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Sometimes it sounds like a cop-out, I guess, but . . . reading books IS research. You need to be a reader to be a writer. You need to remember why you write. You need to connect with stories that inspire in you the kinds of feelings you want to inspire in your audience. And you need to pay attention to how they do it and draw your own conclusions rather than expecting instruction divorced from context to teach you everything you need to know.
Publishing resources, instructional writing, and feedback on your work are absolutely priceless, and those are often needed to get your stuff out there too. But if you just keep trying and you don’t seem to be getting closer to your publishing goal, you do have to remember that sometimes it isn’t just about persistence and study. Sometimes it is about your material not being ready.
Look at your heroes and see how they did it. You might be surprised how much they can teach you just by doing it again in front of you when you’re ready to listen.
Ughhh this comic is so on point. There were people in my upper level workshop classes who didn’t read and thought not reading didn’t affect their writing.
And yet, shock of all shocks, when we got their stories for peer critiques, the prose and narrative structures and characters were all terrible in the exact same ways.
I just don’t get writers who don’t read. What the hell are you doing trying to break into an industry and community you don’t personally enjoy? If you don’t like to read, why are you producing reading materials??
*incoherent rage*
>_> mannnn. I’m so glad I graduated. Never again.
Many writers want to make big bucks writing. Flipside, many journalists want to “change the world”, usually by fixing something that is less broke than their ideas would make it (IMNSHO) (in my not so humble opinion).
I think the secret of happiness, in writing and other aspects of life, is a cheerful ruthless self-honesty. But how to convey that to the clueless? Not my circus.