The Write Attitude - StoryBundle

Kristine Kathryn Rusch sold more than 35 million books worldwide. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance.

Her novels made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction appeared in more than twenty best-of-the-year collections. She won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.

She occasionally blogs about publishing on her website. However, she blogs about publishing weekly on her Patreon page, patreon.com/kristinekathrynrusch. Her newsletter often contains information about deals for writers.

The Write Attitude by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Writers work alone, and most of them make stories up for a living. Those two facts make writing very difficult. Writers often quit because they believe something untrue. Without a support system, those beliefs take over.

The Write Attitude provides that support system. With chapters on everything from believing in oneself to learning how to clear the critical voices from the office, this book shows writers how to get through even the darkest night of the soul.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch knows a thing or two about writing. A professional writer since the age of sixteen, she survived the ups and downs of publishing for five decades. All of the advice in this book comes from those experiences.

CURATOR'S NOTE

Sometimes I scare myself, usually when I write little things like this one. My writing first appeared fifty (yes, fifty) years ago, when I wrote a column for the local paper about the doings at my high school. I've published nonfiction ever since. It took another decade before my fiction saw print. Since then, I've run publishing companies, become an award-winning editor, won awards for my fiction in every genre I've tried, and sold over 35 million copies of my books. And I still have attitude problems on some days. I overcome them, usually. And if they threaten to overwhelm me, I write about it. Which is how this book came about. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

REVIEWS

"[Kristine Kathryn Rusch's weekly publishing blog]…is full of sound advice and analysis about what's going on."
– Jeff Baker, The Oregonian
"I would highly recommend reading this book and learning from the wisdom of a writing veteran like Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She has written professionally for nearly four decades across science-fiction, fantasy, mystery, and the romance genres. Her writing advice and experience in publishing provides a brutally honest perspective about the business and how creatives can survive and thrive to have a long-term writing career."
– Kammbia Book Review on the first edition of The Write Attitude
"Rusch's advice is more than a guide to a freelancing career; it's a guide to handling any aspect of life through turbulent waters."
– Michael A. Burstein, award-winning author of I Remember the Future

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

From the introduction:

As I started to write the posts, I realized I was writing less about how to write than I was about attitudes. Attitude makes the difference between a successful writer and a wannabe writer.

I don't just mean attitude as in that happy-go-lucky you-can-do-it! rah-rah stuff you find in most how to write (or how to do anything) books. I mean the way that a writer should look at her writing, her career, and her life in order to succeed.

Before I go further, I should define a few things.

When I talk about writing, I mean the actual creative part of the process. Creating new words. Playing. Not revision, not rewriting, not all the drudgery stuff your English teacher had you do in high school.

When I talk about career, I don't mean hobby. I really don't. And I don't mean something you do while you have a day job. I mean a career in writing that lasts for decades, not one that will last maybe five good years before petering out. I've been at this career since I was sixteen. I've had ups and I've had downs, and I've weathered all of them—by having, finding, or rekindling the right attitude.

When I talk about life, I mean the stuff you do in addition to your writing. It's all part of the package that is you. Your life informs your writing. Your writing can intrude on your life, if you let it. Your life will intrude on your writing at times.

The key is to make writing part of your life, but not your entire life.

If you want to be a career writer—someone who has decades of writing and publishing—then you must find the right balance for you. You will give up things and you will also find things because of the writing.

Because I assembled this book from blog posts, the book is anecdotal. After I finished the initial posts, I thumbed through what I had written in years of blogging on writing and publishing, and found some other posts that were, in some ways, even closer to the idea of this book.

I decided not to cut the posts much. I didn't want this to be a standard how-to book, only filled with advice and shoulds. I think shoulds are deadly to the writer.

Instead, I left the posts mostly intact because they were written in the moment, and they show how I grappled with large problems that came my way.

I wrote these through serious illness, the loss of friends and family, the near-loss of my career, and the start of several businesses (not just writing-related). I share some ups here as well as some downs.

I am rather amazed at how clearly my attitude comes through these posts. The attitude—my strong desire to write and to remain the writer I want to be—informs almost every word.