Dropping him in there right at the end, implying too that we needed to read Insomnia to understand what was going on (after I had just read the first six Dark Tower books) was a little frustrating to say the least.
Roland in the Tower/the end
Before you read the final section Stephen King drops in an afterword to “warn” you that you might not like the end. He says that readers should take pleasure in the journey, not the end. While I understand his point, it’s not an end, but rather a conclusion that the reader wants. I actually thought the whole Ka-as-a-wheel thing was really clever, however, less clear was why the Tower felt Roland was deserving of such punishment. However, the fact that he begins the next journey with the Horn of Eld made a lot more sense, and you get the impression that eventually on one of his cycles he will have everything he needs to finally bring the cycle to an end.
Conclusions
Overall, I really enjoyed the series. There were some low points – the rubbish battle at the end of Wolves, the reliance on items from other writers' series (sneetches, lightsabers) and the whole Susannah/Mia dirge section which took up most of part 6, but in general it was an excellent read. I think time will judge King on whether or not he has pulled off what he was trying to do, but I personally think it is a massively impressive piece of work, one any writer should be proud of, and if a few fans don’t like it, then so be it. I felt that King achieved what he wanted, and as a writer I know that the hardest person to please is often yourself.
What do other people think? Please feel free to leave your comments below.
Chris Ward
If you are interested in my own writing, I have a book coming out soon called The Tube Riders. It’s not as good as the Dark Tower but it’s pretty damn good so look out for it.
February 26, 2012
Here and Beyond - Why I decided to self-publish
How I got here
On January 23rd I self-published something for the first time, a short story called Forever My Baby, one I wrote back in the summer of 2007. I am 33 years old. I first submitted a story to a magazine for possible publication back in 1997, when I was 18 years old. Over the past 15 years I have racked up some 400 short story rejections, plus a handful of all important sales (33 at last count). I also have more than 100 rejections on four of my eight novels, one of which received three all important partial requests, but failed at the final hurdle.
For most of that time I loathed the idea of vanity (sorry, “indie”) publishing. Yet, now I have turned my back on my beliefs and began to do just that. Am I a traitor to my ideals or a man granted a sudden revelation? In all honestly, I’m still unsure. Probably somewhere between the two.
Vanity publishing
Vanity publishing is when a writer chooses to publish their work by their own means. No editor has bought it, no editor has said it’s good. The writer has decided that yes, it is good enough, and no, he/she doesn’t need some editor in a castle somewhere to tell them that it is. It’s getting published, no matter what.
In the past it was actually quite an expensive, unrewarding thing to do. And then Amazon Kindle happened, and Goodreads, and Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. Suddenly it was easier to self-publish than it was to submit work to an editor. No waiting around, no rejection. The only thing that was required was the confidence to do it, and the willingness to market it yourself.
Why now?
I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Strictly speaking, I’m only half-doing it – three of the four stories I’ve self-published and nine of the ten stories in my collection (Ms Ito’s Bird & Other Stories) have been previously published in print or online magazines and the rights have now returned to me. However, it does also give an opportunity for me to publish stories and eventually novels that have not been published before. So why would I do that? One reason is that I can, but the most important reason is that I trust my judgment. I know which of my works are good, and which are not. And I know how good. Maybe not change-the-world good, but better than most and more importantly, good enough.
I was that starry-eyed kid once, bouncing merrily to the postbox with a dumb grin on his face to mail off his future bestseller to HarperCollins. That kid is dead, and what is left behind is a hardened (and poor) writer with a day job and an ambition rather than a dream, but one who backs – without question – his own ability.
