Writers Gonna Write

(Or, Why I Despise “Writing Culture”)

Source: Writers Write (Facebook Group)

Writing is my passion. A little over a decade ago, when I first buckled down and started doing, on the regular, this one thing I’ve always thought of myself as doing, this thing I dreamed about, and dabbled with, and even majored in—on the mistaken belief that studying a subject in college made one serious about it—I discovered that a lot of other people shared the same passionate, vaguely-defined obsession. Ever since novels became a common-place thing, there have been a lot of people who wanted to be novelists. The problem is just that there are about as many would-be authors in the world as there are novels. And I mean printed copies in circulation, not individual works. There are thousands upon thousands of people who think of themselves as writers, and who almost never write. And, since it’s 2023, they have a “community.” Like most contemporary communities, it’s mostly imaginary, and it’s mostly online. In other words, it’s not really real, just real enough to make someone else a lot of money.

The basic problem of being a writer is this: you have to write stuff. That part’s hard enough. For one thing, it takes time. Most people in the online “writing community” only manage it for two or three hours a month, on a good month, I’m fairly sure. Of these, another fraction belong to a writing group where they share their “work in progress” and “get feedback”, items I put in scare quotes for reasons I’ll shortly explain. Of these, a tiny, tiny percentage wake up one day, and, in a cold, clammy sweat, glimpse for a weighty instant the pain, the sacrifice, the terrible cost of actually doing what they say they do. Of this fraction-of-a-fraction, most brush off—or drink away—that terrible moment of self-discovery. They go back, for a time, to the comforting blanket of writing culture, pretending not to know that which they now know, deep down. Some, honest but less brave, decide to quit right there. Others, with more endurance but less shame, go on living the dream. And it’s only a dream.

They’re content with writing as a self-proclaimed identity. People in this group spend more time on writing websites than at their laptops, in the wee hours of morning, bleary-eyed, and sipping coffee. Memes like the following give them comfort:

Source: Writers Write (Facebook Group)

Source: Writers Write (Facebook Group)

You see! We’re all in this together!  

But in writing, as in pandemic lockdowns, we are most assuredly NOT all in this together. Some are working; others are not. After all, spending time at the keyboard is only the first of several steps to being a writer. If you’re curious about the steps, here they are:

1) Write every day, or for set days per week.

2) Write a set amount each day. This can be calculated in terms of word count (say, 250 at the start, going on 2,000) or in hours spent (two, minimum. More if you represent the 5% of professional writers who can live off their writing). 

3) Complete an entire, book-length work.

4) Revise, that is to say, rewrite almost from scratch, said work.

5) Edit.

6) Edit.

7) Realize your scenes are not tight enough; your characters not alive enough; your dialog just sounds like you talking.

8) Cry, rage, accept that you suck, and you’ll always suck, but that before you die, you must, must, MUST suck less. You have to minimize the suckiness enough to fool people into living inside your fantasy, and liking it. God! If anyone ever reads your story and looks at you as at a terrible stranger, whispering, “I…can’t believe you wrote this!” you will absolutely die from happiness! 

9) Fix the problems (this is step 9-11)

12) Edit.

13) Get professional editing.

14/1): Start a new project; now having learned something about what it was you were trying to do in the first place.

A person who does all these things can finally say he’s a writer. Some internet types—suckers—like to draw a fine distinction between being a writer and being an author. This is nonsense. Writing is a process whose telos is authorship. A “writer” who never becomes an author is like an acorn that lands on concrete, and is crushed underfoot. If you want to stroke yourself on the back because you wrote some words down, and had some cool ideas that you put in an expensive leather journal, with an ink pen, while sipping a latte by the river, then please enjoy your pathetic life, and keep it to yourself. Writing is 100% about execution. And execution means finishing. It also means killing, by the way; bloodletting on an altar of strange justice being a perfect metaphor for the act of completing a novel or anthology, and one that actually works. 

Bad writers, or false writers, do the following:

1) Have some cool ideas, and write them down.

2) Begin writing without a daily plan for finishing the whole work.

3) Write occasionally, sometimes with short bursts of many words.

4) Constantly tell their friends, family, and anyone who will listen about the book they’re writing.

5) Classify themselves as “Pantsers” (meaning they’re too lazy to plot, and think they breath stories like the greats.)

6) Share their WIP (work-in-progress, a techy-term that makes you sound, like, super-duper inside baseball), even though the work is still a mess.

7) Get high on compliments from friends or fellow workshoppers who say it’s “honestly, really good! What an imagination!” 

8) Take a break for a while, basking in the idea of the book that will someday come to light.

9) Try again. Find out that writing is hard 99% of the time. Get pissy.

10) Go on Facebook to share woes and ask for “advice” from people who are not currently writing your book, and who therefore don’t know how to fix its unique problems, and don’t give a shit anyway, because they’re (kinda sorta) writing a book too.

11) Share a meme about the ups and downs of “the writing life.”

12) Look forward to NanoWrimo, when you’ll “really buckle down” and knock your book out.

I am not trying to be unkind here, nor am I claiming that with one published book to my credit (and two completed novels, and another anthology waiting in the queue) to be some kind of expert. What I am saying is that I was once a “writer”, and am now a writer, and the difference between the two is like the difference between a thirteen year-old boy with a “girlfriend” and being a married man with several children. The former can eventually become the latter, but it takes time, work, fidelity, and a lot of incomprehensible pain. Almost anyone who loves to read can learn to write, and anyone who can do that, and work in a disciplined way, can become a real writer. And anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. And speaking of selling something…

I hate the “writing community” and the authorship industry. Yes, it’s true, there are a half-dozen books on writing, and a handful of writing resources, that are genuinely useful. James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure changed my life. But then, James Scott Bell is a very busy author. He knows what the hell he’s talking about, and I guarantee you he’s not sharing the “first few chapters” of his “WIP” in a little writing group every other month in order to get “helpful feedback” (actually, a dopamine shot). I guarantee you that James Scott Bell, Stephen King, Kazou Ishuguro, Neil Gaiman, and Dean Koontz broke whatever terrible, talent-stifling habits they had long ago, which is why they spit out book after book. But there’s an entire industry of writing books, writing websites, writing lectures, writing videos, and “book publishers” that exists mostly to collect email addresses so they can sell more “writing resources” to “writers” who refuse to do the one thing they have to do in order to become authors.

I hate these things, because I love the act of creating original stories that work. I would never share a “sample of my WIP” unless the work was in the later stages of revision, or it was largely for fun (such as my Chronicles of the Mask, or some of the flash fiction in my Short Stories section), or to entice readers with a bit of red meat,  and/or my work needed the icy touch of a cold-hearted editor. I can’t say I feel particularly sorry for a writer who sends his “WIP” into a “publishing company” that claims to be eager for such half-baked fare in order to work with “new authors”...for a nominal fee. These writers must know they’re not really doing the work, which is why they’re content with such shallow success. Still, I resent them.

I am not saying all of this to gloat. God knows, I know the terrible desire to write, the need to be read, the feeling of despair, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome that comes with trying to become a “real writer.” But I also despise the colossal fakery of writing culture, even if such disdain will do nothing to change it. That is all. There’s no other point to this essay. Writing is a habit, not an identity. Rant over.