Return to Part 1

Concentration/Focus

Okay, knowl­edge drop: for some of us, this isn’t entire­ly accu­rate. There are some nice med­ical doc­tors who can give us lit­tle pills that help with the abil­i­ty to concentrate/focus, so yes, sort of, some peo­ple can kind of be “giv­en” the abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate. Let me just make that caveat through a bull­horn before we go any fur­ther.

And yet, with or with­out pills, one of the great­est strug­gles a writer goes through is apply­ing their ass lib­er­al­ly to the chair of their choos­ing*, and get­ting the fuck­ing work done. Although a deter­mined writer might be able to write a nov­el, longer work, or have a suc­cess­ful writ­ing career by work­ing fif­teen min­utes or thir­ty min­utes at a time over the course of who knows how long or even putting in six hours every week­end, most peo­ple who hit those bell­wethers have a breath­tak­ing­ly sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence to report: they con­cen­trat­ed on their writ­ing for hours. Mul­ti­ple hours. Often (usu­al­ly) LOTS of mul­ti­ple and con­sec­u­tive hours. They did it dai­ly or very close to dai­ly.

(*Metaphor chair could be a stand­ing desk. I had one of those for a while. It was AAAAAAAWWWWWWSOOOOOME! There’s no room for it in my new place, though.)

No one can hand you a can of con­cen­tra­tion that you can chug. There’s no ten-pack of con­cen­tra­tion at Cost­co for you to slather your­self with. You need it bad­ly, but the only way you’re going to get it is through the dis­ci­pline of sit­ting down time after time (prefer­ably day after day) and turn­ing a lit­tle bit of time into a lit­tle more and a lit­tle more and a lit­tle more. It will even­tu­al­ly become prac­tice, then habit, then feel strange to miss, but noth­ing out­side you can make you love writ­ing enough to blow past all those voic­es that are going to try to talk you out of it.

Enough Real Talk

It’s way too easy to find some­one who will take an indus­tri­al-sized leaf blow­er, fill it with uni­corn farts, and blow mag­i­cal rain­bows straight up your ass so that you become dis­tend­ed and rain­bows come leak­ing out all of your mucus mem­branes. “If you can believe it, the uni­verse will lis­ten to you!” “The only thing between you and suc­cess is focus­ing the actu­al­iza­tion of your imag­i­na­tion.” “By syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly man­i­fest­ing your quan­tum desires, you will ebb the per­tur­ba­tions of the ether to obey your focal­ized imag­ini­fi­ca­tions.”

And look, I’m fuck­ing woo, okay? Walk over to some oth­er parts of this blog, and I’m talk­ing about mag­ick (with a K) and pre­his­toric Irish deities hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with me. I’m not above quan­tu­miz­ing my actu­al­ized syn­er­gy to get what I want. But that’s not going to do the writ­ing FOR you. And for every cis het white dude who tells you that all you have to do is dream it to make it real, there’s some­one from a mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ty you have to straight up fuck­ing IGNORE.

It is ALSO easy to find a whole fuck­ing epic met­ric shit­ton of peo­ple who are will­ing to “SELL” the one thing that is “clear­ly” hold­ing you back. Nov­el for­mat­ting soft­ware? A gram­mar check? An ergonom­ic key­board? A yoga ball for a chair? Baby, I gots what you needs. Grab your cred­it card, and let’s make you a genius. 

Slight­ly hard­er to find is real talk. The talk that threads that nee­dle. The talk that acknowl­edges a tough indus­try with a LOT of sub­mis­sions and a crowd twen­ty deep out­side every door who think writ­ing is their tick­et to fame and for­tune. The talk that says you can prob­a­bly have a mod­est career… if that’s even what you real­ly want, but you’re prob­a­bly going to have to give up some things to get there. The real talk that tells you that some peo­ple nev­er pay a bill from their word-smithing or make only side-gig mon­ey, pur­sue art casu­al­ly or as a ded­i­cat­ed hob­by­ist, and nev­er EVER quit their day jobs. Real talk that tells you that for 99.9% of writ­ers, it takes years of prac­tice and prob­a­bly dou­ble-dig­it years of read­ing vora­cious­ly to be a writer. But also that it’s not impos­si­ble if you’re will­ing to work hard.

Most peo­ple have an agenda—even if they don’t know it. They want to get you to buy some­thing. They want you to give up like they did. They want to bang you. Or they just want you to keep com­ing back because they make you feel so inspired by talk­ing about your dreams and nev­er get­ting around to men­tion­ing the work.

