November marks year number ten … numero diez … numéro dix … since I took off my dinosaur floaties, plugged my nose, and jumped headfirst into the deep end of this whole writing thing. To mark the occasion, I thought it’d be fun to pause on my journey and walk over to the edge of the cliff, maybe sit down a moment and take in the vista of the last several years. Look at all the cool and weird and heartbreaking and murky and heart-pounding places I’ve hiked through. What have ten years of writing been like, exactly? What are some things I’ve learned? What have I seen? What are some pitfalls others might want to avoid if venturing this way?
The Dangling Bestseller Carrotcake (because raw carrots? ew gross)
I remember back in 2008 or thereabouts, I decided to write the next best-seller. Oh it was gonna be HUGE! Probably go all international. Hollywood would definitely wanna buy the movie rights. Big blockbuster. We’re talking the biggest thing since Harry Potter.
Okay okay … bwa ha ha ha ha! Ooooh boy! Yeee hee hee! Ahem. *snorts* *wipes a laughter tear* Big breath. Okay I’m ready to continue now. Wait wait. Ho ho hee. Okay. I’m fine now.
Boy was I dumb. Okay so maybe not dumb, per se. Just very VERY naïve. And oh so innocent. I was that guy who said he was gonna take on all 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail in a single stretch with my backpack crammed with hot dogs, cans of baked beans, and maybe some Ramen noodles thrown in for, you know, variety.
I had no idea what I was doing but man was I having fun. For about a year or two. Then I wasn’t having fun anymore. Writing became hard! It was frustrating! Turns out it was, crap man, actual WORK! Where were all the writing fairies? Where were the ponies and rainbows? Wasn’t there supposed to be some kinda Muse or something visiting me every day and telling me what to write? Why was I the only one doing all the hard stuff? Wasn’t Inspiration supposed to be doing some of the heavy lifting here?
Ain’t All Pixie Dust
Part of the problem—okay let’s quit kidding ourselves here—100% of the problem (there, happy now?) was my own personal expectation going into it. I thought stories just sort of, you know, appeared. I am Writer. I am Artiste. I am 10% human and 90% Creative Magician. Abracadabra alakazoo et voilà! smoke and pixie dust and a whiff of binding glue and BEHOLD MY NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING STORY.
The stories I read as a kid were magical in their own way. Whole, complete, finished products that I held in my hand and read with my eyes and imagined with my brain. What I never saw as a kid (or even as an early adult) were the countless drafts, revisions, critiques, rewrites, and edits those stories went through to finally make it into my hands. All the months and years of work and team-effort for that particular story before I even got hold of it.
What I saw on tv or read in the paper or glimpsed on the internet was “Best-Selling Author’s Debut Novel Sells Millions of Copies Worldwide,” and I thought, “Hey! I can write a first novel! And my first novel can sell a million copies worldwide! And be made into a movie!” I never saw all the work. And I also never saw all the failed stories said author couldn’t sell prior to that debut novel launching. Yeah, maybe that was her very first published novel. But what about the six or eight or twelve novels before? The ones no one wanted to touch? What about all the stories collecting dust under the bed or stashed in boxes out in the garage, the ones that’ll never see the light of day?
That was my first pitfall, is what I’m trying to say here. I got caught in a trap thinking writing was easy and didn’t involve any actual work. All I had to do was show up every day and some mystical creature would materialize from a vaporous cloud of creativity and grab me by the hand and whisper cool ideas into my ear, and I’d just transcribe it all down on paper and send it off to a publisher and collect the cash that would most assuredly come rolling my way. I’d skinny dip in a pond of advances and royalties baby!
I feel a belly laugh coming on again. Don’t get me started.
