The entire essay (cleaned up and revised a bit) is here, if you're interested.

Current Music: The Great Gig In The Sky - Easy Star All Stars

“Ten Things I’ve Learned” by Stephen Leigh (Part Two -- see yesterday's post for Part One)

6: In the beginning, always say “yes”

This will probably be somewhat contradictory against some of the other advice I’m ladling out, but that’s okay. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

What’s important early in your career is that you’re working—making writing that dirty habit I mentioned earlier, right? It’s also important that you’re wide rather than narrow in what you’re willing to attempt and what you’re willing to do. When you start out, you’re still not only trying to find your own unique voice, you’re also trying to figure out what you do best, and what you enjoy doing best.

I started out writing short stories. One of things I eventually realized was that I was trying to cram too much story into too small a space. I was essentially trying to shove a novel’s worth of idea into the container of a short story, and as a result, my stories were 1) not very good, and 2) were getting increasingly longer.

Something in me wanted me to be a novelist. Not a poet. Not a short story writer. Not an essayist. I enjoy writing short fiction (and have written lots of it—and hey, I think I’m finally getting better at it...). I enjoy writing poetry (though I think that I would have to study poetry far more than I have to be anything close to a decent poet). I like writing creative nonfiction as well. But mostly, I know I that I like the scope and breadth of character and story that I can examine in a novel.

 If you don’t try your hand at everything that’s possible for you, you may never discover what it is that you really like. So don’t shun poetry. Don’t shun creative nonfiction. Don’t shun short fiction. Don’t be afraid to attempt a novel. Try every genre. Try every style and every approach. Experiment. Bend and break all the rules of good writing you’ve been taught. Push the envelope.

Try everything. You’ll fail often enough—because that’s what we all do when we’re learning—but let those failures teach you. When someone asks “Have you ever tried this?” and you haven’t, give it a shot. If you see a market report that sounds vaguely interesting but isn’t something you’ve attempted before, go for it and submit your effort. If someone asks you to write something for them, even if it’s entirely outside your experience, say “Sure, I’ll do that for you.”

 Say yes to everything.

Further on in your career, you’ll inevitably reach a point where you’ll need to learn to say “no” in order to retain your sanity and to have any chance at an unstressed life. There is such a thing as having to juggle too many projects at once without crashing and burning at the same time. But saying “no” is a trick you can always learn later. Hopefully.

 For now, the answer is “yes!”

7: Don’t write for fame

Writers have egos.

How’s that for the world’s most obvious “Duh!” statement?

Actually, when you think about it, the whole “submission” process is fraught with ego. After all, in sending out your story, poem, article, or novel, you’re essentially saying “Hey, I think this is so damned good that everyone should read it.”

Writers need ego. We need to think we’re capable of doing something special or we wouldn’t even make the attempt. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of self-confidence.

Just don’t let your expectations destroy you.

When I started out, I wanted fame. I wanted my name to be on the lips of every reader. I wanted to top the best-seller list. I wanted everyone to say “Oh yeah, he’s that brilliant writer who wrote…”

Here’s the problem with chasing fame: you can’t catch Fame from behind. Fame, if it wants to, will instead catch you.

Let’s say that the current Big Thing in bestsellers are novels about zombie were-weasels in Victorian London, and you’re thinking that hey, I can do that as well or better than the one I just read that’s currently #1 on the NY Times list. And maybe you can. But the reality is that by the time you research Victorian London and zombie were-weasels, finish plotting, drafting, and revising your novel, and start sending it out, the new Big Thing will be romances set in haunted RVs in the desert, and the editor will look at your zombie were-weasel novel and just shake her head. It could be the best zombie were-weasel novel ever written, and it’ll still get rejected because it’s already passé.

You can’t catch the current popular wave of publishing. Ever. And you shouldn’t even try to do so.

Want to be famous? Imitation won’t get you fame. What might do that is creating the next Big Thing, but you won’t know that you’ve done that until it happens. The reality is that most writers never manage to do so… but that’s okay.

