Sterling Terrell

recovering economist

Taken Short Cuts

Taken Short Cuts

For every one of you that have taken short cuts (and somehow still made it), I think there are 100 people out there like John Erickson.

In fact, my sense is that very few people make it by taking the “easy” route.

People just start at different times.

I mean, one can easily start voice lessons at the age of four, and not make it into a full-time singing career, until age 24.

Most don’t make it. And that’s 20 years of work!

Honestly, it feels like my career arc is headed in this same direction…

By the year 1982, I had served a long apprenticeship as a writer. I hadn’t cheated or taken short cuts. I had been writing four and a half hours every day, seven days a week, for fifteen years. I had collected at least one thousand rejection slips and was ready for someone in the publishing community to give me a chance to practice my craft. When that opportunity didn’t come, I started my own publishing company in my garage.

-John Erickson, Story Craft (Amazon)

A Serious Novelist

A Serious Novelist

I think that if you want to be a serious novelist – or anything else – you should hold loosely to the specifics of it all.

  • If you want to work as a serious novelist, don’t turn down an entry-level job as a reporter. You’re still a writer.
  • If you want to work as a hedge fund analyst, don’t turn down an entry-level job as a financial advisor. You’re still in finance.
  • If you want to work in a zoo, don’t turn down an entry-level job in a vet office. You’re still working with animals.

Get it?

I mean, it’s easier to transfer within a field than from another industry.

Honestly, the second bullet point above is about me. I traded good-for perfect and never did get the kind of job I thought I wanted at the time.

Thank goodness dreams can change.

Plus, you don’t know what providence has in store…

Point and case right here.

Understand: You will get further by making situations win-win too.

I started thinking of myself as a novelist—a serious novelist, if you please, one who would write important novels about important subjects and important places. At that point, if someone had told me, “By the year 1985 you will be best known for a series of humorous books narrated by a ranch dog in Texas,” I would have laughed. Me, write humorous books about a dog? No way!

-John Erickson, Story Craft (Amazon)

Sterling Terrell