A disciplined mind will put you on a disciplined path. Disciplined doesn’t mean rigid and unyielding though. It simply means focused. A practice gives you a focus. A writing practice teaches you to release an attachment to an outcome. It teaches you to show up and be present, if only for five minutes. The more frequently you can embody presence and focus, the more likely you are to recognize when you fall out of it during your day (and we all do). The more focus you have, the less likely that cheese crumb distractions will call to you around every turn. It doesn’t mean you’ll never have a cup of coffee or stop for a glass of wine or buy a sparkly scarf. It does mean you won’t be undone by those things and find yourself at the end of your days wondering what happened to all the time you thought you had.
CHAPTER 15
Illusion of Publication, Success, and Fame
A sage can have things without feeling he “owns” them.
The sage does things without putting an emotional stake into the outcome.
The task is accomplished,
but the sage doesn’t seek credit or take pride in the accomplishment.
Because the sage is not attached to the accomplishment,
the accomplishment lasts forever.
—Tao Te Ching, chapter 2
You’d have to be living in a cave not to be aware of the upheavals and challenges in the publishing industry. You can barely look at Publisher’s Weekly these days without reading news of a publishing house closing, or consolidating, or laying off staff. Spend even a small amount of time in the blogosphere of editors, agents, and publishers’ blogs and you’ll find yourself wanting to run for the hills and take up anything but writing. You can read agent blogs that give you a rundown of their weekly stats—how many manuscripts received, how many rejected, how many requested. The odds are daunting, and yet, people keep giving it a shot.
I can’t tell you what’s going to happen with the book industry in ten years, or how many people are going to be reading books, or if we’re all going to be reading e-books on our e-readers, or if somehow stories will be mind-melded to us, but I can tell you that you can waste a great deal of your energy worrying about what publishing might do. There are stories of authors garnering wide acclaim with their first books, but if sales don’t reach the megamillion dollar mark, they may find themselves unable to sell a second book. There are stories of authors getting picked up, getting the advance, turning in the manuscript, only to find their editor has been laid off and no one else at the company is “passionate enough” about the story to take it on. You can read about release dates being pushed farther and farther out into the future, and publishers staking their entire season on big names like Dan Brown or J. K. Rowling.
Do not be discouraged, gentle ones. All this may be happening, but it doesn’t have anything to do with you. If . . . (OK, are you ready for the big If?) . . . your sense of worth as a writer isn’t hanging on what a publisher or agent might or might not do. What are you writing for? Whom are you writing for? Why are you writing in the first place?
Publishing is a business. Perhaps this is one of the hardest things for new writers to accept. The publishing world isn’t waiting to nurture your career. It isn’t waiting to take a chance on you. It’s a business, and, for good or bad, it operates on a business model; namely, more money should come in than goes out. If you can make money for them, great. If your work doesn’t make money, then thanks, but no thanks. I’m not going to tell you this doesn’t suck, but I am going to tell you that you need to get over yourself and any sense of entitlement you might feel because you’re the literary genius the world has been waiting for. No one’s waiting. So what do you do? It’s similar to the Buddhist question: what do you do when no one’s watching? What do you write, how often do you write, how much do you push yourself with your craft if no one is waiting for your manuscript?
There’s no right answer, as you might suspect, but it’s worth exploring what your own answer might be. If your sense of self and your sense of worth as a writer hinge on getting a front-page review in the New York Times and an Oprah book pick, then you’re setting yourself up for a lot of needless suffering. As writers, we naturally want to be read. We want our work to reach others. We want to communicate, reach an audience, and change the world, perhaps. I’m not knocking that at all. I feel it too. I want to reach millions of people. I want to be recognized. I want to be featured on blogs and followed on Facebook. I’m human. But I have to realize that fame isn’t real. I have to ask myself what my authentic relationship with the work is, and it comes back all the time to my writing and me. That’s the part that matters. I have to release my attachment to the rest.
Easy, right? I’ll wave my magic writer’s wand, and you’ll no longer want an Oprah appearance, or the National Book Award, or a nod from the Pulitzer committee. You’ll no longer want your novel to be the subject of an auction between Random House and Simon & Schuster. You’ll no longer even want a big advance. Feel better now? Maybe you’re at least smiling.
You cannot control the publishing industry. You cannot control which books get reviewed and which ones don’t. You cannot control who reads your blog. You cannot control who will pick up your book at the bookstore and whether they will smile or put it down in disgust. When publication is your only goal, you are setting yourself up for a great deal of suffering. I’m not saying don’t try to get your work published. I’m not saying you should stop doing due diligence to find out who might be the best audience for your work or stop working to make your writing as good as it can be. You can do all of those things. You can show up to do your writing practice. You can research appropriate markets. You can develop ways to self-promote your work. But you can’t decide what Random House is going to pick up for the fall. Don’t kid yourself; they don’t know either. Trends are random. Trends often take the publisher by surprise. Don’t write for what you think people will be buying in a few months. Remember that the publication schedule is usually about eighteen to twenty-four months from acquisition to book-in-hand unless you’re the sole witness to the crime of the century or a general in a current war or a member of a recently ousted administration. If you’re a new author or a midlist author, the tides of publishing are not rising and falling based on what you do. And, as hard as writing is, nothing is quite as hard as writing a book you don’t care about—featuring a topic you came up with because you thought it would sell—and then, heaven forbid, you sell it and now have to write it and, frankly, could care less about. It’ll show. The advance won’t be enough money to undo the damage you’re doing to your writing integrity.