The Contest
Sometime in the summer or early fall of 2011, after I’d been banging my head against the wall on this blockbuster of a novel for years now, which was going nowhere and had no real end in sight, and starting to question whether or not I really wanted to write stories, my wife brought home a flyer from our local library. It was an advertisement for a writing contest sponsored by the library and open to the public for all age groups. There was a theme and a deadline and even cash prizes for the winners. Best of all, there was a maximum word limit—around five thousand if I remember correctly. Listen, for someone who had just spent two years cranking out twenty-five or thirty thousand words on his pièce de résistance and getting nowhere, a five thousand word short story sounded heavenly.
I wrote a story and entered, and … <trumpets and fanfare> … actually won! Although once all the excitement and jubilation died down and I had a chance to think about it, my winning probably had more to do with me being the only entry in my age-group. But so what? I won! And Wendy and I took that $25 gift card and, I dunno, probably got some fast food or groceries or saw a movie or something. I was just excited because a story I wrote paid for that! I was rejuvenated! The clouds broke open. The sun shone down. The gods smiled upon me. This was a sign! A sign that I was meant to do this! A sign that more success would soon follow!
Oh ho ho! Bwa ha ha! Hee hee hee!
*wipes another laughter tear from his eye*
Sorry. I really do apologize.
Remember that whole naïve innocence thing from before? Yeah. That was me once again right there. But something magical and strange actually did happen the night I won that library contest. I caught THE BUG. No, not Covid you weirdo. Covid wasn’t even around back then. And no, not some weird illness or venereal disease either. I’m talking about THE WRITING BUG. Sheesh.
I met some folks at the awards ceremony that night. They invited me to join their writing group. Such a thing existed, I was told, where writers of stories get together and discuss and learn and share and help one another. I didn’t have to lock myself away for hours every day and do this thing all alone anymore. There was, in fact, a community of other weirdos just like me. Huzzah! I was part of the cool club now!
Writing Groups
Writing groups are great, or can be great. Like-minded people getting together on a regular basis to discuss a shared passion, to learn from each other, to help one another, to look at each other’s work and give an outside perspective, to teach you how to edit and give constructive criticism. These are all valuable skills a writer can use to sharpen his craft and improve his techniques.
You have to be careful though because writing groups can also be like that clique of people in the weight room who never actually work out or use the equipment. They’re just sort of there to flex in the mirrors and take selfies and gossip and hog the squat rack. I’ve been in writing groups that were productive. That first one was pretty amazeballs, and others too. But I’ve also been in ones that were not such a good use of my time.
I also discovered over the years that not everyone actually wants honest feedback on their stories. What they’re really looking for is someone to read their stories and tell them how wonderful they are and how great of a writer they are. Or they just want to talk about writing, without actually, you know, writing. Give them a writing prompt, and then discuss for an hour how one might go about fleshing out that prompt, just not ever getting around to really doing it. I was never very good at coddling those kinds of writers. I tended not to hold much back in my edit notes. I was polite, meaning that I tried really hard to grind their medicine into a fine powder and mix it with some sweet-tasting berry jam before spooning it down their throats. But I’m sorry to say that my red-lining might have discouraged more budding writers than it ever encouraged.
I needed a writing group in the beginning. It gave me a sense of community. It got me talking to people. It helped me realize I didn’t have to do this whole thing alone. It taught me there’s a whole world of resources available out there. It thickened my skin against criticism. After a while though, I found that I relied on them less and less. One, it’s hard to find a group of people you actually click with. In every group there are always going to be some, um, *interesting* people. Two, I was spending too much time working on all their stuff, leaving precious little time for me to work on my own stuff. Three, I wasn’t really learning any more from them. Four, I didn’t really need a social group anymore. What I really needed was a handful of trusted folks who could critique and review my stories and give me honest feedback to help me improve the work and tell the best story I could.
