Quantity Vs Quality

I have been contemplating this moral dilemma for the past few months. I have said, in recent times, that I encourage young ones especially to hold off from self-publishing just because it is the easy way to get their stories out there. You may wonder, why do I self-publish my own work while at the same time discouraging self-publishing? What is the difference between believing your stories are ready and knowing they are? And, if you know your story is ready, won’t an existing agent or publisher agree with you? These are big questions. But what do they have to deal with the theme?

I spoke with an eager young writer the other day who told me she planned to publish a 12 book series. When I attempted to read her first book, which has in fact already been published along with a sequel, I was frankly saddened. The writer had clearly made no efforts to edit her work. When I pointed out this simple fact–if you don’t write quality, quantity won’t matter–she was upset, to say the least. And considering she had also been a fan of my work, I think I shrunk my fan-base.

Let’s go back, for a moment, to why young ones shouldn’t publish their works. At a certain age, you are so excited to be a writer, you may not realize that editing is part of the job description. Editors are very, very expensive, for someone first starting out and hoping to make a breakthrough. I am not a firm believer that they are strictly necessary, as long as you make it your aim to know as much as possible about editing. I was commended recently–even though the overall tone of the review had been negative–for putting a solid effort into self-editing. But you should know, at the age when I was most eager to enter this industry, I truly believed I wrote a “clean first draft”. Any author who carries this idea around in his head is fooling himself. And since English classes and writing classes are still being taught in colleges around the country, it is reasonable to say that most teens don’t know enough to approach writing professionally yet. (Alright, there are a few Christopher Paolini types in the world, so I will give them my nod of approval, though certainly these young ones already know the importance of good editing, or they would not have come so far.) Looking back now on those “clean first drafts” I used to write, I am tremendously overjoyed that I didn’t send a series of works full of typos out into the world.

So what makes me so confident that publishing the Forgotten Princess series myself is such a good idea? Seriously? I’m not. As stated before, this is a moral dilemma. You see, I want to find that agent or publisher who believes in my work as an author. But these days, agents seek out potential authors who have an already established platform. In other words, they want you to sell your work yourself first; then they might represent you. So how is a writer supposed to get a publisher without published work? True, they suggest writing articles for magazines. But if you write a particular niche of fiction, magazines are scarce. I considered writing about writing (it is one of my few specialties in life), but if you attempt to publish an article about writing when you are not a published author, your credibility disappears.

The cold truth is that one can never really know whether his writing is ready for publishing. And that brings me back to the theme. It is best to build credibility with quality works–even if achieving quality is a lengthy, painstaking process–because having others argue about the quality of your work is greatly preferred to their silent agreement that you have made a big mistake. By all means then, strive for quality at any phase of your life and you will have great reasons to believe in yourself, which is a very good place to start.

Since I encourage others to share insights, as a wonderful way for us to learn from one another, I invite your comments regarding any of the above issues.