The Writer's Friend Foreword @ WritingNow.com
The Writer's Friend -- How to get published and paid. The foreword was written by Ron Franscell, author of Angel Fire and The Deadline.
Plenty of publishing pundits will tell you a writer has no friends in this business.
Yes, there are lots of friendly people out there agents, editors, publicists, publishers, distributors, and booksellers -- but each has a profit motive for chumming up to the source of their raw material: You. The good old days when brilliant editors nurtured writers and their careers in a literary Garden of Eden are over. This is a time when gigantic, hulking, corporate reptiles prowl the publishing landscape. Go ahead, name one renowned editor. Max Perkins is dead. Long live the nameless, faceless mercantilists!
The fact is that some of these people are truly friendly, and all of them are vital to your success as a writer. Each brings a unique talent or knowledge to your team. Knowing how they think and what arouses their own creative juices -- and understanding how your artistic and business interests can blend -- will give you an edge over all those writers who skulk around in an "us versus them" funk. They are on a collision course to an eventual calamity with the publishing industry.
It's helpful to think of yourself as crucial to the process, but not indispensable. For every byline in every national magazine today, there are 100 hungry, but capable, writers who would split their mother's infinitive to be published. Editors know this, and, like you, they will take the path of least resistance if it still leads to their ultimate destination: Publication and profit.
So maybe a writer doesn't have many true friends in the publishing business, but you won't succeed if you have enemies created by a flimsy grasp of the business. It is perfectly natural, even necessary, that you think like an artist while you translate magic from your mind to the page,but when you emerge from your lonely garret, you must also think like a merchant. You must assess the commercial quality of your product, study its market, and put it where somebody will buy it.
The Writer's Friend is a treasure trove of practical advice. It provides some excellent thoughts about how you can become a team player, even the team captain, in getting published. And to get published, you'll need a good team.
It's a good rule for writing, and maybe a good rule for life: Try to understand the other guy. If you do, your art will blossom and maybe, finally, somebody will try to see things your way, too.
Ron Franscell
Author, Angel Fire and The Deadline
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