What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing Part-1

writ•ing [rahy-ting] noun
1. the act of a person or thing that writes.
2. written form: to commit one's thoughts to writing.
3. that which is written; characters or matter written with a pen or the like: His writing is illegible.
4. such characters or matter with respect to style, kind,quality, etc.
5. an inscription.
6. a letter.
7. any written or printed paper, as a document or deed.
8. literary or musical style, form, quality, technique, etc.: Her writing is stilted.
9. a literary composition or production.
10. the profession of a writer: He turned to writing at an early age.
11. the Writings, Hagiographa.

“Writing?” he asks. “What does that actually mean?”

I pause. What DOES that mean? Because it sure as hell means a lot more than the act of a person that writes. I’m so used to stupid plebs assuming they know what I mean when I say “writing,” and being so very, very wrong about their assumptions. It has literally never occurred to me that someone might actually ask.

“So,” I say. “It has come to this.” I am instantly aware of the dramatic tension. I feel the cool press of the Glock in my hand, and in a swift move and a sharp report, it’s all over. I wonder briefly if it is smoke or steam that rises from the gushing vermillion hole in his chest.

If anyone asks, I’ll tell them he asked me to read his fanfic that he wrote in high school. That seriously happens like twice a week. Bullets are on the monthly budget. But just to be on the safe side, I better work out an answer to the question so no one sees something untoward when they examine the trail of bodies left in my wake.


The problem with the word “writing” is that most writers use that word differently than other people, most creative writers use it differently than other writers, and most fiction writers use it slightly differently than creative writers of other genres. The definition above is from dictionary dot com, and it will not help us. Definition eight, down in the dregs of definition limbo where angels fear to tread, perhaps comes closest, but even this is woefully insufficient for the kind of damage writers are talking about to psyche and social life alike when they use the term “writing.” These definitions don’t talk about the caffeine addictions, the muses, the moments of despair, or how writers know they might be writing something good when they have completely forgotten having written the last three pages.

Let’s start with the very basics. Forget creative writers with their namby pamby artsy-fartsy crap, running around and trying to figure out if they want to be the kind of writer who does talk shows or gets Nobel prizes for literature before they’ve even submitted to a magazine. Let’s just talk writers in general. They could be professional writers, or they could be amateur writers, but what they are NOT—and let me be absolutely clear about this—is people who aren’t writers but want to be, dream of being, or THINK THEY ARE. These people might have some stunning “I don’t do that” sort of stories to share with you after you read them this article. (Or preferably after you send them the link because I REALLY need the page hits.) Some may have fanciful tales and tell you "I don't really see that as part of writing..." and you'll wonder if your old pal Chris has played you false.

However, investigate these fantastic claims a little further, and you’ll find that those people aren’t really writing. I’m not kidding, if you poke at those wildly contrary stories for a good Perry Mason minute, you’re going to discover those people like to think about themselves as writers, but they usually aren’t actually doing much writing that might be put out in the world. You will find that for writers that are serious about writing, and perhaps more importantly, who are serious about making their writing be something that other people would want to read, there’s no real way of getting around a few basics of what is writing, and what isn’t writing. A couple of very special snowflakes might have a talent they recognize is freakishly weird and makes them an X-man, but those people realize almost instantly that they have an extremely odd quirk, that theirs is not a common experience, and that they would be doing a disservice to other writers to try to tell them they should expect the same. In thirty years, I have never met an exception to this. I have met a few people who can side step some of the writing fundamentals but each of them seems keenly aware that this is unusual and do not encourage others to forgo the entirety of writing.

So what separates the writers from the not-writers? So glad you asked! When your basic literate human talks about writing they mean the moment of actual writing. If they have to write a paper (let’s say for a college class) they would say that they begin the paper when their first word shows up on the page at three in the morning, five scant hours before the paper is due. After two break downs, three panic attacks, and a cruise through the university website to see how hard it is to drop a class after deadline, they finally hook themselves up with a Five-Hour Energy intravenous drip and begin working. They write the first line of the paper, and at that moment they consider themselves to be writing. For these people, our definitions up above are sufficient.

