What I’m trying to say is:

Being a writer is about more than writing.

Writing a book is about more than sitting down and writing the book.

We know this. But I don’t think we’re always so good at knowing exactly what this means — as in, there’s a lot about being a writerperson of books that nobody tells you and so there’s a whole buncha shit you simply don’t plan for. And you maaaaybe should.

(…)

We like to believe that writing a book is enough. And in many ways, it is. You don’t have to do anything beyond writing and editing the book. Once it’s out there, you can stop. That’s okay. But also, your book is releasing on a literal tide of dozens of other books in its genre, hundreds of other books in general, and all that is born upon seas of countless other distractions (social media, video games, oceans of pornography).

Plus, you’re a storyteller.

It is wholly appropriate for you to figure out the story about your story.

You have one. I’m sure of it. Our books are not born of nothing. They’re made from us, and the greatest mistake we make as authors is to believe we are not an important part of that — that we don’t have anything to say, that we’re just a cog in the creative machine, that the book is a shield we hide behind. But that’s not true. The book is a part of you. And you matter! This massive story came out of you (not literally), like a weird little book baby. It’s got your memetics wound up in there, and it came out of your experiences, your ideas, your hopes and fears. There’s something in there to talk about. Just as the book has a hook, so does how you talk about the book.

– Chuck Wendig

I know this isn’t what new authors want to hear, but it’s true. Just because you publish books, it doesn’t mean you’ll make money. Just because you write in a certain genre with a certain plot, it doesn’t mean it’ll sell. Sometimes a book doesn’t resonate with readers, so they don’t buy them. It doesn’t mean the book is bad. (I’ve seen plenty of great books not selling well.) It just means the book didn’t “click” for some reason.

Even if you wrote something specifically to market, had tons of feedback on it from your target audience, got a professional cover, had a professional editor, and have the best website on the planet, you aren’t guaranteed sales. Also, you can run ads, do permafrees on the first in a series, or do other promotional stuff all day long, and you still might not reach the level of income you were hoping for. I’ve seen authors do all of the right things and still not make a living at this. The sad reality is that sometimes it just doesn’t happen.

– Ruth Ann Nordin

Each to his own, but the idea of multiple drafts is not necessarily a good idea. A writer can get lost in all those drafts, and think the more drafts the better the book. I polish as I go, so there’s essentially one draft, though by polishing as I go, I’m doing a lot of little daily rewrites. I don’t outline or plot, except subconsciously, I just write, correcting each page the day its written, after the juices are done with the creative part. Then I look over yesterday’s work the next morning before continuing, touching up here and there. For me, this creates a more polished draft. About halfway through I reread the whole thing to regain momentum, polishing if needed, then I write the rest, and reread it all and polish. So it’s one draft and a polish. Now, this may not work for everyone. There is no right way, but this is my way. I can only offer as evidence a forty-six year career. Other’s may feel they need to do a lot of drafts. I don’t. I also have found the more I’ve worked like this, the tighter the work is first time out. I write more loosely with letters, notes, things of that nature, and that is a kind of freedom from thinking about how “right” it is. But stories and books are better polished in progress for me instead of juggling a lot of drafts. I did that in the beginning, and it just depressed me. I let the story come fast every day, but when I’m done, I read over what I’ve written and make touch ups.

– Joe Lansdale

If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise. Attack it at an hour when it isn’t expecting it.

– HG Wells

When I was first starting out, I had the same agent as Agatha Christie. I was about 19 and she was in her nineties. I met her once, and I remember she said, “I want to die face-first in my typewriter.” And I feel that way. I mean, I want to go on forever, just writing.

– Danielle Steele

NEVER PUT DOWN YOUR OWN WORK. Especially older books.

Some reader might think your older book is the best thing they ever read and the last thing they want is to be insulted by you putting down their tastes in books.

Keep your mouth shut, keep learning, write the next book, and get it out. Repeat.

And if you really do realize no one cares but you, the freedom in your writing is amazing.

Go have fun.

