The great danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. —Michelangelo
This past year or so, I’ve been working to reactivate my moribund capacity to dream big. Bear witness: I’ve never given up on writing. I love writing. It brings me joy, it keeps me sane. I am myself when I write. I have stories and stories and stories – some of them not finished and some not particularly good – packed away.
But I long ago gave up on making money writing short stories or novels, what we used to call having a career in writing. I’m old enough to remember an era when novelists earned real advances. And if the halcyon days when F. Scott Fitzgerald could buy a mansion selling short fiction died with him, in the 1980s and 90s a story might still be worth the time it took to write it. However, I learned early on that this gold wasn’t intended to pan out, for a variety of reasons.
Other dreams died harder. When I started college, I envisioned late night discussion on art and literature, opportunities for creative collaborations, DIY theater and open mics in old warehouses and smoky bars. Aside from some rare moments, this life also didn’t manifest, also for a variety of reasons. Though tempted, I’ll resist oversharing. Life, bad choices, bad luck. That’s all it was really.
So I trimmed back. I shrank my dreams. But the funny thing about dreams is that they can never be too small. There will always be more to cut. The less space you make for them, the less they need. When you don’t ask for much, the world is very happy to accommodate. This is also true of lovers.
But it’s time for me to light a small fire under those dreams. Not the money dreams. I’m not mental. Ok, yes, I have an Oscar speech ready, but I’m not crazy. But the others? Good friendships and camaraderie with fellow writers, long talks about craft and story theory, creative team-ups, sharing my work, creating things in the real world? Those dreams are worth cultivating.
A year ago, I took a few baby steps towards that life I’d always envisioned. I wondered if I were too late, if the curtain had come down before I found my seat. But on the other hand, I’m a smart guy. I learn from mistakes. Not always quickly, but I work it out. I thought it was worth a shot.
So far, so good.
I’m having bigger dreams now. Not the big dreams of my youth, but bigger than I allowed myself even a few years ago. And the funny thing about dreams is that they can never be too big. There is always room to grow. The more space you give them, the more they need. The dreams I have today are modest, but I’m giving them their room and I’m confident they will expand.
And the greatest part? Every day when I sit down to write, I feel inspired. I’m ready. I’m anxious to get to work on whatever is next. I’m excited to meet with my writers group every month and – being greedy – am thinking about ways I can have more.
I’ve said before that I feel like I’m starting Act I at an age when I should be on Act III or IV. But also, I’m a bit wiser now, a lot more jealous of my time. I’m more focused. I have a stronger vision of myself, a lot less ego, and the rewards I’m chasing are internal. I appreciate this experience so much more. As a man once said, This is the best drink of water after the longest drought in my life.
We should all dream big. What dreams would inspire you to create something every day? What would you do if you spent your life creating at your highest level?
Think of your biggest creative dream – no matter how crazy – and how it would feel to commit to fulfilling it. What does your most outrageous and positive writing life look like? What would you be doing if you were living all-out?
If you were confident you could not fail, what would you do?
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About a year ago, I wrote about the new Superman movie and wondered if we were entering a cultural phase in which heroes acted like heroes and where the antihero may not have as much appeal.
Nosferatu I’m not. In the last nine months, the world does not seem to have begun craving good people.
Not that we don’t still need actual heroes. You might even be tempted to create one of your own. But what makes a hero? Where do you start?
One place is with your writer’s credo.
What is a credo?
A credo is an authentic statement of moral beliefs or intentions that guide your actions or, for our purposes, your creative writing.
You may have seen credos in action in the business world. For example, a statement of beliefs may guide a business plan and attract like-minded investors and employees. Religious texts provide credos for their followers, who may also have their own personal credo for putting their faith into action.
In All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum presented his credo for living in language even children can understand: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess! Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
In Bull Durham, Kevin Costner’s Crash Ryan had a slightly more colorful statement of beliefs:
Credos in action
In A Game of Thrones (the novel), George R.R. Martin uses the back matter to document the credos of each of the major families of Westeros.
Ours is the Fury. Winter is Coming. Hear Me Roar! As High as Honor. Family, Duty, Honor. Growing Strong. We Do Not Sow. Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken. Fire and Blood.
Unlike the writer’s credo I’ll discuss below, these family statements are boiled down to simple 2 to 4 word statements of character. But despite the simplicity, these statements drive the goals, ambitions, choices, and actions of these families. Buried within them are these families’ beliefs about family, honor, strength, success, and loyalty.
It’s not necessary to do so, but you might be able to compress your writer’s credo down to a short simple statement you can pin up over your writing space.
But first, you need to figure out what that is.
The writer’s credo
What is a writer’s credo? It can be anything you want it to be, but generally it will contain the values you seek to promote and defend in your work. This can include your purpose in writing and your creative philosophy.
