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The world of writing is a dense jungle full of poisonous creatures, carnivorous plants, sudden drops, and a stopwatch that changes speed every few seconds. You may be calm and plan the initial idea, but chaos will appear for most of us at some point. Those that don’t stumble are either lucky or living in a cabin beyond the reach of human contact. If it’s the latter then how in the world do you get Wifi out there?
Every author will run into their own set of pitfalls and challenges. So there are no identical paths, but there are a handful of common dangers that one can slip into without realizing it. I’m not talking about rejection letters, negative reviews, or computer crashes that devour your work as you’re trying to upload to a thumb drive. Those are beyond your full control. Here are a few I thought of from my own experiences that I could have stopped if I had thought about it.
- Style Corrosion– Also can be called ‘Style Overload’ or ‘Failed Mimicry’ or whatever else you think of. I’ve mentioned this before on my blog. Many authors with low confidence or high exhaustion will see the suggestions of others as golden wisdom. It really comes off this way if presented as a solid fact instead of an opinion. A young author who is unsure of their style will absorb these suggestions. At first, it isn’t that bad and you might see improvement. Then you take on more advice and your style becomes either a cluttered mess or a carbon copy of an established author. If this goes on for too long, it may take months or years to get back to the style that you’re really comfortable with.
- PERFECTION!– I’ve seen so many authors fall to this ideal. It results in a constant creation of drafts to the point where a decade will go by and no progress has been made. It can connect to Style Overload as they adopt a new trick and rewrite the entire story. There are also times a single typo can cause these authors to make a rewrite or scrap what they have. It’s kind of scary. Some of these trapped authors research agents, publishers, and other authors, so they adopt the idea that they’re experts in the field. You’ll get suggestions on what you should do and they may be right, but these people lack the experience to go along with their own advice. I know it sounds like I’m badmouthing this type of author, but you can learn something from them. Maybe you can even convince them to take that scary first step too.
- The Universe Will Give Me Time– I wasted a decade of my life on this one. I truly believed that I would work my way through another job to the point where I could also do my writing. Some people can pull this off, but you need the perfect situation for it. I didn’t have that. Instead, I found most of my jobs sucked my energy and I was barely able to maintain the house. This deals a lot with the mentality you need to start writing and I needed to be calm. Exhaustion led to bad writing. So you really have to put your foot down and make time for your writing.
- Planning Loop– Much like the writer toiling for a lifetime on the perfect manuscript, you have some authors who don’t even get that far. They fall in love with the world and character creation, but fail to put it into book form. It’s a safety zone because planning and creating without structure prevents full-blooded criticism. You might be told how a few things don’t work, but it’s the comfy planning stage and nothing is written in stone.
- Quest for Pure Originality– We’d all love to make a story that is unconnected to anything that has come before it. Sadly, all of your basic stories have been done and readers can be really creative when it comes to connecting new to old. An author who is obsessed with originality may scrap all of their good ideas because one aspect has been done. I’ve met a few of these authors who are at the point where they’ve given up and spend their time turning on others. They become bitter and angry about their ‘failure’, so they lash out. I would consider this the most dangerous pitfall because it can be incredibly toxic and hard to break.
- Smug Competitor– At every level, you’ll find authors who are so confident that they refuse to accept advice. This isn’t the bad part though because some people simply don’t see a marketing plan of one person working for them. This pitfall becomes a problem when the author makes a scene about negative reviews and tries to sabotage fellow authors who are doing better. It’s this type of author that can do a lot of damage to the overall community. Thankfully, they’re rarer than we believe.
Legends of Windemere 
oj…now I’m going to have to bookmark this and read it all over…sigh…seems I never get the whole idea the first tie around 😦
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It’s a lot about the mentality of an author trying to get published and the traps that your mind can fall into along the way.
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Oh…I know what it’s about…it’s trying to get it to sep into my head and decide what would be useful to get me started publishing….
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For publishing, I recommend writing a list of questions and asking a few published authors for information. That’s how I learned the basics before starting out.
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I think it’s probably the only way. Do you do the SmashBooks thing like Sahm did for the Anthology in August? I’ve of course discovered with my new e-book…that kindle is not always an option. My e-book read e-pubs and lots of stuff but no mobi or amazon formats. So, would that mean I can nevr buy a e-book by Amazon…and if not, where would I get your books?
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Amazon uses mobi, which means it can’t be read on a Nook. Ipad and computers have Kindle apps that allow you to read the books on them. I’m not on Smashwords like Sahm. I was on there with my first book, but it didn’t sell at all. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it to move there. The worst was when people were proudly telling me that they downloaded the free sample and then never getting the book. So, I went Kindle exclusive to grab the benefits from their program. There is a paperback option that’s on Amazon.
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Ah…the paperback option is interesting…thanks for the info. I really wouldn’t know where to start. Understand your Amazon choice now though.
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Are you thinking of publishing soon?
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I’m trying to figure out how to assemble an e-book with the idea of maybe publishing. Not too clear huh?
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Makes sense to me. In that case, I’d recommend trying for Smashwords (covers all non-Amazon eReaders) along with Amazon and Createspace (paperback). The big benefit of Smashwords is that it does a format check on your work, which can help you set up on Amazon too. It doesn’t hurt to start out and see if you can get success on all of the mediums.
What kind of book?
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Good question…I’d like to try a collection of prose and maybe two small books of poetry…one Japanese and the other Western Forms. As you can see…not really given it a whole lot of though. I think I’d start out elaborating some of what I’ve already produced…
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You’re a talented poet, so the poetry books would be great.
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Cool…sounds like a workable beginning.
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I like that you tell people not to let other author’s opinion cramp their style…there are so many “rules” out there…it can really be intimidating. I wrote a post that includes some of this that I haven’t posted today. Cheers! And keep on keeping on.
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Thanks. Some of the rules are more guidelines. I know commas are a big debate with authors. I use them a lot and some people perceive this as misuse. Others don’t use them at all with no criticism. It’s a lot about personal taste.
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Its so funny that you bring up commas. The very first stranger that read my manuscript said that I didn’t use them enough. She wanted more pauses, and less run on sentences. The next person said that I overused commas. When I sent the book off for editing, I felt the commas chopped up my style…hampered my lilting southern drawl…but I accepted it as a more worthy read. (There is still a southern belle lurking in there somewhere.) There seems to be much that is personal taste. I was reading a review site’s criteria for 1-5s and what what expected…I sooo disagreed with them.
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Everyone has their own criteria for 1-5 ratings. A 3 for one person might be a 2 or 4 for others. It’s that middle area where things get sticky.
A high school teacher actually realized that I didn’t understand commas. She gave me extra work and lessons during a writing club time to help me figure them out. I go the rule of ‘mental or verbal pauses’. Fantasy writing does have a lot of long, comma-infused sentences though. The book I just finished reading had a 4-5 line sentence.
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I have read books like that and actually prefer it to constant interruptions in my flow of thought while reading a sentence. My mind puts the pauses where it wants them anyway.
This review site said that to earn a five star review the book MUST have a clear and concise protagonist AND a clear and concise antagonist. I thought about all of the books I have read in my life which had neither or only one. Sylvia Plath’s “Bell Jar” comes to mind…a Pulitzer, So many books about people and places that had no clear and concise either…books on friendship, family, romance and dilemmas that weren’t based on good guy bad guy…or even one main character.
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I wonder what their definition of clear and concise is. If part of the fun is not knowing who the real antagonist is then they’ll be in trouble.
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Charles. You are a sage. You wasted a decade. I wasted four decades. The rest of the pitfalls we must work on daily to avoid. This was great.
Sent from my iPhone
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I probably would have kept going into multiple decades if I didn’t hit a point where a full-time job seemed impossible. It’s weird to think a flimsy economy gave me the chance to take a risk.
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Like the old saw “one door closes, another opens.”
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Exactly. Been hearing a lot of wise sayings involving doors today.
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Good advice!
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Thanks. 🙂
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Great post! I’m doing the work/writing thing. I don’t really have a choice right now. It’s working. Slower, but it’s working out. You may want to gather your sage advice and put together a small Author’s Guide for publishing. 🙂
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It’s been mentioned, but I’m not a fan of those books. It would come off as me trying to spout personal experience for money, which I’ve seen cause some backlash. I’m better off keeping it to my blog where it’s free and my own little world. 🙂
I was good at getting writing and work done for a few years. Then I got a few jobs that left me drained by the evening and weekend. I think if you can get a job that doesn’t sap your energy then it’s entirely possible to do both.
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These are all so true, Charles. What really hurts me is the day job: a lot of mental energy and productivity is “wasted” there, but at least I’m at the point in my life where I can see retirement at the end of the tunnel (and, yes, I have a countdown calendar ;))
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I agree and that’s why I went full-time author. I needed the energy and retirement was so far away. There was also a lot of talk about me being in the generation that will never be able to retire. Very cool that you have a countdown calendar.
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Well, if you can’t hope to retire, then it makes sense to just go ahead and do what you want to do now, instead of putting it off and hoping you’ll be well enough to do it later 🙂
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I fully agree. 🙂
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Excellent list. 🙂
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Thanks. 🙂
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Excellent observations. They all point in the same basic direction, which is, Get down to business! Of course, sometimes that’s easier said than done.
I was lucky enough to have that perfect situation in the past, but now I’m self-employed so I have a 24-hour cycle at my disposal if I need it. (I seldom need it. 😛 )
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Create summation. I’m kind of self-employed now with the writing, but I’m still working on time management. The toddler plays a major role in that since I get talked into playing far too easily.
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Given that there are so many pitfalls and that they affect almost all authors, it really is amazing how much is accomplished each year.
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I know. Also how many authors survive their first year.
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