Three Signs of an Amateur Writer
New to the writing community? A few things to think about.
Between moderating Ninja Writers, and the few years that I spent as an intern to a query agent, I’ve seen a lot of new, aspiring authors take their first steps into the world of sharing their work online.
Over time, if you pay attention, you can observe behavioral trends, if you’re so inclined. And, over time, I’ve noticed three hallmarks of amateur writers, all of them who are overly worried about things that they don’t need to be worried about yet.
1. Worrying about people stealing your ideas.
Plagiarism is a thing that happens. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. That is the theft of an extant work, in whole or in part, being published under somebody else’s name.
There are so many amateur authors scared to post their story ideas, because they’re deathly afraid that somebody is going to steal their idea. Their big, precious, special, absolutely unique idea that is going to make them a million dollars.
Uh, no.
First of all, your idea isn’t that unique. If, while you’re writing a book, you don’t read at least a handful of books that make you think “Aw, fuck, this is like my book, but better!” you’re…