You may already have the foundation for a credo, even if you don’t realize it. Do you believe that love wins out over fear or that might makes right? Do you write to entertain or to illuminate? Do you believe stories raise questions or provide answers? Do you believe we must or must not write about certain topics? Even if you have never written down the answers, they reside in your subconscious, ready for you to access in your writing.
Maybe it’s time to put this to paper.
Where to start
Write a few simple statements beginning with “I believe…”
You might be tempted to start your list with something profound. That’s great if you have something in mind, but if you don’t, that’s an easy place to get stuck. We can’t all be Maya Angelou. Start with the surface layers. If nothing comes right to mind, lean on a few clichés to get your gears turning.
I believe that honesty is the best policy.
I believe that hard work is the key to success.
I believe that what goes around comes around.
Keep going. Get your base value statements out first. Then broaden your discovery.
What makes a good father or mother?
Should you stick by family no matter what, or is it ok to walk away?
What gives life meaning? Does anything? Or is life a random sequence of events that amount to nothing?
Are humans responsible for themselves or are we responsible for each other?
You may dive a bit deeper and explain why you believe these things. Why is honesty important? Why should we honor family? What did you experience or learn that brought these values into your life? If you want to create an “official” credo, you might not include your stories, but write them down anyway. Go where your heart takes you.
What do you believe about faith, patriotism, death, love, morality, justice, crime, bodily autonomy, consent, freedom, responsibility, childhood? Consider not only statements of belief but the very nature of those concepts. In addition to your moral values, document your intellectual, spiritual, and artistic values. There’s no minimum and no limit – write down as few or as many statements as you wish.
Why do you write? What is your creative philosophy?
Do you write to entertain or create connection?
Do you write about the way life is or the way it should be?
Do you want to disturb or reassure?
Do your stories have a conclusive or ambiguous ending? Why?
Is it more important for your readers to see themselves or be exposed to people and experiences different from them?
I frame these as either/or questions, but in many cases, the answer can be both!
As you deepen and refine your credo, focus on what you feel strongly. You may (correctly) believe that pineapple goes on pizza, but unless you’re willing to die on that hill, you can leave it out, as well as other moral values that aren’t as important. Listen for what stirs you. What topics bring up the deepest emotional reaction – anger, scorn, affection, reassurance. Look for those and explore them. If one of your “I believe…” statements sounds weak, revise it or cross it out.
Your credo will change over time. The belief system of a young writer who has recently left home may evolve as that writer ages and becomes a parent. A teenager may have strong beliefs about fairness, autonomy, freedom, sex, conformity, peer pressure, bullying, the nature of education, and the future. His older self may be more concerned with concepts of security, meaning, legacy, tradition, responsibility, safeguarding, family, and regret. If you ever revisit your credo, you might find that your perspective has evolved, and that certain strong beliefs don’t motivate you anymore. That’s ok. You are a work in progress. Your writing will naturally reflect the evolution of your values.
A helpful roadmap
In several posts on Writer Unboxed, literary agent Donald Maass addressed the writer’s credo in an indirect way. Maass doesn’t use the word “credo” but he does suggest that writers should clarify their view of the human experience and what they wish to accomplish with their work. I found both helpful in clarifying what I write and why.
In his first article, Maass urges writers to take a “moral inventory” and suggests a series of questions to get you started. For the purpose of this inventory, the questions are either/or. You can choose only one answer, and cannot answer “both”, even if that is sometimes accurate. Here are a few of the questions:
What factor most produces success, security, and happiness: Randomness and luck, or effort and reward?
Which better describes you: warrior or survivor?
What is the better goal: to do justice or to practice forgiveness?
What is better to have: individual freedom or group cooperation?
Which is better to have: faith or reason?
Works of fiction should primarily show us: how we are or what we should do?
When you’re done, you should have a list of concepts that reveal how you see yourself and the human condition. Maass says the final question is especially important to your writing, as it reveals your unconscious intention: Do you create mirrors or arrows? Do you want to show your readers the way people are or the way we should or could be?
Maass dives into the differences between mirrors and arrows – which he calls Stories of Fate and Stories of Destiny. He categorizes the answers to his twelve questions as either mirrors or arrows, and suggests that, from a craft perspective, it’s important to pick what kind of story you’re telling and which answers best fit that story. A strategy of picking some from Column A and some from Column B will likely result in a tale with a muddy message. Maass also offers some advice for putting this into practice in your writing, but for the purpose of a credo, the questions are the point. You can find the rest here, and may be inspired to add some of your own.
