Fiction Writers Review » the writing life

“My novel is going nowhere”

Celeste Ng — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:00:57 +0000

You may have said those words once or twice yourself, perhaps? (If not, please leave this blog. Now.)

It may comfort you to know that you are not alone in that sentiment: even established writers think so, now and then—and have for decades, if not centuries. To prove it, Michael Hoffman has combed through the letters of Joseph Roth, finding every mention of his novel The Radetzky March, which would become his masterpiece. Here’s a sampling:

November 20, 1930
Joseph Roth to Stefan Zweig:
“‘The Radetzky March,’ it’ll be called, set in the Dual Monarchy from 1890 to 1914. I’ll tell you the plot sometime we’re together.”

February, 1931
JR to Friedrich Traugott Gubler:
“My novel is going nowhere.”

[...]

October 28, 1931
JR to Stefan Zweig:
“Don’t make me itemize the sorrows that are besetting me. Sick girlfriend, creditors, pharmacies, doctors, I myself am still going to the clinic twice a week on account of my eyes, I avoid people, have destroyed six completed chapters, they were rotten, now I’m rewriting them.”

March 20, 1932
JR to Félix Bertaux:
“I was sick and miserable for a long time, and I’m working desperately on the Radetzky March. The material is too much, I am frail, and unable to shape it. On top of that there’s the material misery in which I’m obliged to live…More after the novel is done (another 2 weeks, with luck).”

Sound familiar? Be you published novelist or currently struggling (or both!), read the full essay over at The Millions, and see if it doesn’t make you feel a little better.

Further Reading

More reasons to hang in there: on literary “slow cookers”, the ten-year novel, and the ten-year story
Colum McCann on why (and how) to be optimistic, as a writer and in life
Tips for writing when you’re sure you can’t

Rejection Love

J.T. Bushnell — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:00:57 +0000

I save rejection slips. In graduate school, someone mentioned an acquaintance who had wallpapered her bathroom with them, and I liked that idea. There was something honest and humbling about it. So when I started submitting my own stories to literary journals, I saved the rejections, imagining I might do the same one day. It would be a necessary complement, I imagined, for a living room mantel cluttered with prestigious awards, framed reviews, and my many excellent books.

I’ve long since backed off both the wallpapering and the cluttered mantel, but I haven’t stopped saving the slips. And I have no idea why. More than once I’ve decided to throw them all out, but I never follow through. I keep stuffing them into the shoe box that holds my diplomas and immunization records and other important documents. I’m not a hoarder; if anything, I’m the opposite. I love open space and bare surfaces. I throw out birthday cards and valentines without remorse. But I can’t bring myself to recycle those rejections.

Most writers I know keep some sort of spreadsheet or running count, if not the actual letters of refusal. Some, I’ve heard, actually print the emails from online submissions. In the Mar/Apr issue of Poets & Writers, Jennifer Wisner Kelly describes the “Folder of Failure” in which she collects her rejections, and in the Nov/Dec 2011 issue, M. Allen Cunningham describes receiving a story’s sixteenth rejection, then quickly adds that another story “recently garnered its thirty-seventh rejection” (his emphasis).

We writers, it seems, are enthralled by our own failures. And as Kelly and Cunningham demonstrate, we love to publicize them. Post on Facebook about how many rejections you’ve received, and see how many of your writer friends comment, “You think that’s bad?” and then give their own numbers. It’s a reflex. We can’t help it. When a friend emailed me last week about getting an acceptance after twenty-seven rejections, I congratulated her. Then I told her I’d just published a story that had received more than fifty rejections, and I was still submitting one that had more than seventy. And I’m sure many of you are rushing down to the comment box right now to say, “You think that’s bad?”

Why do we do this? Rejections don’t exactly reflect well on our work. Writers are fond of naming some great story that suffered some unconscionable number of rejections, and we take heart from those examples, but in general, great stories don’t get as many rejections as mediocre ones. The reason is self-evident.

Do they give us a sense of legitimacy? Before my first rejection, I’d heard about all the discouragement and disappointment writers faced, so getting my first dose of it made me feel like a real writer. This was the necessary suffering, I thought. But that sentiment has long since dried up. These days the acceptances make me feel like a real writer, and the rejections chip away at that feeling.

Are we simply masochists? Our raw materials, after all, are conflict and suffering. If something doesn’t go wrong, it probably isn’t worth writing about. Does that mean we’re keen for conflict and suffering in our own lives? Maybe, but I don’t think we brag about other sources of pain in the same way: You think that’s bad? Listen to how many grandparents I’ve lost! Listen to how many lovers have cheated on me!

