So You Want to Write

by Marge Piercy

  I can never forget how little respect or understanding I received from other people when I was a serious but largely unpublished writer, not yet sanctified by the fame machine. It’s hard getting started in the arts, and one of the things that is the hardest is that nobody regards you as doing real work until somebody certifies you by buying what you do.

  Another kind of irritation I provoke in resident or visiting male writers is drawing larger audiences or selling more books than they do, whereupon they are careful to inform me it’s because I “jumped on this feminist bandwagon.” I’m fashionable, but they’re universal. Universal includes only white men with university degrees who identify with patriarchal values, but never mind even that. If they imagine it helps me to be known as a feminist, they have never read my reviews. The overwhelming majority judge my work solely in terms of its content by a reviewer who hates the politics and feels none of the obligations I do when I review works to identify my bias and try to deal with the writer’s intentions. Such reviewers also seem to have failed to notice that the women’s movement, while touching the lives of a great many women, no longer has access to the media, and enjoys little money and no political clout. To try to bring about social change in this country is always to bring down punishment on your head. My grandfather, a union organizer, was murdered. At various times in my life I have had my phone tapped, been tailed, been beaten very, very thoroughly with a rich medley of results to this day, gassed, had my mail opened, lost jobs, been vetoed as a speaker by boards of trustees in Utah, been heckled, insulted, dismissed, refused grants and positions that have consistently gone to lesser writers, and they imagine there is some bandwagon I am riding on. A tumbrel, perhaps.

  Then there are local politicos. A phenomenon I have noticed since my anti-war days is how rank and file in American movements for social change treat those who have assumed, perhaps fought for or perhaps had thrust upon them, some kind of leadership. Frequently the mistrust with which your own treat you is sufficient to send people into paranoia or early burnout, away from political activity damned fast; it certainly contributes to crossing over to the Establishment where at least you can expect that people will be polite to you.

  If you are effective at anything, you will be sharply criticized. The real heroes of many people on the Left and in the women’s community are failures who remain pure according to a scriptural line and speak only to each other. Also, lefties may harbor fantasies that you are rich. The creeping desire I suppose is to believe that if you sacrificed a principle or two and perhaps actually spoke in American rather than in jargon, you would instantly be pelted by hard money. At every college I visit a feminist will demand to know how I dare publish with New York houses rather than the local Three Queer Sisters Press—as if the point of feminism isn’t to try to reach women who don’t agree already, rather than cozily assuming we are a “community” of pure souls and need only address each other. Often women who have some other source of support (husband, family, trust fund, academic job) will accuse you of selling out if you get paid for your writing or for speaking.

  Feminist presses have an important function, as do all small presses. With the New York publishers almost to a house owned by large conglomerates, they are the one hope for freedom of expression and opinion. The all-pervasive electronic media are not open to those of us who do not share the opinions of the board of directors of Exxon-Mobil, of Rupert Murdock and Anaconda Copper. What was true in the days of Thomas Paine and what is true today is that you can print your own pamphlet or book. The printed word is far more democratic than television or radio. You do not need to be a millionaire to acquire and run a publishing enterprise. My partner, Ira Wood, and I have a small press of our own that publishes many serious writers who can no longer get published in New York.

  Just as a small press does not take much capital to set up and run, owners of small presses whether collective or individual can and do take chances on books that will make little money, that appeal to a small group. Most of the important writers of our day were first published by small presses and some such as James Joyce were published by small presses for their whole professional lives.

  Conglomerate publishers may not be interested in a book because it is too original. They may be offended by its politics. I found out with The High Cost of Living it is still impossible to write a novel with a lesbian as a protagonist and have it reviewed as anything but a novel with a lesbian as the protagonist—nothing else is visible behind that glaring and overbearing fact. A book in fact may appeal to only a small audience, quite honestly, but appeal strongly to that audience and thus remain a good backlist item for a small publisher who can keep that book in print.

  Fame has a two-edged effect on the character. On the one hand, if you suffer from early schooled self-hatred, then fame can mellow you. If you like yourself, you may be able to like others better. Naturally I apply this to myself, believing myself easier-going since the world has done something besides kick me repeatedly in the bread basket. However, I would also say that fame—like money and probably like power—is habituating. You become so easily accustomed to being admired, that you begin to assume there is something inherently admirable in your character and person, a halo of special soul stuff that everybody ought to recognize at first glance.

  Fame can easily oil the way to arrogance. It can as easily soften you to cozy mental flab, so you begin to believe every word you utter is equally sterling and every word you write is golden. There is a sort of balloon quality to some famous men—including famous writers—and you know they may never actually sit alone in a room agonizing and working as hard as it takes to do good work, ever again. You may even come to regard yourself as inherently lovable, which is peculiar given how writers actually spend a lot of time recording the bitter side of the human psyche and our utter foolishness. Having a fuss made over one leads to the desire to have more of a fuss made over one, and even to feel that nobody else quite so much deserves being fussed over, or that any fuss, any award, any prize, is only a tiny part of what the person truly deserves.

