Becoming A Writer/Breaking Into The Business

I'm going to assume for some reason that at least a few of the posters here either have experience in the field, or have researched it.

How did you get into it? How did you manage to get published? How does someone with no experience get jobs as a freelancer?

I know, it's kind of a stupid thing to ask here, but I've felt kind of overwhelmed in trying to get into it myself. I'm often told I'm a good storyteller, and I describe and explain things well, and I do enjoy writing. How am I supposed to compete with people with teams of writers who each went to college specifically for the writing field though?

How am I supposed to compete

Join a writers' workshop perhaps?

Best advice I could give is: don't bother unless you have a complete piece written and done to your taste.

Seriously. It's just fair. Do you think your father should risk his job for some random faggot who thinks he's the new Shakespeare? Or course not. Wanna get published? Bring out them finished works.

Now, if you have a piece done, then you WILL get published. Much worse writers get published constantly. Just like I wasn't pessimistic last paragraph, I'm not optimistic in this one. Publishers and readers are people. They're used to sub-par stuff. And most of the time they can't tell shit from gold at first, anyway.

Now then.
You've got a piece complete. Fine! You get a list of publishers near you and come visit them personally. "I'm a writer", you say, "and I want to publish this work of mine. I like your style, so I want you to do the job. Here's the CD with the complete, final version of the work."

Now, get ready: out of ten publishers, seven are going to tell you that you suck (after taking a months time reading your work) even if you're the king of prose. They're dull bitter assclowns, those editors. Don't talk back. Just blacklist them so that you won't spend any more time on them. "Goodbye," and off you go to another one.
#7 and #8 are gona propose to purchase all rights for your story and characters forever for a price of one dollar. Tell them you'll think on that when you're done considering all other proposals.

The last one is going to propose purchasing exclusive rights for your work for a year. Maximum three years. That's the one you need. Got several ones like that? Fine, pick the most luxurous one. Pick the one that published all those books you purchased in your bookstore, because your main gain here is audience and experience, not money: you can't get rich with your first work, anyway.

And there you go: you just got published. Earned laughable money. And a chance to become a renowned author, if you're good enough. Now, writing good stuff is up to you. You might want to listen to your readers. Just don't listen to your editors, most of whom don't know what they're talking about. Their job is selling crap as mediocrity, so they deal with everything as if it was crap that needs to get dressed up. They're going to change the title of your story from, I dunno, "Homini Dei, Gloria Hominus" to "Exciting Adventures". Fine, who cares. If this easily obscures best qualities of your writing, than your shit was too fragile for the generic reader to comprehend anyway.

So, there we go.

Wow, this gives me some hope. I'm not the OP, but I've been playing with the idea of writing for a long time now. I like it, but I don't have that "YOU'RE NOT A WRITER UNLESS YOU OMG HAVE TO WRITE ALL THE TIME" thing. Fuck, I just want to make some money doing something I might be good at.

>"Homini Dei, Gloria Hominus" to "Exciting Adventures"

I LOL'd.

>>4
>>"Homini..."

I lol'd, great summation of the American market.

Anyway, to add onto what anonymous said:

Writing can be easy, or it can be hard. It's all up to you.

Whether you wrestle over one word for weeks or you just write off the top of your head for a couple of days and are convinced you've written War and Peace – it doesn't matter. Publishing your first story is always going to be nerve wracking.

The trick to writing and publishing is to believe in your words. You're a human (despite the fact you visit this website and probably sit on your couch all day, watching anime and fapping). Other people in the world are human (despite what you might want to believe). Thus, you share a connection with everyone. If you can get others to connect with your work – you win. Whether what you've written or not is vapid is irrelevant.

You just need to lie to yourself and keep pushing your story. Someone will publish it. Now, money? Don't write for money, that's all I'll say.

Finally, if you lack the ability to write, due to education or whatever... that's the easiest thing to remedy. Start off with "The Elements of Style" by William Strunk Jr.  – it's free online. Everyone recommends it, and it's no wonder. You'll be able to write intelligibly in a few days and with a little practice. Just move on from there.

>>4
You still have to write all the time to be a writer. Not because it's some prerequisite to enter the club, but because writing takes quite a bit of time. Sadly, it's true.

And by "all the time" I mean at least a few hours a day. Make yourself a rule to write, dunno, 10 thousand symbols (about 1.5 thousand words) a day. That's, like, minimum for beaing a professional writer.

The trick is, you can't just randomly jump to your table and write stuff. When you sit down, you immediately get stuck. The reasons for it are one of the two:

1. You like your story idea leass than you thought (the feared "writer's block", actually - not so scary, see below);
2. You can't grasp how to put that shit on paper for the life of you.

Both are gona happen to you, and sole remedy is WRITING MORE no matter what, so that you could:
1. Finally understand what you like;
2. Finally find a way to get it on the paper right.

You can't do either without working a few hours a day. Think of daily writing as meditation. You have to get into writing. Put on the writer's mentality. Think with quality prose.

Writing is kind of daydreaming. Now, you can't just tell you head to dream about something before going to bed. You can more-or-less do that if you try long enough and hard enough, though, right? Same with writing.

So, that's it.

I hope I was helpful.

There's actually some pretty good advice in here.

>>3
Also not OP, but my problem with deciding on a publisher is that everyone I've read seems to be published by Del Rey/Random House, which seems to have a pretty fuck-no policy on unsolicited submissions, and are pretty insistent about having an agent give the manuscripts to them. The only one I've found that's open to them is Tor.

>>9
In the US, you better have an agent, yeah. introducing yourself to one is same as introducing yourself to a publisher, though. Just beware:
- you never ever pay to you agent;
- like, never ever pay a penny to him from your pocket, hear?
- he takes 15% of everything he earns you with your works;
- he mightsuggest 20% - you decide;
- she might suggest 25% - agree only if she also signs a contract to perform daily fellatio on you and her face looks like it's worth it.

In some countries, though, publishers prefer dealing with writers themselves. Anyway, the process of getting a publisher and hiring an agent really is similar:
1. You give them your finished work.
2. You wait for up to three months, perhaps monthly reminding about your existence.
3. You sign a contract if they like your works, and then never ever have to do anything else to get the work published.

Agent might give suggestions as to how change something in your work, especially if it's your first work. These suggestions might or might not be handy, obviously; but, really, they often give pretty good advice.

>>10
Where does one find a good agent?

>>11
I never dealt with one myself, only talked to people who did, because in my country publishers prefer to deal with writers in person. Anyway, people say that one good way is to find some writers that do fiction similar to yours and find out who their agents are.

Most of the time, this kind of information is easily obtainable online. You can even contact the writer and directly ask for their agent's name. That's fine, because that's professional; don't ask for an introduction to the agent, though, 'cause you won't get any.