Anyone who knows me knows that I was an accidental academic. When I took my first part-time university teaching position so many years ago, I had no intention of making it permanent. I didn’t see myself starting off as a lowly assistant professor making my way up the academic ladder to associate professor and finally the ultimate academic goal: Full Professor. But that’s what happened. You know the old saying… “If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans…” Well, God must be laughing. Anyway, that happened, but that part of my life is also over. And I find myself back where it all began: teaching writing.
Yes, that first course I taught all those years ago was a writing course. You see, I had already begun to carve out a path for myself as a writer. I had published numerous magazine articles mostly in my specialty area of health and medicine, and I had also already published my first book – also in my specialty area. So, teaching writing seemed natural to me. And it still does. However, my venue has changed.
This past year I finally pulled together thirty years of writing and publishing experience to share it with the world. I thought I’d be able to be a mentor to newbie writers just starting out. But something happened.
In the intervening years between when I first established myself as a writer, and today, the writing and publishing industry has undergone nothing short of a transformation. Everyone can be published today. No one seems to need a publisher. Or even an editor. And so many writers are part of an online writing community that oozes self-congratulation and disingenuous positivity about everyone’s writing – all because you never know what someone else might say about your writing. You pat my back and I’ll pat yours, or something like that.
The upshot of this whole project was a book that seeks not only to provide a bit of mentoring to new writers but also to provide a foundation in reality and to disabuse writers these days of some of the myths about fame and fortune as a writer. The book is Permission to Write: How to Write a Book and Other Myths from the Real World of Writing and Publishing. I’ve also decided to share additional materials through the medium of video.
Thus, I’ve begun a 10-part series to accompany the book. The first episode “Want to be a rich and famous writer? Don’t give up your day job” is already up and running.
Today episode number two launches: “Don’t write that book! Or at least don’t publish it.”
So you can see that I don’t necessarily paint a rosy picture for wannabe writers. However, serious wannabe writers will get through them and still want to write that book. Those are the writers I aim to help.
The videos are posted on the Moonlight Press YouTube channel. Let your friends who “wanna write a book” know.
It happens every time I finish a book-length project. I begin to think about marketing the book to readers who might like/love/need/enjoy it. Of course if it’s a non-fiction book, I’ve given it a lot of thought up front because publishers these days want a fairly well-fleshed-out marketing plan from an author as part of the book proposal long before the book is even completed. If it’s a piece of fiction, I write what I write then think about marketing it after it’s published. I can’t help it; I’m a writer not a content creator! But, what about that marketing?
Many years ago – in a former lifetime even before my academic career – I worked in the field of organ transplantation. I was called an “organ procurement officer.” An odd title, you say? Yes, odd indeed. My responsibilities included overseeing the transplant coordinators who were tasked with ensuring donor organs made it to appropriate recipients (kidneys and livers mostly in those days), and the public education programming for increasing organ donations. This latter responsibility involved developing strategic promotion plans, writing about organ donation and making copious numbers of public presentations. All in a day’s work.
Patricia J. Parsons 