Are we commiserating? One-upping each other? Making pleas for sympathy? Showing off our perseverance? Chronicling our writing lives? Enacting some kind of revenge? Maybe, maybe, maybe. All these possibilities seem partly right, partly wrong. The truth is, I don’t have an answer. To me the phenomenon is a mystery, as inscrutable as the editorial whims and judgments that cause it. Maybe that’s why I can’t seem to let it go.

Further Reading:

Waiting three years… for a rejection
Subscribe to Poets and Writers magazine at the special super-low FWR rate!

I’d like to thank the Academy…

Celeste Ng — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:00:11 +0000

On Oscar night, no one listens to the thank-you speeches—except the people being thanked. Likewise, no one reads the author acknowledgements of a book—or do they?

On The Millions, Henriette Lazaridis Power delves into the stories behind this oft-overlooked section of a book, from the Brontë sisters to Zadie Smith to Robin Black. And Power argues that the acknowledgements are more than polite thank-you notes; they’re an opportunity:

Everyone reads the acknowledgements. In fact, for many of us, the first thing we do when we pull a book off the store shelf is to flip to the back. The writers among us might be searching for the agent or the editor we can query, or we might be seeking our own name in the list. But we certainly read the acknowledgements for the drama and the human story revealed therein. Some acknowledgements are works of art, expressing with finesse and sincerity the gratitude for a supportive surrogate family, a patient and understanding spouse and kids, a best friend who saw the writer through difficulties hinted at sufficiently so that we can glimpse a bit of the author’s life. At their best, acknowledgements can be finely-wrought short stories with the author as protagonist.

One of my favorite acknowledgements comes from Heidi Julavits’ The Effect of Living Backwards, in which she thanks Track 4 of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (one of my favorite albums). I’ve never been able to see the connection, but I’m still thinking about it 5 years after reading the book!

Do you read the acknowledgements in books? Have you thought about who you’d want to thank on the acknowledgements page when your book comes out?

Further Reading:

Learn more about Power’s journal, The Drum: A Literary Magazine for Your Ears

Perseverance Triumphs Over Despair At AWP

Sarah Van Arsdale — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:00:08 +0000

Editor’s note: At AWP 2012, which just wrapped up in Chicago, we were thrilled to hear this wonderful story from one of our contributors, Sarah Van Arsdale, and are delighted to share it with you. It’s a reminder of what conferences are really about: fostering community to buoy a writer’s spirit, helping you hang in there through those the hard ~~months~~ years when it feels like you’re going nowhere.

2009, Chicago. Attended AWP with the single-minded purpose of finding a publisher for my novel; my agent had tried like hell, and failed to place it. Barely made it to a single panel or reading, too busy shuffling booth to booth, then retreating to hotel room to collapse in a heap of despair. Within twenty-four hours of returning home, had sent copies of manuscript to everyone who’d expressed even the slightest interest.

Back home, heard from James Peltz at SUNY Press. He liked the manuscript! Enough to publish it! But SUNY, like everyone, was feeling the financial collapse, and he couldn’t commit. Corresponded like frustrated lovers for the better part of two years, he a perfect gentleman, saying he wanted to publish the book, but still couldn’t give me a contract, and advising I send it elsewhere in the meantime.

Which I did. But it came back, again. And again. And again!

2010, Denver. Still no contract from SUNY, too despondent to attend AWP. Considered going into another field. Stopped writing altogether, knowing, with certainty, this book was dead in the water.

I CONSIDERED OTHER PROFESSIONS

2011, Washington DC. Infused my seriously anemic self-esteem with the encouragement of my friends and went to DC. Trolled the bookfair again, an exercise even more depressing this time, with all those publishers there who’d already turned me down. Process therefore quicker.

SEARCH FOR A PUBLISHER SOMEWHAT DELAYED BY DESPAIR

Last day of the bookfair, made one last slog to the tables in the further reaches of the basement. And saw it: SUNY Press. Looked down at the carpet. I wouldn’t embarrass nice James Peltz and myself by saying hello, making him tell me again that he loved my book but couldn’t publish it. Couldn’t help but glance furtively at the SUNY table, a little like looking to see your ex kissing his new girlfriend. James Peltz looked up at just that moment. “Sarah!” he said, happily, not in the voice of an editor ducking an author.

“Hi,” I said, as casually as I could.

