Top Nine Myths About Novelists

(1) Authors Pay To Get Published
This one makes me want to hurt people. Readers pay publishers and publishers pay authors. If the author pays the publishers, nobody needs readers, so they don’t get them. If some jerkwad wants you to pay to be published, go to any library or bookstore and try to find any of their books. You won’t. Not even one. They can piss off.
(2) The Time You Spend On Facebook Makes You Write Better
No, you’re not getting inspiration from Facebook and Twitter. You’re goofing off. Acceptable and even recommended in small doses, same as any other form of relaxation that helps clear and/or calm your mind. It’s a marathon not a sprint, and breaks are needed. Small doses, though. I find Solitaire more relaxing – only one game, win or lose, then get back to work. On social media, I’m probably flogging my wares, not relaxing.
(3) You Too Can Be A Happy Member of the “Writing Culture”
Oh yeah, read all the books and magazines and spend hours getting drunk with your fellow authors in restaurants. That’s not writing, folks. Writing is something you do alone. If that’s a problem, you’re not a writer, no matter how black your beret and cigarettes.
(4) Novelists Are Rich
Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha.
(5) Novelists Can Sleep As Late As They Want
Not entirely mythical, but the whole “lazy undisciplined lifestyle” is mythical. If you’re sleeping late, you’d better be working late. While you are free to make your own schedule, it must consist largely of parking your butt in a chair and writing. However, the full-time author with no other source of income is rarer than you think, so you’ve probably got to get up early anyway, to go to your regular job. Writing novels is how you stop the pressures of that regular job from making you kill yourself.
(6) Just Steal From Your Friends’ Lives and Your Novels Will All But Write Themselves
Well, the truth is you can steal from anybody. If you find it interesting, steal it and rework it and make it your own. Family, friends, your inner self, strangers on the bus, other novels, whatever. But that freedom to steal doesn’t mean you’re not doing about 95% of the work.
(7) Friends Support Their Writer Friends
Your best friends do. They love your new hairstyle, don’t think those jeans make your butt look fat, and know you’ll succeed as a writer. But not if you go on and on and on about your writing, and they probably don’t want to read it, so change the subject. Then they’ll keep supporting you and everybody will be happy.
(8) Drugs and Alcohol Make You Write Better
They don’t make you a better plumber, engineer, teacher, juggler, or bus driver. What counter-intuitive self-deception makes you think they improve your writing? You know that’s not right, even if you’re telling yourself it is. Listen to your gut on this one, just like you listen to your gut about what is and isn’t good writing.
If I feel the need to go find some of that magic mythical magic that some call inspiration, I get it from a bike ride. Notepad and pen in pocket, always. You might find it somewhere else. But I can guarantee you it won’t be from the needle, the pipe, the spoon, the bottle, or the tinny. Sorry to bear the bad tidings.
(9) You Don’t Need Pants
That one’s true. Yay!