by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
This is something I tell my children all the time (because, of course, I’m teaching them to be writers):
[Tweet “The best way to become a better writer is to read. Widely, intentionally and continuously.”]
But don’t just read. Study. Gather. Analyze.
Earlier this year, I started reading books more critically. I pull out passages that I like and write a short note on what I like about them. This does two things for me (besides slowing me down when I’m reading):
1. Because I’m typing the passages onto a document on my computer, I’m writing that passage as if it’s mine (definitely don’t ever use it as if it’s yours, though. That’s not what it’s for). Did you know that there were writers of old who copied down entire chapters of the books they admired because they wanted to get a feel for the voice it was written in? They wanted to see what it was like to write brilliant words. So this is, essentially, what I’m doing when I’m copying those words down into my “book notes” document—I’m imagining how it feels to write brilliant words like Salman Rushdie does and brilliant dialogue like Rainbow Rowell does and brilliant humor like Erma Bombeck did.
2. Because I’m studying these passages, I’m able to point directly to what techniques I feel work in fiction and what techniques seem to fall flat. I’m pulling out passages on characterization and passages that have beautiful language and passages that make me laugh, and I’m assessing why it is that the passage works. I’m learning how to employ that in my own writing. I’m taking these techniques, from this studying of masters, and I’m applying them to my own work, even if the knowledge remains only in my subconscious.
To be sure, studying books in such a comprehensive way means the reading of them takes longer, and I can’t do it with every one of them, because sometimes I just want to read a book for pleasure. Plus some of the books I read—like mystery thrillers and adult romance, which I don’t have plans to write anytime soon—I don’t really feel the need to learn from just yet.
But I did start reading through all the award winners—the best adult books, the best memoirs, the best nonfiction, the best in kid-lit—and I’m trying to learn from the ones that have been named the best of the best. I’m trying to study them so that I can write my books in the best possible way I can.
Mostly because there’s a reason these books are published. There’s a reason why they won a prestigious award. So it’s worthwhile to study them so that we can glean what we can and apply the lessons learned to our own story technique.
Here are some reasons I write down a passage:
1. I’m held by it.
Sometimes, in my reading, I’ll get stuck on a passage that’s just so beautiful I want to read it again. I always mark them, because, clearly, it’s a passage that stuck out to me, and I want my writing to contain the same kind of passages. Sometimes I’m held by it because it was so hilarious, and I want to find out why, exactly, it made me laugh. Sometimes I’m held by it because it was a great passage on characterization and voice, and I’d like to keep it as an example of that when I get stuck in my own characterization and voice.
2. It stirs up a particular emotion.
It doesn’t really matter what kind of emotion—I love studying emotion in story. Most of the time I write down passages that feel a little bittersweet, a bit sad but also a bit beautiful. Sometimes I’ll write down passages that invoke anger or a feeling of injustice. Sometimes I write down the tragic passages that can’t be forgotten.
3. It’s a really good line that holds some universal truth.
I enjoy studying the art of good writing, whether it’s poetic writing or skilled humor writing or very emotional writing. But one thing that I’ve noticed about the award-winners is that there is always some line of universal truth in their stories. Sometimes it’s hidden in a passage about the tragedy that a certain character recently endured. Sometimes it hangs out all on its own. Sometimes it’s so buried you have to dig deep for it. But I also write down those passages of universal truth, because they tend to have a unique impact on readers, and there’s a reason that the award winners do it—because it makes a difference in the lives of readers everywhere. It changes people for the better, or it makes us think more critically or it shows us how to be.
Read in the genre you want to write in. Read in every genre, if you want, but especially read in the one you want to write. Read wide and deep and long, and figure out what other authors are doing to make their books so amazing.
This is how you’ll become a better writer.
Obviously, in order to read more, we’ll have to make time to read more. But that’s an article for another day.
For now, remember:
The more you read, the better you’ll write.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Last week we talked about some of the misconceptions that surround a writing career, including the lie that only certain people have a compelling story to tell.
