You Don’t Work Do You?
A writer is an unusual person. It may seem like an idyllic life. Sit town and write. How hard could that be?
Until a kid wants something or the dog wants to play or your spouse needs help in the garage…
Writing is hard work and it involves concentration to put a story together. It also involves concentrated time and effort. Hopefully some skill.
If I want to set a goal to write a chapter a day I can usually manage that in an hour. Well, if a book takes say, 35 hours to write, then why couldn’t I knock that out in a week?
Because some of writing is breathing, praying, researching, thinking, and reading. Non-fiction could possibly go faster but it’s still not easy to put words on a page in a way that would be good, and impact a reader. Something that someone would want to read.
Take that 35-40 hours of writing time for a book that might take 6 hours to read. Add editing. An author will read through a book many times. It could take me two days minimum to usually do one round of edits on a book. That’s a lot of concentrated time considering the overused words, phrasing, plot lines, time consistency throughout the story, great beginnings and endings to a chapter, finding typos, tightening up sentences and paragraphs, and maybe even deleting unnecessary words or phrases.
Then making sure the story engages all the senses without using the words: feel, look, taste, hear, see and smell.
Oh, and after that, grammar. Commas, quotation marks, hyphens, spelling … Then you submit it and the process begins all over when another set of eyes surveys the version you sent. I have some novels with so many files of edits it is unbelievable.
Even with all that being done by myself and maybe two other editors, if I go back and read older works I can see how I could have done it better.
Are you exhausted yet? All of this is without a penny coming into my checking account.
Do I work? Yes. And hard.
My husband will lament that I don’t make what I’m worth for writing books. He then will say, “But that doesn’t seem to bother you.”
Sure, a nice income would be lovely, but it’s more about heart impact than it is about making money. The first book I ever wrote I wrote for myself. I’m my first audience. Now I could do that and enjoy the stories without ever doing one edit. That would be selfish though. If God gives me a story why wouldn’t I share that with others? If God leads me to publish, then I need to be as obedient to Him in writing the first draft as I am with every subsequent edit.
Is it work? Absolutely. Unless God decides to bless I will never receive an income equal to the time I put into my stories. I’d be wealthier working at a fast-food restaurant. (I’ll pass, thank you. Been there, done that!). It’s a good thing I enjoy what I do—at least most of the time!
When you see a book for sale for $18.00, realize that there was a lot of work for that amount of money. It amazes me how someone will pay $5 for a cup of coffee that lasts maybe 30 minutes? A book can be read in maybe 6 hours – and more than once! Wouldn’t that be worth $30 then? And e-books are even cheaper! They never grow cold or contain calories!
If you do spend that money, and enjoy the work of an author, please give them a review on Amazon. Only a few words are needed. It may not fill our bank accounts, but it will help others find our books and in time that might net us a little bit of compensation for our labors. Let them know you appreciate their hard work as well as the labors of their editors, marketing people, layout and cover artists.
