Um…they all have them. If you get what I mean. *blush* Again, I’m closing the door on this question!
For Writers
For all the years I’ve been in this business, I’m awkward about giving advice. I don’t understand where the pictures in my head come from, and I feel lucky rather than competent when it comes to why my books have found an audience. That being said, from time to time, I’ve blathered on the subject of writing, creativity in general, and the publishing business at large. The below is a collection of commentaries I posted on my Facebook page years ago. They’re minimally edited, and I have to say, it was fun to go through them and see that the shit still resonates.
Soz. Sh*t.
Ah, the *...
Because you know me, always keeping it professional.
Mood Rings and Other Sh*t
One of the things I’ve found to be true—and I do not like this slice of reality—is that my mood affects my opinion of my work. Not so much when I’m drafting. When I’m laying new tracks on the page, that’s one kind of zone. It goes fast or slow, feels rough or smooth, and I suppose my mood can affect the speed of things. But for me, how I’m feeling can intrude on my workspace when I’m editing. On a day when I’m feeling focused and positive, I can cook right along and see the good in things. When I’m feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, the filter through which I assess my work can go fun house on me in a bad way: Everything becomes sh*t.
I’m wondering if the same isn’t true for you all. When it comes to editing, I firmly believe that writers need to have a very honest and unsentimental catalog of their strengths and weaknesses. Strengths: I do male voices very well. I’m pretty good at action. I’m good at description and I’ve got a knack for line-by-line construction. Weaknesses: I suck at endings. I rush them, usually because I’m so relieved to have made it to the end in one piece. (LOVER UNBOUND is a prime example of this, whereas THE CHOSEN is a book where I consciously tried to take more time.) I still need to work on my females (Marissa in LOVER REVEALED, although she’s gotten better). I can grow more there. Sometimes, my voice gets in the way of the reader. It’s too much quippy sh*t that can be distracting. (Logos, overuse of slang, ’d at the ends of made-up words, the fact that I insist on not putting a ? at the end of a question in dialogueif, when the person said it in my head, they make it like a statement, with no inflection.) I take for granted that my readers will remember things that they shouldn’t have to. (Every book.) As hard as my research assistant and I work at continuity within the series, and as much as we scrub the books, we still miss things from time to time. (Every book.) Nothing I ever write meets the standard in my head. (Every book.) I get sidetracked by the world building because I’m so fascinated by it that I can short change the romance. (But I’ve identified this as a problem, and I’m getting back to basics, i.e., THE SAVIOR.) Oh, and I flood the books with too many people because I’m fascinated by them. I leave open, unresolved storylines...
The list goes on and on.
Anywho, you need to be clear with yourself about what you’re good and bad at. Don’t rely on others to give you this opinion. Read your stuff and make your own decision about its value, and for godsakes, don’t be blinded by the effort it takes to write something, even if you love it, even if your fingers bled on the keyboard. Bottom line, no one cares about how hard it was for you (unless they are your personal friends and family), and you shouldn’t, either. People read for an escape, and they read to be entertained. That you worked your butt off is something you should take personal pride in, but you shouldn’t expect your readers to care about it, and you shouldn’t use that as a shield against the crap that’s on the page. (We all write crap. We also all write brilliant stuff. The key is to know the difference and fix the latter.)
And this is where the mood problem comes in.
The tricky part, as we sift through what we’ve put on the page, is to be objective while we edit, revise, and refine. But on a bad day, I can decide everything is crap, and bad days can have nothing to do with the writing (kid is sick, dog is sick, husband worried about something, money worries, toothache). I canremember struggling with being exhausted and overwhelmed, and I talked to Sue about how I was feeling. (Sue Grafton, my mentor.) Sue was great for kicking me in the can and getting me over myself. She said, “When you’re thinking everything is sh*t, take a break, clear your head, come back at it. And then trust that you have a sufficiently objective sense of what you’re doing so that you can judge accurately even when you’re not feeling kind about your words.”
Trust your process. And try the following.
Step one: Identify that you’re in a bad headspace. Step two: Label it as such. Step three: Mental health break for reframing. Step four: Identify your frustration, disappointment, whatever, with your words as something that is transitory. If you think every single word is sh*t, at least some part of it is mood, I guarantee this. Step five: Gently come back to the work. Step six: Know that the mood will shift, and you will probably feel better the next time you sit down. Don’t get caught up in it.
Rinse and repeat.
