It is because they love words, literature, they love to read. Somewhere inside of them, that impulse (along with others, I’m sure) is at the heart of what they do.
Let’s go back to the NHL analogy. If I play on a pick-up team all winter, become the best player in town, have the most goals ever on record, am I ready for NHL tryouts? No. I may be pretty good, but the people who are going to judge me are experts. They can spot a fake in a second. They can critique the way I hold my stick without even having to think about it. Why? It’s their passion, it’s their job, and it’s their area of expertise.
What are you an expert in?
How does it feel when someone treats your interest like a hobby, a cute pastime? Does that make you feel good?
I’m going to imagine you said no.
If you are sending sloppy manuscripts to agents, are you treating those agents like the professionals they are? Are you showing them the respect they deserve for the positions they’ve earned?
No.
And they know it.
Just like your teacher did, all those years ago.
Let’s just have another truthing moment, ok? It’s all right if you don’t want to put in the work. You don’t have to. But please don’t expect the agents to coo, and the readers to come flocking.
Could you be the one amazing poorly written one-hit wonder of the decade? Maybe. Why take the chance?
Style, grammar, using words effectively—these are the tools of the trade. Writers who put in the practice reap the rewards. If you’re not confident in your abilities, get the support you need to take you to the next level.
___________
2 I don’t know
HOW TO PUBLISH
SO MANY WRITERS DREAM of being published, but find themselves stuck because they can’t even finish a manuscript.
That’s a tragedy and just plain wrong.
Can you relate?
Do you long to publish—but can’t even finish your manuscript?
Do you feel the same frustration I hear from so many writers who are exhausted from writing their umpteenth draft?
Are you unsure if the feedback you’re getting is trustworthy or if you really should tweak that one part?
Have you been seeking the right class, the right book, the right conference to set you on the path to authorship and come up with nada?
Are you tired of wasting money on classes that don’t help and only end up confusing you more than where you started?
And finally:
Do you wish your questions could be answered, your problems would go away, and your manuscript would just be done already?
Look, I get it. I really, really do. I’ve heard this story from hundreds of writers, and there was a time in my life when I was there too.
Discouraged. Afraid. Uncertain. Frustrated, and mostly confused about which direction to go and whom to trust.
We are on the same page. Why yes, it’s page 232.
If any of those questions above resonated with you, I have good news. None of those are the real problem. Those are just the symptoms. The real problem is you’ve believed erroneous publishing myths.
What?
Yeah.
Sorry to be the one to deliver the bad news, but there’s a lot of misinformation out there.
Don’t worry. It’s not all bad news. You can break free from Pantser Peril, Lollygag Woods, Molassesn’t-on-the-Chair Swamp…
Moving on.
And when you do, you’ll meet and exceed your word count goals—while writing with the kind of fun that feels like summer camp. You’ll feel not only supported, but confident in your writing ability and have clarity around your writing strengths.
You’ll have the knowledge you need to create a publishable manuscript that’s up to industry standards, but more importantly you’ll know how and when that knowledge applies to your manuscript.
You’ll be in a state of flow with your writing. You’ll break through the struggle and live in symbiosis with your writing. You’ll create it and it will feed you creatively.
You’ll have a finished manuscript in which you feel confidence and pride.
I’ve already told you that I started out in the same writing trenches that we all do. I knew where I wanted to be; I could almost taste it. It took me years to get myself to publishable. Over time, I noticed five things successful authors were doing to get the attention of agents and publishers.
Now, I’ve been at this writing gig a long time. I’ve seen some people win and some people lose. I started to realize what the writers who publish over and over were doing to accelerate completion and publication.
So, what I’m going to do now is share what I’ve learned with you.
Shh! You won’t tell anyone else, will you? It’ll just be our little secret.
(You just leaned into the book again, didn’t you?)
They’ve got their mindset in order.
I know. I know. I know. Woo-woo again.
But, if I asked you to be really honest with me and rate your fear around writing: fear of messing up; fear of getting it right; fear of publishing, fear of rejection; fear of acceptance; fear of people reading your work; fear of people not liking your work…
If I asked you to rate your fear on a scale of 1 to 10:
What would you choose?
That number is your little secret, and you don’t need to tell anyone.
What if I told you you could dial that number down several notches, master your fear, and combat it with true confidence?
Is that an elixir you’d buy?
Yeah, most writers would.
So, when I talk about mindset, it’s not about getting woo-woo. It’s about learning the skills to work through the fear, to move into confidence that leads to prodigious writing—joyous writing even.
If you don’t lay this foundation, if you stay in the fear, how likely do you think you are to finish that manuscript? To send it out into the world?
