Skip to content
Facebook page opens in new windowTwitter page opens in new windowMail page opens in new window
Search:
Miriam Herin, Author
Tips for Fiction Writers, Publishing Novels, Blogging and Publishing
Miriam Herin, AuthorMiriam Herin, Author
  • Home
  • Meet Miriam
  • A Stone for Bread
  • Absolution
  • Buy
  • Short Stories
  • Blog Posts
  • Events
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Meet Miriam
  • A Stone for Bread
  • Absolution
  • Buy
  • Short Stories
  • Blog Posts
  • Events
  • Contact

Necessary Arrogance

 

Writing is a tough business. Gratification (publishing) can be long in coming. If and when it does, royalties are usually insufficient to live on, sometimes even nonexistent, especially when averaged over the months or years and costs it’s taken to finish a manuscript and get it accepted for publication.

Once published, we have to sell ourselves. We have to create websites, blogs, develop e-mail lists, contact bookstores, apply to writers’ conferences. In short, we have to keep our books “alive” and out there. Publishers may do some of this but not nearly enough these days, unless we’re one of their top sellers. Yet even the most successful writers face pressures to get their next book out quickly, even while making the rounds of book clubs and writer’s events for the current book.

After publication, we face reviewers, some of whom aren’t kind and negatively affect sales. Then there’re those Amazon and Goodreads 1 stars that can deflate us no matter how many 4 and 5 stars we’ve received.

Two years ago, when Atlanta Braves’ star Chipper Jones retired, a news article referred to what Jones’ called “Necessary Arrogance,” the personal mantra that carried him through the ups and downs of his outstanding career.

If you’re a new writer hoping to get published or a seasoned writer who’s chosen “to stick with it,” Chipper’s mantra is for you. It doesn’t mean we’re to “swagger” or remake ourselves into arrogant s.o.b.s. It means writers need to assume arrogance (or less abrasively put “self-confidence”) when we contact agents or editors or walk into a venue to sell our books or stand in front of a large crowd to explain why our book is worth buying. Necessary arrogance is the pep talk we give ourselves when we’re nervous or intimidated or ready to quit writing altogether. I like to think necessary arrogance is protective armor in this difficult and often ego-bruising endeavor.

 

Note: For an excellent “reality check” for what it takes to persevere as writers, take a look at Rachel Shteir’s recent NY Times article “Failure, Writing’s Constant Companion.”

Post navigation

PreviousPrevious post:BarrelsNextNext post:Butt In, Distractions Out
Buy Miriam’s Books

A Stone for Bread by Miriam Herin

Recent Posts
  • On May 11, 2020, Miriam’s second novel A Stone for Bread won the 2020 Eric Hoffer competition Legacy Award, which placed the novel on the short list for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize. Prior to publication, the Stone for Bread manuscript was a top-ten finalist in the 2014 International Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Novel Competition. In 2016, it was nominated for North Carolina’s prestigious Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. Published by Livingston Press of the University of West Alabama, the novel received a starred Kirkus review through the Kirkus Indy program and was cited by Kirkus as an Indy Best book of the year for 2016. It was a 2017 Finalist in the International Book Awards, Literary Fiction category.
    February 21, 2022
  • Coming Soon: THE BASILISK, a novel of 12th Century France
    February 21, 2022
  • Coming Soon, Miriam’s medieval novel THE BASILISK
    February 17, 2022
  • 1. Lucky, The Backstory: A Grassy Field and a Basketball Goal
    April 9, 2019
My Readers Say

With a sharp eye for detail, Herin weaves a riveting and compassionate narrative out of lifelines that have echoed across the decades and become part of my own.

L.C. Fiore

This is a supremely ambitious book from a thoroughly gifted writer.

Joseph Bathanti

But here’s the main thing I have to tell you: A Stone For Bread is an irresistible page-turner.

Judy Goldman
Contact Miriam Herin
Miriam Herin on GoodReads

Find us on:

Twitter page opens in new windowMail page opens in new window
© 2022 Miriam Herin, All Rights Reserved