“We just found out yesterday,” he said. “We can publish your book! The money has been approved!”

CUE THE DISNEY BIRDS. CUE THE HARPS. CUE MY FRIENDS BUYING ME DRINKS IN THE BAR.

2012, Chicago. With a pub date of April, press rushed to get the book ready for AWP, sent my first ten copies directly to the hotel. The text messages flew among my friends, and one by one they showed up to meet me at the hotel mailroom.

There was a problem finding the box. My books were missing! It would never happen!

And then, there it was, carried down the hall by one Mr. Preachly, the hotel mail room clerk, who ceremoniously opened the box, and then I was holding it in my hands: Grand Isle, a novel.

Further Reading:

More by Sarah Van Arsdale—including the prequel to this story from AWP 2009:

“The book fair at AWP didn’t only encourage me in my own small endeavors; it made me believe that exciting, carefully crafted work will be brought to appreciative readers, no matter how far the mainstream publishers fall.”
What do do when you feel like scrapping your novel
Visit Sarah’s author blog at http://sarahvanarsdale.blogspot.com

Imposter syndrome

Celeste Ng — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:00:36 +0000

When I first got to college, I was pretty sure that I was an admissions mistake. My roommate was one of Glamour’s College Women of the Year. Another girl downstairs played piano with the Philharmonic; the guy down the hall was almost sixteen. A guy on the first floor held two patents. You get the idea. Even now, I occasionally get the feeling that I am a complete fraud, and I have no idea how I managed to convince people I had anything worthwhile to say. In my worst moments I suspect I will get a phone call rescinding awards I have won, or announcing the de-publication of one of my stories.

You, too? Chalk it up to imposter syndrome. Lesley on xoJane explains:

Impostor syndrome happens to all sorts of people, at all ages and all levels of “success” in career and life. (However, it is especially common amongst graduate students.) People with impostor syndrome are convinced that their successes, no matter how concrete or obvious, are merely accidents that they cannot ever hope to repeat on purpose. They can’t own and internalize their accomplishments; instead, they are convinced that they are frauds, that they don’t deserve their accolades, and at any moment they will be revealed for the charlatans they are.

The phrase “impostor phenomenon” was first used in 1978 by Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. [...] Totally unsurprisingly, impostor syndrome was initially thought to be more common amongst women, although more recent takes on the idea have found that men are just as suceptible, they just tend to handle these feelings differently.

When I read this, a bell went off in my head. Though the article is mostly aimed at graduate students in the cutthroat academic world, “imposter syndrome” is a feeling all too many creative writers struggle with, too. xoJane offers some tips on getting over these feelings—read the full article here—as well as this parting thought:

The difference between the impostor-plagued person and the self-confident person is not competence; it’s attitude.

Do you ever feel like an imposter? How do you cope? Tell us in the comments—and don’t worry, we’ll keep your secrets.

Further Reading:

An interview with author Jeff Kass on “never being the cool kid” and why being an outsider can be important to writing
Scott F. Parker examines the David Foster Wallace story “Good Old Neon”—which begins, ““My whole life I’ve been a fraud”—in light of the author’s own suicide.
Is there really a link between mental health and creativity?
When does a writer become a Writer?

“The writer is not the writing”

Celeste Ng — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Recently, the New York Times tackled the burning question of why authors tweet. One main reason? To connect with the reader, of course:

For one thing, publishers are pushing authors to hobnob with readers on Twitter and Facebook in the hope they will sell more copies. But there’s another reason: Many authors have little use for the pretension of hermetic distance and never accepted a historically specific idea of what it means to be a writer. [...]

Jennifer Gilmore (3,463 followers) finds hearing from readers helps her understand the influence her novels have on them: “On Twitter, I have a sense that people — those you know and those you don’t — read your work in a way I have not always felt in the world.”

Not all authors feel this way; as the Times article notes, Gary Shteyngart often writes in persona (including that of his dog), while Jeffrey Eugenides argues, “It’s better, I think, for readers not to communicate too directly with an author because the author is, strangely enough, beside the point.” But by and large, it seems that readers want to feel connected to their favorite authors—not just to their works, but to the authors as actual people. Love a book, the logic goes, and you’ll likely love the author, too.

But does that logic hold? What if you don’t love the author?

Writing in The Faster Times, Abigail Rasminsky describes a stilted book-signing encounter with Joan Didion that left her feeling “dirty, like I had turned into a predator, sucking her for something she wasn’t equipped to give”:

The relationship, I saw with renewed clarity, is always to the writing—not to the writer. That fleeting moment Phillip Lopate calls a “shiver of self-recognition” comes from the ideas, the words themselves, meticulously lined up again and again, not from the person standing before a crowd, rereading them after the long struggle.