“Isn’t this true of everyone?” you ask. No, of course it isn’t. This is true of the un-writers. Writers do this whole thing completely differently. For a writer this entire landscape is part of a larger mosaic. Oh sure they probably still abuse stimulants, often have breakdowns and panic attacks and most of them dick around until the deadline is elbow deep up their ass. But a “writer” recognizes that this is all part of the process. A writer wears these moments of panic and distress like old, comfortable shoes. As the panic attack sets in they say “Oh splendid, the panic attack portion of the evening! Things are going right according to schedule.” Such a writer knows that the moment of panic between the first round of vomiting and needing the oxygen mask is when their real work can begin. Or maybe they work well when they’re not under deadline and have steadily plugged away. Regardless of what their process is, they know it, understand it, and anticipate it.

And you wouldn’t believe how much fucking mileage you can get out of this. Your boss can burst in, find you playing World of Warcraft and if you have set yourself up right with this whole “process” thing, get quality work in under deadline, and you are VERY good at acting you can totally say “I’m actually writing” with a straight face.

Seriously. (I mean don’t go around inviting your boss to raid with you during office hours or anything. Just know that you have one last ace up your sleeve if you need it.) This has happened to people I know. It works. You have to have the reputation for on-time excellence first, but if you do...

This is partially because a writer (who knows their process and how it works) will turn around in the eleventh hour and pull it out, suddenly appearing from an office with finger cramps, caffeine psychosis, and a draft that isn’t half bad for what is expected. The other part is because, it’s sort of true. I wasn’t just making up the most ludicrous example I could think of. I wrote a lot of papers while my gnome Warlock farmed Fel Cloth in Felwood. I didn’t physically write those papers while playing W.O.W. I would have gotten terrible grades, but when I was still percolating those ideas in my head it actually often helped me to keep part of my brain busy doing something repetitive, mostly mindless, but also kind of fun. Two hours of WOW could probably generate a dozen really good ideas that I would jot down on a notepad next to my computer, and then unpack later when I’d put Esk to bed, and it was time to get some work done.

Writing is a process. When writers talk about writing, they are talking about the whole process, not just the part of the process where ink or pixels actually start to spill.

Our hypothetical student who sits down and writes their paper from beginning to end will probably end up with comments along the order of: “Your paper lacked focus,” “I think your real thesis statement is hiding in your conclusion,” and “Holy BALLS, did you get your introduction off the back of a cereal box, or what?” This is because despite the sleek and sexy depiction of writers in popular media (especially writer action heroes in those summer blockbusters) no one sits down and writes something from beginning to end—even the people that actually sort of do.

Writing is a process, and most of that process isn’t actually what is commonly thought of as writing. Writers know this process. They respect this process. They understand it, and they use it. And even when they can do certain steps of it SO FUCKING FAST that it looks like they just sat down and wrote something from beginning to end, they are actually engaged in this process every time they write.

When writers talk about writing, they may be using definitions 1-11 just to keep you on your toes, but what they are probably talking about is the whole crazy process from beginning to end.

[To be continued on Wednesday...]

It's All About the Food

Here are a few prompts for this evening. I'm not exactly sure why the food ones are calling to me. I've had dinner already. Don't forget to HAVE FUN!!

1- Imagine two food items of a Thanksgiving dinner. How would you characterize them? (Perhaps a pie might be sweet, or a cranberry sauce might be tart but what would the difference be between green beans and turkey?) Now imagine these two food items are in the back of a car on its way to a Thanksgiving dinner. Are they excited about their duty or are they more like two convicts about to be executed? Maybe one is excited and the other is resigned. Or maybe one bravely faces destiny and the other is a coward. Write about their conversation with each other for 15 minutes.

2- "Love is like a rose." Such romantic imagery is a cliche. Try comparing love to a food item (not chocolate!) especially a food item that would be unconventional--the weirder the better. (Love is like cabbage!) Take a paragraph to develop this metaphor.

3- Open your fridge. Look around. Personify all your food items. What is their social structure. Are they democratic? Is one food item in charge? (And which one?) Is there a caste system based on the position of shelves or is it a more complicated oppressor/oppressed relationship based on dairy vs. meats? Are their factions? Who crosses sides--besides the tomato, of course. (That crisper drawer looks like it's a hotbed of political insurgency, doesn't it?) Pick a specific food item from a condiment to a lunch meat to one of the beverages. Write a three page vignette about this food item trying to get along in this world. Does it get swept up in the crisper's ideology? Does it try to stay in the back and not be noticed? Does it like the existing social structure or try to fight it? What does it want? How does it try to get it?