But whether it’s a blog about writ­ing, some good advice, or an edi­tor that knows how to cleave that mid­dle ground, find­ing the real, down-to-earth talk is some­thing writ­ers can’t get enough of.

Feed­back Armor

You might as well get through your del­i­cate flower stage ear­ly because no one’s approval is going to coun­ter­bal­ance the crit­i­cism out there. Not now. Not ever. 

It’s a jun­gle, and it’s even worse now that the Inter­net means that peo­ple can basi­cal­ly drag your book at the press of a but­ton with the ease of writ­ing a Yelp review for the local Thai place. It’s going to hurt. You are not the writer equiv­a­lent of sliced bread. You have to find your voice, and even THEN, it won’t be for every­one. But even­tu­al­ly, it’ll hurt less. And one day you’ll be able to either accept it with­out ego or dis­miss it with­out prej­u­dice.

This might be a bet­ter rea­son to get start­ed ear­ly engag­ing in the full writ­ing process—including peer review—because if you don’t learn ear­ly (and so so fuck­ing often) that your prose is not the stuff of leg­end, it’s going to be THAT much hard­er when you put it out there, and folks take a shit on it.

Moti­va­tion

No one is going to make you want to sit down and do the work. You can get your ass tem­porar­i­ly rid­den by exter­nal moti­va­tion if you are in a writ­ing pro­gram and your grade depends on writ­ing. You might get a lit­tle hit from the William-Wal­lace-Brave­heart-speech-cal­iber inspi­ra­tion posts. (“They may take our PROSE. But they’ll nev­er take OUR PROOOOOCEEEESSSS!!!”) Maybe your men­tor or a mom who nev­er thought you were good enough can say, “You got this, kid” in a tear­ful scene where they final­ly stick some­thing you’ve writ­ten on the refrig­er­a­tor, and it’s total­ly not weird even though you’re now in your for­ties.

But ulti­mate­ly, all that will fade. No one can actu­al­ly give you sus­tained moti­va­tion. You have to find that for your­self. In the nooks and cran­nies. In the suc­cess of oth­ers. In the faces of the chil­dren. In the sighs of lovers in some wild group sex. In untam­pered rage that you still have some moth­er­fuck­ers to prove wrong. (“Take that, Mrs. Fel­sner. I’ll show YOU. Hav­ing dan­gled my mod­i­fiers indis­crim­i­nate­ly, the writ­ing still made mon­ey.) In the voice of that friend who told you maybe to find a more attain­able dream… if you liked things like pay­ing rent and food.

Or maybe that’s just me. 

What­ev­er it is, use it. Use it all. You have to find your moti­va­tion to sit down day after day after day and keep putting in the work. In rage, and hope, and habit, and sheer force of will. No one can find it for you.

Nerve

BOLD OF YOU TO ASSUME ANYONE WANTED TO READ YOUR SHIT! (But assume you must!)

Call it chutz­pah. Call it mox­ie. Call it sinew. You have to have some. You do. And no one can give that to you.

I mean, if you want to write for your­self alone in jour­nals that Brad Pitt and Mor­gan Free­man will try to piece togeth­er after your sev­en-sins killing spree, then maybe you don’t need any nerve; but if you want it out there, read by peo­ple, an audi­ence, maybe a fan or two… or pos­si­bly a lit­tle niche, then yeah, you need nerve. You need just the tini­est bit of grit­ty, non-sup­port­ed, ever-so-slight­ly arro­gant faith in your­self.

And real talk, my friends. Just for a moment. Let’s be absolute­ly can­did and frank with each oth­er. There’s a lot I could unpack here and a lot that could be said about this. And real­ly so much of it is salient. But one thing that is real­ly impor­tant to remem­ber is that Brad Pit­t’s char­ac­ter was hav­ing trou­ble with Dante, so is that real­ly the route you want to go?

All writ­ers suf­fer from imposter syn­drome. The ones that don’t are almost always dread­ful writ­ers and often not-such-awe­some peo­ple either. The rest of us have bad days and less-bad days. But at the end of those days (what­ev­er the rel­a­tive lev­el of bad­ness they involved), we pro­ceed as if we have some­thing worth say­ing. We con­tin­ue as if, some­where out there, some­one wants to read our shit.

No one can give this to you. No one will ever tell you for the gag­illionth time that they want to read your work, and then you’re “over it.” No one will ever take away the feel­ing that you are a pre­ten­tious fuck for pre­sum­ing you have any­thing to say, and assuage the need for some courage.

And even though you’re absolute­ly wrong (pret­ty much always at least one some­one DOES want to read you)… putting one­self out there takes nerve. No one’s going to give that nerve TO you, but you need it just the same.