Your responsibility is to your writing. Write what is within you to write and release the rest. Don’t try to please the editor of the week. She might not be there next week. Write your novel or your memoir or your nonfiction book. Write your poems. Make them as good as you can make them. Send them out. When they get rejected, send them out again. Keep in this flow, and you’ll be better able to remember that you are a writer, and that you are doing what you love and what is burning in your heart to do. There is great joy in that, and, believe it or not, there can be publication in that. There can be fame. But as quickly as those arrive, they vanish, and you’ll find yourself chasing the illusive next greatest thing. It’s a circle you’ll never find your way out of until you stop chasing.
Let me say it again: the publishing industry is not waiting for you. Don’t stop the flow of your own work by trying to please it. Don’t make each rejection slip (and yes, Virginia, there will be rejection slips) a reason to stop or believe you’re not good enough. There are as many reasons why a work is rejected as there are sands in the proverbial hourglass. Your responsibility is to your craft and to the voice of your work. Keep your eyes there. When publication happens, it will neither unmoor you nor freeze you. It will be just the next right thing.
CHAPTER 16
Illusion of Money
Materialistic knowledge can only provide a type of happiness that is dependent upon
physical conditions. It cannot provide happiness that springs from inner development.
—His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Why include the subject of money in a book about writing? Listen to these comments:
“If I had enough money, I’d quit my job and write all day.”
“If I had enough money to go to Europe for six months, I could finish my novel.”
“If I had enough money to get my kids through school, then I could spend some time writing my book.” (Notice that phrase, “spend some time.” Another illusion. Another commodity.)
“I don’t have enough money. I have to work three jobs just to make ends meet. I don’t have any time to write.”
Perhaps no other symbol in our culture holds as much promise and seduction as money. The stories of money associated with success within our cultural mythology as well as our individual mythology are powerful, and often unconscious. “Enough” money will make us happy. And it goes even deeper than that; it’s not so much the money, but the things, the lifestyle, the partner, the car or home that the money can bring us. These things are, according to our cultural mythology, unattainable without money. The one-dollar bill—the piece of paper—isn’t worth all that much as a piece of green paper. Where its value comes in is through our perception of what the piece of paper can bring us, the story associated with the symbol.
In college, my economics professor held up a one-dollar bill in class. “What would you be willing to do for this?” Turned out, not very much. Then he held up a twenty. “Now?” And finally, a hundred-dollar bill. It seemed like no one was willing, at least on the surface, to murder for a hundred dollars, but the exercise got the whole class thinking. “It’s just a piece of paper,” he said. “Just a piece of paper with a number on it. Would you kill for it? Would you steal for it? Would you risk your life for it?”
Stories about money hang in all of our closets. What does it mean to have money? What does it mean to be without money? Where does money fall on the “what is valuable in this family” rule book? What is money tainted with? Can it be clean? What perfect storm of events had to occur before money found its way into your account? Were you born into money? Do you feel guilty about having money? About not having money? How much of your psychic energy is spent worrying about money—how to get more of it, how to better manage what you have, how to save enough so you can retire one day or put your kids through college, how to have “enough,” whatever enough means to you?
I’m not going to talk about the virtues of poverty, tell you to give all your money away, or suggest that once your mortgage payment is less than 15 percent of your take-home pay you’ll be safe, happy, and at peace. I’m not about to tell you that life isn’t a bit easier if you’ve got enough money for good food and a safe place to live. I will, however, encourage you to think about what your relationship with and beliefs around money are, and I want to show you an alternate way of thinking about money.
You might have worked your entire life and accumulated fifty thousand dollars for retirement. One day, you want to go to the bank to retrieve your money. They give you back your fifty thousand dollars, only you suddenly realize that that fifty grand isn’t worth what you thought it was. The value of the dollar has shifted, and what you thought you had you no longer have, even if you actually have fifty thousand one-dollar bills in your hand. Think about currency exchange rates. One year you travel to Europe, and your money “goes farther” than it would in the United States. The next year, you need twice as many U.S. dollars to travel to Europe for the same vacation as you would have the month before. Go figure.
Let’s go back to the example from my economics class and think about money as a symbol for a story. What story does one dollar get you? Now think about perspective and point of view. What story does one dollar get you if you’re nine years old and it’s 1943? What story does one dollar get you if your sole desire is a pack of peanut M&M’s? See how story and symbol are connected to setting, place, and character motivation? What do you think one thousand dollars would give you? Ten thousand dollars? One hundred thousand dollars? Don’t be ruled by your story of money, and don’t put your writing life on hold waiting for big money. That’s the illusion of money. Not that we don’t need it. Not that it doesn’t provide a service. Not that it isn’t a tool. But it isn’t the answer. It won’t make you a writer.