But there are more lies than just those that surround the actual pursuit of a writing career. There are also lies that surround the conditions of a writing career. We think we have to do it full time. Or we think we have to give it up when we have kids. Or we think we have to get out there and brush shoulders with all the important people, because we need to know somebody in order to make it in this business (sometimes that can work. But not all the time.).
So here are four more lies we tend to grab when the going gets hard.
1. You can’t build a writing career when you have kids.
I am a living testament to the fact that a writing career does not end just because you have kids. Now. It takes a lot of juggling. My husband and I split our days down the middle, and he’s the one making the money, which means he only has half as many hours to do what most men do in eight (he’s pretty incredible). He’s been supportive since the very beginning, which is what every writer needs—a supportive partner.
But even before we did it this way, when I was working a full-time job to support my family, I needed an outlet for all the passion and heartache and frustration and joy in my life. So I would write in the late-night hours, after the kids were in bed. I would find the time.
[Tweet “There’s always time to write. We just have to find it—and we will if we love it enough.”]
My kids give me great stories. They also help me better tell my stories, because I can read what I write to them, and the questions they ask are good questions about characters and plot and what this means. Because I write kid-lit, their questions are incredibly helpful in the revision process—which makes them fantastic people to have on my team. They’ve made me a much better writer than I used to be.
2. You can’t do it when you have a full-time job.
I started this business with a full-time job. It was tough. I was a mom of five and working full-time and there were all the house things that needed to be done, too. But you know what? If we want something badly enough, we’ll work hard for it.
So I would take my journal out, when my husband was getting ready for bed and my kids were already asleep, and I would jot down fifteen minutes worth of words, every night. I did that for a year, and at the end of the year, I had a book. Actually, I had the equivalent of three long books, with more than 300,000 words.
3. You have to work at writing full time if you want to go anywhere with it.
See the above answer.
Yeah, it’s hard to find time in all the spaces, but if we really, really want it, we’ll do it. We’ll do it however we can. We’ll write in the bathroom, we’ll write while the kids are taking a bath, we’ll write in the mornings before they get up. We’ll find the time somewhere.
If we’re not writing full-time, we’ll have to get really good at making a plan and sticking to it. We’ll have to get really good at putting a project down and picking it back up. We’ll have to get really good at learning to use the available spaces for whatever we can manage—and yet still have time to spend with our family. It’s not balance so much as it is integration. Our writing can be integrated into our daily lives in small ways that, over time, become large ways.
4. You have to know someone to make it somewhere.
I used to tell myself this one a lot—that those people who were successful writers just knew someone, and that’s how they got the awesome publishing deal. Or that’s how they got 10,000 readers on their mailing list. Or that’s how they made it to the top of the bestseller list. And it’s true that sometimes authors do know someone, or they are someone (celebrity memoirs sell better than others). But it’s all in what you do with your time, not all in who you know.
This is a difficult one to wrap our minds around, because sometimes it can be discouraging to actually do the work it takes to get published, and what we really want is a magic little pill that gets us an agent and a publisher and a great advance (or a successful indie book).
But if we’re not doing the work in the first place, whether or not we know someone won’t make the slightest bit of difference.
So let’s recap:
1. We can build a writing career when we have kids.
2. We can build a writing career while working full time.
3. We don’t have to be a full-time writer to begin our writing career.
4. We don’t have to know someone to make it in the writing business.
All we really have to do is do the work, which takes a commitment in and of itself. But if we’re willing to do it, we’ll watch our career leap to the next level.
Week’s prompt
Photos have an amazing ability to unlock our creativity. So write on the photo below for as long as you want. Write what you see, write what it makes you think about, write what you feel. Just write.
Photo by Veeterzy.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
There are a lot of misconceptions that hover around the writing profession. I can see them in people’s eyes when I answer the question “What do you do?” with “I’m an author.”
