Lilith Saintcrow

Good morning, my dears. I’ll be caffeinating myself in the making of this post (all hail multi-tasking), so I will probably get more and more coherent as the typing goes on and the coffee soaks into my tissues. So, welcome to the regular Friday writing post. Let’s get right on it.

On the train to and from San Diego, of course there had to be socializing. (You couldn’t get away from it.) And last night I picked up the Teen’s friend, Squeaker, from his grandparents’ house. Both my conversational partners on the train and Squeaker’s grandparents wanted to know the same thing. And no, it wasn’t about my facial piercings.

It’s the question I get all the time. What’s it like to be a writer?

Of course, this question means a different thing each time it’s asked. It’s the original Proteus. Sometimes it means where do you get your ideas, sometimes it’s how many hours a day do you write, where do you find the time, or it can even mean, is there a SECRET to it?

Most of the time, it does mean the last. People often think there’s some gold-edged mystery that, once solved, will lead to fame, the NYT Bestseller List, and lots of adoring fans. There really isn’t a SECRET, just things you can do to maximize the chances of getting published, and after you’re published, effectively reaching the people who will like your books.

I’ve been doing this for so long, in my own hit-or-miss fashion, that writing itself seems old hat to me. It’s just something that gets done, between the dishes and tripping over the cats and trying to keep the laundry pile at bay. Writing is a priority, like feeding the kids, so it gets done.

If there is a SECRET, part of it hinges on that: priority. Writing must be an absolute priority if you expect to get published. Too many people who call themselves writers don’t make time for it on a daily basis. They say, “as soon as ________ (i.e., the important stuff) gets done, I’ll have time to write.”

Wrong. You will never have time to write. One must always MAKE time to write. That is a small but crucial difference, and one reason why I tell my writing students to get a cheap kitchen timer. Even setting the timer for ten minutes a day for writing begins to shift your priorities a little bit to include writing.

Another part of the SECRET (if there is one) is brute production. You cannot just sit on one manuscript and expect the world to beat a path to your door. Finishing a novel or a piece is wonderful, and you should definitely celebrate it. But after the hangover goes down a little bit, you need to get right back up on the horse and start something else. Don’t try resting on your laurels–they wilt awful quickly.

Then there’s professionalism, which is a part of the nonexistent SECRET. Professionalism includes:

* Reading the submissions guidelines and following them. If it says 10.5 point and double-spaced, by God, that is what your manuscript should look like.
* Saying “please” and “thank you”, even when an agent or editor gives you bad news
* Understanding your editor just wants to make the story better
* Avoiding the hard sell
* Scheduling your work so you don’t get avalanched and have to turn in something of lesser quality
* Learning how to take criticism

That last deserves further explication. Look, writing is hard, and it’s personal. There are going to be people who read your stuff who are going to be mean, rude, nasty, or just not like it. There’s going to be fellow authors who knock you and reviewers who are either jealous or just don’t get set on fire by your work. That’s okay. Learn how to ignore that.

But you cannot let “learning to ignore” translate out into an inability to take even constructive criticism.

A certain big-name author, a few years back, wrote in a rant about how she had worked very hard to get to a place where she never had to let an editor touch her stuff ever again. I physically cringed when I read that, because no matter how good a writer gets, s/he is still too close to the work to effectively, professionally polish it. You literally cannot view your own work objectively enough, that’s why editors are around.

Editors and publishers are not merely distribution networks. They are a form of quality control, and the writer who cannot take an editor’s honest constructive criticism is a writer who has already opened his or her arms to artistic death and irrelevance. Not to mention thrown their career in the toilet, in one way or another.

That’s another part of the nonexistent SECRET–reminding oneself not to get wrapped up in one’s own purple, turgid prose. Of course you can love your work–that’s why it’s yours, and that’s why you’re writing what you’re writing–but part of love is realizing when you’re not the best person to prune the work.

Incidentally, I struggle with this a lot. When I get an edit letter, the first thing I do is read it and literally weep. I scream, I curse, I rant, I throw pages across the room. I think I’m entitled–this is someone telling me my baby, the book I worked so hard on, isn’t perfect. It isn’t even close. It has warts and ugly bits. The weeping, I think, is a perfectly reasonable reaction.

But then I put the edit letter aside for a week–this is time, by the way, that I insist be scheduled into the editing process–before I go back to it.

And what do you know, when I go back, I start seeing the editor’s point of view. “Huh,” I say. “That’s true, I suppose that is a horrible plot hole. Hmm. I suppose that doesn’t make sense, and it would work better this way. Oh, yeah, that’s inconsistent. Hrm. Guess (editor’s name) is right. Well, this isn’t so bad. I can live with this.”

That, right there, is part of the SECRET (if it exists). Doing whatever you have to do, to get to the place where you can take that constructive criticism and put it to good use. The work is better for it, and it might even make one a better person (though my jury is still out on that score).

The second-to-last thing I want to mention is marketing. Yes, there is marketing involved in this biz. If you have a web presence, you need to first realize that as a public person you can’t engage in some of the, ahem, less adult behavior people engage in on the Internet. And for any marketing in general, you need to get used to disappointment. There are companies that spend billions on marketing and promotion. One little writer isn’t going to be able to match that investment of time and money. On the one hand, a little bit of marketing is necessary, and you need to think about your “brand” and your public presence, if only to save yourself grief when your career starts to grow.

On the other hand, you need to not get wrapped around the axle when nobody notices your marketing ploys, or when your freebies get snatched, dumped into bags, and forgotten. Such is life. Marketing should never take more than a little bit of your time–it’s easy to think things will be better if you just promote a little more.

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

We’ve all seen them, the “writers” who show up with mountains of promo material or who haunt author/promo loops, usually for small presses, whose time seems exclusively taken up with marketing. One wonders when they find time to write or refine their craft, they spend so much time flogging away at giveaways and chats and what-have-you. The same could be said of “writers” who post constantly to their blogs–I’m not talking about the once-a-day posters, but the people who give out long posts five or six times a day, seven days a week. I always wonder why they’re not writing submissions-worthy pieces with all that time.

I heard a general rule a while ago from a very good writer friend: for every six hours you spend writing, you are allowed a half-hour of promo. Promo is a small professional component of the job of being a writer. Your primary job is to write–to refine your craft and to produce. The ersatz sense of accomplishment one gets from promotions and marketing is nice, but it doesn’t make one a better writer. It’s just running in place mistaken for an actual journey.

Well, this is turning into another monster post, isn’t it? I should quit while the quittin’s good, as my grandfather used to say. But one more thing before I go. Just one.

If there is a SECRET, there is also one deep dark component to it. Have some fun. Write what you love to write, write what makes you excited. If you get bored or end up with a hate-filled ulcer, there’s really no point in it. If you are excited about what you’re writing, if you love it, that enthusiasm will show. It will help you take the rejection, the editing, and the nasty reviews. That deep-down welling of joy even manages to make up for the non-pay, the long hours, the beating of one’s head against a wall of plot and characterization.

Well, at least most of the time. *wink* The rest of the time, dear fellow wordsmith, you’re on your own.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Deep Thoughts, Writing (About). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.