– Dean Wesley Smith

What I can tell you is that I know less about writing now than when I began, and that my successes have been born of failures, and that my failures are made from just trying shit. All the time. It’s me constantly poking at this thing I do. Sometimes that means 2,000 words a day, sometimes it means 5,000 words in a day, sometimes it means no writing in a day because I’m lost in thought to it. Sometimes it means self-care. Sometimes it means I realize today’s self-care is just a crutch, and I can’t lean on it. But every day it usually means touching it, so to speak, just a little bit. It means looking at it, prodding it, not leaving the work alone. It means accepting that to do this thing I want to do, I need to do it, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, and not always in one direction. Progress is not always in a forward direction. It’s too often sideways. Once in a while, it’s driving in reverse. Sometimes you go back to go forward, sometimes you spin in place for a while, just revving your engine. I don’t know.

That’s the point: I don’t know.

And nobody else does, either.

Nobody but you.

But to Delilah’s point above, there is no waste in your effort. That’s the key takeaway here — the goal is simply never to give up, and always to be doing something. Thinking, plotting, writing, rewriting, scrapping it, starting over, just fucking poking and prodding the thing. How you do that, and the form that it takes, is yours. But be assured that no effort is left on the floor. No part of it fails to teach you a lesson: even, and especially, the failures. To fail is to try. To try is to do. Most people write one book every never. Most people never even manage a paragraph, much less a scene, or a chapter, or a finished manuscript. The best thing I can tell you is to keep on keeping on. The tragedy is not in failing. The tragedy is in quitting. Persevere. And as I said before: persist.

– Chuck Wendig

The manuscript you have just finished writing is not your story. Your story lives in your mind. The manuscript is a tool that takes the story from your head and puts it in my head.

The very best writers use that manuscript tool so effectively that readers can actually hear the writer’s voice as they read. That’s why so many readers have a visceral response to writers like Stephen King or Nora Roberts. (Oh, I hate them. They can’t write. Or Oh, I love them. They could tell me stories forever.) That’s why so many English students and unsophisticated writers will complain that certain bestsellers “can’t write their way out of a paper bag.” Those reviewers, students, readers, and writers are all reacting to upper-level voice, without realizing it.

– Kris Rusch

We start by being happy first. Learn to be content with how things currently are for you. We often hear “don’t compare yourself to others”, and I think this falls in line with that idea. It’s hard to be content with how things are for you if you are comparing yourself to someone else.

I’m also going to say something that is probably going to upset quite a few people. It’s time to stop listening to others tell you WHAT makes an author successful. I understand that writers are looking to make money, but the pursuit of money does end up trapping us into the cycle I mentioned above. This post is talking about happiness, not money. You can have both if you learn to be content with the money you’re making. But what I find most of the time is that writers want to make more. It’s more and more. Even if they’re making a living, it’s not enough. And the marketing experts know this. This is why they sell courses teaching authors how to make more money. The illusion of money (aka success) = lasting happiness is a powerful one in the writer community, and there are some people out there who are taking advantage of that.

If your aim is to be happy for the long-term, you have to shift your mindset. I’m currently working on shifting mine. For the past couple of months, I’ve felt incredible despair about writing. I was thinking, “What’s the point in writing if I can’t sell books unless I write to market?” and “What’s the point in writing when my income keeps dropping?”

– Ruth Ann Nordin

I know so many people who chase whatever worked for other people. They never truly decide what they want to do, and end up jumping from one thing to the next — trying to strike quick gold. And repetitively, they stop digging just a few feet from the gold after resigning the spot is barren.

No one will ever give you permission to live your dreams. As Ryan Holiday has said in The Obstacle is the Way, “Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angles.” Rather than hoping for something external to change your circumstances, mentally reframe yourself and your circumstances.

“When you change the way you see things, the things you see change.” — Wayne Dyer

You are enough.

You can do whatever you decide to do.

Make the decision and forget what everyone else says or thinks about it.

– Benjamin Hardy

“If you are going to devote your life to a music career, you also need to devote your life to having fun with it as well.” Mariah Carey on The Voice.