This kind of personal disappointment in a writer you adore is one thing; at home, as Rasminsky does, you can ignore the physical existence of the author and renew your relationship with that author’s words. But what if the author ruins your relationship with the writing? What if you actively despise the views of an author you love? In the Huffington Post, Dave Astor writes about his conflicted emotions on learning that Orson Scott Card is anti-gay:

It was on the Web that I discovered Card has actively and publicly opposed same-sex marriage, which greatly upset me because I’m a strong believer in gays and lesbians having the right to wed. So I asked myself: Do I ever want to read this guy again? [...]

Ultimately, I decided I would not open a Card book again. This is similar to a decision I made years ago not to read much of Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer because of the macho nonsense they were guilty of in their personal lives. (And I didn’t see a Woody Allen movie for a long time after his shenanigans that might have almost bordered on incest.)

Astor’s decision reads almost like a business boycott: he vows not to “devote any more eyeball time to a guy who fights against an important civil and human right for millions of Americans.” Will Orson Scott Card notice, or care? Probably not. But that’s not the point. If you, as a reader, know an author fervently supports a cause you hate, every word that author writes might seem tinged. In that case, the distinction between the writer and the writing may be academic.

When I was a moody teenager, I developed crushes on movie stars based on the roles they played. Chief among them: Tom Cruise, because of Top Gun and—I blush to admit it—Far and Away. Fast-forward twenty years. Tom Cruise impregnates the virginal Katie Holmes and startles the nation with a lunatic jump on Oprah’s couch. This is in no way the same as, say, opposing same-sex marriage (a cause I, like Astor, strongly support). But I haven’t been able to watch a Tom Cruise movie, new or old, since.

The actor is not the acting. The writing is not the writer. But sometimes, the two overlap.

Further Reading:

Critics of Rick Moody’s work often seem more like critics of Rick Moody himself. What’s the deal with that? Jonathan Callahan investigates.
Further blurring the line between writer and writing: David Foster Wallace writes a story in which David Wallace imagines the thoughts of a friend who takes his own life. Scott F. Parker’s thought-provoking essay, “The Real Question,” attempts to unravel this.
Would you trust Hemingway’s Yelp reviews?
Forget tweeting with the author. Maybe you’d rather just tweet with the characters.

When does a writer become a Writer?

Celeste Ng — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:00:42 +0000

That’s how I’d have capitalized this recent article by The Atlantic, which asked that rather big question. Describing Alex Jenni, a French biology teacher who recently won the Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary award, the article noted,

In the Alexis Jenni school of thought, a writer may be someone, anyone, with a compulsion to scrawl or the conviction of having something to say. A writer is not defined by his career, but the simple act of writing regularly. And authors who found success through the muck of making ends meet have taken that approach for some time now, in practice at least. [...]

T.S. Eliot, on the other hand, was inclined to keep his day job even after it was financially necessary. When the Bloomsbury group offered to set up a fund that would allow him sufficient funding to become a full-time writer, the poet turned them down. “This idea that Eliot should be freed from the drudgery of work misses the point that he was actually very interested in the minutiae of everyday life—he was a commentator on the quotidian,” British Library curator Rachel Foss told The Guardian.

For modern-day counterparts to Eliot, there’s Days of Yore, a website that interviews artists “about the years before they had money, fame, or roadmaps to success, and inspires you to find your own.” Here, Deborah Eisenberg discusses her “late start” to writing and Jennifer Egan describes how she went on an archaeological dig. But this isn’t just a nostalgic look-what-crazy-job-I-did-when-I-was-young-and-hungry site. The site’s co-founder and editor, Astri von Arbin Ahlander, a self-described “aspiring artist” highlighted in the Atlantic piece, argues that the day job is a way of life for today’s writer:

Says Von Arbin Ahlander, “We’re kidding ourselves if we think we can make a living on writing.” As for the romantic ideal of the leisurely writer life, slowly crafting one’s masterpiece in the calm solitude of a big, empty house: “I mean, that’s over,” she added, “Unless you’re a trust fund baby.”

