It’s the end of the year, a time of looking back while heading forward, the season of countdowns, Spotify Wrapped lists, and best of lists. In that spirit, I wanted to share a list of the things I learned – or tried to – and focused on this year. “Tried to” is an important caveat here: I did my best, I think, to keep the important things in mind, but when it comes to my frame of mind, I have bad days (and weeks, and if I’m honest, months) as well as good days. These ideas form the frame through which I saw my writing life on those good days for my frame of mind.
1. Read what you want to read. I often feel pressured to read the books that other people are reading — especially when the books in question are highly cerebral and literary. This year, giving in to that pressure – to read the smart books, the high-culture books, the so-heavy-your-brain-hurts-from-lifting-the-words-off-the-page books – led me to two of the most unpleasant, tedious, and uncomfortable reading experiences I’ve ever had (a note: I usually force myself to finish a book, no matter how much I hate it; another thing I’ve learned this year is that this isn’t always a good thing to do). I would’ve been much better off reading what I wanted to read rather than what I felt like I had to read. There is something to learn from everything, and that includes all genres of writing. Also, a book doesn’t have to be highly literary to be intellectually engaging. I was intellectually challenged, inspired, and excited both by Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, Trust, and by Cixin Liu’s sci-fi masterpiece The Three-Body Problem.
2. Take your time. I can’t seem to find it, unfortunately, but earlier this year, a Tweet circulating around writing Twitter said, essentially, “unless you are George R.R. Martin, no one is waiting anxiously for your next book.” While my first response was “well, that’s depressing,” my second response was “wait, that’s incredibly freeing.” The second response is the one that stuck. We all face so many pressures from so many different directions — home, work, family, the body, the pet who just realized the bottom of their food bowl is just barely visible. There’s no reason to feel pressured to finish book after book in record time, especially since it’s usually an entirely self-imposed pressure. Your pace as a writer is the right pace for you.
(I do, however, confess that I would really love for George R.R. Martin to pick up the pace with The Winds of Winter.)
3. Save, save, and save again — separately. This is, perhaps, obvious, but saving drafts as separate documents saved me from a great deal of pain. In March, I had the absolute best idea for structuring my novel. In September, I realized that it was actually the absolute worst idea I could possibly have. Thankfully, before making major changes, I’d obsessively saved my draft as it was and then saved it as a new document. If I hadn’t, September Emma would have had a very, very bad time.
4. When in doubt, print it out. This is probably every bit as obvious as the last item on this list, but it was still an important lesson for me. I “revised” several pieces on my laptop multiple times, but came away from each “revision” with that nauseous, lingering suspicion that something still wasn’t right. That’s because I wasn’t actually revising: I’d become so accustomed to seeing the piece on my laptop that I was no longer actually really, truly seeing the piece. Printing a piece out, I found, allowed me to see it in a new way — and to finally make the drastic revisions necessary to make that nauseous, lingering suspicion go away.
5. Live for your writing. This realization is two-pronged: for one, life is (unbelievably) busy, and in order to write, one must make time for it, whether that’s scribbling some notes while scarfing down a sandwich on one’s lunch break or setting one’s alarm for an hour earlier then using that time to write. On the other hand, if you’re not living – gathering experiences, engaging with the world, connecting deeply with all we call being and finding inspiration there – you’ll have very little to write about. What this kind of “living” means, of course, differs for everyone: perhaps, for you, it’s hiking the Appalachian Trail. Perhaps it’s lingering over coffee and crying during The Today Show. Find what fuels your writing, and then live it.
6. Don’t judge yourself by someone else’s goals or by things that are out of your control. So often, especially on social media, I see writers setting goals based on what they’ve heard is important in publishing: getting an agent in the right agency, landing a book deal with one of the Big Five publishers, selling a certain number of books and getting a certain kind of feedback or a review in a certain publication. So often, I do this myself as well. But so much of what happens in publishing is completely and totally out of a writer’s hands: agents leave the industry, publishing houses shut down, and sometimes, a single post by an anime fan account can do more than a starred review in Kirkus. Plus, reaching these artificial goals can feel — well, artificial and hollow, as Catherine Baab-Muguira discusses in her Electric Lit essay, “My Book Earned Out in Two Years and Nothing Happened.” “Here’s what happens when you earn out: Nothing,” Baab-Maguira writes. “No one throws beads, confetti, nada. No one even notices. They’re busy. They’ve moved on.” Baab-Maguira realizes that “[h]ustling to earn out cost me time with my family and energy I could’ve spent writing the next book” — living and writing. This year, instead of setting a goal that’s beyond my control, I tried to focus on two things: am I writing, but not forcing it? Do I feel satisfied with what I’m writing? That’s what is actually in my control and what’s truly important to me.
7. Community over competition. I will be honest: this was probably my most difficult year as a writer. I started the year feeling unmoored both in my practice and by my attempts at publishing, and it took a long while to get my footing, which remains unsteady. Ultimately, the fact that I am still writing and I did try to get my footing is most important, and I owe that mostly to the support of my writing community. That support is crucial — and treating your fellow writers as competitors eliminates this kind of support. It can also be an incredibly destructive force that can harm other writers. This year, there were far too many stories about writers tearing down other writers, like the writer with a highly anticipated upcoming novel who review-bombed fellow debut novelists on Goodreads. It’s essential to support other writers, to lift them up and to do the same for their work. We are colleagues, not competitors, and we are all in this together.
Loved 1 and 2 the best. I found that the journey of enjoying and writing returned after realizing “unless you are George R.R. Martin........." quote. I have enjoyed some of the best reading because it was about enjoying the craft!
"Read what you like" struck a nerve for me. Thanks!