I know many of you get tired of me constantly saying over and over to have fun with your writing. I know that goes against the myth that sitting alone in a room and telling stories is “hard work.” And that many of you have issues from your past about needing something you make money with to be work.

I got all that.

But making your writing work, making it special, making it difficult to do just leads to the critical voice eventually grinding you down to a stop.

And making writing work never allows the real you to show through your writing. And that real you is what makes your stuff different. Original. And sell.

The real secret to being a long-term successful artist is what Mariah Carey said. Devote your life to having fun with your art, be it writing or music or painting.

– Dean Wesley Smith

Money isn’t enough. It never is. You have to START with connecting to your own heart, and telling the stories you hold dear. And if you need your “adult” self to hold down a day job so that your “child” self can play, then DAMMIT, DO THAT. Do NOT make the creative child pay the bills. The child’s job is to play. It is the ADULT’S job to pay the bills.

And…if you are lucky enough that the output of that child finds an audience? Embrace and nurture that connections,a nd be true to it.

And…if you are smart enough to set your “adult” to learning marketing, such that it handles the Outer world with the “child” safe in the Inner? Most of the most successful people I know either split themselves into Artist and Marketer, or find an agent or manager to handle this “adult” role.

But they do NOT whore the children of their hearts. They just DON’T.

– Steven Barnes

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.

~ Alice Koller

There’s no map but the one you draw. No process of anyone’s you can borrow. You gain your groove by wearing it into the floor one micrometer at a time. It’s erosion. Water on stone to find its path. It makes it harder in times like these because we want it to be math. PERSIST.

You don’t know you can do it. You don’t know that you belong. You can do it. You belong as much as anybody. You’re an impostor, sure, because we’re all impostors, we’re all here unasked for, unbidden, uninvited, wearing our masks.

Persist anyway.

– Chuck Wendig

Creators on social media can feel as if they are expected to present a positive, successful image at all times—and to churn out a steady mix of self-revelation, irreverent commentary, earnest activism, and a smidge of self-promotion. It creates the impression that all of us are doing great, that things couldn’t be better, that we’re all on upward trajectories of success and enrichment.

Unfortunately, for quite a few of us at any given moment, that’s not entirely true.

Creative professions, especially those connected with publishing, are difficult and often low-paying. For persons without other full-time occupations, trying to survive in a gig economy can be brutal, exhausting, and demoralizing. Sometimes we get depressed. The entities some of us rely upon to help advance our careers let us down. Things sometimes don’t turn out as well as we had hoped. Promises made to us get broken; opportunities get rescinded.

Most of us can’t talk openly about such setbacks. In some cases it would do us more harm than good to air our disappointments, so we shield our fans and friends from our bad news.

– David Mack

With fiction, the reader wants to escape their life and you’re offering them a way into this other world. Those readers often become loyal to your brand over time.

So when this question comes up for you, it is usually at one of two different points in your life.

If you haven’t written anything yet, seriously, go with your heart.

You need to write the book of your heart. You have to. Why would you do this otherwise?

Writing is not a get rich quick scheme. You write because you can’t not write. You love it. You love reading. You love words. You just want to do this, and even if it never makes any money, you’re going to do it anyway.

– Joanna Penn

There’s no use, after all, in beating yourself up for desiring more from your craft than the confines of one small box. The truth is writers write. Sometimes in one vein, sometimes in another.

While others may tell you that you fit this mould or that, it is you and only you that knows what is best. Trust your gut. Accept it’ll change.

At the end of the day, what really matters is not your label but your craft. Write well.

If you do feel like you want to leave one box for another, know that you can. It goes back to number one: set that goal. Learn what you will need to do. Start to take those steps.

Baby steps, dear writer.

Great things take time.

– Mackenzie Belcastro

I am prolific for the following reasons.

1… I love to tell stories.

2… I spend more time making up stories than other people do.

3… I don’t waste time writing stories ahead of writing them or going back over a story after it is done. Into the dark one draft clean and I have been doing that for thirty years now.

4… I have set up systems to get my work to readers quickly.

5… I have been at this for over forty years now.

I would love to be able to type faster and over the years my speed has increased slightly. But that has nothing at all to do with me being prolific or selling millions of copies of my books.

