Notes to a new writer
I am one of those writers who always and only ever wanted to be a writer. Before I could read, I wanted to illustrate picture books. As soon as I learned to read, I wanted to be an “author.” When I was a kid reading YA and mysteries and thrillers, I wanted to write those. I wrote my first “book” in the second grade — stapled-together pages about a family of vampires — and donated it to my elementary school library, not because I thought other kids would want to check it out but because the librarian asked me to. I hope every good thing happened to that librarian for the rest of her life.
As a teenager, I discovered poetry and all I wrote was poetry for many years, until I got serious about my first novel in 2015. In some ways, I have been at this forever, but it also feels like I haven’t been doing it long at all.
Recently I was contacted by a younger writer named Hallie, who is majoring in creative writing and was tasked with interviewing a “working writer” for a senior seminar presentation. Hallie had such fantastic questions and knew way more about writing and publishing than I did at 21 or 22. Though I always wanted to be a writer, publication was a mystery to me for a long time; my first story was published not because I submitted it to magazines but because an editor heard me read it and asked for it. It was only then that I realized I needed to be sending my work out if I wanted it to find its audience. Hallie, on the other hand, took a whole entire course on the modern literary magazine!
It was my honor and pleasure to speak with Hallie, and I wish we could have talked all day. I decided to document some of the things we discussed (and also the things we didn’t get to), partially because it turns out I’ve learned a lot in the last decade — some of it the hard way — and maybe it will be of use to someone, but also because I’m a writer, so sometimes I can only find the fullest answer to a question by writing about it.
I hesitate to call any of this “advice,” but these are my notes on what my writing journey has been like so far and what I’ve taken away from it.
On being a “working writer”
I used to think that the goal was to support myself with my art to the extent that I would not need a day job. In my mind, those were the “working writers.” Turns out, not many people can do that! And I’ve made some life choices — putting down roots in New York City, getting married to someone with even more student debt than I had (love you babe 😘), having a kid — that make it even less likely for me.
Then for a while I was kicking myself for not getting an MFA because that seemed like the second-best thing to just being able to write. To spend a couple of hours at a time in the classroom, talking about fiction with other people who love fiction, and then have all this free time to write — amazing! But there’s not a ton of stability to be found on that path. Many of those folks wind up adjuncting, which looks to me to be a low-paying grind where you still have to pay for your own healthcare, and there’s still a ton of admin work to do outside the classroom. It’s still a job, and it still needs to be balanced with your art, but there’s also this added pressure on your art because if your art is “successful enough” then maybe you can land a more secure gig.
The longer I’ve done it, the happier I am that I have a day job that is basically unrelated to my art. I have a steady paycheck and health insurance for my family, and yes, the time I have to work on my art is limited, but it’s also focused. The best part is that there is no pressure on my art to support me. It can just be art, unmotivated by money. (My agent probably wishes I were a little more money-motivated, but I think she knows she made a long-term play when she bet on me. Hi Ashley! 👋 Thanks for believing in me!)
Plus, all my jobs have provided great fodder for fiction. In my glass house novel, the narrator’s present and past jobs are all inspired by jobs I worked in my twenties. And one day, I’ll be ready to write my HR novel…
On selling art in a marketplace
It’s mostly luck! Luck and timing.
There are things you can control:
Maintain a consistent writing practice
Study the craft
Seek out feedback so you can keep improving
Be professional — the writing world is small!
Be kind — the writing world is made up of human beings!
Then there are so many other things you can’t control, e.g. the magazine editor loved your story but they just published a story about pregnant manatees last month so they have to pass on this one, or the book editor loved your manuscript but they just can’t get their acquisition team on board with the subject matter/style/setting/whatever.
One option is to try to write what you think the marketplace — and when I say marketplace, I mean publishing, not readers — wants. There are people who do this and are good at it, but there’s still luck and timing involved because the zeitgeist can shift in an instant.
Another option is to make the art you want to make and trust that things will fall into place when the timing is right.
With my glass house novel, I’m making my art. However long it takes me, whether or not anyone wants to publish it. I believe that if I can accomplish my vision, there will be a readership. With the pond novel, on the other hand, I wanted to try my hand at writing something more commercial, something with a better chance of selling to a traditional publisher. (Whether or not I succeed in this endeavor remains to be seen!) Neither approach is good or bad. Just different ways to go about it. Whichever way you choose, be professional and be kind.
On writing routines
I’m a morning writer, and I like to write every single day. It’s a mental health thing for me. During times when I’m not writing because other life things have taken over, I turn into a grumpy monster who cries a lot. So I write!
Many writers I admire don’t write every day and don’t want to. I just read an interview with Rita Bullwinkel where she said, “I think a lot of bad writing happens when people write at a time when they do not want to write.”
Some writers write best at night, but my brain turns to mush after 4pm. 4:30-6:30am is my best brain time. You have to find your best brain time and protect that time for whatever is most important to you, whether it’s writing or something else.