So if 99% of writers today need to have a “real job”—beyond pounding furiously at a typewriter all day—then what DOES make a writer a writer? One commenter put it bluntly: “I became a writer when people started to pay me for my writing. Before that, I was an aspiring writer.” Another took the oppoite view: “I dislike the very concept of ‘being a writer’. That is something fakes and wannabes say at bad parties to impress the foolish. [...] I’m quite happy to say, if the subject ever comes up, ‘I write’, but never ‘I am a writer’.”

Here’s a better question: Why such angst about a self-imposed title, a person who writes versus a Writer? It’s a question of proving your seriousness. Most other professions have clearly defined borders: lawyers have law degrees and bar memberships; doctors have M.D.s and board certifications. Realtors, health inspectors, schoolteachers like Alex Jenni–each needs certain objective qualifications and credentials. You know they’re serious because they’ve spent time in school and training; you know they’re (ostensibly) qualified because they’ve been tested and granted licenses. So you turn over your lawsuit, or your appendix, or your child, and let the experts work.

Writers operate outside these boundaries. You don’t need an MFA–or even a high school diploma–to write. You just pick up your pencil and go. Anyone can call himself or herself a writer, and anyone can be a writer. Democratic? Yes. But that also makes it hard to prove your seriousness, which is really the topic the Atlantic–and the commenters on the article–delicately circle around. Who’s just a dilettante, and who’s a capital-W writer? Is it a career or just a temporary occupation? Something you happen to do, or something you are?

Recently a stonemason (yes) came to repair the foundation of my house. He made up haiku while he was working, he told me, reciting one to me as he chiseled away the old mortar. But he was quite firm: he was not a Writer. He was a stonemason, the last in a long line of stonemasons, the “and son” of DeAngelis and Sons. That was his art. The haiku, he insisted, wasn’t writing, just something he did to keep his brain active.

So was he a writer? Are you? The answer may all lie in your attitude towards your art–or towards that “something you do” just to keep your brain active.

Further Reading:

A related question: do you have to be a genius to create a work of genius?
By the way, does “work” writing count as “real” writing? In the Huffington Post, Holly Robinson says yes.

Optimism for the new year

Celeste Ng — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:26:12 +0000

On New Year’s morning this year, I was sitting at a kitchen table in Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up in Cleveland and love it, but (like most people) in the way you love your old rusty car with the duct-taped mirror and muffler tied up with a string, or your dingy old house with the drafty windows and the sagging roof—both of which are, unfortunately, all-too-common images in the city of Cleveland. To top all this off, we were in town visiting a seriously ill family member and had spent most of the past few days in a hospital room, listening to the slow wheeze of the oxygen pump.

All this is to say that on New Year’s Day, when I picked up the comics page of the Plain Dealer—an ailing section of an ailing newspaper in an ailing city—I was not at all surprised that they weren’t at all funny. Two-thirds of the strips tried to crack jokes about the outlook for 2012 and could muster only a deep cynicism. The other third didn’t even try. The funniest comic was a Peanuts strip, which was copyrighted in 1961.

At times like that, needless to say, it’s hard to feel positive about the upcoming year. So I’m grateful to Colum McCann for this essay—drawn from an address at Boston College—for reminding me why (and how) to be optimistic.

There’s a degraded discourse around the notion of optimism these days that says there is something soft about being an optimist—something wrong. It claims that optimism has no edge, as if it’s less than complete, less than the full deck of knowledge. The optimist is cartooned into the corner with an idiotic grin. I submit to you that none of that is true.

A good optimist never denies the reality of the dark. In fact, optimists are far more cynical than the best of cynics. They have to trump the cynic within. They have to examine the world. They have to go headfirst into the dark.

That is what learning is about. Cynics do not go forth. Cynics are trapped in their cynicism. It’s the end of the journey. They all fall down.

For McCann–as for so many writers and readers and thinkers–the key to optimism lies in story:

So much of good education is learning how to get to the other side of cynicism, how to cross that towering divide. This is not, I submit, sentimental. It’s full of sentiment, yes, but not sentimental. The best theologians, thinkers, philosophers, the best teachers, have always told us that we get to the light through the heart of the dark. You read, you engage. You become who you are by telling each other your stories. The bloodstream of the stories becomes the bloodstream of your life. [...]

If you can make the darkness visible, then you can make the light visible. So I call on you to practice resuscitation. Endure the rough weather. In fact, embrace it. Do not tread water. If you tread water, you might survive, but you won’t live. Swim in the waters that other people would drown in. Get ripped to pieces and learn to put yourself back together again.

