I’m just going to grumble a bit about being covered with the muck myself… my complaint… them with resources, gots opportunity…
Case in point: Attend conferences. It is a strong recommendation for networking in the pre-published stage of a writing career, which I’d like to think I am. The problem? The day job. The family. And the lack of money to pay for conference, hotel or eating out. You see… I’m the only wage earner in my family right now. Michigan’s economy has been in recession since 2001 and I’m just darned lucky to HAVE a job. So physical conferences are an impossibility. [I throw out a HUGE thanks to Elizabeth for alerting me to the existence of online writer’s conferences, and I plan to make use of them once I can research a little which are most appropriate for me.]
Issue #2: Know your market. I need to confess that I get 95% of my reading material at the library. I just can’t afford to buy brand, spanking new books very often. I reserve the honor for the rare books I will read several times through. I LOVE books, and I read as much as I can fit in (between the job, the writing, the family…) so mostly just on my commute—still, about 90 minutes a day. It just isn’t CURRENT.
Issue #3: Time. I’ve listed my time suckers already, but there are other things that require time. The blog I like, so it’s not too tough to steal half an hour I can call a lunch hour for that. But researching ‘books in my genre’, agents, reading all the industry and writer info out there (this one I ALSO like, but have little time for). It just takes a lot of time I don’t have.
What it all leaves me is fantasizing about a some day when I am only a writer for my job, when I can split my work day between writing and networking, instead of having to take out that bothersome trouble of spending 9 hours answering to the people responsible for my paycheck. But I have now read enough to think… this takes a while… no day job bye-bye until I hit BIG which may not be for several books, if ever…
So I just felt compelled to throw a little pity party… tantrum over…
I would LOVE to know though, what the norm is for published authors… How many books that are how successful does it take before a person can give up supplemental income?