Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ... anjuellefloyd ..., Articles & Essays, Articles and Essays, Relationships
Fellow author, Pamela Samuels Young, recently forwarded, as she did to 30-40 others, the link to a genre author, Scott Pratt?s new blog, The Writer?s Predicament.
While I have not read any of Mr. Pratt?s six legal thrillers I will say that if his novel writing style holds any of the similarities he had exhibited in the few blog posts of The Writer?s Predicament, I will start touting his work. ??Needless to say I am a fan of his blog.
After opening the e-mail containing the link to his blog, I immediate clicked over and began reading his posts.
Scott?s warm, style combined with a vow to honestly share his experiences of how the 21st publishing world works with authors and how that has shaped is perceptions and future actions as a published writer immediately drew me in.
Few writer/authors who hold contracts or had held contracts with the US publishing industry will speak honestly and unabashedly of their dealing with the industry.
To be sure the publishing houses, much like the movie executives of Hollywood have few towards whom they hold allegiance and loyalty. ??Likewise, the publishing industry has elevated even fewer to that ivory tower status.
Why more authors who have not reached the exalted place do not speak candidly albeit with respect as to what any novice author can realistically expect from a publishing contract baffles me.
The psychotherapist part of me suspects that the answer lies partly in hope, the rest in fear: hope of one day receiving an invitation into the hallowed chambers of commercially successful authors whose writings literary critiques hail as equally competent to their salaries and fear that should they disclose all one must and they have endured to reach that point, the words they speak or write will wipe away all possibilities of entering that holiest of literary and publishing inner sanctums.
Scott Pratt lists April 6, 2012 as the first date of his first blog post on The Writer?s Predicament. His most recent appeared, Saturday, April 16th, 2012.
Prior to creating The Writer?s Predicament Scott posted about five posts between March 2011 and January 2012.
I sense, as a blogger, that Scott, like so many of us 21st century writers, particularly those of us who have made our debut publications in the last 5-7 years, needed to fine his stride, a subject on which he felt passionate enough to blog.
Maintaining a website requires time and persistence. Doing so with the blog on your website requires time, persistence and heart.
Readers are quite intelligent. ??And while they might not know all the in?s and out?s on the subject about which you are blogging?that?s why they read your posts?they can and do immediately sense whether you feel passionate about the topic on which you write.
The rule of creating and maintaining a successful website requires that you commit to memory that ? ? content is king.?
Application of the axiom ? ? content is king ? ? demands that to become known as a thought leader in your ascribed category of interest you reveal your heart.
Even as Scott wrote about supporting and traveling with his wife through the journey of fighting breast cancer I could see that this husband and father, an attorney prior to becoming a full-time writer and published author possessed a big heart, one that he opens to each and every task to which he commits his efforts and energy.
He also respects women, evidenced in the blog posts about his wife, which brings strong kudos in my book.
Scott?s writing voice echoes the aesthetics and sentiments often shared and stated by my husband.
I only wish I could have spoken with him before he made a professional decision that led to him becoming a full-time writer, one that would have at least and hopefully urged him to take a moment of pause and consider his choices before rushing head long into becoming a full-time writer and author.
Whether he would have chosen differently I cannot say.
What I know is that as The Fates would have it I did know?Scott Pratt back in 2006 when he transitioned from practicing criminal attorney to full-time writer and thriller author later published by Penguin Publishers.
I was busy finishing up my last semester of work towards earning my MFA in Creative Writing.
Like, Scott, my MFA Thesis, a collection of short stories, Keeper of Secrets?Translations of an Incident, came to print in June 2007 under the auspices of Three Muses Press, the literary imprint of the small press, Ink and Paper Group.
Like Scott I was happy, elated.? Unlike Scott, my expectations remained nominal at best.
We entered publishing trained to write under old rules, but at a time on the cusp, a period of multitudinous change in the publishing industry and a cataclysmic overhaul in the way all corporations and entrepreneurs conduct business within this country and around the world.
Unfortunately we have all suffered, leaving authors and professionals like?Scott Pratt at best confounded, at worst demoralized.
Fortunately Scott?s writing evidences he stands not among the latter.
Having studied writing for the decade prior I had heard the shocking turn of the twist stories of writers who became published authors overnight, may possible then only by way of the big New York publishers.
One day these writers were sitting in fiction writing groups much like the ones in which I participated for over three years, the next day they, having garnered a literary agent, a task somewhat easier then, the agent was conducting a bidding war with their unfinished novel as the prize.
A few months down the road the novice writer soon-to-be published author was furiously working with her or his then in-house editor to complete the book and revise it.
The then published author would ring in the next year toasting their debut title along book tour which included a list of cities across the country and if lucky, throughout Europe.
Some of these authors established themselves in the world of publishing and we still hear from them in the novels they have continued to publish, a daunting feat in light of the serious financial crisis that has gripped the world and whose tentacles continue to eat away at our hope and belief that financial security and what many hope is a better livelihood and life awaits us around the corner of the next year or subsequent decade.
Sadly, the vast majority of these authors have faded into obscurity, a darkness that has consumed their hoped-for careers, but also the author, and worse still her or his practice of writing.
I have heard it said more times than not, that what truly distinguishes a true writer from all else is the ability to write without a contract of the probability of money and financial gain in sight.
After reading these initial posts by Scott Pratt to his blog The Writer?s Predicament I have revamped my definition of a true writer as that author who continues to write after having experienced the more often than not true side of publishing, the one that takes on a writer and without forewarning when finances deem, leaves said writer, her or him to paddle to shore, or worse, tread water alone.
As a published author with one book in print,?Scott Pratt underwent what so many authors in a most similar position have experienced. ??Notice I?m not telling you what he endured. I want you to read his blog.
Unlike those others he continues to write, and I sense with more fervency.
Not only has he begun publishing his own books, he?s also fighting to regain control of the two books Penguin gain rights to within the contract he signed.
I?m so glad Scott is an attorney. A licensed psychotherapist, I avoid confronting others.
My comfort zone lies in the area of internal awareness, my strength and expertise in squaring off with the demons within who seek to sabotage our thinking thus allowing those outside and around us to peddle their wares that keep them wealthy in both money and esteem and us in bondage.
Reading all of the essays Scott has posted to his blog left me energized. I have signed up to receive his blog at private e-mail.
While I have chosen to receive a few blog posts from other bloggers, The Writer?s Predicament is one that I am truly looking forward, anticipating with minor palpitations to receive the next installment and read.
Whether you are an author, mother, husband, teenager or grandparent, if you are a blogger or want to blog, read Scott Pratt?s blog.
His writing provides if nothing else a monumental example to all bloggers?writers without celebrity status, like myself, who are attempting through our blog posts, to prove ourselves as a though leader in our said area of expertise?how to write in a manner that attracts and engages the attention of readers and visitors to our websites.
Scott is a great writer.
He is also a passionate writer; so much so that in reading his posts to The Writer?s Predicament I awoke this morning inspired and determined to address my passion, my predicament as a mother.
A mother who at the end of this past week was left angry and hurt at Hilary Rosen?s statement to GOP Presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney about his wife, Anne Romney, that in having ? ? never worked a day in her life ? ,? [Anne Romney] proved an ill-equipped person for Mitt to consult regarding the concerns of women in our country and what we want in a US President.
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