In a follow-up article, Maass continues discussing how to put these dichotomies into practice in your writing, particularly when deciding your story’s purpose and its intended effect. Generally, Maass argues that when your purpose is unclear, the effect on the reader is weak. You may write a story about the nature of evil or justice or equality, but if your reader does not understand your definitions of those concepts, your story may fall flat. The reader might not grasp your point and may even believe that you were arguing for its opposite.
You should never assume that the reader will intuit your purpose. If you want your reader to know what is good or bad, what should be feared, or what should be hoped for, you need to feel that strongly in yourself and express it clearly on the page.
“What produces a strong effect for readers is not your story’s plot circumstances. It’s you. Your outrage, inspirations, problems and comforts. Your heartbreaks, hopes, humiliations and laughter. Your insights, lessons, and self-knowledge.” – Donald Maass
A credo can help you define your values in strong terms that carry through to the page. Maass offers suggestions – including more questions – to help you dig deep into your psyche to identify what angers or scares you or inspires defiance or hope. What makes you furious? When have you felt helpless? When have you felt terror? Those kinds of questions can point you toward specific values and the reasons those emotions were triggered. Again, Maass approaches the topic from a craft standpoint, but the exercises can help you create your writer’s credo.
Why write a credo?
Some writers find that a credo gives them a greater feeling of purpose when they write and can contribute themes and concepts to their work. A credo can connect you more intimately to your creative work, ensuring that you focus your limited time on what matters most. Does your writing reflect your values or what you want to share? Are you crafting stories that create the effect you wish to see in your reader? A credo provides both a compass and a measuring stick, pointing you where you want to go and a way to compare your results to your intentions.
A credo can prompt creative inspirations. As you write your belief statement, characters, scenes, and stories may present themselves. The act of identifying your most important values can point towards new ideas and concepts you haven’t explored. Are you stuck in the middle of a story with no way out? Consider whether your story reflects your values and if it would benefit from a stronger examination. Find the compass and the guideposts in your credo and apply them to your writing.
You may feel more confident in your writing and more excited to work on your next project. You may find it easier to express yourself, guide your stories, or talk about your writing with others. You will have a clearer statement of your values, which you have examined and selected with purpose, and a chance to explore and test them in your writing. You may find that your writing has greater depth, purpose, and meaning. You might find yourself thinking more deeply and realize you have more to say than you believed.
Writing a credo can connect you to parts of your inner life that you’ve neglected or not yet discovered. You may uncover hidden beliefs, or even biases and resentments. You might hit some emotional roadblocks that need bulldozing. You might embrace new ideas or concepts. You might even identify strong beliefs that conflict, such as the conundrum of having tolerance for everyone’s beliefs, except those whose beliefs you find intolerant. Writing your credo provides you the opportunity to reconcile and align conflicting values into a whole.
A credo is worthwhile only to the extent that you want one, and the results are only as good as the effort you put into it. No one will ever see it. There’s no reward for writing one, except for what it can bring to your creative work.
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In our last episode, I noted how much the writing world had changed since Anne Lamott first published Bird by Bird, in which she described receiving advance money on an unwritten novel, including additional funds released after she submitted two failed drafts.
A hundred years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald supported a lavish lifestyle with income from his writing, the majority of which came from his short fiction rather than his novels and screenplays. Fitzgerald was reportedly paid as much as $4,000 for a short story, or about $70,000 in today’s money. In 1925, he earned $2,000 from a single short story, more than he earned in royalties from the first year of sales of The Great Gatsby.
In an entry in her Diaries and Notebooks, Patricia Highsmith recorded a few early sales of short stories. She earned $800 per story, or the equivalent of about $14,000 today. Earlier in her diaries, she mentions paying about $50 per month in rent. So the sale of one short story per year was sufficient to pay rent on a small apartment in New York City, with money to spare for utilities and telephone. I didn’t crunch the numbers, but a second short story was probably enough pay for food and a reasonable clothing and entertainment allowance.
That’s a far cry from $4,000, but bear in mind these were Highsmith’s first significant sales. She wasn’t yet the author of Strangers on a Train or The Talented Mr. Ripley. She was 25-year old comic book writer Pat Highsmith of New York, paying a year’s rent with one story.
Outside of the New Yorker or perhaps Harper’s, paying markets for fiction today are going to tap out around that 1947-era $800 bucks, if you’re lucky to get that high. A long story in the New Yorker might get you that $14,000, but only if you come with credentials. And even that won’t pay a year’s rent in New York City.
A million years ago, when I started submitting short fiction, most markets paid in comp copies, and a few paid $50 to $150. There were more top tier markets, like Playboy and The Atlantic, but unless your name was Kurt Vonnegut or Joyce Carol Oates, you weren’t catching those paydays.
As usual, I’m in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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Mastering dialogue is hard work, but the right scaffolding can help.
