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Yesterday I started on the topic of approaching writing as a business but before I go further, I need to comment on something. There are people who write for the pure joy/love of it. Maybe they're taking on their memoirs or writing a family history, putting to pen an oral story told from generation to generation, a diary, etc. I stand in awe of such people because I simply don't have the time for that. Although I'd love to write about my grandparents, particularly my grandfather's murder at age 34 and his widow's determination to raise their three young children, it keeps getting pushed to the back burner.

That said, most people I've come across in my travels are pounding away at their computers because they dream of being published. That certainly was the goal of my 100+ students when I was employed as an instructor for a correspondence writing course. The curriculum called for completing twelve assignments, each building on the skills learned in the previous assignment. Students could take either a fiction or nonfiction or track and switching was allowed at certain points. To be honest, I found the assignments rather simplistic, but there was plenty of room for creativity to grow. What, over and over again bothered me was the limits to that creativity. Oh, I could fairly smell my students' drive and passion. They wanted to be read, to have their passions aired. But there was so much they didn't know or understand about this business.
First off, they were limited to writing short fiction or articles. The folks at the institute are to be applauded for their marketing textbooks which list the majority of publishers who accepted short work. But reality is, there's a dearth of short fiction markets, particularly those that pay. In other words, those 100 plus students (and I was only one of who knows how many instructors) were all chasing the same limited market.

But did the institute point that out and was I given permission to do so? No. In other words, we perpetuated the myth. I and my employer played the creativity game while hiding the reality of this business.

Not that it mattered because the vast majority of my students weren't producing publishable work. Neither would completing the course bring them to that point.

More on that tomorrow.

Vonna Harper