Prompt Disclaimers

Sunday prompts may be fun or difficult, they may work specific "muscles" or just let you play. They may be precisely defined or widely open ended, meticulously timed or totally casual, and they may involve a long paragraph of complex rules to follow or a few words meant to inspire...anything. These are a few I've found over the years that have been fun, funny, challenging, interesting, or generated some good writing.

Don't worry if this doesn't lead to your next short story for the New Yorker or The Atlantic. I don't know why writers have this thing where everything they write has to be headed towards publication and nothing is ever abandoned or just played with for fun. Go have fun and play with some words! Frolic with them. Everything is always something a writer is "working on." Why is nothing ever something they're "playing with"? If you start to see something "real" in a prompt response, that's great, but it really is okay to write something that you absolutely never intend to publish. This is not a waste of spirit or words.

Musicians train for years, practice, and rehearse long before any performance. Actors practice and rehearse and most without nepotism train for years as well. Visual artists train for years, and draw or doodle constantly when they're not painting things and most of their work sits in their studios unpurchased. Dancers train for years, practice, and rehearse. Architects study for nearly a decade before they design so much as a house. Film makers train, rehearse, and most of their work ends up on the cutting room floor. Most of what fundamentally goes into the creation of a work of art happened before the "performance" even began. That's why it's so impressive. You're not just looking at thousands of hours of effort--you're looking at thousands of hours of effort after tens of thousands of hours of training. Just because a writer's "practice" sits on a page and doesn't go away (except after many years) doesn't mean it shouldn't. The audio/visual arts disburse in waves across the universe and if they don't hit eyes and ears they are lost forever, but the permanency of words on a page doesn't mean you have any obligation to them. Just have some fun and see what happens.

There is absolutely no reason to expect that everything you write will lead to a finished product, and honestly, there's every reason to expect that it won't. If anything, the idea that your every written word is just a revision away from being worthy of publication is hubris beyond measure (said the blogger). And the sentiment I've seen among some writers that nothing is worth putting effort into that won't one day be published is a very stifling way to approach art. Writers have "jam sessions." Writers have "doodling." Writers "sing along with the radio." It just involves writing, so it looks a little different. But if you let go of that expectation, you can actually forget the writer's block, forget the expectation, forget that internal voice that has something to say about it's "potential," forget all that horrible presumption that leads you to stare at a blank page because it HAS to be brilliant from the very first word, forget it all, lean back, and enjoy playing.

Lastly, it seems like sometimes writers get really worried that everything that comes out of the same prompt will be similar and feel derivative, and that if for some reason one of these prompts somehow DID lead to something to be published and submitted, there would be dozens, perhaps hundreds of "clones" out there competing for those publication opportunities. Trust me, it won't happen. Trust me. Truuuuuuuuuuuuust me. I sat in class after class of an undergraduate creative writing program, 75% of which consisted of ardent Stephen King fans who watched more TV than they ever read, and week after week, prompt after prompt not one of us--not ONE of us--generated something that was even remotely like the others. If your writing is derivative, that's one thing, but it won't be the prompt's fault. Between your angle and take, your style, your focus, and the evolution the piece might take there is virtually no chance that two pieces published off of the same prompt would ever be recognizable as such without the authors divulging that fact. And in point of fact, I know a few published pieces out there (nothing like each other, I might add) in which this is exactly the case. Shhhhhhh.

Relax. Have fun. Remember why you fell in love with writing in the first place, and do it all over again. This is miniature golf and pizza for date night, not the 10th anniversary dinner. Beside, you might just find (like with golf and pizza dates) that the best moments come when you're least expecting them...

Clam Chowder for the Writer's Heart

Clam Chowder for the Writer's Heart is totally not a blatant rip off of certain other kinds of soup for certain other kinds of existential personification body parts.  Each fifth Friday in a month, I will let the guest bloggers take an extra week off and regale you with poignant stories of what it sometimes means to be a writer (or possibly just an artist) in this world.

The Talent to Go Forth
My Highest Compliment
Why Failure is Awesome, But Quitting is for Losers
When the Student is Ready, the Master Will Appear

There’s Gold In Them Thar E-Readers

One of the things in this picture is changing the industry completely.
Can you guess which one?

E-readers aren't just creating an "e-reader-instead-of-books" niche in the publishing industry.  They literally create a viability where there once was a dead zone.