You’ll get fame if Fame wants you. If it doesn’t (and be aware that it’s a fickle, fickle master), you won’t. Whether or not you ever become famous is not under your control: therefore, don’t worry about it. At all.

What should you be writing? Well, be patient. That’s covered under Realization #9.

8: Don’t write for money

Don’t get me wrong here. I like it when I get paid for the work I do. I want to be paid for my writing. I make a decent percentage of my annual income from writing and I don’t want that to stop. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being paid for your creative output.

What’s wrong, in my opinion, is when the money is the only reason you’re doing something.

This one took me awhile to process myself, alas. It’s also an easy trap into which to fall. I’ve fallen into it more than once—and hey, let’s be honest: if someone dangles enough money in front of me, I may yet fall into it again. I’m a slow learner sometimes.

Yes, I’ve written novels strictly because there was decent money involved, even though I wasn’t incredibly enthused by the project because it wasn’t mine but someone else’s. Here’s what I’ve found, every single time I’ve done that: I’ve ending up hating the project, it’s been a terrific slog to finish, and I haven’t been happy with the outcome.

 Mind you, there are times when you might have to do this, so if it happens, don’t beat yourself up too badly. How many of you hate the job you’re doing now, after all? How many of you dread slogging into the office every last weekday morning, and can’t wait until you can leave again? How many of you are laboring strictly for the paycheck and benefits you get as a result, because you need the money just to survive?

 If that’s the case, you already understand what I’m talking about. If writing is your sole source of income, please feel free to disregard this piece of advice, since you may well have to undertake assignments that don’t really interest you simply to pay the bills. Do it if you must -- because I certainly have.

But… be aware that you might end up poisoning the well. You might make writing something you dread rather than something you do because you can’t stand not to write. You might make writing just another lousy job. You don’t want to end up being the bitter, jaded writer whose first question is always “How much are you going to pay me for this?”

Writing purely for fame or purely for money are the wrong reasons to choose writing as a career. Which is why we have Realization #9...

9: Write for passion

So if you’re not supposed to write for money or for fame, what the hell should drive your writing?

You should be writing because you’re writing something that you absolutely love. You should be writing because what you’re working on is something that you can’t not work on. You should be writing because you believe passionately in what you’re writing: whatever that may be, whatever genre it happens to be in, whether the work is serious or comic or somewhere in between.

Good things happen when you’re writing simply for the joy of the work you’re doing. You look forward to working on the current project. You enjoy your work—all of it, from drafting through revision to final polishing to marketing to (hopefully) the eventual publication. You finish the work you start.

This is especially essential for novels. The longer the work, the more it had better be a work of passion—because if it’s not, the great likelihood is that you won’t finish it. It’s perhaps less critical with poetry or short fiction or short nonfiction, not because they’re inherently easier to write, but the time expended tends to be far shorter than with novels. But even then…

When you write something that you’re passionate about, it’s easy to find the time to work on it, because that’s what you want to do. You’ll want to make it the absolute best work you can make it. You’ll be willing to take the time to inspect and polish, to revise and revise and revise again to make the words sparkle. You’ll make it good, and if you’re lucky, you’ll even make it great.

That’s what passion can give that nothing else can: the drive you need to make your work your absolute best work. Passion will make you push beyond your current boundaries, to explore aspects of the craft you hadn’t expected, to become a better writer because the work demands more of you.

Leaning the craft is a function of Intellect: you have to do that too, to be a decent writer. You have to learn the craft. But passion is all about the heart and being willing to tear open a part of yourself and let it bleed onto the page, if that’s what it takes. It’s about being willing to be vulnerable and all the risk that implies.

But (and I swear this is the truth) a good reader can tell when something is written with passion and when it is not, and the difference is stark to them. Write with passion, and your work has the chance of being special and great; write without passion, and it will never be either of those.

10: Enjoy what you receive

It’s easy to get so caught up in life and your career and your expectations that you forget to take the time to enjoy what’s happening. So you’ve set up a book signing in your local bookstore, you’re ensconced behind a towering rampart of your shiny new publication, and you’re hoping for a line that stretches for blocks around the bookstore. But what you get are two friends whose books you already signed a week ago and one stranger who’s buying your book mostly because you look so pitiful sitting there all alone. Period.