Writing naturalistic and compelling dialogue is fiction is both critical and difficult to master. Unfortunately, there aren’t any reference books to tell you exactly what your characters should say or how.
Dialogue takes time to master and even successful bestselling authors don’t always get it right. Any writing coach will tell you that you should not try to create dialogue by replicating real-life conversation. Rather, dialogue is stylized conversation that only sounds natural.
You will also hear that characters should never – or very rarely – say what’s on their mind. Base declarations of need should be saved for highly emotional moments. A character who is trying to earn his father’s respect should not say in dialogue, “Dad, I’m acting this way so I can earn the respect you have withheld my whole life.” If that’s your opening scene, you might as well have your characters leave the haunted house and end your story right there.
While no one can truly teach you to hear or write dazzling dialogue, there are a few tricks that can help you craft dialogue that complements your story, builds emotional tension, and keeps the reader engaged. Here are two that have helped me.
Sentence structure
In Dialogue: The Art of Verbal Action for the Page, Stage, and Screen, Robert McKee shares 300 pages of excellent advice on writing sharp dialogue, including more than a dozen specific examples of film and play scripts utilizing these techniques. One specific piece of advice caught my attention, because it focuses not on juicy word choices – which can’t be taught – but on sentence structure, which can.
In his section on the flaws that can derail your dialogue, McKee discusses mistimed or miscued dialogue exchanges, and shows how sentence structure – the literal order of your words in your sentences, arranged for emphasis – can make the difference between flat or confusing dialogue and dialogue that sings.
You may have read craft advice describing dialogue as a tennis game. One character lobs a piece of conversation at another character, who hits it back, setting up the first character to respond. When dialogue is cracking, the characters may volley long strings of conversation, like two well-matched, highly skilled tennis players. What you don’t often see is what that looks like on the page.
McKee does provide such an example, demonstrating how properly structuring your sentences to place your volleys at the beginning and end of each piece of dialogue can create a compelling action/reaction chain as your characters engage in a verbal back and forth.
McKee quotes a brief passage from John Pielmeier’s play (and later film) Agnes of God. In the story, Sister Agnes, a young nun, has given birth to a child that is found dead next to her bed. Agnes is accused of murdering her baby, but insists she is a virgin. Prior to the birth, Agnes also showed evidence of stigmata, a wound in her hand mimicking the wound of Jesus Christ on the cross. The court appoints a psychiatrist to examine Agnes and determine if she is mentally fit to stand trial. In the following exchange, the doctor discusses Agnes with the convent’s Mother Superior. Note the bolded text.
MOTHER SUPERIOR: Of course not. Look, I know what you’re thinking. She’s an hysteric, pure and simple.
DOCTOR: Not simple, no.
MOTHER SUPERIOR: I saw it. Clean through the palm of her hand, do you thinkhysteria did that?
DOCTOR: It’s been doing it for centuries. She’s not unique, you know. She’s just another victim.
MOTHER SUPERIOR: Yes, God’s victim. That’s her innocence. She belongs to God.
DOCTOR: And I mean to take her away from Him. That’s whatyou fear, isn’t it?
MOTHER SUPERIOR: You bet I do.
DOCTOR: Well, I prefer to look upon it as opening her mind.
MOTHER SUPERIOR: To the world?
DOCTOR: To herself. So she can begin to heal.
MOTHER SUPERIOR: But that’s not your job, is it? You’re here to diagnose, not to heal.
DOCTOR: That is a matter of opinion.
MOTHER SUPERIOR: The judge’s… (opinion.)
DOCTOR: Your opinion. I’m here to help her in whatever way I see fit. That’s my duty as a doctor.
MOTHER SUPERIOR: But not as an employee of the court. You’re to make a decision on her sanity as quickly as possible and not interfere with due process of law. Those are the judge’s words, not mine.
DOCTOR: As quickly as I see fit, not as possible. 1 haven’t made that decision yet.
MOTHER SUPERIOR: But the kindest thing you can do for Agnes is to make that decision and let her go.
DOCTOR: Back to court?
MOTHER SUPERIOR: Yes.
DOCTOR: And what then? If I say she’s crazy, she goes to an institution. If I say she’s sane, she goes to prison.
In this exchange, the bolded words trigger the conversational volley between the characters. Each character begins her piece of dialogue responding to what the other character has said and ends by lobbing the argument back into play. By placing the emphasis of each character’s argument at the end of the segment, Pielmeier weights the dialogue to its most important information and sets up the other character’s next line of speech, creating the “tennis game” effect that keeps a scene popping.
To test this method, we can rewrite some of the dialogue to bury the emphasized information within the dialogue string. Notice how this slows down the exchange, muddies the delivery, and decreases clarity.
MOTHER SUPERIOR: I saw it. Clean through the palm of her hand, do you thinkhysteria did that?