[I originally wrote this post on LiveJournal while I was taking my Business of Writing class during the Fall 2011 semester.  I’ve revised it a bit for W.A.W. so it’s more edgy. I threw some swear words, full frontal nudity, and an explosion, so it should have mass appeal. I’m no longer in the class, so some of the tenses might be inaccurate now.]

One of the things I’ve been taking from our publishing guests (small and larger press) in my Business of Creative Writing class is that there's a real significant gulf between small press and large press that is widening as the prolonged effects of a sustained recession really start to ravage art industries. Small presses are dropping like clichés. Large presses are all too wary of the bottom line. A number of our guest speakers spoke about developments in publishing that had caveats such as: "I've been coming to this class as a guest lecturer for twenty years, but this is the first year I've talked about this," or "Even last year this wasn't such a big thing, but now I would be remiss to neglect it." E-readers are changing FUCKING EVERYTHING in the industry and a lot of the groups with the most ability to capitalize on the changes—publishing houses and to an even greater degree, small presses—are dragging their feet.

Let me tell you about the gap. One of the problems with the publishing industry is this gap between small press and large press. Even FULL FRONTAL NUDITY can’t overcome this gap. It’s massive, and it’s been growing for decades. Unless you can sell about 20,000, and really more like 30,000 copies of something, a large publishing house won't take a chance on it. The number of "auto-approve" authors (like Stephen King, Anne Rice, and JK Rowling) shrinks every year. It’s getting so bad that authors can hit the New York Times bestseller list with one book and then have trouble even selling their next book. I’m not talking two weeks at the bottom of the list either, but major authors who hit reluctant publishers because they aren’t sure they’re going to hit that 20k-30k mark. It’s just a bad time to take a chance. The recession, which we have languished in for nearly ten years now, has essentially caused a MASSIVE EXPLOSION in the confidences of publishers and the resources they have to mitigate mistakes.

In the small press world, the problem is a little different, but it presents in basically the same way. A run of 1,000 is spectacular for a small press; however, many of the same market forces affect them. In both worlds, the first three months a book is out, it will sell 80-90% of total sales of that book’s lifetime sales. Only authors that are household names ever break out of this pattern. Very few books continue to sell well after those first couple of months of hype and marketing, so small press has to worry about selling all their copies. A large press might say: “Look Fowlks, a mere 500 books didn’t get sold! What a GREAT run. Pop the bubbly!” “Yes...quite.” For a small press eating the cost of 500 copies—possibly about half the run—would put most of them out of business. Instantly. Plus a small press doesn’t have an economy of numbers to offset print costs. A book retailing for $15 might cost $12 to print. That means you don't break even (on print costs alone) unless you sell 80% of the books you order. And that is to say nothing of editing, marketing, and overhead.

So I know what you’re probably thinking: “Well, small presses should do lots of smaller runs to minimize risk!” But they can’t. Because of what I mentioned earlier about timing. You have about THREE months before the sales plummet. You really need that first run to be as accurately estimated as possible. And when a few leftover books could kill you, you tend to undershoot the mark and get really nervous around big numbers.

Now, if you’re paying attention, you noticed a gulf between 1,000 copies and 30,000 copies. (If we’re really generous, that gulf might be more like 1,500 and 20,000.) That is huge. And the worst part is that gulf is widening every year as large presses demand more and more potential sales to justify taking a chance on a book and small presses get more and more gunshy about taking big chances with limited resources. That gulf is a huge, unexploited niche of vast, untapped potential.

E-readers aren’t really helping the large presses very much. What people often don't really understand, when they demand low prices for e-reader versions of books. “I mean, there’s not even an actual book, right? Why is this so expensive, brah?” What they don’t get is just how little of the cost of a book from a major press house is in the physical materials—in fact most of a book’s costs aren’t. They are in marketing, editors, overhead and legal. (Oh my god is there ever a lot of money in a publishing house’s legal department. You would probably be mortified to know how much of your book price is basically going toward paying for an army of lawyers to ensure that one company alone makes all the money off of an artist’s talent.) The reason they require a minimum 20k run is because that's where the cost-per-book starts becoming reasonable. Let me give you an example to illustrate this: Harry Potter 7 was so blessed by the economy of numbers that each individual copy of the HARDCOVER cost the publisher probably about 20-30 cents. That means if they overshot their run (and they actually undershot it from what I understand) each copy they sold would pay for about fifty copies they didn’t.

