Miscellaneous Questions About Writing© by Holly Lisle
All Rights Reserved
Why do you do this site --- don't you worry that you're making
more competition for yourself?
No. I'm my own competition. If I can write better books, I'll
sell better. If I can help you write better books, you'll sell better.
But the people who buy your books won't stop buying my books because
of you. They'll buy both. I do this page because a couple of idealistic
writers (one who has gone on to be phenomenally successful) took
me under wing when I was a neophyte and told me how to do things
right, and taught me how to avoid making the major mistakes they
knew about (though I've still managed to make some pretty impressive
mistakes on my own,) and because one of them told me, "This is the
way my help works. You can't pay me back for what I've taught you,
any more than I can pay back the mentors who taught me. You can
only pay forward."
This is part of how I am keeping my promise to pay forward. If
what I've done here has helped you, then you are the recipient of
a chain of mentoring and altruism that extends from me back to Mercedes
Lackey, and through her to C.J. Cherryh, and through her to, I think,
Marion Zimmer Bradley. It probably goes back further than that.
If I've helped you, you can't pay me back. You can, however, pay
forward. When you make it---and you can make it---pick up the torch
and use it to help light the way for the young writer who is coming
up behind you. That young writer is not your competition. He is
the next good book you'll want to read, and the promise that books
worth reading will continue to be written after you and I are dust.
Tell him what I'm telling you: Life is short. Love is eternal.
All we have to offer to each other that amounts to anything is our
love, our time, and our belief that individuals and their dreams
matter. Dare to love. Dare to believe. And never give up on your
dreams.
Are collaborations a good idea?
In spite of the fact that I've done a lot of them, I'd have to
say no. You'll only live so long, and in that length of time you'll
only be able to write a certain number of books. For every collaboration
you do, that's one solo work you won't do.
I did them because I was broke and dependent on my writing income
for survival, and new enough in the business that I couldn't hope
for royalties or subrights sales to get me through. I regretted
the necessity, and I still regret it; every collaboration I did
was good, and some of them are the best work I've ever done, but
I have fans who won't read them because of the perception that collaborations
are inferior work.
They're harder to write than solo work, they take just as much
time and sometimes more, you make a lot less money, and they don't
sell as well when you're done.
Aside from that, they're great. You get to meet some neat people.
But you could do that at a convention, too.
Ten Thousand More Miscellaneous Questions About
Writing
I got more questions than I could keep up with. The FAQs would
have become an unwieldy monster (they're already pretty long).
So I set up a board where I could answer questions live. And that
board grew to an entire community of about a hundred boards, which
include discussions, debates,
writing workshops, research links -- and a number of boards dedicated
specifically to answering questions about writing.
The boards have good search functions -- go to the board closest
to what you need to know, type in your question in the search
box
and see if someone else has already asked it. If not, ask. You'll
usually have an answer or three within a few hours -- sometimes
within a few minutes.
Here are the places for miscellaneous questions about writing:
*You
must be a member to read or post. (Membership is free)
**Anyone can read, but you
must be a member to post. (Membership is free)
Questions About the Forward Motion Writers'
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