DOCTOR: It’s been doing it for centuries. She’s just another victim. She’s not unique, you know.
MOTHER SUPERIOR: Yes, God’s victim.She belongs to God. That’s her innocence.
DOCTOR: And I mean to take her away from Him. That’s whatyou fear, isn’t it?
A slight movement of a few sentences completely throws off the pacing. In lines three and four, Mother Superior and the doctor respond to the what the other has said in the previous lines, but not the last thing they said. By burying the key information in the middle of the sentence, the additional text – unique, innocence – is rendered irrelevant and the scene loses its crackle. The dialogue feels clunky and unnatural.
Emotional hierarchy
In his section on dialogue in Anatomy of Story, John Truby says that dialogue ebbs, flows, and escalates in the same way as your overall plot and individual scenes. For example, in dialogue, a main character may state a desire for the scene. A second character speaks against the desire, creating opposition. The first character responds to the attack. The dialogue continues, escalating to confrontation or resolution.
Truby suggests a trick that can help you put this into practice, particularly in highly emotional or turning point scenes. As with any technique, you shouldn’t overdo it. However, this one may help you create key moments that require hot, emotional dialogue.
The hierarchy looks something like this: desire > plan > state of being
The dialogue begins with the characters discussing a desire. Character A wants to take an action. Character B speaks against it.
As the conflict grows, Character A proposes a plan. Character B tears it down.
When the scene reaches its peak emotional moment, attacks become personal, accusatory.
In his book, Truby shares a snippet of dialogue from the film The Verdict. In the scene, an attorney lays out a goal of winning a large settlement in court case. His client attacks the plan, angry that his lawyer turned down an offer that would have resolved the case. The attorney sets out his plan for winning. The client shifts to attacking the attorney on a personal level, accusing him of not caring about the people he’s supposed to be helping.
When working in harmony with your story, the final stage – the accusation or revelation about a character’s true nature – directly connects the dialogue to your character arc and theme. In The Verdict, the client’s accusation is accurate. His attorney is unethical and a drunk. In fact, he took the case expecting an easy settlement and quick commission. However, the case stirred a desire to change and now represents his make or break moment. The client’s accusation strikes at the attorney’s weakness and need, while also heightening the stakes of the outcome of the court case. The attorney must win the case to prove that he cares and is capable of winning.
These scenes don’t have to be lengthy or complicated. The above scene segment escalates through desire > plan > state of being in about 160 words, but that brief exchange sets the stage for what follows – the high stakes arguments in court and the attorney’s redemption.
Neither of these techniques will tell you what to write or how to develop an ear for snappy, idiosyncratic dialogue. But studying and practicing both can help you build scenes with high emotional stakes and dialogue with clarity and tight pacing.
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Inside every writer, there are two competing factions. Not wolves, but inclinations. We have both the desire to fit in and the desire to break the mold, the instinct to follow the rules and the drive to think for ourselves. The wish to be popular and the desire to be great. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is stacked like a pyramid, but sometimes the layers conflict. The safety of community may ask that we eschew personal fulfillment. An apotheosis may require we leave the community.
This is the conflict through which true believers become heretics and heretics become saints.
In writing, there are rules – the methods and techniques that make a successful story. What to do and what not to do. We want to learn the magic formula – the tricks and tips that transform an unknown writer into a bestselling author. I haven’t experienced it, but I bet having 100,000 readers generates a damn fine sense of belonging.
But at the same time, we want to be recognized for our unique talents. We chafe when someone suggests we write to formula. We don’t want to be merely successful, but respected. We want to be known for our creativity, the originality of our writing, and our keen insights. We have to understand the rules of grammar, spelling, and syntax, or we risk looking foolish. But also, we admire the writers who take risks, who play with language, who fashion new words from old, who break molds. As a rule, writers love eccentric writers. Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, Anne Rice. Who doesn’t want to live freely and write with a bit of style?
In Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, sections of prose are typeset to force the reader to turn the book sideways and then upside down in order to continue reading. In other places, the text is set in backwards type, presumably asking the reader to hold the book up to a mirror. The design mirrors the experience of exploring the haunted house in the title, as well as various characters’ descent into madness.
This technique isn’t for everyone. The novel is described as post-modern. A cranky reader (ahem) might be tempted to describe it as post-intelligible. But as an object of art, it’s a stunning accomplishment by an writer with vision, who decided not to follow what we’d likely consider to be the most basic rule for writing a novel: that the reader be able to read it. Mark Danielewski is definitely a heretic. On the other hand, his second novel was nominated for the National Book Award, so he’s at least been considered for sainthood.