So you’ve got this huge zone between 1000 and 30k where basically nothing is getting published. Commercial books become increasingly homogeneous as formulas that sell are used over and over and over and over again. Like Hollywood and their fear of anything that isn’t “Aliens invade [insert place here]” they just go with what they know is going to make money. It becomes more and more fiscally dangerous to take a risk when consumers won't pay for expensive books or take a chance on new authors. It's a problem, and it's really killing that mid-range. And the thing is that mid range has always just been considered a necessary evil and part of the cost of doing business. When you’re talking about physical books that gulf makes perfect sense because you can’t get around the realities of your printing costs.

Enter the e-reader.

This is what e-readers are doing to the traditional publishing industry.

It can’t help the large presses because their costs are tied up things that aren’t the cost of physical materials. In fact big copy houses have mostly hit on e-versions of their books from the point of view of their own pocketbooks, trying to exploit the fact that they can't easily be lent or sold to used book stores. However, e-readers could blow the lid off of the ability for a small press to use only e-versions of books to reach way up from a 1000-1500 copy ceiling into that mid-range. See, when big copy houses look DOWN at that gulf, they don’t look at it from the vantage of saved print costs. They see accountants and lawyers and publicists and all the things they would have to pay for anyway. No wonder they're just happy to get a version that someone can't pick up next month at Half Price Books. Saving a few cents on a physical object doesn’t really help them. But a small press looking UP would see a vast open field of opportunity. Think about it. You don't have to estimate that first run. You just instantly issue e-versions with their ISBN's when someone buys one. You'll never have an extra book again. Ever.

You want to know what the biggest obstacle to small presses exploiting this opportunity is? Those people who are going on about the damned smell of books. (Let’s be clear, I like the smell of books, but I’m willing to hold a paperback under my nose while I carry the ENTIRE FUCKING CANON in my other hand on a device smaller than a Reader’s Digest. ) However, this just isn’t hitting home in the small presses. Most of these curmudgeons (and please understand I love them to bits) are hardcore bibliophiles. They shake their head at Kindles and iPads and are kicking and screaming already, before the real dragging has even begun.

Pictured: Hottest Full Frontal Nudity EVAH!!!

So one of the things I've honestly been thinking about is how much money someone could make running a publishing company that worked exclusively through e-readers (with a much more expensive print-on-demand, physical book option for those willing to pay the difference.) Perhaps each year such a press could have a modest print run of its best sellers to market to brick and mortar stores, but the whole thing would be mostly electronic. I'm not talking about vanity press here--this would be ISBN's and everything--just an almost exclusively e-medium publishing. All that technology exists already—right now. Someone would just need to put it all in the same place and make it work for a new kind of model. Such a business wouldn’t even have many startup costs given the potential lack of overhead. Without print costs, that niche between 1001-29,999 is open ground.

The real beauty of it would be its potential to create an entirely new dynamic within the industry. For decades publishing has been big houses and small presses. What if a third seat were added to the table? With no print costs, books could be offered on an e-reader for super cheap. I'm talking half, or even less of the current price of a paperback. That means more readers would take a chance on new authors or unknown territory. But even more than that, it means the authors could actually make some royalty money—something that rarely happens in small presses or is a pittance if it does. Imagine publishing in that niche where you could attract authors with some real money while still selling the cheapest product in the industry. It would basically be an entirely new game. Everyone I talk to about this who knows the industry kind of gets a wide eyed look like I’ve just mentioned that peanut butter and chocolate might go well together. My professor’s jaw hit the ground when she realized I’d tied together things from four or five different classes worth of guest speakers together to come up with the idea. (Seriously? What do people getting C’s in this class actually even DO?) She told me she thought what I suggested really might work, and that I’d probably hit on a way to make a good living, and possibly really create something big and make an obscenely good living.

Nah. Not for me. I’m too addicted to writing. The problem is, as spectacular as I think this idea could be with the right execution, I've met some people who run small presses, and it's a huge time commitment, and often for years not much more than a labor of love. One woman, who made just enough from her very-well-known small press to pay herself a modest salary and do just that full time, was the envy of the rest of the panel. So, I don't think so. Not for me, anyway. It might be less insane without some of the logistics of printing, but I'm sure converting files and electronic logistics (and Amazon’s proclivity to be outright buttheads) would cause their own time sinks. After doing the managing editor thing for Transfer, I'm really wary of time I spend not writing and creativity saps.

