If he (Glass) wanted to create fiction, and shortcut his way to fame, why not simply become a novelist? That at least would have been honest.
shareI won't pretend to know what was going on in that guy's brain, but I would imagine it's easier to get noticed and find work writing nonfiction articles. Especially if you're writing stories that are too good to be true.
shareHe might still write fiction someday, since the California Supreme Court rejected his application to the California Bar Association, in 2014. He still makes almost $200,000 a year at a Los Angeles law firm, but he does not do litigation or official legal work. He preps clients for testifying in personal injury lawsuits (a very fitting irony, don't you think.....?)
One obstacle might be that his first book sold so dismally; fewer than 6,000 copies, I think. He received a $190,000 advance, and the publisher lost money. I doubt he'd get a deal from anyone now. He has no established fiction-writing reputation.
I was thinking the same thing. Then, no one cares if you make stuff up.
shareLots of reasons. Firstly, writing a novel is a lot harder than writing column inches. It takes time, skill with use of sentences and creating a long term narrative to tell your story in a way that is interesting and engages the reader over 250+ pages. Writing articles is very different skill. It involves punching out the entire story in one sentence in a way that engages the reader immediately and demands their attention. Being a good news writer does not make you a potential novelist, any more than being a Hollywood script writer would automatically make you adept at writing newsprint.
Secondly, it's a lot harder to make money from writing novels than it is from writing for magazines/ newspapers. I know a hell of a lot of aspiring writers who worked on a novel for several years only for it to never be picked up by a publisher. I've been in the journalism industry for 15 years and every paycheck has cleared so far, whether my articles were any good or not.
Exactly bh_tafe3 said.
The notion that just because someone writes for a magazine can write a novel is naive. The skills are completely different, and novels (ESPECIALLY Fiction---even more so in Fantasy and Sci-Fi genres) take a monumental amount of plotting, planning, writing, revision, and require a key ingredient: imagination and creativity.
It's one thing to be able to obtain facts, write them out into a short couple page article. You're not actually creating anything --- you are taking what is already in existence and reporting on it, with your own viewpoint, and spin on the article. Depending on the article and media format, the article might have a certain vibe to it (humor, political, educational, etc.)
With novels, you're entering into a completely different world. You have to create a story that begins and ends from page 1 to page 300 (or more). You have to create entertaining characters. You have to write dialogue (a lot of people struggle with this). You have to write creatively and understand how to use comparisons, descriptions, similes, metaphors, etc. without being redundant to the reader...
The list is endless.
This is why some novelists take a year+ to make new books, while a magazine writer can pump out numerous articles in a month. Most of the writer's time for articles is spent investigating (or it used to be --- not so much these days) and not actually writing. A novelist? Their entire life is spent writing books, sun up to sun down. It takes a big effort, especially if you are writing in specific genres.