Molding Your Exoskeleton
Imagine spending weeks or months writing a story, then rewriting it several times, editing it, polishing and buffing it up all nice and purty. Then you give it to someone else and tell them, “Okay. Here it is. I need to know what’s broken. I need to know what’s confusing. I need to know what doesn’t work.” That takes some guts, son. That’s taking your child, who you conceived, who you carried for nine months, who you went to classes to learn about, who you pained and toiled and puked for, who you birthed. The doctors and nurses cleaned that child up and wrapped it in swaddling clothes. You held that child to your breast and nursed it and cuddled it and took pictures of it. Then your great-aunt Phyllis comes over to visit. She takes your precious one into her arms, holds it up, and makes that face. You know the one. Eyebrows squeezed together like she’s constipated, lips pinched, nose upturned. She’s not actually saying it, but you know exactly what she’s thinking all the same. “Ugh,” Aunt Phyllis’s face says. “This kid kinda stinks like poop. And that little face, well, please don’t take this the wrong way, but … u-g-l-y. Clearly from your husband’s side.”
That’s essentially what you’re doing when you hand your story off to someone else and ask for a critique. You want them to tell you your child is ugly. What’s more, you want them to tell you all the ways and places your child is ugly. You want the details. Because, unlike an actual human child, you get to fix all the ugly parts. Okay, I mean, most of us don’t have Kardashian as our last name and we don’t have access to teams of cosmetic surgeons to fix all the moles and crooked noses and unclefted chins. But you get the idea.
It takes guts to put your work out there for other people to scrutinize. It also takes guts—and the hardened carapace of a croco-hippo-dillo—to hear that scrutiny and not want to slam the door to your bedroom and weep into your pillow and get up the next day and keep on writing. Because contrary to what some people in a writing group will tell you, your story is NOT your baby. You would never do to a baby what you do to your stories—chop them up, dissect them, cut off a leg here and reattach it where an earlobe used to be, transplant the heart with one, say, stolen from the chest cavity of a robot monkey.
What I’m saying is, you got to take your shoes off on this hike and toughen up the soles of your feet so those blisters don’t crack open and ooze blood and pus all over the pretty flora along this trail. Okay that’s really gross. Let’s move on, mmkay?
Rejections
Know what else requires skin like a Bradley fighting vehicle? Rejections. Yes, it hurt back in high school when you mustered up the courage to ask that girl out. You know the one. The one you were macking on in chemistry class for, like, six weeks. Yes, she said no, just as you feared she would. But there had been a chance she’d say yes, right? A smidgeon of possibility the Fates would align in your favor? Other fish in the sea now and all that. One day you’ll meet someone special and you’ll fall in love and get married and have kids and you’ll never have to face that kind of humiliation again.
And then you become a writer.
You’re grown now. You’re mature. You’re not that silly pimple-faced kid anymore that you were in high school with the bad haircut wearing your brother’s hand-me-downs driving that raggedy car with the slow oil leak that stained your best friend’s driveway and his dad yelled at you and said you’re never allowed to park in his driveway again. Wait. What? Too specific? Yeah. Too specific. Moving on.
Except you find out you are still that kid. You send a story in to a magazine, a story you’ve worked hard on, a story that your peers have vetted, a story whose errors and plot holes you’ve corrected, whose plot lines and pacing are now perfect, a story which is, in your own humble opinion, nothing short of pure awesomeness.
You check your email one day and, about four months later, and OMG OMG OMG THERE IT IS! A RESPONSE!
“Thank you for considering us for your story. Unfortunately we have decided not to accept it. We wish you the best of luck finding a home for it elsewhere.”
And just like that you’re a sad little high-schooler again, ugly-crying into your bedsheets, slobbering and snot-staining your pillowcase, vowing that you’ll never love—er, I mean write—ever again.
Rejection is part of the game my friend. Everyone gets rejected. That NY Times debut author with the bestseller? Yep. Rejected. Many many times before. I assure you. There are literally thousands of submissions every month, each story vying for one of only a dozen precious slots in a monthly magazine. That’s a lot of competition.
But it gets better.