  We can easily confuse the luck of the dice and the peculiarities of remuneration in this society with inner worth. I recently overheard an engineer who writes occasional poetry berating the organizer of a reading because he felt he wasn’t being given a prominent enough spot in the line-up. “My time is worth something,” I heard him announce, and he meant it: He considered what he was paid by the hour and day as an engineering consultant somehow carried over to his poetry and meant that his poetry was to be valued more, since the time he spent writing it was worth more an hour than the time of other poets. A fascinating assumption, it launched this particular observation about the confusion between what the pinball machine of financial rewards and public attention spews out at any given moment, and the assumption that the subsequent money or attention reflects some inherent superiority over the less lucky.

  Once in a women’s workshop at a writer’s conference, several of the mothers were talking about feeling guilty about the time they took to write, time taken from their children. I asked one woman who had been published a goodly amount whether being paid for her work didn’t lessen her guilt, and she agreed it did. Finally, the group decided that if enough people seemed to value your work, whether by paying for it or just by paying attention to it, if some people showed that they read or listened to your work and got pleasure and/or enlightenment, something real, out of what you wrote, then you felt less guilty. You could begin to justify demanding from the others in your life the time and space to write. Certainly attention paid to your work seems to validate your effort and make it easier to protect the time necessary to accomplish something.

  I suppose the ultimate problem with the weirdness I encounter on the road is that it makes me wary. It’s hard to respond to people I meet sometimes, when I am not at all sure what monsters are about to bulge up from under the floorboards of the suburban split level where the reception is being held. I also find demands t
hat I provide instant intimacy, or the idea that I should walk into rooms ready to answer probing questions about my life and my loves patently absurd. The books are public. They are written for others. They are written to be of use. But I am not my books. I never doubt that:

  the best part of me (is) locked in those strange paper boxes.

  —from “The New Novel”

  But I don’t believe that people who have bought or read the books have a right therefore to sink their teeth into my arm. I had an unpleasant experience at a fancy Catholic school recently where a group of women made demands on me I found silly. I gave a good reading, worked hard to make the workshop useful, went over their work. Then I was castigated because I was not “open emotionally.” One of them quoted to me a phrase of mine from “Living in the Open” which apparently meant to her that you must “love” everybody you meet and gush and slop on command.

  For some people, admiration of something you have done easily converts into resentment—disappointment you are not Superwoman with a Madonna smile, or resentment if you do not bear obvious scars. They can forgive accomplishment if the woman who arrives is an alcoholic, suicidal, miserable in some overt way. To be an ordinary person with an ordinary life of ups and downs and ins and outs is not acceptable.

  That admiration that can sour into hatred is frightening. Bigger celebrities inspire it far more than small fry, for which I am merciful, but I would rather not inspire it at all. You meet an occasional person who, if you do not work a miracle—light up their life, change things, take one look at them and say, Yes, you are the one—they feel they have been failed in some way.

  If what people want in a place is a good energizing reading, a useful workshop, an honest lecture, answering questions as carefully and fully as I can, then they are satisfied. If what they want is a love affair with a visiting Mother Goddess, a laying on of hands to make them real, a feeding of soul hungers from a mystical breast milk fountain, then they are doomed to disappointment. For that act, I charge a whole lot more.

  18

  The 10 Most Destructive Things Writers Can Do (to Destroy Their Careers or Never Get Started)

  Whatever You Do, Don’t. ...

  10. Hold Out For Random House

  Big Presses are often looking for Big Books and Brand Names. If an author approaches us with a fantasy of getting rich, I always encourage them to try to get an agent. We can’t satisfy anyone’s fantasies and everyone has the right to shoot for the moon. Indeed, people have hit home runs with their first books. Cold Mountain. A Girls Guide To Fishing and Hunting. Prep. Sometimes they become one-book wonders; the literary equivalent of Wang Chung or Milli Vanilli. But many times, as in the cases of John Irving or Jonathan Franzen or Annie Proulx (who all seemed to appear out of the blue) you’ll find out that your “overnight success” has been laboring in the trenches, putting out mid-list or small press books for years.

  If you have written something quirky and original, a small press might be right for your book. It’ll need time to catch on, to develop a reputation, and a small press will keep it in print long enough to do that. Also, there are far more small presses than big ones so you have a greater chance of attracting an editor. There have been many writers who would not consider small presses, which is akin to guys who are holding out for a woman who looks like a movie star and won’t consider a woman who loves sex, has a great job, a terrific sense of humor but is ten pounds overweight. Where do they find themselves? Often chasing their own fantasies.

  Don’t hold out for Random House. You certainly owe your work the time to take a shot at an agent and a big advance, but if it doesn’t happen, don’t be too prideful to consider an alternate route and don’t wait too long. Books do become dated and small press editors who receive submissions of novels set in 1998 with a letter that says, “I just finished a novel. ...” are no fools.

