Exactly. I have nothing but support and encouragement for people who want to be published and work to achieve those goals.

But publication shouldn’t be the end-all, be-all of writing.

It shouldn’t be something that a writer MUST aspire to in order to be a “real writer.” While I haven’t seen anyone out and out told they’re not a “real writer” if publication isn’t that important to them, it’s the attitude they have. I have seen writers told, many times, that they shouldn’t be writing what they’re working on because “it’ll never sell.”

That sort of attitude kills passion. It kills creativity. It kills the love for writing.

I was a member of a writing community founded by a print-published author (call me elitist if you want, but there’s still a distinct difference between print and ebooks, IMO). Several other published authors hung out there and freely gave advice.

All of them were prolific and wrote more than one book a year. Two were self-supporting fiction writers. In blogs and forum posts, they talked about how they submitted proposals to their agent and editor, and decided what they would write based on that. Which makes sense–if writing is your main source of income.

Problem is, the community as a general whole picked up on “write what will sell.” I used to think it was just that community, but I’m really not sure anymore, cause I see it to some extent at RD. At least RD puts it in a positive light. My former community, by the point I left, did not.

If you’re not writing what you love, it carries into your work. It can be beautiful, perfect prose, a great story, and still fall flat cause your heart’s not into it.

That’s part of what we’re trying to focus on with Evolution after the revamp. We want to foster creativity and love for writing, as well as support and encourage those actively trying to get published. I don’t want us to be just another publication-oriented writing community–cause there’s more to writing than just business.

The hardest thing is a lot of people don’t see it going on until they’ve burnt themselves to the core. They don’t recognise that trying for perfection, trying for saleability, changing parts of their work to fit a critiquer’s viewpoint is hurting them. They think they’re making progress. That they’re almost there. Until they hit the glass wall and can’t figure out why they’re blocked.

*shakes head*

It’s really a sad situation.

So, I choose to write my story my way. It might never get published, but that’s not the point of writing. It may be the goal, yes. But the point? No, I don’t think so.

I love Evolution, btw! I love that you focus more on the actual writing, less on the misc. b.s., and encourage writers to be who they are. Not that I don’t enjoy RD and other communities… it’s just that the philosophy is different. I think most communities are goal oriented, not craft oriented, and their strict adherence to the “writing rules” is one of the direct results.

Grrrr…hate that.

Exactly. While removing adverbs and forms of “to be” makes stronger, more vivid description–you don’t always need it. Personally, I find it most useful to draw attention to a place or character… like those photoshopped images you see, where everything is greyed out except for the bright red lips, or nails, or such.

“Passive adds an eloquence that active can never touch.”

Passive voice can also place emphasis on the proper subject… for example:

“John was touched by the hand of God” — attention is drawn to *John*

instead of

“The hand of God touched John” — which puts emphasis on the hand.

Make sense?

(I can’t believe I just used God in a grammar example. o.O)

I really dislike that. I don’t like rules. Writing rules are a guideline, something to take stock of to help you strengthen your writing. But if you took out all adverbs…well the book would be about a million times longer with all these unnecessary descriptions when he ran quickly works just as well. Grrr…thankfully, I’ve been around for a while and can ignore crits like those…but to a newbie, something like that is just plain damaging.

My other big pet peeve…people who tell you never to write in passive. I’m sorry, but sometimes passive just reads better. Passive adds an eloquence that active can never touch. All in moderation now, but seriously. If I stuck to those rules all the time my books would be lifeless and dull. I write what I like and know…and you’re damn right that readers don’t give two shits whether I write active over passive.

Gawd, if they did do you think Christine Feehan (with her constant head hopping) would ever have made it as big as she has? I seriously doubt it. As an author her style of writing aggravates the hell out of me, but I’m clearly in the minority and I wish more authors would understand rules are made to be broken. Learn ‘em first, then break ‘em, and you’ll write what you love.

Ironic that you wrote about this tonight, I blogged about something very similar myself.

~~Vivienne (and I too belong to RD, but under my real name. )