People think they have an idea of what it’s like to be a writer. (I thought I had an idea of what it was like to be a writer–before I became one.) They think writers sit around and write all day and that they either make a lot of money or they’ll be really poor (nothing in between).
I’ve heard these lies all my life (and even spread them), and for a while, I truly believed them. But what I’m discovering, as an indie author who also has manuscripts out with agents, is that I get to decide which ones are lies and which ones are truth. Here are the lies I’ve found.
1. You’ll be poor.
I know a whole group of authors who are doing this writing thing as their only job, and they’re not anywhere close to poor. Most of them are self-published authors who have control over all parts of the publishing process and also keep all the proceeds from their sales, but there are some traditional authors who are making good money, too.
Now. That’s not to say that all authors will be rich, of course. There are only a small percentage of writers who actually get rich at it, and they’re usually the ones sitting up on the bestseller lists for years at a time (not saying you can’t, just saying it’s good to know what it takes). It depends a lot of genre. If you prefer writing literary books like I do, you’ll probably never get rich at it, unless you have a thousand books. People don’t buy poetry and literary fiction like they buy thrillers and romance.
But we can all still make a good living off our writing if we’re smart about the way we run our business.
2. Writing is a creative endeavor, so you don’t have to worry about the business side of things.
False. The truth is, we’re all business people if we’re writers, and we’re going to have to learn things like email marketing and how to have a social media presence and what we can do to build a platform. That becomes especially important as indie authors, but traditional authors need to know about marketing, too. Releasing a book, unfortunately, isn’t as simple as releasing a book. There’s timing and wording and selling, and a whole bunch of things I didn’t really know about when I first got started..
I was surprised by how much I had to do to get my books published on the indie side. I shouldn’t have been. In the traditional world, it takes six months to a year (sometimes longer) to get a book published once a publisher accepts it. Of course it’s going to take a self-published author a little time to do it, too.
But if we’re not considering the business side of things, we’re not going to go very far in this business.
3. A writing career isn’t all that rewarding.
If you’re looking at things from a monetary standpoint, then maybe for some it isn’t really worth making a career of writing. My books have only made a handful of change in the last six months. But when I think about how those words were all bottled up inside me and now they’re finally out, finally free, I feel like writing is definitely worth the work it requires.
It’s always a worthy choice to tell our stories, whether or not anybody picks them up to read them. Do you know what happens when we tell our stories? We come to know ourselves better. We find our voice. So just because one project doesn’t sell well doesn’t mean the next one won’t, either—because we’re always practicing and always doing the work, which means we’re getting better and better and better.
4. Only a certain kind of person has a compelling story to tell.
Its true that sometimes it can feel hard to find a compelling story to tell, but I always tell people to start with their lives. What story can they tell from their life in fiction or nonfiction that might resonate with readers? Maybe you had a boring life (I think every life is fascinating, so you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that you haven’t led an interesting one), or maybe you don’t feel like anything all that significant happened to you growing up or maybe you never met a quirky person in all your years. In that case, I’d invite you to revisit your memories and open up your eyes. Look for stories everywhere and then practice telling them. Start a blog.
There’s this guy I know who writes a blog about all the homeless people he meets on the streets of his city. His stories are intriguing, and he is one of the most compassionate men I’ve ever known. His readers love hearing about the characters they’ve come to know from his street stories.
[Tweet “There’s a story to tell everywhere. We just have to crack our lives open and tell them.”]
These aren’t the only writing lies, and I have a Part 2 coming next week–about the lies we unknowingly place around the circumstances of our writing careers.
But for now, remember:
You have a compelling story to tell. So tell it.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
We’ve all done it. We finally have the time to write, and we pull out our computer or our notebook, and we’re staring at a white screen or a white page, and our head is full of…nothing.
Some call it writer’s block. I call it internal editor block.
One of the biggest challenges we as writers have is outrunning our internal editors, because they’re the voices that can make us stare at a blank page and have nothing in the world to write. We’re putting too much pressure on ourselves. We’re making too big a deal out of the rough draft. We’re letting those annoying voices keep us from using this valuable time we have.