  9. Fake It

  The old adage says, “Write what you know.” That works pretty well for a first book (everybody on the planet has an autobiographical book in them); or for authors who lead “high concept” lives like homicide cops, criminal psychologists, ex-forensic scientists and courtroom lawyers; for weird, neurotic types like Harvey Pekar, and those rare observers, like Anne Tyler, who have a special talent for squeezing insights and humor from the mundane. But most writers lead pretty dull lives and need to do research in order to give depth to their writing. Don’t fake the research. Don’t watch cop shows on TV and imagine you know enough to reproduce a portrait of life on the streets. “Writing what you know” is misleading. Successful writers understand that writing is only a part of their work; equally important is the quest to “know” more.

  You cannot decide to fake a best seller. You think you can knock off a Danielle Steele or a Sidney Sheldon? Good luck. No matter your opinion of the quality of the work of writers whose books sell in drug stores and in the millions, those writers are passionate about what they write. They don’t fake it. They are not writing down to their readers, they are the voices of their readers’ inner souls.

  8. Quit Your Day Job (Create an All-or-Nothing Schedule)

  Believe it or not, you can write the first draft of a book in a year if you give it just one hour a day. The trick is to find your best hour; the one in which you are writing in that state during which you are totally engaged. Don’t wait for the perfect schedule to start, or the moment of inspiration. It rarely turns up. Thousands of writers have “stolen” the time to write. But you have to find the best time for yourself, be it at five in the morning before work, or late at night when the world is asleep. No one can tell when the best time is, but if you give yourself too much time, you’re likely to waste it fussing and get frustrated and quit.

  7. Imitate Trends

  Trends last for a season or two. If we think back to what was hot in the last few years, memoirs, spiritual books, anything having to do with angels, movie star bios, minimalist fiction, the short story revival, magic realism, dysfunctional family sagas, political books (left and right), chic lit, manga/anime, we invariably find that the market has become saturated and they are no longer the “in” thing (which does not mean that a good book concerning any of the above will not be published, only that publishers are not attempting to scoop up every book). You can’t copy trends. While there is a type of book that is released on the heels of disaster, it is generally either written by a journalist who has simply gathered facts, or a compendium of news articles. Rarely does such a book engage the mind and the emotions or rise to the level of literature. There have always been books that seemed to have been in the right place at the right time, well-written books that shot to the tops of the best seller lists and were exactly what the public seemed to want to read the moment they came out. Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying appeared when many women were discovering feminism and Robert Sabbag’s Snowblind complemented an entire generation’s discovery of cocaine. Roger Kamenetz (The Jew in the Lotus) and Mitch Albom (Tuesdays With Morrie), even Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones), all to a greater or lesser extent touched on a national interest. But none knew, years in the writing, what that interest would be. You have to write your passion, whether or not it is “in” because you will have to live with the process for years. Marge’s agent and I encouraged her to write a memoir and she threw herself into the task. But by the time she submitted it (and she is one very fast writer), her editor said, “A memoir? But they’re out.” Never mind, it was very favorably reviewed and made its way. If you have a passion for a subject or genre that is not “in,” or will be “out,” continue with it, figure out how to communicate your passion to a reader, how to present the material in an original way. You’re a writer, not a department store buyer or a party planner whose career depends on the next new thing.

  6. Fail to Write About People You Know Because You’re Afraid it Might Hurt Them

  If you have a great story to tell but you’re afraid of hurting people, don’t fail to write. Rather, learn to deal with that material. First
novels are often autobiographical novels. There’s nothing wrong with writing the intimate story of your life; the difficulty is in overcoming the fear of doing so. The trick is to learn the techniques of distancing. Do you need to write in third person? Do you need to interject yourself into a genre? Fictionalize the material? Or, dare we say it, get permission from those involved? Too many people stop themselves from writing because they can’t bear to hurt people in their family. But, you can learn to disguise the material so that the story matters, not the identities of those concerned. You’ll be using your innermost feelings but the characters won’t resemble your loved ones. Moreover, in dealing with the material, you’ll be healing yourself. Is writing therapy? No, but it helps.

  5. Hide (Fail to Publicize Yourself)

  The frustrating contradiction of writing is that writers, who need to be the most aggressive artists to get noticed, are probably among the most reclusive of artists, more comfortable behind a computer screen than on the telephone or in front of an audience. But you have to develop a new attitude; you have to become an entrepreneur.

  This does not mean that you have to put boxes of books in your car and visit bookstores around the country (the way Wayne Dyer turned himself into a best seller long before New Age books became the rage). You can be a reviewer, a great performer, a book chat commentator; you can be a cable talk show host; you can run a reading series or interview famous writers for the newspaper (thereby increasing your chances of making contacts and getting blurbs). The idea is to be out there. To distinguish yourself from the pack. To get your name in the papers. To do favors for others so they in turn will owe you favors when your book is published. The day of the solitary poet in the garret is long gone. Garrets rent for a lot of money. You can write, but if you want to be read, you can’t hide.