Sucks, doesn’t it? How the hell are you supposed to feel good about this, huh?

It is what it is. Talk to your friends as long as they’ll stay. Talk especially to that stranger who bought your book—she’ll tell a half dozen other people about this cool book and how you sat there and talked to her about it, and a couple of them will come in to the bookstore to buy the stock you signed.

This is nothing new for a writer, no matter how well-known. Understand that all of us have sat behind the rampart of new books for a signing like that. Sometimes those things go well, sometimes they don’t. It’s nothing new, it’s not your fault, and the universe doesn’t hate you. It’s what life has deigned to give you today and you can’t change it, so you might as well enjoy it.

Celebrate the good things that happen along the way and take the time to relish them. What you don’t want is to look back later and realize how you wasted your best times worrying and always wanting more.

Look, one of these days if you’re persistent and dedicated and stubborn and passionate enough about this craft, you’re going to sell your first (or second or third, or tenth or twentieth) story, and you have a choice. You can think that it’s about fucking time the universe recognized your awesome talent and allowed this to happen, and now that it has happened, it’s probably going to be fucking forever until it happens again. Isn’t that what you’re thinking, Eeyore?

Or you can embrace those successes and revel in them. Each time, you can taste all the pleasure the moment holds, then carefully place the memory in the section of your mind labeled “Excellent Stuff To Recall.” You can think that maybe, perhaps, the universe has just aligned itself a little more in your favor, and that it’s now more likely that things like this will continue to happen.

Yeah, I know. Sometimes it’s really hard to avoid the dark universe, Eeyore’s universe. We all struggle so hard and get so many rejections that depressing thoughts sometimes dominate. I still fail at holding onto the brighter place myself. The truth is that the universe itself probably doesn’t care one way or the other, but which way of thinking gives you more joy? Which way of thinking makes you feel better? Which way of thinking is more likely to help you persist, to push yourself even harder than you already are?

So take the time to enjoy each step along the way. Stay in those moments as long as you can. Take pleasure in them and celebrate them, because you really can’t know what the future holds.

Enjoy what you’re doing while you’re actually doing it. It’s a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

*******
So those are some of my insights after decades in this business. There is one further, overarching Truth to cover, though, and that this: There’s No Right Way To Write.

Hey, I’m a skeptic. It sets off my alarms when someone tells me “This is the way the world works and it’s the only way the world works.” The little realizations above are my truths. They are what I’ve learned and what has worked (and not worked) for me. That doesn’t mean that any of the above necessarily applies to you, because the last time I checked, you’re not me. You have a different background, a different temperament, a different set of experiences, and—let’s face it—the world continues to change, the publishing world no less than any other, and so what worked in previous years may no longer work now.

Feel free to argue and disagree with anything I’ve said. But if something here resonates with you, if it feels right, then give it a shot. Who knows, maybe it will cause you to miss one of the pitfalls or take a shortcut to the top of that mountain you’re climbing.

Let me know what the view’s like from up there!

Current Music: Awakening - Mahavishnu Orchestra

I hear that everything's up to date in Kansas City, so I'll be headed that way tomorrow to see for myself.

ConQuest beckons; KC's annual regional convention, one of the best. Should be a good time. Patrick Rothfuss is GOH, John Picacio will be there, along with Brad Denton, Caroline Spector, and all of my old KC friends and partners in crime. I'll be doing a reading, doing a panel, eating too much barbeque, drinking too much bheer.

And even before the con, we'll have the road trip. I will be hitting the road with my Aussie friends, and driving right through the heart of Tornado Alley, which should be an... ah... adventure. If you're in Oklahoma or Kansas and think you see me passing by, you may be right. The Big Well beckons... along with Dorothy's House, Pancake Boulevard, the Cosmodrome, and the Elevator of Terror (you can't make this stuff up).

