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“Ten Things I’ve Learned” by Stephen Leigh (Part Two -- see yesterday's post for Part One)
6: In the beginning, always say “yes”
This will probably be somewhat contradictory against some of the other advice I’m ladling out, but that’s okay. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
What’s important early in your career is that you’re working—making writing that dirty habit I mentioned earlier, right? It’s also important that you’re wide rather than narrow in what you’re willing to attempt and what you’re willing to do. When you start out, you’re still not only trying to find your own unique voice, you’re also trying to figure out what you do best, and what you enjoy doing best.
I started out writing short stories. One of things I eventually realized was that I was trying to cram too much story into too small a space. I was essentially trying to shove a novel’s worth of idea into the container of a short story, and as a result, my stories were 1) not very good, and 2) were getting increasingly longer.
Something in me wanted me to be a novelist. Not a poet. Not a short story writer. Not an essayist. I enjoy writing short fiction (and have written lots of it—and hey, I think I’m finally getting better at it...). I enjoy writing poetry (though I think that I would have to study poetry far more than I have to be anything close to a decent poet). I like writing creative nonfiction as well. But mostly, I know I that I like the scope and breadth of character and story that I can examine in a novel.
If you don’t try your hand at everything that’s possible for you, you may never discover what it is that you really like. So don’t shun poetry. Don’t shun creative nonfiction. Don’t shun short fiction. Don’t be afraid to attempt a novel. Try every genre. Try every style and every approach. Experiment. Bend and break all the rules of good writing you’ve been taught. Push the envelope.
Try everything. You’ll fail often enough—because that’s what we all do when we’re learning—but let those failures teach you. When someone asks “Have you ever tried this?” and you haven’t, give it a shot. If you see a market report that sounds vaguely interesting but isn’t something you’ve attempted before, go for it and submit your effort. If someone asks you to write something for them, even if it’s entirely outside your experience, say “Sure, I’ll do that for you.”
Say yes to everything.
Further on in your career, you’ll inevitably reach a point where you’ll need to learn to say “no” in order to retain your sanity and to have any chance at an unstressed life. There is such a thing as having to juggle too many projects at once without crashing and burning at the same time. But saying “no” is a trick you can always learn later. Hopefully.
For now, the answer is “yes!”
7: Don’t write for fame
Writers have egos.
How’s that for the world’s most obvious “Duh!” statement?
Actually, when you think about it, the whole “submission” process is fraught with ego. After all, in sending out your story, poem, article, or novel, you’re essentially saying “Hey, I think this is so damned good that everyone should read it.”
Writers need ego. We need to think we’re capable of doing something special or we wouldn’t even make the attempt. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of self-confidence.
Just don’t let your expectations destroy you.
When I started out, I wanted fame. I wanted my name to be on the lips of every reader. I wanted to top the best-seller list. I wanted everyone to say “Oh yeah, he’s that brilliant writer who wrote…”
Here’s the problem with chasing fame: you can’t catch Fame from behind. Fame, if it wants to, will instead catch you.
Let’s say that the current Big Thing in bestsellers are novels about zombie were-weasels in Victorian London, and you’re thinking that hey, I can do that as well or better than the one I just read that’s currently #1 on the NY Times list. And maybe you can. But the reality is that by the time you research Victorian London and zombie were-weasels, finish plotting, drafting, and revising your novel, and start sending it out, the new Big Thing will be romances set in haunted RVs in the desert, and the editor will look at your zombie were-weasel novel and just shake her head. It could be the best zombie were-weasel novel ever written, and it’ll still get rejected because it’s already passé.
You can’t catch the current popular wave of publishing. Ever. And you shouldn’t even try to do so.
Want to be famous? Imitation won’t get you fame. What might do that is creating the next Big Thing, but you won’t know that you’ve done that until it happens. The reality is that most writers never manage to do so… but that’s okay.
You’ll get fame if Fame wants you. If it doesn’t (and be aware that it’s a fickle, fickle master), you won’t. Whether or not you ever become famous is not under your control: therefore, don’t worry about it. At all.
What should you be writing? Well, be patient. That’s covered under Realization #9.
8: Don’t write for money
Don’t get me wrong here. I like it when I get paid for the work I do. I want to be paid for my writing. I make a decent percentage of my annual income from writing and I don’t want that to stop. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being paid for your creative output.
What’s wrong, in my opinion, is when the money is the only reason you’re doing something.
