The most com­mon prob­lem among begin­ning writ­ers is actu­al­ly not stilt­ed or pur­ple prose, it’s not lack of vocab­u­lary or gram­mat­i­cal knowl­edge, it’s not that they haven’t found their voice and bor­row from their favorite Vic­to­ri­an authors even if they’re writ­ing grit­ty cyber­punk tech­no­erot­i­ca, and it cer­tain­ly isn’t that they need to do noth­ing more than “a pol­ish” on that vam­pire mag­ic school love tri­an­gle man­u­script they wrote in high school.

It’s that they’re too good to take advice.

It’s breath­tak­ing, real­ly, how many would-be writ­ers are spe­cial snowflakes to whom the basic advice giv­en over and over and over (by vir­tu­al­ly every­one they want to write like) sim­ply doesn’t apply. Not in this case. Not to them.

And I want you to under­stand, when I say “them,” I mean “us.” That was me think­ing that a hun­dred pages of high school jokes was going to get a big six (it was six back then) deal if some­one would just fix my spelling errors. That was me think­ing that I was nev­er going to have to cut a whole scene out or remove a char­ac­ter. That was me think­ing that oth­er writ­ers might have to put in five or ten years of rejec­tion, but I had the shit wired. Even as recent­ly as a few years ago, I was won­der­ing why my sec­ond drafts weren’t being received with more enthu­si­asm.

The world of writ­ing (and real­ly many arts) is filled with such unique flakes of snow and folks who know bet­ter. Tell them they are going to need to write three to sev­en drafts if they want to be pub­lished, and they’re sure they can do it in one and some proof­read­ing because they thought a lot about their sto­ry before writ­ing it down. (“Vir­ginia Woolf did it in one!”) Tell them they’re going to have to kill their dar­lings, and they know that in this case, they’ve got a win­ner from begin­ning to end with not one super­flu­ous char­ac­ter or scene. Tell them to use sim­ple words, and they will give you ten rea­sons they need “blan­d­ish­ment” instead of “flat­tery.” Tell them to cut 20% to tight­en their nar­ra­tive arc, and they will cling to every word like they’ve writ­ten Ulysses.

And tell them to write every day, and they will find a hun­dred rea­sons they don’t want to and fifty excus­es for why they can’t. Most of these excus­es are spec­tac­u­lar­ly trans­par­ent pri­or­i­ti­za­tion fail­ures.

If said writ­ers were calm­ly clack­ing away for their own artis­tic ful­fill­ment, hap­py sim­ply in the joy of the writ­ing they so vocif­er­ous­ly love, if they nev­er want­ed to be famous or paid or even per­haps even read except pos­si­bly by a hand­ful of fam­i­ly and friends, this would be no issue. Imag­ine them blissed out as they do that thing for which they florid­ly express their undy­ing devo­tion. A tear rolls down their faces. “I just love writ­ing so much…” they say.

Mil­lions of artists are unknown, uncel­e­brat­ed, and uncom­pen­sat­ed. They paint, com­pose, play instru­ments, sing in the show­er, dance in their liv­ing rooms, carve wood into faces, fold paper into cranes, dec­o­rate wreaths, take pot­tery class­es, snap pic­tures, doo­dle, and even write in ways that ful­fill them but aren’t intend­ed to be con­sumed by a wider audi­ence. Even those who dis­play or per­form their art often do so for their com­mu­ni­ties or their loved ones. They act sea­son after sea­son in the­aters where the tick­et price might go towards the strike par­ty. They sing for town con­certs for lit­tle more glo­ry than the may­or being hon­est­ly impressed. They write fic­tion online for forums where their best days are a cou­ple of emails telling them their words are real­ly appre­ci­at­ed.

But for some rea­son, many, many, many writers—millions upon mil­lions of writers—also sit around and won­der how to “make it.” They may not know what “it” is, but the fact that they are mak­ing any­thing less than “it” is unful­fill­ing to them. They ask Neil Gaiman how they can make it. They cor­ner Stephen King at sign­ings and ask how he blew life into his bur­geon­ing career. They del­uge Danielle Steele with impas­sioned pleas for how they too can emu­late her suc­cess. They even write to third- or fourth-rate blog­gers who they have found are pay­ing half their bills through writ­ing these days, and try to find out what the secret is. Because they want to dis­cov­er something—anything—other than hard, con­sis­tent work that might be the secret to being a writer.

Over and over and over and over again, these writ­ers are asked these ques­tions. I make about = half my income from writ­ing (the oth­er half from per­son­al train­ing), and have made non-triv­ial mon­ey from writ­ing over the years, but I am in NO way a career writer or get­ting rich any time soon.

And yet I have prob­a­bly been asked this ques­tion no less than fifty times.

These folks want the career tra­jec­to­ries, the acco­lades, the read­ers, the mon­ey, maybe even the fame, and yet some­how they are des­per­ate that it comes from some secret trick of “tal­ent” or inspi­ra­tion that goes beyond hard and con­sis­tent work. And yet as lay­ers of writ­ers are peeled away, tak­ing away the casu­al writ­ers, the dilet­tantes, those who’ve pub­lished a sin­gle book, those who make a pit­tance or have a few hun­dred read­ers… As you peel away trust fund babies and folks with rich spous­es who get to be “work­ing writ­ers” because they don’t need to have a day job, and the obscure names you’ve nev­er heard of from the cor­ners of Ama­zon… As you solic­it the advice of only the most suc­cess­ful, the most pub­lished, the most read, and the most admired, their advice on process (if not craft) becomes increas­ing­ly homo­ge­neous and pre­dictable: read inces­sant­ly, write con­stant­ly.

And the rea­son I’m telling you all this is that I want you to under­stand the con­text in which most advice from writ­ers is solicit­ed and the con­text in which it is deliv­ered.

Because there IS anoth­er kind of con­text. It’s rare (though not that rare), but it exists. And it is impor­tant that one context’s sort of pre­emp­tive answers put out as advice to the teem­ing mil­lions are not mis­com­mu­ni­cat­ed into the oth­er context’s “answer field.” Once in a while, some­one says they can’t write every day, and it isn’t about their raid­ing guild or their after-din­ner drinks or their inabil­i­ty to skip their beau­ty sleep to get up half an hour ear­ly. Once in a while, they say, “No, I actu­al­ly can’t write every day.” And they all mean it

TO BE CONTINUED….