You call yourself a writer? they’ll say.
No one would read this, they’ll say.
This is terrible, they’ll say.
Well, of course it’s terrible. It’s the first draft.
There are some stories that come out just fine when we write them, and then there are others that don’t come out well at all, and they need a whole lot of loving care. But it doesn’t matter. The point is that the first time, every time, you should just be concerned with getting the words down on paper. That’s the only purpose of a first draft.
So get the words down. Stop worrying so much about the way they sound.
I know. It’s not easy. We want it to sound good right out of the gate, and when we go back and look at what we’ve written for the day it actually sounds a little hollow and cliche, and this is never going to be good, is it? Well, not if we’re constantly putting pressure on ourselves—convincing ourselves that we need to be writing better when we’re only supposed to be getting that initial run of the story down. Not if we’re going to keep focusing on the way the words sound when we’ve only just started writing. Not if we’re hoping the rough draft will come out perfect the first time.
[Tweet “It takes a while to make a manuscript good. It takes even longer to make it great.”]
We can’t expect to get it down all neat and perfect the first time we tell the story.
It’s like when we’re telling a story to our kids. We tell that initial story, and they’re mostly interested, and then the next time we tell it, we add a few far-fetched details, and they’re even more interested, asking for it now, so we tell it again and again, and every time it gets better, because we’ve had practice telling it.
That’s what multiple drafts do—they helps us practice the telling of our story. We refine and add and delete and shape it into the best version it can be.
What’s going to happen if we keep putting the pressure on ourselves is that we’re never going to finish the work of a manuscript. And an unfinished work is way less valuable than a finished work that makes no sense yet—because with a finished work, at least we have somewhere to go with it.
Those internal editors have many different voices. They might sound like our professor in college or our mother who never really believed in us or, worse, ourselves (that’s what mine sounds like, most of the time). But they have no power over us, even though they like to think they do. They have no power.
We are writers. We don’t need the editors right now.
Here’s what I do: I write my first-draft words as fast as I can, and then I let that draft sit for a month. The I go back and turn it into a “final” draft, which is really just a soft final draft, because there will be two or three more drafts after that. One of them I’ll read through on the computer, to tighten up any typos or spaces I feel like need some tightening, and then I’ll print out a copy, no matter how long the story is, and break out my purple pen and get to work, reading for a lot of different things: typos, continuity, questions, errors in the story line, passages where I was unclear, word usage and language, and dialogue.
For me, seeing my work in hard copy as opposed to the same way I’ve been looking at it for months at a time, helps me look at it more objectively, almost like it belongs to someone else.
All this to say that in those first drafts, the internal editor shouldn’t be allowed in. I open the door for them in the final drafts, because sometimes the things they have to say are helpful once we’ve gotten the story down. Sometimes they tell me I need to work a little on the characterization of this character, and this passage is too long, and the words try a little too hard here and make themselves unclear there.
[Tweet “When we’re just trying to get the initial story down? Kill the internal editors.”]
Take heart. Sometimes it takes several drafts to get to the heart of a story. Some stories are harder to tell than others. Some stories need some peeling away, and you do that with drafts. Sometimes the way manuscripts look in final form are not anything like what they looked like in rough draft form. It is as it should be.
The first draft should be a telling of the story, from beginning to end, without worrying about technique or language or brilliance or mastery or authenticity. That’s for later.
So many people I know haven’t finished their stories. Usually it’s because they opened the door to the internal editors in the first draft and then didn’t know how to get rid of them. So if that’s you, here are some ways to get rid of them:
1. Write as fast as you can. Set a timer and race it to the end.
Try as hard as you can not to think about the actual writing. If you feel the editors begin to move in the back of your mind, do your best to push them away. There are some stories that, in the middle of writing, I’ve felt the editors come out of hiding, and I’ve had to write harder and faster to outrun them. It gets easier with practice. If we can win the first time, we can win the second time.