Tags: conventions, travels
Current Location: Santa Fe... for now
Current Mood: busy

“Ten Things I’ve Learned” by Stephen Leigh (Part One)

     I’ve been lucky. Over the last five decades (and let me tell you, pointing that out that makes me feel so old…), I’ve managed to sell and publish twenty-six novels and somewhere around fifty pieces of short fiction, along with the occasional non-fiction piece and the even more occasional bit of poetry. That’s a total (counting only the first publications and not the various reprints, other editions, and foreign publications) of almost 4,000,000 words of published fiction.
     Now, before you accuse me of shameless bragging, I want to emphasize that I’m not saying how incredibly talented I am and how I’ll probably be considered by future generations as the second coming of Shakespeare. I suspect future generations will consider me the second coming of Howard Sturgis (“Who?” you ask. To which I reply “Right.”)
     In truth, what those publications of mine show is that if nothing else, I’m persistent, dogged, and stubborn. They show that I am an ugly mule, not some beautiful thoroughbred racehorse. They show, perhaps, that I am what nearly anyone could be: if they desire it enough, and they live long enough. I’ve made my career mostly in the midlist, not the top tier.
     Along the way, I’ve also realized that there are some truths about being a writer: things that in my mulish, stubborn way, it probably took me longer than it should to realize; things, in some cases, I wish I’d learned a lot earlier in my career. Here are ten of those realizations, with the hope that maybe a few of them will resonate with some of you who read this, those of who are starting to tread the same path.
     You poor, poor fools...

1: Expect progress to be slow, not fast
     I’ve seen this one not just in writing, but in music, in aikido (another avocation of mine), in painting, in any form of art. We Westerners seem to expect that everything can be learned in ten easy lessons. We also seem to think of every pursuit as a race, with a finish line at the end.
     None of those expectations are true. Oh, yeah, there’s those few, those brilliant and irritating few, who race into the bestseller lists and win the big awards and reach fame and fortune with what appears to be their very first efforts. These people are the exceptions. Don’t expect yourself to be an exception, because the great likelihood is that you’re not.
     Here’s the first part of the equation: Nothing worth learning can be learned quickly. There’s a reason nearly every artist laughs when someone calls them an “overnight success,” because “overnight” consisted of months and years of learning the necessary basic skills; of looking at other artists and trying to figure out how they managed to make their work so incredible; of trying to imitate some of that and failing, and failing again and again and again, but each time getting just a little bit better; of trying to find your own voice in all the chaos and managing (eventually) to coax it from its chrysalis stage; of honing that voice and making it your own…
     Overnight success takes years for most of us. Decades, sometimes. For some of us, too, it never really arrives.
     And here’s the second part: There’s never, ever, any finish line for any art or avocation. “Mastering the art” is a chimera—once you think you know everything there is to know, you’ve committed artistic suicide.
     I can pretty much guarantee that you’re going to write stuff you think is terrific. I did. I wrote short stories all through high school and college and I thought they were incredible, easily as sophisticated and polished as the crap my teachers were throwing at us from the literary canon. In college, I even started sending out those nascent efforts, yet somehow the editors to which I sent my works of unadulterated genius were somehow blind to their literary quality and did nothing but send me lots of rejection slips.
     Reams and reams and reams of rejection slips.
     I kept all of those old stories that no one wanted. They’re in a file cabinet in my office, and I can read them now and understand why they never sold.
     They really, really sucked.
     I just couldn’t see that then—because it takes time to get to the point where you have the necessary expertise and knowledge of the craft to see your early work for what it is: early work. Practice work. Bad sketches of what could be, rife with errors that you didn’t and couldn’t see because you didn’t have the experience yet.
     There’s a reason why there’s an old cliché about having to first write a million words of crap. So get started on that as soon as you can. Maybe you’ll get lucky and only have to write half a million.