– Dean Wesley Smith

Write something meaningful to you, regardless of imagined commercial implications

This one is hard. As I began putting this book together, with its unusual structure and its potential for being categorized incorrectly as an anthology, I couldn’t help wondering: Who will buy this? Could a publisher get behind it or will it be too odd? Is this what I “should” be writing? Will this be a waste of a year?

I stopped asking. Or at least I tried to. Because the thing is, there aren’t valid answers to those questions until you’ve written the book. Unless your name is so huge that your publisher is going to buy whatever you pitch them, no matter how vague the idea, isn’t it better (I asked myself) to simply write the story you want to write? Then you can show people a completed novel. And it will speak for itself.

So that’s what I did. Because the simplicity is this: every publisher in every country of the world, and every reader who has ever existed, wants the same thing: a good book. That’s all. I don’t think I can write a good book if I’m writing to chase an idea of what people might want. And besides that, who wants to spend time on something that doesn’t make you want to jump out of the bed in the morning so you can get to work?

Happy writing to all of you!

– Arwen Elys Dayton

Write what you love. Set up a solid business model of the kind that you want to build. Focus on a slow build, and concentrate on providing books to anyone who wants to read your work.

If you do those things, and stay true to yourself, you will still have a career five years from now. Will you be rich? Maybe. If you figure out what works for you. Will you be successful? Depends on your definition of success. Will you be happy? Ah, hell, how do I know? I don’t have a crystal ball.

But I do know this: You’ll be happier if you do what you love than you will be if you’re just blowing hot air around a room as you try to impress people you look down on.

So shut out the hype as much as you can. Take what little bits of advice that make sense to you from the gurus out there, and apply those bits to your business. But avoid “systems.” Because they don’t work, often not even for the person who developed it.

Do your thing, and you’ll have a greater chance of being around five years from now than that supposedly super-successful person “everyone” is talking about.

Remember that, and you’ll be just fine.

– Kris Rusch

I consider there to be very few Actual Truths in writing, in storytelling, in making cool shit — but this, I think, comes as close to Actual Truth as I can muster.

Every story has one original thing about it.

And that original thing is

You.

That sounds like some goofy-ass self-help shit, I know, but trust me, you’re it. You’re the thing. You’re the Original Idea, the Important Discovery, the One Untold Tale, the Unexplored Path, the Savior of Narnia, the Sword of Damocles, the Revenge of the Sith wait I’m getting carried away, sorry, sorry. Ahem. Moving on. Point is, it’s you. Look at it this way —

You’re a bundle of unexpected genetics. Two people fucked, and they made you. And to make each of them, two other people fucked, and on and on and on — you’re at the bottom of an inverted pyramid, the nadir of an unholy host of genetic material that has scrambled itself up and guaranteed that you are a random, uncountable confluence of atoms. And that’s just the genetic side.

On the memetic side — the side of ideas and information — oh my sweet fucking hell, are you ever an infinite, irreplicable* maze. You are a labyrinthine tangle of wants, desires, fears, experiences, anxieties, certainties, questions. You’re the sum total of the places you’ve been, the people you’ve met, the things you’ve seen. And you complicate that when you go more places, meet more people, see new things. You never get simpler. You just get more complex. Your uncertainties grow. Your maze grows larger even as you travel it. You’re an amazingly weird, bizarre, wonderful bundle of wires.

– Chuck Wendig

I get emails from authors every week asking if they are “too late” to write a book when the world is so crowded with books and more being published every day.

Best time to be a creatorBut it really is the best time ever to be a creator and I am grateful every day to be born at a time in history when the internet enables us to write, publish and connect with readers across the world through free or cheap tools.

When you get bogged down by negative news or get sucked into the drama of whatever authors are worried about next, look at the bigger creative picture and be happy!

– Joanna Penn

I won’t try to convince you that I’ve never plotted any more than I’d try to convince you that I’ve never told a lie, but I do both as infrequently as possible. I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible. It’s best that I be as clear about this as I can—I want you to understand that my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves.