2. Don’t look back.
That initial draft is not the place to look back. Don’t even read what you wrote when you’re finished. Close the computer, update your word count and congratulate yourself for all the work you did today. Don’t start reading over the story until you’ve finished it completely.
3. Don’t stop to think.
Remember, you’re racing a timer. You want to get as many words as you possibly can. If you can outrun your thinking, you can outrun your internal editors, because you know what internal editors do? They overthink things. A rough draft shouldn’t be overthought. It helps to have a brainstorm handy and have a plan for exactly what you’re going to accomplish with your block of writing time so you don’t actually have to think at all. You just let the story tell itself.
4. Let your voice tell the story.
The best way to “find your voice” is to do your work quickly, without overthinking it. When we’re writing fast, our voice shines through. It’s when we’re overthinking things, when we’re trying to revise as we write that our voice will feel elusive. So challenge yourself to write as many words as you can, and you’ll begin to hear the beginnings of your natural voice.
It takes practice outrunning your internal editors. But every time you win, it gets a little easier.
So practice. Refine. Win.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
Writing is one of those professions that you typically do from the comfort of your own home. I rarely get out of my house or, even, the room I’ve set aside for my writing—which is a small sitting area in my bedroom.
Every now and then I’ll get a wild hair and go for a walk and see the world, but I’m not really writing then, I’m just thinking or brainstorming. Or I’ll drive down to our local library, which has a pretty fantastic outdoor space if no one had the same idea I had (which is always the risk—and then I’ve wasted some of my really sparse time), and I’ll sit in a rocking chair, with nature humming around me, and create.
But because I typically hole up inside my bedroom and write, it’s really easy to get distracted. When you’re home all the time, of course there are other things that come knocking on our subconscious.
Remember that laundry you forgot to put in the dryer? You should go do that right now.
Remember that stack of dishes in the sink? You should probably do them before dinner.
Remember how you said you’d go to the grocery store today? Your pantry’s really bare, and the kids are about to be home from school, claiming they’re hungry.
The kids. There’s not even enough room to list here all the distractions kids can provide—all the papers that need to be signed, the pants that need to be tightened (because I have skinny kids), the stuffed animals that need mending, the never-ending questions that need answering, the attitudes that need curbing, the homework that needs supervising.
I probably don’t have to tell you how difficult it is to stay focused in an environment like this one.
So here are my best tips for taking your writing business from amateur to professional, at least on the production and focus side:
1. Set aside the time to write.
We’re not ever going to start writing if we don’t actually set aside the time to do it. This isn’t easy when we’re parents, because you know what is the only job from which you can’t take a break (unless you beg)? Parenting. There are always needs that our kids have, even when they’re away at school. I am constantly with my phone, because I never know when someone from the school might need to get in touch because a boy is sick or I forgot about early release or someone forgot their lunch and can I give permission for them to charge one.
But my point is that I have a space on my calendar, every day, that says this is my creating time. I don’t schedule anything else for that time, unless there’s an emergency that no one else can take care of.
2. Set up the space.
Like setting aside the time, if we don’t have a space set aside where we will actually do the work, we won’t do the work. Set up this space however you like it. I’ve set up a standing desk in my bedroom, right in front of my dresser. Every now and then, it’s a little freaky, because I get so lost in my words that I forget what I’m doing, and I look up at the mirror, and there’s this person staring at me. It takes me a minute to remember it’s me. So maybe don’t set your standing desk up in front of a mirror. It’s the only space I had for a standing desk, though, and it was important for me to stand for most of the hours of my day, instead of sitting.
On the tail hour of my work day, I’ll usually sit in my blue wing chair, with a couple of books on the coffee table in front of me, and work on things like editing or business items that need to be gotten done. My day is pretty crammed full, but my space, unless my kids have destroyed it (which is highly likely) is usually nice and ordered and relaxing.