This one took me awhile to process myself, alas. It’s also an easy trap into which to fall. I’ve fallen into it more than once—and hey, let’s be honest: if someone dangles enough money in front of me, I may yet fall into it again. I’m a slow learner sometimes.
Yes, I’ve written novels strictly because there was decent money involved, even though I wasn’t incredibly enthused by the project because it wasn’t mine but someone else’s. Here’s what I’ve found, every single time I’ve done that: I’ve ending up hating the project, it’s been a terrific slog to finish, and I haven’t been happy with the outcome.
Mind you, there are times when you might have to do this, so if it happens, don’t beat yourself up too badly. How many of you hate the job you’re doing now, after all? How many of you dread slogging into the office every last weekday morning, and can’t wait until you can leave again? How many of you are laboring strictly for the paycheck and benefits you get as a result, because you need the money just to survive?
If that’s the case, you already understand what I’m talking about. If writing is your sole source of income, please feel free to disregard this piece of advice, since you may well have to undertake assignments that don’t really interest you simply to pay the bills. Do it if you must -- because I certainly have.
But… be aware that you might end up poisoning the well. You might make writing something you dread rather than something you do because you can’t stand not to write. You might make writing just another lousy job. You don’t want to end up being the bitter, jaded writer whose first question is always “How much are you going to pay me for this?”
Writing purely for fame or purely for money are the wrong reasons to choose writing as a career. Which is why we have Realization #9...
9: Write for passion
So if you’re not supposed to write for money or for fame, what the hell should drive your writing?
You should be writing because you’re writing something that you absolutely love. You should be writing because what you’re working on is something that you can’t not work on. You should be writing because you believe passionately in what you’re writing: whatever that may be, whatever genre it happens to be in, whether the work is serious or comic or somewhere in between.
Good things happen when you’re writing simply for the joy of the work you’re doing. You look forward to working on the current project. You enjoy your work—all of it, from drafting through revision to final polishing to marketing to (hopefully) the eventual publication. You finish the work you start.
This is especially essential for novels. The longer the work, the more it had better be a work of passion—because if it’s not, the great likelihood is that you won’t finish it. It’s perhaps less critical with poetry or short fiction or short nonfiction, not because they’re inherently easier to write, but the time expended tends to be far shorter than with novels. But even then…
When you write something that you’re passionate about, it’s easy to find the time to work on it, because that’s what you want to do. You’ll want to make it the absolute best work you can make it. You’ll be willing to take the time to inspect and polish, to revise and revise and revise again to make the words sparkle. You’ll make it good, and if you’re lucky, you’ll even make it great.
That’s what passion can give that nothing else can: the drive you need to make your work your absolute best work. Passion will make you push beyond your current boundaries, to explore aspects of the craft you hadn’t expected, to become a better writer because the work demands more of you.
Leaning the craft is a function of Intellect: you have to do that too, to be a decent writer. You have to learn the craft. But passion is all about the heart and being willing to tear open a part of yourself and let it bleed onto the page, if that’s what it takes. It’s about being willing to be vulnerable and all the risk that implies.
But (and I swear this is the truth) a good reader can tell when something is written with passion and when it is not, and the difference is stark to them. Write with passion, and your work has the chance of being special and great; write without passion, and it will never be either of those.
10: Enjoy what you receive
It’s easy to get so caught up in life and your career and your expectations that you forget to take the time to enjoy what’s happening. So you’ve set up a book signing in your local bookstore, you’re ensconced behind a towering rampart of your shiny new publication, and you’re hoping for a line that stretches for blocks around the bookstore. But what you get are two friends whose books you already signed a week ago and one stranger who’s buying your book mostly because you look so pitiful sitting there all alone. Period.
Sucks, doesn’t it? How the hell are you supposed to feel good about this, huh?
It is what it is. Talk to your friends as long as they’ll stay. Talk especially to that stranger who bought your book—she’ll tell a half dozen other people about this cool book and how you sat there and talked to her about it, and a couple of them will come in to the bookstore to buy the stock you signed.
This is nothing new for a writer, no matter how well-known. Understand that all of us have sat behind the rampart of new books for a signing like that. Sometimes those things go well, sometimes they don’t. It’s nothing new, it’s not your fault, and the universe doesn’t hate you. It’s what life has deigned to give you today and you can’t change it, so you might as well enjoy it.