[But if any of you out there are toying with the idea of going into publishing, and want to walk into a vast untapped market, you heard it here first on Writing About Writing. You might want to move quickly, though. Since I first wrote this in Livejournal about five months ago, I’ve run into a couple of startup publishing companies that are doing EXACTLY this, so I was neither the first nor the only one to think of it.]

Thursday's Three

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Elbert Hubbard

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Scott Adams

The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.

Natalie Goldberg


I'll present these without much comment since I already wrote a post today, and I'm still sweaty and covered in sawdust from all the construction I'm doing on the site.

I Shall Impart What Wisdom I Have Gathered Over the Years

I’ve noticed something about a lot of writers. They can be a little bit petty and a lot jealous of other writers’ success. There’s a great sense of community among writers when everyone is a struggling Bohemian, but something seems to sour when one writer finds success. They change. The others change. Envy. Jealousy. Take-them-down-a-peg-ery. Entitlement.

Writing groups have fallen apart because one of them gets published. No joke.

A lot of times, I notice that seasoned writers lord over their secrets and insight, only selling them as part of a craft book, a writing lab, or as a salaried instructor…if they part with them at all. This makes a certain sort of sense when you consider that creative writing barely pays for a pack of instant Miso soup and three Slim Jims; however, I also think a lot of it comes from the atmosphere created by gatekeepers and old-guard publishing. Instead of a society of artists doing everything they can to enrich the world they live in through each other’s talent as well as their own, we get to participate in The Art Hunger Games.

And why not? (From the publisher's point of view, that is.)  If you have five book deals and five hundred writers, you can dangle the deals like steaks in a pit full of rabid papillons and then it's a great big favor you're doing when you hand them out and they forget that you're about to make a lot of money off of their creative efforts. Entire industries will spring up (and have) to help people increase their chances of being the one who makes it.

Anyone else's success implies you are that much less likely to taste it yourself. Of course you find a reason to dislike them––too experimental, too commercial, too avant-garde, too plot-based, too this, too that. I’m not saying writers never share a secret or don’t have writer friends, but it’s a starvation economy, so everyone’s shifty-eyed and wary. There's not enough to go around. Better make camps. People are less generous with their charitable thoughts and the sharing of insight when there is no incentive to do so. Why give someone else your edge?

Oh, and the gatekeepers loved this power--they loved it for decades...centuries. It kept writers weak in negotiations–honored just to be published.

If a bunch of managers were competing for a district manager position, they would not likely make friends among themselves, and less likely still would ever share advice. That sense of competition would set a cool timbre between them. This is where a lot of writers are, especially when they start seeing people “making it” around them. They trash each other’s work rather than foster it. If anyone has ever actually been in a writing program, they are no stranger to the fellow student who says "Well, I thought this was not very good" about every single assigned text.

And while "sprezzatura" lives on in our sense of humility–and most people are usually not so crassly arrogant as to come right out and say, “I’m so much better than that person”–many are not QUITE so clever as to realize their transparency when they have an ass-load of "constructive criticism" about style or content of literally any writing that is not their own.

Healthy competition can be good when it drives us to excel. But when competition reaches the point that we feel the need not to drive OURSELVES to excel, but to tear others DOWN in order to have a chance, that is the point when everyone ends up with self-esteem issues, and all are diminished. At least in the art world––I'm not trying to argue evolution.

No sense of aesthetic is served by falling on each other like jackals. This is why I think some of the electronic and self-publishing developments in the industry are particularly exciting. I can declare, around tear stained eyes, "We don't have to live like this anymore!"

And indeed, bloggers and non-traditional publishers seem to be more inclined to prop each other up and encourage each other's work than falling into the pattern that there can be only one.

Okay, bro, but actually if we do self-Highlandering via computers,
and eliminate the need for a whole strata class of
Highlander admin/middlemen in the supply chain,
we could actually have as many as a community
who values their Highlanders is willing to support.

Two things I think you should understand about me:

Number one: 

I don’t think of publication or financial independence as the endgame. I think of the act of writing as the endgame. That's where the catharsis and joy and artistic fulfillment come from. I already think I’m "making it" in the ways that matter. Oh, I’ll admit a little twinge when I see someone’s name in print who I know, or when I see an old acquaintance get a movie deal from their first novel. But after thirty years of doing something without a paycheck, you really start to realize the fulfilling and rewarding part is already happening. If someone offered me a lifetime of royalty checks and talk shows and fans under the condition that I never again write, I would laugh myself into an aneurism. I think we already know what I would do if someone offered me a lifetime of writing without a paycheck or accolades worth speaking of. 