3. Do the work.
This is probably the hardest thing of all, because there are a lot of things that will come against us. Some people call this Resistance.
Resistance, for me, comes in the form of crying children—especially my baby. He’s a mama’s boy through and through, because he’s the youngest, and I’m truly captivated by him, so when I hear him crying, which isn’t often, thank goodness, I feel my focus shatter. If I hear his voice, or if his daddy brings him in to see me, because he starts missing me about halfway through my creating time, I’ll smile and kiss him and snuggle for five minutes or so, and then he’s good and it’s time for me to get back to work. I wear headphones most of the time while I’m creating so I can’t hear the roar of noise my children make when they’re with their daddy.
Resistance can also come in the form of a stomach virus, trying to keep us in bed, or our kids latched to our side. It comes to us as laundry and dishes and all the things we should be doing instead of writing.
The trick to beating Resistance is doing it the first time (and, also, believing in the value of our work). After that, it becomes easier and easier to beat.
4. Get started.
You don’t have to get started on a 120,000-word novel. Start with 225 words in your morning pages (that’s about the equivalent of one page in a long-hand journal). Set a daily word count for yourself and constantly push yourself to attain it. Do some writing exercises to ease you into the writing. Record your progress and see how you’re doing.
5. Minimize the distractions as much as you can.
Like I said, there are so many of them when you’re a parent. But I’m not even talking about our kids. I’m talking about technology and Internet and, for me, books. Turn off the phone, close the Internet browser, keep the books on your shelves until you’ve written your word goal for the day. Those stories inside you will be glad you honored them.
6. Run your own race.
It’s so tempting to look around at all the other authors who are doing so much better than we are, and to get distracted by that. Sometimes I find myself feeling jealous about this or that book deal, and I wonder why not me, because of course I’m entitled to what they got. I’m pretty good, too.
[Tweet “Our race is our own. No one else can run it for us. We owe the world our own journey.”]
And, also, we are all in this together. We can’t forget that.
7. Connect.
Writing can be a very solitary pursuit, and it seems to be filled with people who are naturally introverted and quiet. But something I’ve learned in recent months is that it’s so important for me to connect with other writers. I’ve recently joined a closed group of writers (you have to pay to get in, but the value you get just being in the same place as 1,500 other writers is pretty phenomenal). Not only do you learn so much from each other, but you also get to vent about the same things with people who understand.
Don’t become disconnected. Find a writer friend somewhere.
8. Don’t forget the business side of things.
As writers, we don’t like to think about the business side of things, like setting up an email list and having a presence on social media, but the truth is, those things are highly important to our connected world, and we’re going to have to look at them. And if we’re indie authors, there are a ton of other things that we’ll need to embrace in our business. I spend about five hours a week on business stuff, and that’s not nearly enough. So I’ll be making some changes once I meet my word goal for the year.
9. Put your systems in place.
By systems, I mean an editorial schedule for things like submissions and email newsletters and blogs, if you do them. It all depends on what we want to do with the business side of our writing career, but we have to put systems and routines in place that will make it easier to create consistently in the margins of our lives.
Systems also mean things like whatever makes it easy to create quicker and without interruptions. My systems include things like wearing headphones when I’m working and my husband is on duty with the kids, so when the kids accidentally wander into my bedroom (which is often), they see the headphones and know that Mama is working. I also have systems like batching, which means I work on business-related things on Thursdays, and I write fiction on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and I create all my blogs on Mondays and I edit manuscripts and brainstorm new ideas on Fridays.
[Tweet “In order to get the writing done in our short amount of time, we have to create systems.”]
It’s anything but easy to be a parent writer, but it’s most definitely possible. We just have to get into the groove of whatever schedule or routine we’ve worked out for ourselves, and that’s going to take some time. So be patient and kind to yourself. Adjust when you need to. Talk to your partner and kids when you need to.