You may not wish to create an impenetrable slab of writing, but do take a few moments to acknowledge both sides of your mind. Appreciate the fact that there are rules of good writing and repeatable steps to success, as well as your soul’s desire to color outside the lines. Reconcile your inner saint and heretic.
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Even if you’ve tempered the influence of your backstory ghosts, you may backslide into negativity. You will experience creative setbacks and rejections, and the voices of imposter syndrome are never louder than when they are given the opportunity to say I told you so.
This is inevitable, but you can use the interim time wisely by learning to be aggressively positive. If you spend more than 3 minutes a month on social media, you’ve probably seen the meme exploring ominous positivity:
You will be ok. You have no choice.
Everything will turn out fine. You cannot stop it.
You will succeed. It is inevitable.
Close your eyes and visualize a time or place when you felt most at ease with your creativity or when you felt that you were achieving a high level of success or excellence. Take some deep breaths and enjoy that feeling. Maybe some of your work appeared in print. Maybe someone gave you a meaningful compliment. Perhaps you uplifted another writer when they needed it. Or you might simply remember a time when you enjoyed writing or other creative work without any negativity and simply reveled in the joy of expressing yourself. Don’t rush. Sit with your creative joy for a bit. This is the good stuff.
Another tactic is to stop talking about writing as though it were our punishment. Eliminate phrases like shitty first draft, open a vein and bleed on the page, and I hate writing but love having written from your emotional repertoire.
Consider assembling a new set of phrases to counteract the voices of negativity when they arise. While your work may be viewed subjectively, there also exist unarguable facts about your creative process and work. Write down some statements that even the nastiest person would not be able to refute. Here are a few of mine:
I genuinely enjoy the time I spend writing.
I write because I want to, not for any outside gain.
I have goals and I meet them.
I love learning and exploring through writing.
I love talking to other creative people and hearing about their work.
These are not subjective statements, nor are they aspirational. Your ugly voice can argue that your writing isn’t any good or that you’ll never be financially successful, but it cannot challenge the fact that you love writing, learning, and other creative people.
Fill your head with good thoughts and don’t give those fuckers an inch.
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The voices of discouragement are the writer’s ghosts, not so different from the backstory wound a protagonist must overcome to succeed on his journey. Fortunately, we generally do not require a major inciting incident or significant quest to overcome these bad thoughts. Unfortunately, we still have to do the Work – looking inside, examining, unraveling, and refreshing our ways of thinking.
Often, the ghosts of our creative pasts are born of shame – the times we were teased because we loved to read or write, the criticisms and rejections we’ve received, and the very bad advice about whether this work is worthwhile.
Oddly enough, compliments also can be a kind of trap. Do you have fans of certain kinds of stories? Has some of your work sold better than the rest? Have your writing group peers told you they love certain elements of your stories, style, or voice? People starved of encouragement are prone to lean into the qualities that earn them praise, often to their detriment.
All these ghosts – good and bad – can hold us back from trying something new. We might be afraid of rejection, criticism, or failure. We might believe we should stick with the familiar, rather than try that new style or genre we’d like to work in. We might lean into the qualities that others like best, such as lush description, fight scenes, or comedy. After all, we don’t want to drive away they very people that are encouraging us today.
The good news is that we don’t have to live with our ghosts.
For today, take some time to think about what people have said about your writing and ability, either positive or negative. Do you agree? Are you satisfied with those observations and judgments? How have those opinions defined you? Have they held you back from trying something new?
Sit with those answers a bit, and then also take some time to accept and appreciate where you are on your creative path. Show some love for your strengths and successes, as well as your weaknesses and failures. Examine without judgment where you are today and celebrate this moment in time.
This might not be easy for you, but let me give you a tip: Right now, someone is looking at you and whatever you’re doing and where you are on your journey, and they admire you. They want to get where you are. They want to be like you.
And here you are, already doing it.
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When I write about the ugly voices in a writer’s head – as I did last week – it is almost always because I am dealing with one in the moment or am anticipating a visit sometime soon. If I submit a harangue about dealing with personal demons, it is not out of the goodness of my heart. It’s pure self-defense.
Writing is great exorcise.
One unfortunate comorbidity of ugly voices is the desire to place blame. And there is plenty to go around. The voices aren’t ephemeral. They existed in our past and I bet they sound like someone you know, someone who was supposed to embrace and encourage you. If not their actual voice, you hear the syntax and rhythm of people who discouraged, insulted, ignored, or undermined you.
When it would have been kinder – and less work – to lift you up, these voices decided to kick your legs out from under you. It’s easy to blame them for the opportunities we missed or when we feel ten (or thirty) years behind where we should be. If only they had…If only they hadn’t…
But what if you decide that you don’t need what that person withheld? When you sit down to write and there’s no one but you and a laptop or pen and paper, what else do you really need?