This is another reason that a day job is a good fit for me. Even if I had the whole day to write, I would probably still want to write in the early morning. Maybe I’d do another burst later in the day, but I’d more likely spend the day cooking and doing laundry and exercising and calling the dentist, so I may as well have a day job because all those things eventually get done anyway.
On submitting to literary magazines
When I was still a baby New Yorker back in 2006, my friend Johnny taught me a very important lesson for living in New York and for life. We were trying to catch the J train at Delancey/Essex and it was late at night because we’d just gotten off work and all we wanted was to be home and we were running through the station because we could hear the train, but just as we ascended the stairs, completely out of breath, the train pulled away. I was upset because the J train didn’t come very often at night then (it probably still doesn’t), but Johnny said, “It wasn’t our train.”
A literary magazine acceptance means a story has found its home. A rejection simply means that magazine wasn’t its home.
Submit to the magazines you actually read and enjoy and would be proud to be part of. Early on, I submitted more widely because my main goal was simply to be published, and so I prioritized online magazines with faster turnarounds. I started being more selective when one of those magazines unceremoniously closed and my story disappeared. This can happen even with the bigger name online magazines (RIP Catapult), but it happens more often with less established ones, so consider how long the magazine has been around, what its readership is, and how seriously it takes itself. In the last few years, I have only submitted to a much smaller list of magazines that I consider to be “top tier,” most of which are paying print journals.
I do suggest keeping a submissions spreadsheet. Update your tier 1, 2, and 3 every couple of years at least. When it feels right, only focus on your tier 1. Don’t worry if your tier 1 is different from everyone else’s tier 1. Submit to the magazines you love and the editors you want to work with. To be edited by a real editor is a gift. These days, my submission process is more about seeking out that experience than about being published.
Because it’s still about luck and timing! The best way to really, truly understand this is to volunteer to be a reader for a literary magazine. I was a reader in 2018 and it helped me understand how each submission is encountered in the context of other submissions, and how you really only have one sentence, maybe one paragraph, to hook the reader, because to get through a submissions queue, they have to make quick decisions and move by instinct. (I don’t think this a bad thing! The same is true for hooking the reader who’s scrolling/paging through a magazine, deciding which 2,500-word story they want to invest their limited time in!)
I submit a story to a handful of magazines at a time, and then I forget about it. Once it’s out there, it’s not mine to worry about. I don’t check the Submittable queue. I have had stories sit there “in progress” for three years. (That probably means it’s a no.) But I have also had a story that sat there for eighteen months and then was accepted, long after I would have given it up for dead had I been thinking about it. Different magazines use the Submittable statuses in different ways, so it’s not worth trying to interpret meaning from them. When a story has been passed over by nearly all the magazines I sent it to, I send it to another round.
My record for a story is 33 rejections before an acceptance. I average fewer than that these days because I’m better at judging whether a story is a good fit for a particular magazine, but I also don’t take it personally if a magazine I’m sure is a great fit passes on a story. The story will find its home.
On workshops
Workshops have been invaluable for my growth as a writer, but not because of the feedback I received. It’s because critically engaging with someone else’s work is one of the best ways to improve your own. Especially early on, when I didn’t yet know how to revise, it was easier to identify the problem — and the fix — in someone else’s story than to figure out why my own wasn’t working. And as I got better at critiquing the work of others, I also got better at applying the lesson to my work, not just when I revise but when I draft. My first drafts are stronger because of all the time I’ve spent in workshops.
I’ve received some helpful feedback and some terrible feedback. In any given workshop, you have to identify whose opinion you care about — who your real readers are — and receive their feedback with an open heart while filtering the rest of it through almost a translator to see if there’s anything useful in it. It’s not turning your ears off to everyone else, but more understanding that their goals might differ from yours and so you might need to take some of what they say and leave the rest. I think a lot about something Liz Craft and Sarah Fain talked about in episode 201 of their podcast Happier in Hollywood: you have to find “the note behind the note.” People will often throw out suggestions in workshop of specific ways you might change a story, and a suggestion might not work for you at all but what is the note behind the note?
You have to do this less when you’re workshopping with very experienced workshoppers. I became a much better workshop member when I stopped trying to make everyone else’s stories like mine and started trying to meet each piece where it was. What is this story trying to do? Is it accomplishing it? How can it be more like what it wants to be?
On finding a writing community
When I first started writing fiction, I had zero writing community. Today, I feel very lucky to not only know lots of writers but to have a handful of really close writer friends and mentors, people who have supported and influenced my work, people whom I trust for feedback.
Thinking through “my people,” here’s how I found them:
At a reading where I volunteered to read my work
At the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference
At a Vermont Studio Center residency
At the Tin House Summer Workshop
At AWP
Through the people I met at these places ^^
Writing community, for me, has come from putting myself and my work out there. It’s come from engaging with other people’s work. It’s come from actively seeking out opportunities to be around other writers, and being brave and saying hi to people once I’m there. Steal my motto: “I’m here to make friends.”
One more note for Hallie and anyone else who’s early in this journey: keep reading, keep writing, keep going. I believe in you.
Love this, Shayne!