The Worst Writing Purchases I've Made
On Tuesday I posted about the Best Writing Purchases I've ever made– today I'm posting about the worst! I tried to limit this only to purchases I have personal experience with; there are way more bad purchases out there, I'd wager. But with that in mind…
Worst Writing Purchases I've Made:
-Fancy paper. When I was querying agents, I bought the fancy linen paper to send my queries in on. Naturally, I couldn't send in linen paper and then regular envelopes. But the linen envelopes only came in a pack of 500. So…I bought 500 linen envelopes. I probably spent around $100 on the whole shebang. In the end, my agent never even saw the fancy paper– she accepted me via an e-query. And yes, I still have linen envelopes left. I'm down to about 100 I think…
-Publishing industry books. There are a few craft books out there I like– Bird by Bird and On Writing, to be specific. But the rest? I'll pass, thanks. I spent close to $200 on books about how to get published, how to write a pitch, how to approach an agent, who to query…and they were pointless. Some because they contained flatly bad advice ("Don't write fantasy until you've mastered contemporary" and "Don't try to write until you're at least 30″ "Call the agency and see if the agent you're after is open to a phone conversation"), other because they were out of date– keep in mind that it takes about two years for a book to make it to the shelf. In an industry where sales trends can come and go in a month, using two year old information isn't wise.
-All the Post-Its money can buy. Look, the materials don't make the writer. I don't want to think about how much I spent on pens and Post-Its and paperclips when the Post-Its from the back of my desk drawer would have worked just fine. Yeah, you need office supplies– but don't convince yourself that you just CAN'T work without seventeen trips to Staples.
-Online clubs/groups. I say this very, very carefully– some online groups are worth their weight in gold. But there are a lot of upstarts recently that seem to charge quite a bit for very little. Make sure you're getting out of a group what you're paying in.
The thing I've learned in the past few years is really, it is all about the writing. It's not about the stuff or the tours or the website. Those things are great, really– and they're important, and worth the money if you have it to spare. But the backbone of your career isn't your website or your fancy paper, it's your writing.
Anyone else made some bad writing purchases? Leave them in the comments!
Mirrored from JacksonPearce.com.