Celebrate the good things that happen along the way and take the time to relish them. What you don’t want is to look back later and realize how you wasted your best times worrying and always wanting more.
Look, one of these days if you’re persistent and dedicated and stubborn and passionate enough about this craft, you’re going to sell your first (or second or third, or tenth or twentieth) story, and you have a choice. You can think that it’s about fucking time the universe recognized your awesome talent and allowed this to happen, and now that it has happened, it’s probably going to be fucking forever until it happens again. Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Eeyore?
Or you can embrace those successes and revel in them. Each time, you can taste all the pleasure the moment holds, then carefully place the memory in the section of your mind labeled “Excellent Stuff To Recall.” You can think that maybe, perhaps, the universe has just aligned itself a little more in your favor, and that it’s now more likely that things like this will continue to happen.
Yeah, I know. Sometimes it’s really hard to avoid the dark universe, Eeyore’s universe. We all struggle so hard and get so many rejections that depressing thoughts sometimes dominate. I still fail at holding onto the brighter place myself. The truth is that the universe itself probably doesn’t care one way or the other, but which way of thinking gives you more joy? Which way of thinking makes you feel better? Which way of thinking is more likely to help you persist, to push yourself even harder than you already are?
So take the time to enjoy each step along the way. Stay in those moments as long as you can. Take pleasure in them and celebrate them, because you really can’t know what the future holds.
Enjoy what you’re doing while you’re actually doing it. It’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
*******
So those are some of my insights after decades in this business. There is one further, overarching Truth to cover, though, and that this: There’s No Right Way To Write.
Hey, I’m a skeptic. It sets off my alarms when someone tells me “This is the way the world works and it’s the only way the world works.” The little realizations above are my truths. They are what I’ve learned and what has worked (and not worked) for me. That doesn’t mean that any of the above necessarily applies to you, because the last time I checked, you’re not me. You have a different background, a different temperament, a different set of experiences, and—let’s face it—the world continues to change, the publishing world no less than any other, and so what worked in previous years may no longer work now.
Feel free to argue and disagree with anything I’ve said. But if something here resonates with you, if it feels right, then give it a shot. Who knows, maybe it will cause you to miss one of the pitfalls or take a shortcut to the top of that mountain you’re climbing.
Let me know what the view’s like from up there!
6: In the beginning, always say “yes”
This will probably be somewhat contradictory against some of the other advice I’m ladling out, but that’s okay. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
What’s important early in your career is that you’re working—making writing that dirty habit I mentioned earlier, right? It’s also important that you’re wide rather than narrow in what you’re willing to attempt and what you’re willing to do. When you start out, you’re still not only trying to find your own unique voice, you’re also trying to figure out what you do best, and what you enjoy doing best.
I started out writing short stories. One of things I eventually realized was that I was trying to cram too much story into too small a space. I was essentially trying to shove a novel’s worth of idea into the container of a short story, and as a result, my stories were 1) not very good, and 2) were getting increasingly longer.
Something in me wanted me to be a novelist. Not a poet. Not a short story writer. Not an essayist. I enjoy writing short fiction (and have written lots of it—and hey, I think I’m finally getting better at it...). I enjoy writing poetry (though I think that I would have to study poetry far more than I have to be anything close to a decent poet). I like writing creative nonfiction as well. But mostly, I know I that I like the scope and breadth of character and story that I can examine in a novel.
If you don’t try your hand at everything that’s possible for you, you may never discover what it is that you really like. So don’t shun poetry. Don’t shun creative nonfiction. Don’t shun short fiction. Don’t be afraid to attempt a novel. Try every genre. Try every style and every approach. Experiment. Bend and break all the rules of good writing you’ve been taught. Push the envelope.
Try everything. You’ll fail often enough—because that’s what we all do when we’re learning—but let those failures teach you. When someone asks “Have you ever tried this?” and you haven’t, give it a shot. If you see a market report that sounds vaguely interesting but isn’t something you’ve attempted before, go for it and submit your effort. If someone asks you to write something for them, even if it’s entirely outside your experience, say “Sure, I’ll do that for you.”
Say yes to everything.
Further on in your career, you’ll inevitably reach a point where you’ll need to learn to say “no” in order to retain your sanity and to have any chance at an unstressed life. There is such a thing as having to juggle too many projects at once without crashing and burning at the same time. But saying “no” is a trick you can always learn later. Hopefully.
For now, the answer is “yes!”