Do you really need your family’s encouragement before you can write?
Do you need your friends to read your novel?
Once you’ve paid your bills and tidied up the house, do you need anyone’s approval of how you spend your time?
Must you have a conversation with someone whose eyes glaze over when you talk about your work?
Do you need that company in your head?
You don’t need any of those things. Are those nice to have? Yes, absolutely, and if you are lucky enough to have any of them in your life, stop what you’re doing right now and express your appreciation.
But if you don’t? Join the club.
For years I believed other writers and artists had supportive families and hordes of artsy friends who loved talking about their work and tons of collaborative opportunities and spouses who volunteered to cook, clean, and watch the kids so they could have time to create, while I – the turd in the punchbowl of life – struggled on alone.
This was both melodramatic and untrue. Nearly every writer I know has experienced indifference to their work, if not outright negativity. Yes, you will encounter writers who have loving parents and spouses who pay the bills and a circle of supportive creative folks but they are not to be trusted and should never be invited to our gatherings.
I once read a comment that gave me a different perspective on being loved as a writer. A new novel by Stephen King can be expected to sell north of 1 million copies in the United States, a rare feat that we’d all love to duplicate. However, given that the US population sits around 330 million, there are at any moment approximately 329 million people who don’t give a single shit about a new Stephen King book, and that’s just in one country.
Yes, that’s still a pretty good problem to have, but ask: Does SK spend a lot of time thinking about those 329 million people? Does he write for them? Is he trying to please them? Does he fret about their opinion of him? Does he wonder why his books sell a million copies but not two million?
He does not.
If Stephen King can ignore the indifference of 329 million people and numerous critics when he sits down to write, there’s no reason we can’t do likewise, even if we have to discount an extra million people, give or take.
We can get by without someone to prop us up. And I’d argue that when we let go of what we don’t need, the voices in our heads have a bit less power. They are still demanding, but when they show up to harass or withhold, their volume is lower.
Those voices are selling something we don’t need. Close the door in their face.
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This will be a rambling post. I do that sometimes. I mean to write one thing and quickly wander into completely different territory. Thinking out loud on paper, saying something to figure out what I’m trying to say. You’ve been warned.
This started as a post about continuous learning in the writing world and how it should be fun and how it may manifest in various ways at different points in our creative journeys.
I like learning new stuff, especially when it comes to my writing. I love craft books. I follow about 20 blogs that post writing advice and have an insanely well-organized bookmark system for saving the good articles. I can spend hours researching story details, and have learned to be wary of the wiki-hole.
I have always approached my writing as a discovery practice. When I was young, I wrote as a way of imagining solutions to questions I couldn’t answer. When I was older, I wrote to figure out if I had anything worth saying. Now that I have some idea, I want to discover the best way to express myself. Over the years, I’ve also played with form, writing short stories, novels, graphic novel scripts, plays, and poetry. While some of the skills overlap and some lessons learned in one form can be applied to the others, each has its own dialect that needs to be investigated and mastered (or mastered-ish, as the case may be). While I bring some skills to the table, I struggle with others, and I know that every story is going to present its own challenges.
This mindset has its drawbacks. I find it hard to feel like a project is finished, because I know there’s more I can do to perfect it. I’m a jack of many writing forms, but master of none. I don’t write in a set genre, which makes it difficult to answer the question “what do you write?” or even “who are you?”
That may be a deeper inquiry for another day. But I know I’ll never be the writer who finishes a novel on Friday, proofreads over the weekend, and uploads to Amazon on Monday. I don’t want to be the writer who gets miffed when beta readers run the red pen over my manuscript. And I never want to find myself writing the same thing over and over.
I like the stretch. I like playing in different sandboxes. I enjoy the challenges. I’m not afraid of doing the work. It’s fun. Unlike Dorothy Parker, I love writing, and am indifferent to having written. I’m weird.
Do you love learning new skills, craft techniques, factoids? I’m honestly curious, though I’m already betting you do.
But also, I wonder about those who don’t, the writers who skip peer feedback and proper editors and multiple drafts, the writers who do indeed type “the end” to a novel one Friday and are published by the next.
There’s something to be said for the “write and be done” approach, but must it come at the expense of writing your best? Don’t you want to know if the middle of your novel falters or if your dialogue is bland or if you’ve written essentially the same novel multiple times? Is it worth it to cram 25 books on your Amazon profile over the course of a few years (and in some cases, less)?
On the one hand, I admire anyone who doesn’t give a fuck what other people think. This is an important life skill. On the other, I’m bewildered (appalled?) by creative people who appear to give so little thought to the excellence – or lack thereof – of their work.
