A client offers praise to a deserving writer.

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A client offers praise to a deserving writer.

August 13, 2024August 14, 2024 39

This is a text conversation with a client today:

Client: Brian Ackley is great!

Me: He surely is. He’s been on my writer roster for years. Excellent and sensitive writer with a fantastic client service attitude.

He IS…I feel fortunate to have him, he’s different, if you know what I mean, and I love that. This book is personal for me. I don’t care if it only sells one copy. Not worried about the cost because the first copy is priceless to me, and if I own the only one, so be it. Thanks for working with me.

I hear from a lot of writers who want to be on my roster. When I have an opening, I choose the best. That’s not some dumb sales nonsense. It’s a fact. I want you to get what you’re paying for, and I also don’t want you calling me and screaming about a writer’s skills or attitude. Makes life easier for everyone.

Amen. He’s a keeper. I’m not patient, but I don’t want to rush his work because we’re in sync and I’m enjoying the ride. I did 32 years in the Army, but before that I was a creative. I lost and miss the ability to be creative, and this process is helping me. It’s therapeutic and restorative for an old soldier with PTSD and pride. That’s why the book means more to me than sales. I have something to prove to myself and others. I miss art and being creative. I’m not putting a price on that. This retired colonel is investing in me again. I won’t hold you, have a great evening and keep picking the great writers.

If that’s not an endorsement, I don’t know what is!

UPDATE: A text from Brian Ackley:

It was nice to share your blog post with my wife. She’ll tell you that I work too much and that I’m always thinking about some project, even when we’re on vacation or taking a walk. It’s not entirely true, but I am almost always on my computer, and balancing work with family time is tough. So seeing that my work means something to others makes it easier for her to accept my work habits and choice of profession. And it’s not like I brag to her every time someone says something nice about me. It’s rare that she gets to see this recognition. Thanks for sharing!

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

John Campbell

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Stephen Wright

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.

J.K. Rowling

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem