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Liz Alterman's avatar

Love this line: "The fire inside your belly needs to be bigger than all of the people trying to put it out." Thank you!

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Bruce Landay's avatar

I write military political technothrillers and when I meet people and tell them I'm a writer they've often replied "I could never do that. I'm not that creative." To me this is a sad statement as lack of creativity or imagination has never been a problem for me. Reigning it in, however, has gotten me into trouble at work, though now that I'm retired that's no longer a limiting factor.

I've written three novels though nothing published yet. I feel my third novel that I'm still working on is publishable so I'm working with an editor to get into final shape, then I'll look for a small publisher. I went to Bookcamp two years ago, a weeklong in residence program for writers working on novels. The professional authors on staff reviewed the first 30 pages of my book and two of them told me I'm writing at a professional level. The one author who described himself as a "word mercenary" told me if I wanted to get published to be insanely stubborn and not give up. I took his advice and know that one day I will get published.

A couple of months ago I sent my book out to a number of beta readers and received some really positive feedback. I know there's a market for what I write, I just have to find my readers. To do that I started a weekly Substack newsletter about what's in the news today inspires lots of science fiction and every week I share examples of books and movies on whatever the theme of the week is. I'm slowly gaining readers.

Thanks for the reminder that we writers are often one bubble off and that's OK, as well as the motivation to keep going!

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