2: Expect criticism. No, rejoice in criticism…
     As a writer, the word you’re going to hear more than any other is “No.” No, I’m not interested in your story/article/poem/novel. No, this is simply not good enough. No, this plot twist doesn’t make any sense. No, I can’t believe the character would do that. No, the setting doesn’t feel real. No, and no, and no again.
     Look, I’ve been doing aikido for over twenty-five years now, and every time I go to class, my teachers manage to point out something I need to work on. And I want them to do exactly that, in the same way that I want my editors to be honest with me and tell me when something isn’t working because otherwise that mistake doesn’t get fixed because for whatever reason, I’m just not seeing it.
     The worst thing you can believe as a writer is that your prose is pure gold and should not be touched. The worst thing you can believe as a writer is that you are a freaking genius just waiting to be discovered. The worst thing you can believe as a writer is that you don’t need an editor.
     You need an editor. At the very least you need competent first readers who will tell you what’s working and what’s not working, because you’re too close to your work to be unbiased. You know the story that’s in your head and your imagination, and so sometimes you’ll think everything’s there on the page when it’s not. That’s an easy mistake to make--read some student work, or some slush pile material, or the majority of self-published work if you want to see that in action.
     Most of us need a critical, honest, impartial response to our drafts in order to make those final drafts work well. Remember point #1: another thing it takes a long time to acquire is the ability to read your own work as if you’re reading someone else’s work, and to see what’s wrong with the draft on which you’re currently working.
     Honestly, some of us never quite get there…
     An honest critique is a glorious gift. It really is. It’s just sometimes hard to realize that.

3: Don’t be jealous of the success of others
     Early in aikido, I was told “Never compare yourself to the other people who started about the same time you did. Only compare yourself to yourself.”
     Easy to say, hard to do. That works for writing, too.
     A few people who started selling their stories at about the same time that I started selling my own work have gone on to fame and fortune, to awards and best seller lists. A lot of people who started selling stuff about the same time I did seem to have utterly vanished.
     If I look up toward the Fame and Fortune crew, I could feel neglected and belittled. On the other hand, if I look down at the Vanished group, maybe I can assuage my ego some. But I shouldn’t be looking either up or down and performing comparisons. I should be looking at myself in a mirror. Period.
Here’s the question you should always be asking: is what I’m writing today the best stuff I can possibly write at this point in my career? If the answer is “yes,” then you don’t need to go any further. You’re doing what you should be doing, and looking either up or down at other people doesn’t matter.
     If the answer’s “no,” then you need to address that issue and figure out what you need to do to make your writing the absolute best you can make it right now. Period. You won’t get the answer by glancing either up or down at the others in your “class.” The answer’s inside.
     Always.
     Believe me, here's the proper way to think about Mr./Ms. BigName Author’s resounding success: they can’t possibly write fast enough to please their fans. It takes someone, what, a day or three to read a book? Well, if it takes Mr./Ms. BigName Author a year or three to write their next novel, well, those thousands of readers of theirs are going to looking for another good book to read in the meantime. Maybe they’ll pick up yours! And maybe, just maybe, you’ll acquire a few new fans yourself.
     So don’t be jealous of your peers’ successes. Rejoice with them. They’re creating more readers for all of us, and that’s a good thing.