And most of all, get creating.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
We have this crazy expectation in our minds about what it looks like to be a writer. It means standing (or sitting—though I hope not!) at our computers all day and producing great pieces of literature several times a year. It means the only thing we do is focus on that literary masterpiece that’s been waiting for years to climb out our fingers. It means giving up unnecessary components of our lives so that we can focus on this one thing.
Well, yeah, some of it is like that, but if our expectations of being a legitimate writer are tied to whether or not we get to do it full-time, then we’re going to be sorely disappointed (and, also, we’ll never get that book finished).
Even writers who have their books published by large publishing houses are not always able to write full time. You hear about all the ones who do, but what you don’t hear about is all the other ones who work other jobs (or do other make-an-income things) while they’re trying to build a writing business and a back-list of books.
I’m incredibly fortunate to have a husband who supports my family in just a half-day of work, so I get to use the other half-day to create. This means our budget is superbly tight. We have six kids. It’s not an easy task for him to support us all, but he believes in what I’m doing and in what I’m building, and he’s willing to make that sacrifice while I’m working on a business that can help out.
But it wasn’t always like this. For eight years, I worked a full-time job and pursued my writing in small little patches on the side. I wrote three books like that, and it was hard work—harder work than I’m doing now, without the pressure of making money on my back.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter whether you do this full-time or whether you’re working on it in the margins of your life, you are still a legitimate writer, because you put in the work.
[Tweet “There’s no one right way to be a writer. It looks different for all of us.”]
Some of us write in the morning, some of us late at night, after the kids are put in bed. Some of us write full-time, some of us for only fifteen minutes a day, but, hey, at least we’re trying. Some of us write novels, some of us write memoirs, some of us write self-help books, some of us prefer all things children’s literature. There’s no formula for being a writer.
Well, actually, there is a formula for being a writer, and it’s this: We do the work.
We are legitimate writers when we decide we’re legitimate. No one can make that call for us. We don’t have to get on the bestseller list before someone takes us seriously. We call ourselves a writer, and we do the work. We publish our own books, or we send them out in hopes that someone else will publish them—either way, we’re writers.
It’s not an easy task to be a writer, of course. It’s a solitary pursuit, for the most part, unless we can find a community of people who are working hard at doing it, too (because the other thing is this: we’re not in competition).
There are always people who tell me they want to write, once they’ve asked me what it is I do, or maybe they’ve seen me sitting on a picnic bench writing and ask about it later, when I run into them in a church cafeteria. They say they would like to write a book, but they don’t have the time. They’ll typically express their sadness that they aren’t pursuing what I’m pursuing, and I always think, Well, then, why not? We can always find time for the things we love, and, for me? Writing is like breathing. I’d die without it.
We decide to do the work of writing, and we make the time, and we’re the ones who will hold a book at the end of all those hours (and it will take many).
If we’re just making the excuse that we don’t have the time to write, because we don’t have hours-long stretches at our disposal, then of course we’re never going to get that book finished.
[Tweet “Sometimes a writing career has to begin at the tiny margins of our time.”]
I don’t have to get a great publishing deal to be a legitimate author. I don’t have to sell a certain number of books to be considered a legitimate writer. I am a legitimate writer because I put in the time and I do the work.
If you want to be a legitimate writer, you will too.
Takeaways at a glance:
1. We control when we consider ourselves a legitimate writer, not anyone else.
2. There’s always time to write. We just have to find it.
3. We are in charge of our lives. When we say we really want to write but we just don’t have the time, what we’re saying to writing is that sacrificing to find the time is not worth it. Writing time happens when we schedule it.
4. It’s not easy to be a writer. It’s actually hard, hard work to do it every day, no matter what. But it’s also worth work.
5. There is no one right way to be a writer, but millions of them. Run your own race. Do your own work.
Week’s prompt
Write whatever comes to mind when you read this quote:
“I shall give you hunger and pain, and sleepless nights. Also beauty, and satisfactions known to few, and glimpses of the heavenly life. None of these you shall have continually, and of their coming and going you shall not be foretold.”
-Howard Lindsay