An arduous task
As anyone who has done the short story market rounds will know, it’s a thankless task. Yes, there is the very slim chance of selling somewhere like The New Yorker or Fantasy & Science Fiction and bagging a solid pay check. I’ve sold two stories professionally, and both were worth it financially. None of the others were. Sending out a story to eight different magazines over a year, collecting seven rejections before that all important acceptance, then waiting another year for publication and that $5 fee via PayPal, it’s a hard grind. Then there are those magazines which close before your story even comes out … #heads crash against wall#
What selling to a magazine does do is give you confidence. One sale is worth fifty rejections in terms of letting you know that yes, your story is good. And when that happens enough times, you start to be able to judge for yourself if what you have written is good or not. And if you can do that, why wait around for a year for someone else to agree with you when the means to put it out into the world yourself now exists?
New voices
Most modern writers get asked in interviews how often there were rejected before they finally sold their first novel – and for many it is a shocking number. JK Rowling, some 15 times, I think, another writer I like, Patrick Rothfuss, only got an agent through a personal recommendation from a writer friend. But what about all those who gave up after a few hits? Rejection is hard to take, and no doubt there are brilliant writers out there who gave up, whose masterpieces are sitting in a box or on a hard drive somewhere because the industry was too hard to crack and they gave up for some less ego-bruising profession. The new revolution in publishing gives these writers a chance, if only they dare.
If 1000 men run a race
Or … finding the gold in the flak. I would be a liar if I said I didn’t feel a little aggrieved (jealous?) that now every man and his dog thinks he’s a publishable writer. Not everyone is good enough to be an astronaut, or a professional wrestler, or a TV presenter, so why is being a writer different? It distresses me each time I read a self-published writer’s work and they haven't even grasped basic grammar, let alone the ability to make a story jump off a page and come alive. There are great self-published writers out there, but they are hidden by a veritable flood of junk from people who think that just because they can, they should.
Here I step into difficult territory because it would be naïve of me – not to mention selfish – to suggest that someone shouldn’t be allowed to publish in an open market like this. It would be like saying someone can't set up a stall at a car boot sale just because they have a rubbish car. But I would argue that people should exercise self-quality control, and I don’t think it is going too far to suggest that any wannabe writer should possess at least basic writing skills. I think it comes from a sense of having served an apprenticeship – it took me nine years to make my first sale – that is no longer necessary in the current self-publishing boom.
The way I see it is this – if 1000 men line up to run a hundred metre race, it will be those best equipped to win who will finish near the front. Those with the skills, those with the talent, those with the drive and the confidence to succeed. The genuinely good self-published writers will become successful based on the quality of their work and their confidence in it, and the rest will fail. I for one, don’t expect to win that race, but I do expect to be somewhere in the leading pack. And if I’m not? Well, I’ll run it again in five years and see how I’m doing then.
See you near the finish line, I hope.
Chris Ward
My Amazon author's page
http://www.amazon.com/Chris-Ward/e/B0...
Chris Ward (fiction writer) on Facebook
@ChrisWardWriter on Twitter
On January 23rd I self-published something for the first time, a short story called Forever My Baby, one I wrote back in the summer of 2007. I am 33 years old. I first submitted a story to a magazine for possible publication back in 1997, when I was 18 years old. Over the past 15 years I have racked up some 400 short story rejections, plus a handful of all important sales (33 at last count). I also have more than 100 rejections on four of my eight novels, one of which received three all important partial requests, but failed at the final hurdle.
For most of that time I loathed the idea of vanity (sorry, “indie”) publishing. Yet, now I have turned my back on my beliefs and began to do just that. Am I a traitor to my ideals or a man granted a sudden revelation? In all honestly, I’m still unsure. Probably somewhere between the two.
Vanity publishing
Vanity publishing is when a writer chooses to publish their work by their own means. No editor has bought it, no editor has said it’s good. The writer has decided that yes, it is good enough, and no, he/she doesn’t need some editor in a castle somewhere to tell them that it is. It’s getting published, no matter what.
In the past it was actually quite an expensive, unrewarding thing to do. And then Amazon Kindle happened, and Goodreads, and Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. Suddenly it was easier to self-publish than it was to submit work to an editor. No waiting around, no rejection. The only thing that was required was the confidence to do it, and the willingness to market it yourself.
