November 8, 2005
Over the years I've acquired a lot of good writing advice and a fair amount of useless writing advice. Here's probably the best advice I ever read, culled from Michael Crichton, which to paraphrase was:

"Don't ask me. My route wasn't typical. You have to figure out how to break in. Everybody's route to publication is different."

Well, Michael wasn't particularly helpful there, but I understand what he meant.

Look, yesterday I wrote about how I had written about 10 or 12 unpublished novels before getting my first one published. But for all that, my first published and paid article came in 1993 and it was, by most of my memory, one of the first nonfiction pieces I ever wrote and sent anywhere. So in a very bizarre way, I wrote novels in order to learn how to write nonfiction for a living. Very strange and not recommended.

Some people go to college and get English degrees or pick up MFAs. I don't think they're a good route to succeeding as a fulltime writer, but it works for some people. Doug Stanton, a friend of mine, makes a great living as a NF writer and author, and I believe he received an MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, although I'm not 100% certain.

I'm reading a novel for a review/profile right now and it's got some problems, but it's a bestseller and the guy self-published his first book and raised money for it by hitting up people for "venture capital," and flogged the book around to bookstores and now he's a bestseller. I think he tells a good story but his writing itself is so-so and he might have benefited from a few years of unpublished novels to learn his craft better (my opinion) but how do you argue with his kind of success?

Joe Konrath, if you check out his website, suggests what I think is a slightly too over-the-top way to get an agent and one to which I don't think I would respond to, were I an agent. But his did and it's worked for him.

It's a strange business, all aspects of it. There are things that make sense:

Write every day. (I don't any longer, but I used to).

Write what you know. (Well, I've always modified that to: Write about what you're interested in).

Learn to rewrite. (Yeah, but, try to make your first drafts good. Don't train your brain to produce crap the first time out).

Leverage who you know. (Yeah, but not all of us know anybody. I just found out that the woman who cuts my hair (okay, shaves my head) has a sister who works at Penguin in NY. Christ, I wish I knew that earlier. But she's in the business offices and facilities management. Is that useful? I don't know. Probably not at the moment.)

Be persistent. (Okay. I'm locked into this one).

Get an agent. (Yes, good advice, but my first novel, Dirty Deeds, was published without one).

Write to please yourself. (I don't think this is the best advice in the world, but I hear it all the time. Yes, here's why you should write to please yourself if you're writing a novel. There's a huge chance you're going to spend a year on the project and not get it published. If you hated it, then you really, seriously wasted your time. At the same time, I think it's useful to consider the audience for what you write. And as a nonfiction writer I often write things I'd just as soon not write. It's how I make a living. Do you really think I want to spend hours researching urinalysis?)

Go to conferences. (Ah geeze. Let's not go there.)

Read. (Yeah. Without a doubt. But is it always good to read too in-depth in your own area? I'm not sure. We benefit from reading outside it. And novelists benefit from reading nonfiction, too).

Have a life. Yes, I'm fairly unequivocal about this one. There's more to life than writing. And having a life--eating good food, seeing movies, traveling, having relationships--will feed your writing. It's hard to have the depth of experience needed to entertain or inform a broad audience when you're 22. It happens, but really, folks, how many 50-somethings really think 20-somethings know that much about life? They do, of course, but personal growth is a good thing.

Get perspective. Goes with "Have a life." We're not curing cancer. The world doesn't "need" more literature. For god sakes, if the entire worldwide publishing biz came to a crashing halt I could read a book a day for the rest of my life without repeating myself or even cutting through the tip of the literary ice berg. Fiction is the entertainmentn business and has similar dynamics to the TV and movie business, theater, painting, the music industry and video games. You might tell yourself, "but this is what I'm meant to do," and that's always interesting, because I feel that way myself, but I doubt that some poor schlub rotting away from some hideous parasitic disease in a back alley in Calcutta says the same thing.

Best,
Mark Terry