When I went to graduate school, I was in a class with a fifty-something man. He was very excited about starting the program. He finally had enough money to take some time off from work and devote himself to writing. His kids were finished with college. His house payment was manageable. He was one of the most enthusiastic people about writing I’d ever met. But then he didn’t come back one day. Or the next day. Or the next. Finally, we notified the program chair, who called his family, who also hadn’t heard from him. We found out that he had died suddenly in his room, apparently of an asthma attack. He waited until everything was lined up for him to pursue what mattered to him. He had “enough” money. And then he died.
CHAPTER 17
You’re Not the Only One
Every writer I know has trouble writing.
—Joseph Heller
When I was writing my first “real” novel in graduate school, my sea foam green iMac would power on by itself with its trademark “chung!” at 5:00 AM. I’d see the glow of the monitor under the closed office door from my bed. My coffee pot was programmed to start percolating at the same time. I had to be at my day job by 8:00 AM. It was a thirty-minute drive from my house to work. I needed an hour to shower, get ready, and eat breakfast. That meant if I actually got out of bed at 5:00 AM and went to my computer, I’d have ninety minutes to work before my day job began.
Theoretically, this was a perfect plan. I’d watched myself not writing. I’d watched myself talk about wanting to be writing, getting increasingly frustrated with each passing year that I wasn’t writing nearly as much as I knew I should be. I saw my twenties passing before my eyes, and I believed that if I didn’t make the best-seller list by the time I was thirty I’d have no chance at a writing career.
My best writing friend, Jeffrey, lived in San Francisco. He also had a day job. He also worried about his life passing too quickly. We both needed our day jobs. So we devised a phone-tree plan. We alternated weekday mornings calling each other at 5:30 AM. Just a quick call. “Are you writing? What are you working on today? Send me pages. Ciao.” Some days we both were awake. Some days one of us woke up the other. Some days we forgot (or slept through). But most of the time we called each other. For a little over a year, we pulled each other out of bed, two thousand miles apart, and wrote. It was a trick, yes, but a trick that worked. It helped us both cultivate discipline. We didn’t beat each other up when one of us forgot to call or when one of us was still in bed when the other called. We were each other’s human muse, calling to gently poke the other awake.
Jeffrey died this past year, and of all the many things I miss about him, I miss his belief in my writing most of all. I miss his investment in me doing my work. I miss my investment in him doing his work. Sometimes I imagine those phone calls when I don’t want to get out of bed. I imagine his voice. “Get up. What are you working on today? Send me pages. Ciao.”
Given the chance, we writers will construct mountains in our paths toward finishing a book. What if you didn’t get in your own way? What if you didn’t wait for someone else to recognize your talent to start writing? What if you didn’t wait for your current book to sell before starting that next novel?
You’re not alone. We seem to need to build these mountains so we can learn the lessons of tearing them down. Watch yourself with a discerning eye. Be diligent. It takes a long time to build a mountain, but the pace of mountain building can be so slow that you don’t notice what has happened until you realize you’ve got to somehow climb over that mountain. Remember, we aren’t machines. It’s not healthy for us to keep an absolute routine every day forever and ever amen. Some days it�
��s just not the right thing to work on your book. But only you can discern whether or not it’s the right day, or if you’re getting in your own way.
When we are in harmony, writing flows. When we compose a sentence, we follow one word after another until we reach the period. You know you’ve felt it, those moments (hours!) when time has no meaning. You’re absorbed into the flow of language and your story. Moments like that are not the sole property of the unusually gifted. They aren’t given only to the privileged few. They are yours when you get out of your own way.
Become a ruthless watcher of your own patterns. Learn what is habit and what is familiar. Recognizing your habits will help you recognize what is comfortable. The trap of comfort hides many a self-sabotaging agent.
Be wary of all-or-nothing thought patterns. An example: if I don’t write at least two thousand words today, I’m never going to finish this book. If you write two hundred words a day for ten days, you’ll get your two thousand words. If you write two hundred words a week, in ten weeks you’ll get your two thousand words. The slow and steady pace gets you to the next level.
Don’t slip into the easy cloak of needing validation from an outside source. I didn’t need Jeffrey to call me at 5:30 in the morning. I believed I did, but I didn’t. I thought I needed someone else to be invested in my work for it to matter. It’s great when someone else is invested in your work, but it isn’t required.
Don’t identify with the trap of writer’s block. Writer’s block is not a concrete thing. It is a concept, which means it’s fluid, and you can accept it or not. Don’t accept it. Your writing is never blocked. You just have not found the way to access your writing, but you will. Just like you are your own best teacher, you are your own worst enemy.
The Writing Warrior Page 8