7: Don’t write for fame
Writers have egos.
How’s that for the world’s most obvious “Duh!” statement?
Actually, when you think about it, the whole “submission” process is fraught with ego. After all, in sending out your story, poem, article, or novel, you’re essentially saying “Hey, I think this is so damned good that everyone should read it.”
Writers need ego. We need to think we’re capable of doing something special or we wouldn’t even make the attempt. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of self-confidence.
Just don’t let your expectations destroy you.
When I started out, I wanted fame. I wanted my name to be on the lips of every reader. I wanted to top the best-seller list. I wanted everyone to say “Oh yeah, he’s that brilliant writer who wrote…”
Here’s the problem with chasing fame: you can’t catch Fame from behind. Fame, if it wants to, will instead catch you.
Let’s say that the current Big Thing in bestsellers are novels about zombie were-weasels in Victorian London, and you’re thinking that hey, I can do that as well or better than the one I just read that’s currently #1 on the NY Times list. And maybe you can. But the reality is that by the time you research Victorian London and zombie were-weasels, finish plotting, drafting, and revising your novel, and start sending it out, the new Big Thing will be romances set in haunted RVs in the desert, and the editor will look at your zombie were-weasel novel and just shake her head. It could be the best zombie were-weasel novel ever written, and it’ll still get rejected because it’s already passé.
You can’t catch the current popular wave of publishing. Ever. And you shouldn’t even try to do so.
Want to be famous? Imitation won’t get you fame. What might do that is creating the next Big Thing, but you won’t know that you’ve done that until it happens. The reality is that most writers never manage to do so… but that’s okay.
You’ll get fame if Fame wants you. If it doesn’t (and be aware that it’s a fickle, fickle master), you won’t. Whether or not you ever become famous is not under your control: therefore, don’t worry about it. At all.
What should you be writing? Well, be patient. That’s covered under Realization #9.
8: Don’t write for money
Don’t get me wrong here. I like it when I get paid for the work I do. I want to be paid for my writing. I make a decent percentage of my annual income from writing and I don’t want that to stop. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being paid for your creative output.
What’s wrong, in my opinion, is when the money is the only reason you’re doing something.
This one took me awhile to process myself, alas. It’s also an easy trap into which to fall. I’ve fallen into it more than once—and hey, let’s be honest: if someone dangles enough money in front of me, I may yet fall into it again. I’m a slow learner sometimes.
Yes, I’ve written novels strictly because there was decent money involved, even though I wasn’t incredibly enthused by the project because it wasn’t mine but someone else’s. Here’s what I’ve found, every single time I’ve done that: I’ve ending up hating the project, it’s been a terrific slog to finish, and I haven’t been happy with the outcome.
Mind you, there are times when you might have to do this, so if it happens, don’t beat yourself up too badly. How many of you hate the job you’re doing now, after all? How many of you dread slogging into the office every last weekday morning, and can’t wait until you can leave again? How many of you are laboring strictly for the paycheck and benefits you get as a result, because you need the money just to survive?
If that’s the case, you already understand what I’m talking about. If writing is your sole source of income, please feel free to disregard this piece of advice, since you may well have to undertake assignments that don’t really interest you simply to pay the bills. Do it if you must -- because I certainly have.
But… be aware that you might end up poisoning the well. You might make writing something you dread rather than something you do because you can’t stand not to write. You might make writing just another lousy job. You don’t want to end up being the bitter, jaded writer whose first question is always “How much are you going to pay me for this?”
Writing purely for fame or purely for money are the wrong reasons to choose writing as a career. Which is why we have Realization #9...
9: Write for passion
So if you’re not supposed to write for money or for fame, what the hell should drive your writing?
You should be writing because you’re writing something that you absolutely love. You should be writing because what you’re working on is something that you can’t not work on. You should be writing because you believe passionately in what you’re writing: whatever that may be, whatever genre it happens to be in, whether the work is serious or comic or somewhere in between.
Good things happen when you’re writing simply for the joy of the work you’re doing. You look forward to working on the current project. You enjoy your work—all of it, from drafting through revision to final polishing to marketing to (hopefully) the eventual publication. You finish the work you start.