4: Make writing a dirty habit
     In my early career, I waited for the muse to strike before I wrote. I thought stories were supposed to flow in sparkling fire from my pen to the page, fully formed and perfect. It was how I'd always been told (by people who weren’t artists themselves) that Capital-A Art worked.
     And it’s complete and utter bullshit.
     Oh, it took me a long time to figure that out. When I waited for the muse to appear, I’d end up writing one or two stories a year—and they weren’t very good stories, either, because when stories are supposed to flow pure and perfect from your pen to the page, then revising them afterward is a form of blasphemy. So I mostly didn’t revise past what little revision I did during the first draft. I accepted what the muse gave me.
     My muse must have found that hysterical.
     What I finally (and slowly) began to realize was that if I ever hoped to forge some kind of career as a writer, I couldn’t wait for the fickle muse to appear. I had to write without her… because once you start writing, the muse can’t stand to be left out and she eventually shows up at your side.The very act of writing brings the muse to you.
     Not only that, the more you do it, the more she expects it of you, and the more she shows up to help.
     Early in my career as I was lamenting my lack of time to devote to writing, a much-better known writer said this to me: “If you write one single, lousy, double-spaced page a day—just 250-300 words—by the end of the year, you’ll have finished a novel.” Actually, that would be two years or more for some of the door-stopper fantasies I’ve written, but his point was well-taken, and I’ve tried to follow that advice. I endeavor to write every single day, even if it’s only a lousy page… and it is indeed amazing how you can acquire a very nice pile of paper over time, if you follow that advice. My personal goal is to get 1,000 words a day of draft written. I don’t always make that, because there are those days when it’s a struggle to get down even a paragraph, but there are also those (unfortunately too rare) days when the muse takes over and I spew out 2,500 words or more.
I’ve made writing a daily habit. I can’t imagine not writing. For most of my life I’ve also had a full-time job to bring in steady money. I’ve had to deal with family and kids and getting them to and from school and to activities, and all the time and energy that takes. I realized that if I was going to also be writer, then I needed to learn to write in whatever scraps of time I could steal. I’ve learned that if I have a few minutes, I can sit down at the laptop and move the story along for another paragraph or two. If I have an hour, I can get that page done. If I have more time, I can do more. I’ve written on lunch breaks, at slow times, early in the morning and late at night.
     I don’t wait for inspiration. I sit down, I do my work, and I trust that the muse will feel the pull and eventually arrive to help. And if she doesn’t, well, that’s what revision is for.
     You can do it too. Give up one of your TV shows, or stop playing that MMORPG that’s been eating up your free time. Get up an hour earlier; stay up an hour later. Make the time to write.
     Then sit your ass down in front of the keyboard and get going.

5: Pay forward!
     Somewhere along the way, someone who is further on the path to the summit of the Great Writing Mountain will give you some advice, some help, some tip, or even a huge helping hand in moving you up that same path. It’ll happen, because as you progress in your own career, you’ll get to know the other writers and editors and publishers out there. You’ll meet them online, or in person at conventions, or at conferences or workshops.
They’ll hand you the gift of their own wisdom and their own experience, and you’ll be incredibly grateful, and you’ll want to someday pay them back.
     The truth is that you probably won’t get that chance, because they’ll stay further along on that path to the mythical summit, or you won’t see them for years, or you’ll lose touch with them entirely, or… well, there are lots of reasons.
     You can’t easily pay back. But you can pay forward.
     No matter where you are on the path, there are people behind you: with less experience, less knowledge, less skill. What you can do—what you should do—is reach back and help guide them along, just as others once helped you along. Point out the pitfalls that you’ve already discovered, so that maybe they’ll miss falling in themselves. Show them something cool that you’ve realized, so they can use that trick also and don’t have to discover it a year or two from ahead. Be a mentor.
     That’s paying forward: giving the gift that you once received to someone else.
     Think of it as adding to your load of good karma. The more you pay forward, the more good karma you acquire. The more good karma you acquire, the more likely it is that you’ll find your own path easier to tread.
     Sometimes you have to look back in order to move forward.
     Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to do here, too.

Part Two follows tomorrow...

Current Music: Awakening - Mahavishnu Orchestra

David Perry gives us an interesting and cogent essay about absolutism and consistency.

Current Music: You Should Be Dancing - Bee Gees

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We're doing some emergency maintenance on one of our databases (user cluster #7, there are 13 user clusters in total. You can see which user cluster your account is on here). The estimated duration of this maintenance is 4-5 hours.

If your account is located on user cluster #7, you will not be able to login to your account until this maintenance has been completed. If you are already logged-in, you will be unable to post, edit, or delete any material on LiveJournal until the maintenance is completed.

If your account is not on this cluster, LiveJournal will still be up, you will be able to login. You may be able to post, edit, and delete content, but if any communities you have posting access to are on cluster #7, you will see an Error 500 when attempting to load the update/edit journal page, or viewing your inbox if any messages have been received from a user on cluster #7. Other pages may also be similarly affected if they attempt to load usernames or data from this cluster. You may also encounter problems viewing journals, entries, comments, or private messages from accounts which are on this cluster.

We're working as quickly as possible to get everything back up & running, and appreciate your patience during this maintenance.