– Stephen King

The best advice I can give is this, once it’s done, to put it away until you can read it with new eyes. Finish the short story, print it, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you’re ready, pick it up and read it again, as if you’ve never read it before. If there are things you aren’t satisfied with as a reader, go in and fix them as a writer: that’s revision.

– Neil Gaiman

That always happens to me. I couldn’t sustain a week of publicity if I wanted to. I couldn’t go ten days without writing fiction no matter how many concerts or plays or movies I attend. I’m just not wired for it.

I know that wiring is trained. Just like runners who take a week off feel cranky and out of sorts because they haven’t been exercising. (Talk to someone who runs regularly and gets a knee injury—but stand some distance away. They’ll be grumpy.)

But I’m pleased I trained that wiring into place. I love writing fiction more than almost anything else. My job isn’t hard. It’s not even a job. It’s play. And who wants to avoid play?

The rest of this stuff—the promotion, the publicity, the constant striving to rise above all the noise—that’s work.

Writing fiction is great fun.

And has been, for me at least, for decades.

– Kris Rusch

Words of wisdom, writers on writing, whatever you want to call them, here’s the monthly feature back for the rest of the year! Have a great Sunday!

12 Reminders You Probably Need Today Because Let’s Be Honest We’re All Struggling

Some much-needed reminders for you, just in case.

1 All writers start out writing things that aren’t very good.

2. Even experienced writers sometimes still write awful stuff.

3. The only way to get better is to keep practicing. No matter how long it takes.

4. You don’t have to do everything.

5. Sometimes, doing your best means not doing very well.

6. Everyone goofs.

7. Other people’s opinions don’t determine how skilled you are. You do.

8. Every rejection is a step closer to success, even if it’s the 10th one in a row.

9. If you enjoy writing, then you should keep writing.

10. If it feels like you no longer enjoy it, there’s probably a reason unrelated to your actual writing.

11. No book, article, script, or writer is perfect. You don’t have to try to be.

12. You can keep writing. And it’s something you’ll never regret.

– Meg Dowell

The work doesn’t need your confidence.

The work just needs the work.

What I mean is, if you can manage, push through. Recognize that we all have those days where we don’t believe in the thing we’re writing, but all it takes is to persevere and continue the effort. Your faith in it is invisible and illusory — words on a page are not ensorcelled by how much you believe in it. It’s not a fragile little sprite, it doesn’t require your clapping to come to life. Now, the caveat here is sometimes you still have to take a break and walk away — and that’s okay, too. Don’t walk away too long, but a short, non-permanent vacation from the work is super-cool, and sometimes essential. But then come back to it. Come back to the narrative and renew your effort.

(…)

We are often the worst judges of our own work. Especially as we’re eyeballs deep in it. It’s like trying to figure out if you’re going to die while lost in the woods. You are or you aren’t; worrying about it isn’t gonna fix your problem. What will fix your problem is picking a direction and moving in it.

Just like writing.

– Chuck Wendig

“If you think you understand what you’re doing, you’re not learning anything.”

Wow does this apply to writing. Writing, as many have learned in the workshops, is an art that the more you learn, the more you realize you have to learn. I love that part of it and always chase the next level up, constantly learning.

– Dean Wesley Smith

I figured I might lose a fan or two with some of the character choices I made. Someone could be angry that a certain character lived or died, or that someone else was hiding a major secret. So be it. I was happy with it. That’s because my primary approach was that of a fan. I am indeed a fan of my own work! And why not? I WROTE IT. IT’S MINE. I should like it. If I didn’t like it, I’d change it or just stop writing it.

So that, to me, is the simple-yet-infinitely-complex solution to serving your audience and writing for fans – be a fan of your own work. Make the decision to change the narrative based on the story you want to tell, because you’ve lived with the story and those characters more than anybody else on the planet could. If you want to write something comforting, then by all means, go for it. If you want to blow shit up, have at it!

Not everyone will like it. But it’s the most honest way to go.

– Michael J. Martinez

You’re taking risks just by being a writer. You are, in this modern era, as much of an entrepreneur as the folks who started Chef’d or MoviePass. The difference between them and most writers it that the folks who start big businesses like that know they’re taking huge risks.