Success is the frosting on the cake. It's gravy. It's a cliché food item in a mélange of culinary metaphors.

I'm not just saying this to be artsy-fartsy.  I really don't care if someone “beats me to the finish line.” Truly. I may feel pangs of envy when someone's buying a house with their royalty checks, but I'm sure some people are feeling pangs about me that I can pay (most of) my bills. Ultimately, I hope we all make it.

Story time:

I was at a wake for a friend in 2009. A fellow writer who I hadn’t seen for seven or eight years prior (someone who knew I was a writer and that I wanted to be a working writer) approached me basically to gloat that she was published and paying the bills with fiction. (Though it has not escaped my notice that technically she mostly meant editing anthologies of other people's work.)

"How's your writing going?" she asked, and I could tell from the tone of voice that she already had a pretty good idea.

I explained about having real trouble with cleaning up my own drafts and that I was returning to school to take an undergrad writing program and improve my craft. At that point I hadn't really made any money yet.

“Well, I’ve been writing for a living for YEARS now,” she said.  And just to make sure I didn’t miss the I-liked-Pearl-Jam-before-they-were-cool inflection, she went ahead and added a derisive snort at the end. Like, you know how when you have closed captioning on the TV, and it SAYS the word "[Scoffs]" on the screen? 

That's what this person did.

I’m not sure if it was supposed to make me jealous, but all it really made me feel was a little sad that, after seven years, a sort of pathetic at-your-expense validation was an itch she apparently needed to scratch SO BADLY that she thought a mutual friend's wake was a reasonable place to walk up to someone and drag them. If anyone thinks I’m in some kind of race, they really haven’t been paying much attention.

Honestly, whatever need for catharsis prompted the display that day, I hope she got it and can get back to her life.

I don’t care if I give someone advice and they get a book deal before I do. If I enrich the artistic world, I win too because that’s another book I might love to read. I scrape out a living. I don’t have any reason or inclination to hoard my insights or experience.

Number two: I have been doing this for thirty years. And I am not fucking around.

I have a bookshelf full of books on writing. That is not hyperbole. It's a bookshelf. It's full. All the books are about writing in some way.

I have a degree in Creative Writing–a "heavily Lit based" writing program from SFSU. I didn’t just cruise through my degree and coast to graduation either. I sucked the marrow from my degree, taking every class I thought could help me, graduating with a 3.94, and knocking down 30 units over what I needed to graduate (or about a full year of extra coursework). I actually got a bit of a curt message from my graduation supervisor asking me to hurry the hell up and move along, and "sure, you can take detective fiction as your genre literature requirement" (in this context, "genre" was supposed to mean poetry/playwriting/fiction, not actually.....genre fiction, but they wanted my ass kicked. to. the. CURB.). 

I’m not just saying that to brag (haha, who am I kidding, I'm totally saying this to brag; Summa Cum Laude, waistoids!). But I’m ALSO saying it to make a point: it’s a pretty safe bet that I caught the gist of just about everything that happened to me during those 150 units. I have every sheet given to me about writing in a two-foot stack on a shelf in my room. I kept every single assignment related to writing, no matter how small, along with any annotations I made or comments I received. I have notes that fill several entire spiral-bound notebooks on my professors’ lectures. I wasn’t there to get a degree; I was there to get an education, so I was determined not to miss a thing.

So I’m not just offering to share something I heard last week about writing from a guy on BART who was asking for change.

I’m also a teacher.  (Well....at least I was until 2018 when I was making juuuuuuuuust enough to be able to quit and focus on writing.) My life has been spent imparting knowledge to others.

Combine my skill set with my knowledge base, and it’s a pretty good bet I have a nugget or two in here somewhere I might be able to pass on about writing and the means to do so. I’m not saying this blog is going to save you the $35,000 on a college degree if that is the experience that you really want to have, but it’s a pretty good bet that I can do a bang-up job on giving most people the highlight reel.

And I will. I’m not stingy.

~kisses his proton pack’s particle accelerator~ Because I’ve got the TOOLS and I’ve got the TALENT!