Again, this is your number. Keep it to yourself, but be honest.
The thing is: If you’re like most writers, you’re not going to get anywhere close to your writing goals and dreams if you don’t look at the root of the problem.
That’s what so many writing classes miss—classes teach how to sketch a character without taking into account the writer as a person, without taking a holistic view of the writer—his talents, his needs, his fears—and so year after year, class after class churns out writer after writer—and none of them gets published.
Because they didn’t have enough knowledge, or best-selling authors as professors?
No.
Because no one showed them how to work through their fear, which must be the foundation of a quality writing program, or writers will continue to flop and fail.
Writers who get mindset right not only write more—more words and more often—they do so with more joy. Writing becomes fun again. It’s something they always have time for because it’s enjoyable.
If you feel stuck, like you don’t have time to write, the real culprit is not knowing how to deal with your fear, and I’m here to tell you that a quality program will give you the skills to work through that.
Let’s do the timewarp (again)
Let us describe a classroom, shall we?
Your typical classroom has desks or tables where students sit. Where is the teacher in your vision?
At the front of the classroom.
Doing what?
Talking.
What are the students doing?
Listening.
Here’s the bottom line: Despite over a century of pedagogical and neuroscientific research demonstrating the futility of this type of instruction, most classes—whether elementary school, high school or college—are still run this way.
Writing classes are no exception.
Most writing classes are a teacher telling you what something is or, if you’re lucky, how to do something, but without giving you repeated feedback on your progress.
This is why it’s time to ditch class.
It’s not you. Really.
So many writers come to me thinking something is wrong with them because they just don’t get it—why haven’t they figured out this writing thing yet? They’ve taken so many classes— what gives?
Let’s take a stroll down memory lane to your high school years.
(No need to tell anyone what year that is; that’s another safe little secret.)
Now, I want you to think of a teacher you hated (no, you have to pick one, you can’t say all of them).
I want you to choose a teacher whose class was BO-RING, a place where you felt like you learned virtually nothing.
Let’s just call that teacher Smith.
Now I want you to think of an awesome teacher, one who taught something you thought was pretty boring, but there was just something about that teacher that made the subject fun, exciting, and even (gulp) something to look forward to.
Let’s call that teacher Jones.
What did Jones know that Smith didn’t? What did Jones do that Smith didn’t?
Whatever you say, I bet it’s going to fall under the umbrella of engagement. He made you laugh. She planned fun activities. The classroom was hands-on.
What was the focus? YOU.
The learner. The student experience.
Let me tell you a secret about your lil ole noggin: It learns best by doing, getting feedback, and trying again.
But what do writing classes do? You sit, you listen, you take notes.
Maybe you write to a prompt and share what you wrote. Maybe you hand in some pages and get a little feedback. Those are steps in the right direction, but they’re a far cry from the ongoing feedback loop that leads to real progress and confidence in a skill.
These classes give you lots of information, but very little experience trying it, getting feedback, and trying it again. Do you need knowledge? Of course. But writing is a craft, and as such, takes time and experience to become proficient.
While we’re walking down memory lane, let’s journey back in human history to the Middle Ages.
Way back in medieval times, people who made stuff (bakers, tanners, shoemakers, etc.) didn’t go to Stuffmaking University; they trained under a Master Craftsman. They started in their youth, and trained for five to nine years to learn the craft. After that, they still weren’t considered Masters, but had to prove their salt as a Journeyman.
What’s my point? (Well, that I have a slight obsession with medieval history, but beyond that…)
Craft takes time to learn, and it’s not learned sitting in hallowed ivy-covered halls. Just like the apprentices of the Middle Ages, we learn by doing, by getting feedback from a Master, from trying again, by watching, by immersing ourselves in the learning experience.
Is your writing class doing that for you?
I’m going to guess no, as that was one of the major frustrations I had as a beginning writer and which I still hear writers talk about today. No individualization. Cursory feedback. Not enough time dedicated to making attempts and getting feedback.
This style of writing class is a dime a dozen out there in the writing world. Sage on the Stage, teacher-centered and, for the most part, useless, or worse: doing more harm than good.
What do I mean?
These types of classes help a writer to procrastinate because he gets overwhelmed with information or finds out so many more rules and tricks and grammar that he thinks he needs to know about, so he spends his time confused or down the rabbit hole of fruitless Google searches.
Here’s a hard truth: These institutions of “learning” want you to stay stuck in this loop because if you continue to be confused, you’ll continue to give them money to be unconfused.
If you actually figure out how to write and publish a novel, you’ll no longer be of use to them.
These types of institutions have put you in intentional discomfort to continue to milk money from you a little at a time, year after year.