Why now?
I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Strictly speaking, I’m only half-doing it – three of the four stories I’ve self-published and nine of the ten stories in my collection (Ms Ito’s Bird & Other Stories) have been previously published in print or online magazines and the rights have now returned to me. However, it does also give an opportunity for me to publish stories and eventually novels that have not been published before. So why would I do that? One reason is that I can, but the most important reason is that I trust my judgment. I know which of my works are good, and which are not. And I know how good. Maybe not change-the-world good, but better than most and more importantly, good enough.
I was that starry-eyed kid once, bouncing merrily to the postbox with a dumb grin on his face to mail off his future bestseller to HarperCollins. That kid is dead, and what is left behind is a hardened (and poor) writer with a day job and an ambition rather than a dream, but one who backs – without question – his own ability.
An arduous task
As anyone who has done the short story market rounds will know, it’s a thankless task. Yes, there is the very slim chance of selling somewhere like The New Yorker or Fantasy & Science Fiction and bagging a solid pay check. I’ve sold two stories professionally, and both were worth it financially. None of the others were. Sending out a story to eight different magazines over a year, collecting seven rejections before that all important acceptance, then waiting another year for publication and that $5 fee via PayPal, it’s a hard grind. Then there are those magazines which close before your story even comes out … #heads crash against wall#
What selling to a magazine does do is give you confidence. One sale is worth fifty rejections in terms of letting you know that yes, your story is good. And when that happens enough times, you start to be able to judge for yourself if what you have written is good or not. And if you can do that, why wait around for a year for someone else to agree with you when the means to put it out into the world yourself now exists?
New voices
Most modern writers get asked in interviews how often there were rejected before they finally sold their first novel – and for many it is a shocking number. JK Rowling, some 15 times, I think, another writer I like, Patrick Rothfuss, only got an agent through a personal recommendation from a writer friend. But what about all those who gave up after a few hits? Rejection is hard to take, and no doubt there are brilliant writers out there who gave up, whose masterpieces are sitting in a box or on a hard drive somewhere because the industry was too hard to crack and they gave up for some less ego-bruising profession. The new revolution in publishing gives these writers a chance, if only they dare.
If 1000 men run a race
Or … finding the gold in the flak. I would be a liar if I said I didn’t feel a little aggrieved (jealous?) that now every man and his dog thinks he’s a publishable writer. Not everyone is good enough to be an astronaut, or a professional wrestler, or a TV presenter, so why is being a writer different? It distresses me each time I read a self-published writer’s work and they haven't even grasped basic grammar, let alone the ability to make a story jump off a page and come alive. There are great self-published writers out there, but they are hidden by a veritable flood of junk from people who think that just because they can, they should.
Here I step into difficult territory because it would be naïve of me – not to mention selfish – to suggest that someone shouldn’t be allowed to publish in an open market like this. It would be like saying someone can't set up a stall at a car boot sale just because they have a rubbish car. But I would argue that people should exercise self-quality control, and I don’t think it is going too far to suggest that any wannabe writer should possess at least basic writing skills. I think it comes from a sense of having served an apprenticeship – it took me nine years to make my first sale – that is no longer necessary in the current self-publishing boom.
The way I see it is this – if 1000 men line up to run a hundred metre race, it will be those best equipped to win who will finish near the front. Those with the skills, those with the talent, those with the drive and the confidence to succeed. The genuinely good self-published writers will become successful based on the quality of their work and their confidence in it, and the rest will fail. I for one, don’t expect to win that race, but I do expect to be somewhere in the leading pack. And if I’m not? Well, I’ll run it again in five years and see how I’m doing then.
See you near the finish line, I hope.
Chris Ward
My Amazon author's page
http://www.amazon.com/Chris-Ward/e/B0...
Chris Ward (fiction writer) on Facebook
@ChrisWardWriter on Twitter