Throw away the GPS. Read. Be like Job, and ask questions. Turn answers into more questions. Push the edge, become the edge. Expose your heart. Imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages. Raise your voice on behalf of those who haven’t had a chance to raise their own.

I am not a tattoo kind of girl, but after reading this essay, I’m seriously tempted to have some of it inked on the backs of my hands. Go ahead, I dare you: read McCann’s essay, especially that rousing finale, and try not to feel your spirit lift, ever so slightly, off the floor. And carry that optimism with you into the new year and into your work.

Happy new year, everyone, and welcome back.

Further Reading:

Novelist Dean Bakopoulos, author of My American Unhappiness, on writing when real-life tragedies make fiction feel “fruitless.”
Scott Parker on David Foster Wallace’s “Good Old Neon,” and why this story of psychological suffering might actually be a story about “optimism for the chances of making it in the world.”
Writing is one of the 10 careers with the highest rate of depression. So how do you go on, in spite of it all?

Why to give up on your novel–or not start at all

Celeste Ng — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:00:02 +0000

Everywhere you look, there are reasons not to write. If you believe in omens–as I do–you may start to wonder if the universe is trying to tell you something.

You may feel like you shouldn’t even start writing. Recently, the Huffington Post offered 10 reasons not to write your novel. And some of them are pretty damn good. For instance:

2. Someone has already written your novel, and better than you ever could. Certainly you’ve visited a bookstore, picked up a new release novel the plot summary of which filled you with loathing. “That’s the idea I had,” you mutter. See? What did I tell you?

5. Instead of writing a novel, why not focus on, say, sex? Imagine that you give your wife, husband or partner the same amount of attention that you lavish on this, this idea — these voicesthat you can’t get out of your head. Imagine what perfection you would attain in the sack! Think of how heroic and loved you would be!

6. Substitute parenthood for sex (above).

If you do manage to get yourself writing, you may constantly be wondering if you should stop. Novelist Tony D’Souza writes about scrapping his novel and starting (gulp!) from scratch.

On November 7, 2009, more than two years after writing the first lines, I crossed my fingers and sent the first 150 pages to Liz. I was a wreck. Maybe it really was a masterpiece, I kept trying to convince myself as I paced and chain-smoked cigarettes. After a few days of that, her email pinged in my inbox. She’d written, “Tony, a few of us have looked at this. I’m sorry, we don’t understand why you’re on this track…”

I showed the email to my wife, then did what I should have done some time before: I put Voyage of the Rosa down for a much deserved rest. No matter that we needed money urgently. No matter that I had slaved at it like doing lacquer-work for years. No matter that I loved it. No matter that I felt like jumping off a bridge. Voyage of the Rosa was not happening at that time, and somehow, I managed to admit it. The next evening, I wrote the opening 20 pages of my new novel Mule.

How do you keep going when faced with all these reasons to quite–or to not start at all?

The best answer I have found is this quote from Annie Dillard–which I have painted over my desk:

Every morning you climb several flights of stairs, enter your study, open the French doors, and slide your desk and chair out into the middle of the air. The desk and chair float thirty feet from the ground, between the crowns of maple trees. [...] Get to work. Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.

“Work” writing and “really” writing

Celeste Ng — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:00:57 +0000

Like many writers, I tend to think of job-related writing–like copywriting, or editing, or ghostwriting memos–as Not Really Writing. In the Huffington Post, though, Holly Robinson expresses a very different point of view:

“Doesn’t it bug you to write other people’s books when you could be working on your own?” another writer asked me recently.

Not a bit. In fact, I love telling other people’s stories. What other job would allow me to walk in another person’s shoes so completely that I’d feel their blisters? Working as a book doctor or ghost writer, I have the opportunity to immerse myself in worlds as disparate as the priesthood, cooking, fashion design, and Tejano music — I just finished ghost writing an incredibly moving memoir for Chris Perez, the husband of the fantastically talented Mexican-American singer, Selena. Ghost writing isn’t just a paying job for me. It’s a passion. Sharing stories is what makes us human.

And you know, Robinson’s right: there is a certain joy in untangling awkward sentences, polishing language, and making muddied ideas clear. But in my own experience, that type of writing doesn’t fulfill me in the same way creative writing does, but it uses the same word-processing part of my brain–thus leaving it too tired at the end of the day for working on stories.

What about you? Do you consider your day-job writing to be Real Writing? How does it affect your drive to tell your own stories in your fiction?

Further Reading:

Robin Becker explains how teaching book reviewing helps writing
How a police blotter can improve your writing
One writer’s story of why he quit his day job