Zette's Take: The Best Revenge

If you write more than a half dozen words a week, you are likely going to hear this from someone:  Oh how could you write so much and forgo quality for quantity!  You must be a bad writer!

A friend and I were discussing the fine art of being prolific in the FM chat room tonight (hello DC -- J. A. Marlow) and how people react to the idea that we actually, you know, spend more time writing than talking about writing.

Not everyone can be prolific.  Not everyone should be prolific.  However, there is no reason why someone who is prolific should have to put up with being insulted without the person ever even thinking to look at the actual writing.

Here are the things it takes to be prolific:

1.      You have to want to write.

2.      You have to have the time to write.

3.      You have to be prepared to write.

The last is something many people don't quite understand.  However, this is why we do outlines and why we have goals and plans.  We make the best use of our time that we can. We set our goals on finishing work, rather than toying with it. 

This is called having a work ethic.

And we have this because writing is our work.  Not a pastime and not a hobby, but our actual job.  We aren't going to waste time when it means we might lose future income.

At the same time, this is a job we love.  We don't want to waste the time we have to write by giving an angsty song and dance routine to prove we are real artists. (Though, to be honest, I've had a couple of those moments lately -- but they're more related to this having been a very long and trying winter than the actual writing.  It just surfaces when I talk about writing.)

What we write will tell if we are good authors or not.  What we write in the future will tell if we are improving as authors. 

The only thing any of you can judge our work by is the work itself.  We're both selling, DC better than me.  We both have some nice reviews, and some bad ones, just like other authors.

What we mostly have, though, is a number of stories to tell and the intention of doing so and at a speed that works for us.

And our sales are, in the end, our best revenge -- as DC pointed out.

Welcome to the world of prolific writers.  We write.  A lot.  And we aren't going to apologize for it.