There is the Dunning-Kruger effect, of course. And some people are just that lazy. If you’ve spent any amount of time scrolling social media forums for writers, you’ve encountered the lazy ones. They’re easy to spot. I’d like to say they’re the minority, but some days, I’m not so sure. For sanity’s sake, let’s agree they are the minority. Loud, but a minority.
So what is it? As I ponder and ramble, I keep circling back to the skill – the confidence – of not caring what other people think. It’s attractive.
But also, I think it’s a trauma response.
A lot of us grew up with criticism and bullying, and so even gentle and honest feedback can feel hurtful. At our best, we grow out of it and learn to find the balance between healthy self-acceptance and a desire to grow and excel. But sometimes we fall short and a mild comment may feel like a personal attack. We have to tune it out or we drown. Call it the fight, flight, or freeze out instinct.
I’ve talked to plenty of writers who were not encouraged to be creative or were even shamed for being unrealistic, unserious, or unworthy. I know people who were talked out of pursuing a creative occupation or passion, because there wouldn’t be any money in it or because they were foolish to believe they were good enough or because the very concept of being creative was too stupid to take seriously, as though they proposed a career as flag pole sitter.
In my case, when not outright ignored, I was told that writing is a lonely life, that the books and writers I liked were garbage, and that if I was serious about writing, I should volunteer to type up the church bulletin every week. On a scale of Useless to Hurtful, I’d place that latter advice somewhere between “Are you being stupid on purpose?” and “Please kill me now.” Even my English professors didn’t know what to say about a career in writing, except that I should consider teaching. In those days, all the writers we studied were dead, so perhaps they believed we were no longer making new ones.
So it happens. A lot. No wonder some of us press the publish button the moment we finish. If we don’t, we might talk ourselves out of it completely. Publish and be damned indeed.
And even under the best circumstances, critical feedback is tough. When we’re already dealing with a group of judgy voices in our heads, criticism can hit like a moral judgment, and suddenly a few paragraphs reflect poorly on our status as writers, or even on our worth as people.
A real writer wouldn’t have made that mistake. A normal person wouldn’t have written that. An intelligent person wouldn’t have wasted their time. Who are we trying to kid?
I had – have – a difficult time overcoming this emotional hurdle. I put a lot of myself into my fiction. Most of my characters have at least a little bit of my history, opinions, observations, and sense of humor. Even when my characters are my polar opposites, my story choices, theme, and genre express a point of view. At heart, the simple phrase “I believe this story is worth telling” is a damn bold artistic statement. So, if my writing is me and my writing is shit, it logically follows that I am shit.
So rather than laziness, maybe the resistance to feedback arises from the receipt of too much criticism. Being open to learning (revising, editing) may feel like admitting defeat so instead we stand up for ourselves. We scream into the ether: “I did this because I wanted to and I’m proud of it and I don’t care what you think about it.”
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this. Let’s make a pact to stop doing this to ourselves.
All love to Anne Lamott, but let’s start by discarding the term “shitty first draft.” It’s amusingly blunt, but perhaps no longer helpful. Instead, let me suggest discovery draft or brainstorming draft. I call my first drafts the “barf draft” but I don’t mean that pejoratively. The barf draft gets everything out of my head and onto the page. It may be messy but it’s colorful and it gives me a good look at what I’m digesting. Most of it will be cleaned up, and this is where the analogy breaks down so I’ll stop.
When you request feedback on a piece of writing, don’t joke that it sucks or preemptively explain what’s wrong with it. A great practice is to go in with questions. Did the dialogue sound true? Was that joke funny or did it sound mean? Is the protagonist as sympathetic on paper as he is in my head? How would you describe the theme? Bringing your own questions guides your beta reader to where you need their focus and can make critiques easier to swallow, even when someone points out a flaw you didn’t anticipate.
When you approach feedback and discussion from a place of curiosity and learning, you can dull feelings of inadequacy and instead come into the critique with the humble admission that you simply don’t know everything there is to know, even about your own story. When you hit a rough patch in your novel or don’t know where to go next, ask yourself what you need to learn and then go learn it.
As writers, let’s revel in the fun of exploration, of learning, developing our skills, deepening our insights, and putting the best parts of ourselves out into the world. Let’s agree that feedback is awesome. It’s a gift of someone’s time and we should embrace it when we’re lucky enough to receive it.
This is a mindset shift. It takes practice. I still have a hard time with imposter syndrome, so I’m in the arena with you. I want very badly not to suck. The world teaches us that learning is boring and imperfection is something to be ashamed of and that personal taste should be crowd-approved. It can be difficult to unlearn that. But if we can adopt this viewpoint, we become more open to the lessons that writing – and life – can teach us.
In the end, learning should be a joyful thing and if I wish anything for my writer friends this year, it’s that you find all the joy you can in writing.
Even if you publish your novel without asking for feedback.
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