What would you say of a parent who didn’t teach their kid to walk, for fear that once the child could, he would leave? Good parenting? No. Self-serving. We’d call that abuse.
A quality writing program has the goal of you completing your manuscript, publishing, and moving out of the nest. Fly, little bird, and soar. Invite me to your book launch.
That’s a good program.
You don’t need a class. You need a program.
If you want to publish a book, you’re shooting for the Stanley Cup (remember the hockey analogy?) and you need the kind of systematic support that will help you to get there.
Depending on your source, something between 80 to 90% of the population wants to write a book. Do you know how many millions of people that is? That’s, like, a lot.
But how many people actually do it—finish writing the book and get it published?
According to the Bowker Report, we churn out about 300,000 traditionally published books per year in the US. Now, you don’t have to be a statistician to see that—even though 300k is a lot of books—that’s still just a small proportion of the people who want to write books getting published every year.
What about self-publishing? Well, according to the same report, 700,000 books were self-published in 2015. That shows that 700,000 people finished a book. Not too shabby...well, until you consider the 20 million or so who said they had a book in them.
What happened to the other 19,000,000 people?
Why didn’t they finish a book to publishable?
Let’s take a look around your writing room, shall we? Oh look, a book shelf. (Don’t be embarrassed about the dust—no one dusts anymore.)
Ooo, look at all these books on writing, and magazines, and course materials, and workbooks, ticket stubs from writing conferences. You’ve been busy.
Are you not published yet because you don’t have the right information? You’ve got loads of information here: plot, character, point of view, how to find an agent, query letters, elevator pitch...it’s all here.
Is the lack of information holding you back?
No.
So, what’s the real culprit?
You need the application of all that knowledge to your specific manuscript and the accountability to get the writing done. That is what differentiates a writing program from a writing class.
My question for you is: Do you need more writing instruction? Or do you need to know how to apply all of those concepts to your writing: how to apply that information about plot to your story? How to apply those principles of character to your protagonist?
Do you need to find the time to write and find the support you need to get there? Or do you need one more class on plot structure?
The tragedy here for people who just accumulate and accumulate knowledge year after year without ever really learning to apply it, is they end up a statistic. Yup, they’re part of the 19 million people who had a passion, had a book in them, and... nothing.
That makes me sad just thinking about it.
An unrealized dream.
There are probably sadder tragedies in the world, but I view unrealized dreams as one of the saddest things going. Unrealized potential. The loss of letting go of something you never even got to hold in your hands? Heartbreaking.
I’m picturing this person walking down the sidewalk on one of those wintery windy days where you tuck your chin into your collar. Everything is that dirty gray of winter. The wind whips up and blows his scarf, so he looks up at the advertisement pasted to the wall beside him, larger than life, a new book by a bestselling author. How many books does that guy get to publish anyway? And I can’t even finish one. His books aren’t even really that good. I know I could write something better, if I could just...
Winter just got a whole lot bleaker.
Are you rooting for this guy? Let’s call him Tom. Do you want Tom to see that there’s another way? If he would just shift his focus from a class to a program…
Tom, Tom, can you hear m
e? There’s a better way.
Did you just talk to a book?
What if it worked, your talking to the book? Let’s play this out. What if your message reached Tom and he changed his ways, signed up for a program that gave him the support he needed, and showed him how to apply the principles of quality craft to his story?
Maybe Tom would say something like what a writer told me recently while we were working together. “Talking to you really forces me to dig deep, and really helps me to find the purpose of what I am writing, and why I am writing it.”
Purpose? Do you want Tom to find purpose?
Do you want his bleak winter to be over; for the sun to shine upon his writing, his book, his life?
Ok, ok, ok, a little too much Eeyore there. Let’s rein it back in.
But let’s think about it seriously for a moment. When we are in our purpose, when we feel that sense of flow with our work—I think that’s one of the best feelings in the world.
I’d want that for Tom. In the same way that I want that for you.
The writer I was working with went on to say, in that moment, that our work together helped her to know what to leave out of her novel.
Sometimes people say small ideas that lead to deep thought. Does that happen to you?
For me, this offhand comment made me start to think about all the advice out there, kill your darlings and whatnot. How? Which ones? When? What are my darlings? These are legitimate questions writers ask and we problem solve every day. It had become such an ingrained part of the work we do, I’d forgotten, on that day, how important having a guiding hand can be in the writing process. I thanked that writer for the important reminder of how powerful the work we do can be.
Moving from a class model into a comprehensive program can be a transformative experience. I’ve seen it time and time again, but no matter how many times I see a writer finish a manuscript in a place of joy and confidence, I am grateful and inspired.
Storytelling for Pantsers Page 13