You keep writing. You keep submitting. And after a time, guess what? Your stories do get better because YOU get better. (As a writer that is—I make no predictions about the odds in your sad janky dating life.) Oh you’re still getting rejections, yeah. But now those rejections look a little different. They’re coming with personal little notes attached to them:
“Thank you for submitting your story, but we’ve decided not to accept it for publication.
I did love the use of the office chair to travel to an alternate dimension, and the tone put me in mind of Jerome K. Jerome’s work, which I quite liked. Ultimately, however, I felt this could’ve used more room—perhaps a stronger motivation for your character’s decisions. I thought I’d pass these comments along in case they help for the next market.”
Rejections like that are worth gold. You ask the girl out. She says, “No thanks. I’m not interested.” That doesn’t help you at all. It’s all personal. Is it the acne? The jeans? The body odor? The tuft of hair sprouting from one ear? You just don’t know. But you find someone else and ask them out. Same thing happens. And again. And again. But then one day someone finally says, “That’s really sweet of you to ask. And I would love to go out with you sometime. But I’m out of town this weekend with my parents, so we can’t. Maybe try again in a couple weeks?” And now you know: it’s not you, it’s them. Or rather, it’s the story.
Heck it’s been ten years and I’m not published yet. Not a single acceptance. I frequently enter the Writers of the Future contest. Lots of rejections there too, but I keep entering. One of my stories even placed an Honorable Mention. I’m getting closer. I only suck my thumb and soak my pillowcase once in a while now.
Hey listen, editors don’t know you. Slush readers don’t know you. All they know is the story you’ve submitted. All they know are the words you’ve sent them. They also know what kinds of stories they’re looking for. They know if what you sent them is a good fit or not. It’s not personal, although it often feels personal. You just have to toughen up, buttercup, until you can handle it. Be like Mal heading into Reaver space. Strap some armor to your hull, paint it red like blood, dangle some skeletons outside the windows and mount a freaking cannon on the deck. Launch that thing out into the writing world and aim to misbehave.
A Hypnotist’s Shiny Pocket Watch
Ten years and not a single acceptance? Nothing published yet? Are you insane? Enjoy punishment much? Why are you even bothering?
So why do it? I can’t say that I’ve never stopped writing, because I have. Lots. I’ve taken time off. Time to recuperate. Time to focus on other non-writing priorities (building a house, focusing on my health, etc.) But I always come back to writing because—get this—I actually ENJOY it. No, not the rejection part. That part’s never piñatas and pool parties. It’s the writing part. The creating part. The imagination part. The challenge of making something worth reading part.
I’ve always enjoyed words. Words have power. Words start fights. Words start relationships. Words calm disputes. Words communicate ideas. I love the challenge of writing words, changing words, re-arranging words and thoughts and ideas into just the right order so their meanings are clear and the messages are impactful. If you don’t think words can change a world, look at the US Constitution—just words arranged in a certain order on pieces of parchment. Think of Neil Armstrong’s first words on the moon—“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Look what thoughts and emotions get conjured when you put four simple words together: “Big brother is watching.”
Sting knew exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t believe me? Go read his lyrics to De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.
The act of writing is equal parts creativism and escapism. Creativism is too a word. Shut up. And even if it’s not, I wrote it, therefore it is. I conjured it into being with my magical keyboard wand. That’s the power of being a word wizard. We create muggle words. We put words together to form thoughts and ideas. We make people think and feel and believe. We use our words to entertain and inspire.
Writing is also escapism. At least for me. I’ll let you in on a little secret that you may or may not know. C’mere. No, closer. I’ll whisper it in your ear. Okay the other ear because that one’s got tufts of hair growing out of it. Listen. Here it is: *The world kinda sucks right now* You may or may not agree and that’s okay. But writing gives me a place to go for a little while to get away from all that craziness. With my magic flying keyboard carpet, I can go anywhere, be anyone, do anything. It’s a bit of self-hypnotism, if you think about it. It’s meditation. It’s therapy. And that’s why I’m still doing it after ten years, and why I’ll keep doing it as long as I can, published or not.