This is especially essential for novels. The longer the work, the more it had better be a work of passion—because if it’s not, the great likelihood is that you won’t finish it. It’s perhaps less critical with poetry or short fiction or short nonfiction, not because they’re inherently easier to write, but the time expended tends to be far shorter than with novels. But even then…
When you write something that you’re passionate about, it’s easy to find the time to work on it, because that’s what you want to do. You’ll want to make it the absolute best work you can make it. You’ll be willing to take the time to inspect and polish, to revise and revise and revise again to make the words sparkle. You’ll make it good, and if you’re lucky, you’ll even make it great.
That’s what passion can give that nothing else can: the drive you need to make your work your absolute best work. Passion will make you push beyond your current boundaries, to explore aspects of the craft you hadn’t expected, to become a better writer because the work demands more of you.
Leaning the craft is a function of Intellect: you have to do that too, to be a decent writer. You have to learn the craft. But passion is all about the heart and being willing to tear open a part of yourself and let it bleed onto the page, if that’s what it takes. It’s about being willing to be vulnerable and all the risk that implies.
But (and I swear this is the truth) a good reader can tell when something is written with passion and when it is not, and the difference is stark to them. Write with passion, and your work has the chance of being special and great; write without passion, and it will never be either of those.
10: Enjoy what you receive
It’s easy to get so caught up in life and your career and your expectations that you forget to take the time to enjoy what’s happening. So you’ve set up a book signing in your local bookstore, you’re ensconced behind a towering rampart of your shiny new publication, and you’re hoping for a line that stretches for blocks around the bookstore. But what you get are two friends whose books you already signed a week ago and one stranger who’s buying your book mostly because you look so pitiful sitting there all alone. Period.
Sucks, doesn’t it? How the hell are you supposed to feel good about this, huh?
It is what it is. Talk to your friends as long as they’ll stay. Talk especially to that stranger who bought your book—she’ll tell a half dozen other people about this cool book and how you sat there and talked to her about it, and a couple of them will come in to the bookstore to buy the stock you signed.
This is nothing new for a writer, no matter how well-known. Understand that all of us have sat behind the rampart of new books for a signing like that. Sometimes those things go well, sometimes they don’t. It’s nothing new, it’s not your fault, and the universe doesn’t hate you. It’s what life has deigned to give you today and you can’t change it, so you might as well enjoy it.
Celebrate the good things that happen along the way and take the time to relish them. What you don’t want is to look back later and realize how you wasted your best times worrying and always wanting more.
Look, one of these days if you’re persistent and dedicated and stubborn and passionate enough about this craft, you’re going to sell your first (or second or third, or tenth or twentieth) story, and you have a choice. You can think that it’s about fucking time the universe recognized your awesome talent and allowed this to happen, and now that it has happened, it’s probably going to be fucking forever until it happens again. Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Eeyore?
Or you can embrace those successes and revel in them. Each time, you can taste all the pleasure the moment holds, then carefully place the memory in the section of your mind labeled “Excellent Stuff To Recall.” You can think that maybe, perhaps, the universe has just aligned itself a little more in your favor, and that it’s now more likely that things like this will continue to happen.
Yeah, I know. Sometimes it’s really hard to avoid the dark universe, Eeyore’s universe. We all struggle so hard and get so many rejections that depressing thoughts sometimes dominate. I still fail at holding onto the brighter place myself. The truth is that the universe itself probably doesn’t care one way or the other, but which way of thinking gives you more joy? Which way of thinking makes you feel better? Which way of thinking is more likely to help you persist, to push yourself even harder than you already are?
So take the time to enjoy each step along the way. Stay in those moments as long as you can. Take pleasure in them and celebrate them, because you really can’t know what the future holds.
Enjoy what you’re doing while you’re actually doing it. It’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
*******
So those are some of my insights after decades in this business. There is one further, overarching Truth to cover, though, and that this: There’s No Right Way To Write.
Hey, I’m a skeptic. It sets off my alarms when someone tells me “This is the way the world works and it’s the only way the world works.” The little realizations above are my truths. They are what I’ve learned and what has worked (and not worked) for me. That doesn’t mean that any of the above necessarily applies to you, because the last time I checked, you’re not me. You have a different background, a different temperament, a different set of experiences, and—let’s face it—the world continues to change, the publishing world no less than any other, and so what worked in previous years may no longer work now.
Feel free to argue and disagree with anything I’ve said. But if something here resonates with you, if it feels right, then give it a shot. Who knows, maybe it will cause you to miss one of the pitfalls or take a shortcut to the top of that mountain you’re climbing.
Let me know what the view’s like from up there!
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