You need to understand that as well, and act in the same way.

Many of you who read this weekly blog aren’t writer/gamers. You tried the systems and moved on or you didn’t try at all, just doing your writing and publishing and watching from afar. Good for you. You’re building sustainable businesses.

But you also need to acknowledge the risks of what you’re doing. It’s hard to build a business, whether that’s a restaurant or a retail store or a writing business. It takes day-to-day massaging, and a focus on making financial decisions while nurturing your creative side. Because without the creative side, you won’t have a business that you want…ten years down the road. You’ll be on some hamster wheel. And that’s not what any of us want.

– Kris Rusch

Well, then it looks as if I skipped the summer! Last entry like this one was back in June, yikes! Anyhow, here we go again. Words of wisdom, writers on writing, whatever you want to call them, enjoy these quotes and have a great Sunday!

As I was saying, you should listen to me because I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. Which is really the point of all this: the further I’ve gone down this path, the one thing I know with great resoluteness is that I know less than I did when I began. My certainties are far less certain. My knowledge has faded, and in its place has grown —

*mouth opens, rainbows and ravens shoot out*

WISDOM.

Or something like it.

– Chuck Wendig

Career authors write a lot of books. One or two books is a great start, but to go the distance in this business, you need inventory, which means lots and lots of books! I find that many authors can write five or ten books, but can they write fifty or a hundred books? Inventory is where the rubber meets the road and makes the difference when it comes to longevity in a very competitive business. I encourage indie authors to keep their focus on producing new books and getting them out to readers as fast as they possibly can without sacrificing quality.

– Marie Force

Editors do not write your book. You write your book. The idea is yours, the characters are yours, the setting is yours, the plot is yours, the voice is yours—unless you paid one of these “editors” to “fix” your manuscript, which considering how inexperienced most of these idiots are, consists of removing every trace of originality from your prose.

Even then, shades of your voice and your perspective remain.

Your book is yours, not theirs. Readers aren’t reading your book because Annoying Person took a red pencil to your prose. Readers are reading your book because you’re a hell of a storyteller, and they like the stories you’re telling.

Have some confidence, folks. Stop giving these egotistical editors so much credit. They’re people you hire, people whose advice you can (and should) ignore if they don’t understand your work or your voice.

– Kris Rusch

Keep writing

I still feel the self-doubt, but it’s not crippling anymore, it’s just something that I acknowledge. I let it sit with me, and put my work out anyway because there’s a part of us inside, as writers, where if we don’t write, we’re going to cripple ourselves in other ways.

We’re going to be unhappy. We’re going to feel blocked.

You need to get your words out into the world.

You need to break through that self-doubt because your words are important.

We need to hear your voice. You don’t know whose life you could change with your story, or your non-fiction book, or the words, the wisdom you have.

As an introvert, the thought of the videos I share going out into the world and people seeing them is difficult enough. But we embrace it anyway as part of the process.

And that’s how we write, and create, put our words in the world, and change peoples’ lives.

– Joanna Penn

WRITE IT BADLY. Write it badly, write it badly, write it badly, write it badly. Stop what you’re doing, open a Word document, put a pencil on some paper, just get the idea out of your head. Let it be good later. Write it down now. Otherwise it will die in there.

— Brandon Sanderson on overcoming writer’s block to create a first draft as a professional author

The fact is that no matter who you are, it’s almost guaranteed that your work is probably not where you want it to be. This could be because you don’t know what your work is (a writer is always a suspect judge of their own work), it could be that your work is actually flawed (your craft hasn’t been honed), or it could be any one of a hundred different things.

For new writers in particular, though, writing six stories in six weeks gives you the opportunity understand an important truth: the best way to learn how to tell stories is to tell a lot of stories.

To understand what I mean by that, let me state the counter rule: The slowest way to learn is to keep working on the same story over and over and over.

– Ron Collins

P.S. on Wednesday I mis-scheduled the post… if you missed it, scroll down below! Sorry about that! 😊