With the emergence of the new writing and publishing paradigm, a new hazard has risen from the ashes of the old world like a post-apocalyptic pied piper. I’m calling it the Writer’s Death Spiral.
Follow me, you want-to-be writers, on the Writer’s Death Spiral!
You start off with an idea, maybe an idea for a book, or a series, or just that you want to write for a living. You read a truckload of books on how to write. You take some classes and workshops. You throw yourself into NaNoWriMo. You write a novel or two, some short stories. With all this hard work, you finally get something you’re excited to share with the world.
Now you have to publish the damned thing.
Go forth, publish, and conquer!
So you take some more classes, attend some more workshops, watch some tutorials, and you learn you have to do a launch, get some reviews, and you have to have a website, and write a blog.
What do you write a blog about? Well, take some courses on that, read a bunch of tutorials, listen to some podcasts, and you learn that you need to write about something that you know.
What do you know?
Writing and publishing.
So you start writing blog posts about your writing process, about your stories, about characters, about setting, about voice, about all the things you’ve learned up to this point, including publishing.
If you’re good at it and you build a following, then you become an expert at this or that. So then you realize that you can make as much money, if not more, by creating courses to teach people how to do what you’ve done. You give webinars and sell your time as a consultant, and you take courses and watch videos on how to give courses and make videos.
Follow me! I know the way!
I’ve got to be honest here; I’m only at the “You’ve got to write a blog” step.
I am an author. I write novels and short stories, and I only blog on pain of continued anonymity.
I’ve got a big fear that I’m going to get sucked into this Writer’s Death Spiral and have no time left to do what I enjoy doing which is writing stories.
If you’re a writer, let me know down in the comment section what you think, whether this reflects your experience or not.
If you’re a reader who likes science fiction or fantasy, buy one of my books, and save me from the Writer’s Death Spiral! 🙂