Writing is so hard. I don’t care whether it’s the career you make money from or something you do for self-expression or a lark you’re just trying out. It requires long hours alone, dedication to an end product that could suck, and the ability to tolerate bucket loads of self-doubt. Sometimes, I don’t know why I keep doing it. I know you’ve felt the same. At the end of the day, however, we just have to. Writers write. It’s how we’re hardwired.
I hope this is not too dour a post. My mantras to share with you are the same: Believe, believe, believe. And: Magic happens. We are the same, us lot. We are all in this big pool of letters, putting together that which gives us buoyancy: The stories in our head.
Yes, you ARE a writer!
Over the course of my career, I’ve had a lot of folks come up to me and ask me for writing advice. I’m always stymied by what to say because the truth is, I don’t know where the people in my head come from, and I don’t know why the stories do what they do, and I have no idea how I got to be so lucky—but that’s another post. The point of today’s is that I am always shocked by the number of people who qualify themselves with the following:
But I’m not arealwriter.
They come up to me in person, or drop me an email, or DM me on socials, and they tell me all about the stories in their heads, and the chapters they’ve put on the page, and the manuscripts they’ve finished, and they cap all that off with the I’m-not-a-real-writer.
Inherent in that statement are a couple of things: 1) The belief that there is some kind of acceptance threshold that has to be surmounted before you get your Writer Badge; 2) Until you get that badge, you are subject to getting tossed out of the club by security; 3) The badge can be revoked at any time if you do not continue to write/get published/hit lists, etc.; 4) Everyone who has a badge is judging you; 5) You are not allowed to take up space or own your own progress and efforts until some external force with a checklist validates your experience and journey.
Let’s reframe this, shall we?
1) There is no f*cking Writer Badge. You do not need to be published to be a “real” writer. There is no “real” writer. If you put words to a page, you are a writer. We are all writers. If youwrite, you are a writer. It’s the verb that makes the noun, nothing else.
2) There is no security. No one can kick you out of the club because the club has no doors, no entrance, no rules. We are all the same. You, me, your bestie, your favorite author. We are in this together. We all type to get the stories out of our heads. It IS as simple as that. See reframe 1.
3) There is no threshold that has to be sustained. I know this market is really tough. I know that it will probably get tougher, and it is never going to be like it was. But as my mentor Sue (Grafton) always said, “Publishing’s been in the bad books for the twenty-five years I’ve had a career.” It is heartbreaking to have setbacks. To find a following and see it challenged. To lose a publisher. To have your work in the hands of a business that is folding. To be stuck by old contracts, or lose new ones. But you are still a writer. See reframe 1.
4) No one has a right to judge you—and by this, I don’t mean that you shouldn’t accept constructive criticism that is valid and from trusted sources. I’m talking about the mean-girl sh*t. If you worry too much about what other people think about you, you’re not just wasting your time, you’re sacrificing time you could be writing. Drama is distracting and counterproductive. When you get to your last day, are you going to be glad that you wrote a book? Two books? Ten books? Fifty? Or are you going to be happy that you spent that time all in your head about what someone said or posted about you? This is not a dress rehearsal. Time is short. Use what the good Lord gave you wisely because you can be called home at any moment.
5) You, and you alone, have the right to define yourself as a writer. No one else does. This is a corollary to reframe 4. Do not let anyone else, or anyone else’s success, define you. YOU define you. We are all on our own journeys, and listen, success is great, and failure sucks (remember, I was fired from my first publisher,so I know what it’s like), and there is no way of ensuring the former and avoiding the latter. YOUR writing is enough. YOUR writing, at whatever level you’re at, is sufficient. Yes, we all want to be further ahead. (I want to be Stephen King, for example. There is ALWAYS someone doing more, earning more, getting more.) Strive for excellence every day, and keep putting one foot in front of the other, and you’ll be amazed about what that adds up to. And remember there are always going to be things outside of us that can undermine us. Why add to that burden? You can’t control that sh*t, but you can control yourself. Be your own champion, and know that any strength you find outside of yourself from other people is something they can take away. The strength WITHIN you is YOURS. Support is great. Personal grounding is better. So see reframe 1 and define yourself.
Well, I said a mouthful. But all of it is true. Please see reframe 1 one more time, and stop apologizing if you aren’t a multi-pub’dNew York Timesbestseller with one hundred and fifty titles to your credit and a chateau in France:
