I would like to add - stop staying you wish to become a writer. Identify as a writer, right now. Make a promise to yourself to write every day, even if it's just 10 minutes some days. Do it "daily-ish." Get a job to pay the bills, but when people ask what you do, say "I'm a writer." Because if you write every day, that is true.
Two books I *highly* recommend, that were life-changing for me: "Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert, and "Meditations for Mortals" by Oliver Burkeman.
After dreaming of "becoming a writer," my whole life, these books helped me finally just live it from the inside out. I started submitting stories for the first time in my life, and one got accepted last month, to be published in the spring.
But I wish I'd done this at age 29 and not age 56!
Congratulations! I endorse all of this 100%. And I want to add that even professional writers who've been published repeatedly are forced to start from scratch on many levels every single day. You have to keep putting in the time and keep believing, and there are stretches when your faith is tested. It's like relearning your own religion: You remember that you are an observer, a collector, a romantic, and those elements of your being are what attune you to the world in invigorating ways. The primary joy of being a writer is centered on that attunement and on your faith in your own unique, strange, scrappy approach to the universe. When you're paying close attention, collecting, stoking your own faith, you're cultivating an appetite for life itself.
You will feel leaden and incurious and full of doubt, just like anyone else, and you'll question why you were deluded enough to think that you had any kind of gift or magic or even coherent perspective on the world. I've had a real year of falling into mud puddles and not feeling particularly inspired. Relocating my curiosity, my faith in myself, my interest in the odd details of mundane life: these are a huge part of the job of being a writer, and of stubbornly insisting on calling yourself a writer no matter your circumstances.
I think when people make adamant distinctions between pros and amateurs i.e. "No, I'm a real writer with experience and you're just scribbling and doodling at random!" that indicates a grasping insecurity that underscores just how difficult it is for every single writer to keep faith in their own unique perspectives and gifts. Compassion for yourself and patience with your skill level is easier to muster when you recognize that even when people make you feel small or they're harshly critical of your work or they unconsciously act as gatekeepers, they're just reflecting the fact that the struggle is REAL.
Be bold and give yourself the title you want, then live up to that title by staying engaged with the process and noticing how much it enhances your experiences and your understanding of the vast romantic universe inside you.
Okay copying and pasting into a post because today I clearly have a lot to say about this!!! Thanks for the great comment, Betsy. Keep believing!
"It's like relearning your own religion: You remember that you are an observer, a collector, a romantic, and those elements of your being are what attune you to the world in invigorating ways. The primary joy of being a writer is centered on that attunement"
This perfectly articulates what I have recently discovered. And I especially love the idea of "collecting" to describe this.
Thank you for your kindness & generosity of spirit. xo
This William Blake image is the mantra of my creative process.
I honestly don't know how I would make anything if I didn't desire for it to exist, and desire to be the one who makes it. That's the start of everything for me. I don't want to "be an artist", in fact I find that somewhat annoying, because it's too vague. What I want is more specific. I WANT to sculpt a complicated, philosophical sructure that exactly expresses my feelings about death and human agency. I WANT to sculpt a simple little sloth-like creature whose tender body makes people want to cry. I WANT to sculpt a round figure that is simultaneously a bug and a mother, and make it fit exactly in the palm of your hand. I want people to want want the things I made. They don't even know they want it until they see it, and then they feel "I want I want".
It seems to me that if the LW wants to write things that lift people out of despair and cultivate emotional awareness, the only way to do that, literally the only way, is for the LW to write things that lift him out of despair and cultivate his own emotional awareness.
The William Blake is my mantra, but this quote is the explanation: "The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own intimate sensitivity" (Anne Truitt)
To me, that means I have to get really, really specific about what I actually want, and obsessively think about what exact shape I want it to take. And that's why Polly says, "my only aim right now is to please myself." That's not a self-care truism, that's a description of the ACTUAL LABOR of creativity.
Well said! Your words apply very directly to the way I approach pottery. I didn't understand why I was doing it until I made something that made me irrationally happy. That happiness was accompanied by a feeling like THIS IS PERFECT, I LOVE THIS, I WANT TO LOOK AT THIS EVERY DAY. I wanted to marry my own plate with a rabbit on it! lol
I couldn't imagine that feeling until I experienced it. It's so simple, but asking, "What do I want?" is huge. I'm very happy with the first chapter of my novel, but I want it to have a little more bite and a little more heart. I'm going to keep returning to it in order to figure out how to make it what I want it to be (while I work on the next chapter, and keep my faith through the first draft of the chapter after that!).
Getting very specific and tuning into what you want: this is just great direction. You slow down and refuse to rush it. You ask yourself, "What would I feel very very proud of? What would make me fall in love with this?"
I was listening to Hamilton this morning after a few years off from it when I had been thinking it was a little cheesier than could be tolerated. This morning I sang along to the first 1/2 and marveled REPEATEDLY at how truly great it is. Not to state the obvious, but these are great pop songs with weight and momentum, sewn together by so much raw emotion. It's a perfect model for writing a great novel. You need characters, clear themes, interesting images, but you also need suspense, momentum, urgency, and emotional heft. You've got to go straight to the fundamental problems of being alive and you have to be obvious at times just to get your first pass onto the page.
A great story has a rhythm and it pulls you along like a wave without pulling you under. It lifts you up along the way. You end up understanding your own life better, or forgiving yourself more for your own flaws, just by seeing fully imagined characters struggle.
And maybe a great story is inherently, unavoidably cheesy. I mean it's tough to write a series of incredible pop songs without being a teensy bit too obvious and corny here and there. Instead of fearing uncoolness -- this is me talking to myself about my writing! -- imagine making something that teenagers and people in their 60s love with equal passion!
So I guess I'm saying that part of being specific and understanding what you want is relishing all kinds of different art forms that DELIVER the feeling /sensation/ inspiration that you also want to deliver.
Anyway, now I ALSO want that round bug/ mother figure very badly!!!
Omg, yes exactly! I had a huge artistic breakthrough when I realized I was ashamed to make something "too obvious" or "low hanging fruit." Then I realized that many of the artists and writers I loved totally go for the low hanging fruit. That's the ripest fruit! It's ready to eat! Those are the universal truths! And I don't have to be self-conscious about making something too cheesy, as long as I go through that process you describe of tweaking it until it feels satisfying and zingy to my own tastes.
If you want to look at the Bug Mothers, my website is kesterlimner.com. (Disclaimer: they are way better to hold and touch in-person than to look at on the internet!! I haven't quite figured out how to photograph my 3D work in a way that feels good to me, so that's a work still in progress.)
Whatever you might think of Stephen King (I think he's pretty good), his book "On Writing" has a lot of excellent advice from a person who probably writes more words per day than anyone else on the planet. A lot of it boils down to: Read a lot, and write a lot. Most good writing comes from practice, the same way you don't really get good at baking, or golf, or HVAC repair, without a lot of practice and a lot of mistakes. Make sure you've got the basics of grammar, style and structure down before you starting screwing around with them and breaking the rules. Ray Bradbury also published a nice book about writing that is slightly less practical but much more musical.
But, basically, write a lot and build up your writing muscles. I work in business press publishing, and for a while one of my jobs was writing corporate white papers. Not the most gratifying work, but it paid well, and after doing that over and over again I could write those babies forward, backward, and with my eyes closed. Writing you care about isn't going to be that easy, but it doesn't have to be like giving yourself a root canal all the time either.
And just make a living doing whatever. I was a writer when I was a deli clerk, and a janitor, and a parole office secretary, and a data entry specialist, no more or no less than when I was an actual freelance writer or magazine editor.
As Polly the Heater says; slow work and lots of time. Life has a gravity which becomes heavier over time, it pulls you to your roots and along the way jettisons the things which you don’t love, because only the experience of loving something, loving yourself, loving your work, will provide the fuel for the long journey.
I believe that supporting yourself so that you can live on your own (or with a roommate instead of a parent) is as important as writing regularly. In an 8-hour day, I'd spend 7 looking for the best paying work I could and 1 hour writing. That balance can shift more, once you are supporting yourself.
(And if you're not getting job interviews, find a professional to review your resume. Don't fall for "resume factories"—find a specific human on LinkedIn or even at your local library.)
I will say that a career as a writer can look quite different than writing to please yourself and seeing where that takes you.
If you're writing to please yourself first, anything can happen. Maybe you'll get published by Knopf—or maybe you'll end up in a less-famous lit mag. Maybe you'll end up being quite well known—or maybe you'll have a small but loyal readership on Substack. But it's the process of writing as well as you can for yourself that's the most important thing.
A writer who writes for income often takes on all kinds of work that isn't exactly fulfilling. But overall they love writing and most likely have their own writing projects that keep them energized. You might be also be surprised to learn how many famous writers *never* gave up their non-writing, income-earning "day job".
And maybe you'll end up in the category where writing for yourself also supports you financially.
But start here: Get as good a job as you can; save and invest for your older age; and write regularly to the best of your ability.
This was absolutely excellent advice! If it helps, I like to think about writing as, like, talking about the most important things. So the question I return to is 'What is most important / alive right now?' But as Polly says, you are the only one who can find out what form or content or purpose your writing wants to take, & you can only do that by doing it. That's the case with all creative work, but most so with writing I reckon. Best of luck, letter writer! I enjoyed to read your letter. (That's another thing I often think about: that writing to people on my Substack is like writing a letter...)
P.S. When I am in the process of writing, it feels like, how can I most clearly communicate what I am trying to communicate? Clarity is beauty. Also, what is arising now? What wants to come next? The writing itself is alive & it will tell you what it wants to be, the more you work & listen, the easier it gets.
Fascinating how the search for “becoming a writer” dissolves the moment you realize writing isn’t in the words, but in the awareness that shapes them. Everything else is just proving what you already know.
Your “heater” call-out made me smirk 😂 I’m new here and trying to step out of my comfort zone with my writing. If you ever feel like taking a peek at my chaos-filled stories, I would be extra thankful this Thanksgiving 🙏🏻
"If I don’t tolerate (and also anticipate!) the pain of feeling that my work isn’t good enough, I won’t shape my novel into something I feel good about, proud of, and excited to share with others."
As usual, fantastic advice!
I would like to add - stop staying you wish to become a writer. Identify as a writer, right now. Make a promise to yourself to write every day, even if it's just 10 minutes some days. Do it "daily-ish." Get a job to pay the bills, but when people ask what you do, say "I'm a writer." Because if you write every day, that is true.
Two books I *highly* recommend, that were life-changing for me: "Big Magic" by Elizabeth Gilbert, and "Meditations for Mortals" by Oliver Burkeman.
After dreaming of "becoming a writer," my whole life, these books helped me finally just live it from the inside out. I started submitting stories for the first time in my life, and one got accepted last month, to be published in the spring.
But I wish I'd done this at age 29 and not age 56!
Congratulations! I endorse all of this 100%. And I want to add that even professional writers who've been published repeatedly are forced to start from scratch on many levels every single day. You have to keep putting in the time and keep believing, and there are stretches when your faith is tested. It's like relearning your own religion: You remember that you are an observer, a collector, a romantic, and those elements of your being are what attune you to the world in invigorating ways. The primary joy of being a writer is centered on that attunement and on your faith in your own unique, strange, scrappy approach to the universe. When you're paying close attention, collecting, stoking your own faith, you're cultivating an appetite for life itself.
You will feel leaden and incurious and full of doubt, just like anyone else, and you'll question why you were deluded enough to think that you had any kind of gift or magic or even coherent perspective on the world. I've had a real year of falling into mud puddles and not feeling particularly inspired. Relocating my curiosity, my faith in myself, my interest in the odd details of mundane life: these are a huge part of the job of being a writer, and of stubbornly insisting on calling yourself a writer no matter your circumstances.
I think when people make adamant distinctions between pros and amateurs i.e. "No, I'm a real writer with experience and you're just scribbling and doodling at random!" that indicates a grasping insecurity that underscores just how difficult it is for every single writer to keep faith in their own unique perspectives and gifts. Compassion for yourself and patience with your skill level is easier to muster when you recognize that even when people make you feel small or they're harshly critical of your work or they unconsciously act as gatekeepers, they're just reflecting the fact that the struggle is REAL.
Be bold and give yourself the title you want, then live up to that title by staying engaged with the process and noticing how much it enhances your experiences and your understanding of the vast romantic universe inside you.
Okay copying and pasting into a post because today I clearly have a lot to say about this!!! Thanks for the great comment, Betsy. Keep believing!
I love this so much, especially this part:
"It's like relearning your own religion: You remember that you are an observer, a collector, a romantic, and those elements of your being are what attune you to the world in invigorating ways. The primary joy of being a writer is centered on that attunement"
This perfectly articulates what I have recently discovered. And I especially love the idea of "collecting" to describe this.
Thank you for your kindness & generosity of spirit. xo
https://tosommerfugle.blogspot.com/2021/01/william-blake-i-want-i-want.html
This William Blake image is the mantra of my creative process.
I honestly don't know how I would make anything if I didn't desire for it to exist, and desire to be the one who makes it. That's the start of everything for me. I don't want to "be an artist", in fact I find that somewhat annoying, because it's too vague. What I want is more specific. I WANT to sculpt a complicated, philosophical sructure that exactly expresses my feelings about death and human agency. I WANT to sculpt a simple little sloth-like creature whose tender body makes people want to cry. I WANT to sculpt a round figure that is simultaneously a bug and a mother, and make it fit exactly in the palm of your hand. I want people to want want the things I made. They don't even know they want it until they see it, and then they feel "I want I want".
It seems to me that if the LW wants to write things that lift people out of despair and cultivate emotional awareness, the only way to do that, literally the only way, is for the LW to write things that lift him out of despair and cultivate his own emotional awareness.
The William Blake is my mantra, but this quote is the explanation: "The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own intimate sensitivity" (Anne Truitt)
To me, that means I have to get really, really specific about what I actually want, and obsessively think about what exact shape I want it to take. And that's why Polly says, "my only aim right now is to please myself." That's not a self-care truism, that's a description of the ACTUAL LABOR of creativity.
Well said! Your words apply very directly to the way I approach pottery. I didn't understand why I was doing it until I made something that made me irrationally happy. That happiness was accompanied by a feeling like THIS IS PERFECT, I LOVE THIS, I WANT TO LOOK AT THIS EVERY DAY. I wanted to marry my own plate with a rabbit on it! lol
I couldn't imagine that feeling until I experienced it. It's so simple, but asking, "What do I want?" is huge. I'm very happy with the first chapter of my novel, but I want it to have a little more bite and a little more heart. I'm going to keep returning to it in order to figure out how to make it what I want it to be (while I work on the next chapter, and keep my faith through the first draft of the chapter after that!).
Getting very specific and tuning into what you want: this is just great direction. You slow down and refuse to rush it. You ask yourself, "What would I feel very very proud of? What would make me fall in love with this?"
I was listening to Hamilton this morning after a few years off from it when I had been thinking it was a little cheesier than could be tolerated. This morning I sang along to the first 1/2 and marveled REPEATEDLY at how truly great it is. Not to state the obvious, but these are great pop songs with weight and momentum, sewn together by so much raw emotion. It's a perfect model for writing a great novel. You need characters, clear themes, interesting images, but you also need suspense, momentum, urgency, and emotional heft. You've got to go straight to the fundamental problems of being alive and you have to be obvious at times just to get your first pass onto the page.
A great story has a rhythm and it pulls you along like a wave without pulling you under. It lifts you up along the way. You end up understanding your own life better, or forgiving yourself more for your own flaws, just by seeing fully imagined characters struggle.
And maybe a great story is inherently, unavoidably cheesy. I mean it's tough to write a series of incredible pop songs without being a teensy bit too obvious and corny here and there. Instead of fearing uncoolness -- this is me talking to myself about my writing! -- imagine making something that teenagers and people in their 60s love with equal passion!
So I guess I'm saying that part of being specific and understanding what you want is relishing all kinds of different art forms that DELIVER the feeling /sensation/ inspiration that you also want to deliver.
Anyway, now I ALSO want that round bug/ mother figure very badly!!!
Omg, yes exactly! I had a huge artistic breakthrough when I realized I was ashamed to make something "too obvious" or "low hanging fruit." Then I realized that many of the artists and writers I loved totally go for the low hanging fruit. That's the ripest fruit! It's ready to eat! Those are the universal truths! And I don't have to be self-conscious about making something too cheesy, as long as I go through that process you describe of tweaking it until it feels satisfying and zingy to my own tastes.
If you want to look at the Bug Mothers, my website is kesterlimner.com. (Disclaimer: they are way better to hold and touch in-person than to look at on the internet!! I haven't quite figured out how to photograph my 3D work in a way that feels good to me, so that's a work still in progress.)
Whatever you might think of Stephen King (I think he's pretty good), his book "On Writing" has a lot of excellent advice from a person who probably writes more words per day than anyone else on the planet. A lot of it boils down to: Read a lot, and write a lot. Most good writing comes from practice, the same way you don't really get good at baking, or golf, or HVAC repair, without a lot of practice and a lot of mistakes. Make sure you've got the basics of grammar, style and structure down before you starting screwing around with them and breaking the rules. Ray Bradbury also published a nice book about writing that is slightly less practical but much more musical.
But, basically, write a lot and build up your writing muscles. I work in business press publishing, and for a while one of my jobs was writing corporate white papers. Not the most gratifying work, but it paid well, and after doing that over and over again I could write those babies forward, backward, and with my eyes closed. Writing you care about isn't going to be that easy, but it doesn't have to be like giving yourself a root canal all the time either.
And just make a living doing whatever. I was a writer when I was a deli clerk, and a janitor, and a parole office secretary, and a data entry specialist, no more or no less than when I was an actual freelance writer or magazine editor.
As Polly the Heater says; slow work and lots of time. Life has a gravity which becomes heavier over time, it pulls you to your roots and along the way jettisons the things which you don’t love, because only the experience of loving something, loving yourself, loving your work, will provide the fuel for the long journey.
Ooof. As someone who is grieving, this hits hard. So true!
As a seventy one year old trying to write his first novel I found this very useful and encouraging. Thank you Mike.
Oh yeah, I'm going to be re-reading this one a loootttttt
I believe that supporting yourself so that you can live on your own (or with a roommate instead of a parent) is as important as writing regularly. In an 8-hour day, I'd spend 7 looking for the best paying work I could and 1 hour writing. That balance can shift more, once you are supporting yourself.
(And if you're not getting job interviews, find a professional to review your resume. Don't fall for "resume factories"—find a specific human on LinkedIn or even at your local library.)
I will say that a career as a writer can look quite different than writing to please yourself and seeing where that takes you.
If you're writing to please yourself first, anything can happen. Maybe you'll get published by Knopf—or maybe you'll end up in a less-famous lit mag. Maybe you'll end up being quite well known—or maybe you'll have a small but loyal readership on Substack. But it's the process of writing as well as you can for yourself that's the most important thing.
A writer who writes for income often takes on all kinds of work that isn't exactly fulfilling. But overall they love writing and most likely have their own writing projects that keep them energized. You might be also be surprised to learn how many famous writers *never* gave up their non-writing, income-earning "day job".
And maybe you'll end up in the category where writing for yourself also supports you financially.
But start here: Get as good a job as you can; save and invest for your older age; and write regularly to the best of your ability.
This was absolutely excellent advice! If it helps, I like to think about writing as, like, talking about the most important things. So the question I return to is 'What is most important / alive right now?' But as Polly says, you are the only one who can find out what form or content or purpose your writing wants to take, & you can only do that by doing it. That's the case with all creative work, but most so with writing I reckon. Best of luck, letter writer! I enjoyed to read your letter. (That's another thing I often think about: that writing to people on my Substack is like writing a letter...)
P.S. When I am in the process of writing, it feels like, how can I most clearly communicate what I am trying to communicate? Clarity is beauty. Also, what is arising now? What wants to come next? The writing itself is alive & it will tell you what it wants to be, the more you work & listen, the easier it gets.
needed this today - thanks Polly, thanks Italian Man.
Fascinating how the search for “becoming a writer” dissolves the moment you realize writing isn’t in the words, but in the awareness that shapes them. Everything else is just proving what you already know.
YES.
Your “heater” call-out made me smirk 😂 I’m new here and trying to step out of my comfort zone with my writing. If you ever feel like taking a peek at my chaos-filled stories, I would be extra thankful this Thanksgiving 🙏🏻
"If I don’t tolerate (and also anticipate!) the pain of feeling that my work isn’t good enough, I won’t shape my novel into something I feel good about, proud of, and excited to share with others."
This right here 📌.