This is writing for the sake of writing. Over Memorial Day weekend my family had dinner with my wife's college roommate who is a successful writer. While I can't claim to be her target audience, I can claim envy of her success. Her latest book, Area 51, spent over 14 weeks on the New York Times best sellers list, which is one of her agent's prerequisites to represent a writer, and is on course for a television series. Prior to this book she wrote for the LA Times and published another book for a smaller publisher. One of her comments the other night alluded to Gladwell's 10,000 hours finally paying off. She sounded humble and sincere with the implication that a best seller is not easy and requires enormous effort. She also didn't balk when in later dinner conversation I piped up with my claim to want to write. Rather she smiled and offered the same advice nearly every other writer offers: set aside a specific allotment of time on a regular basis and just write. She offered 20 minutes three times a week, echoing Dorothea Brande's advice to just write.
Oddly I find writing fairly easy. The hard part is writing something that will have an audience. After all, what's the point in writing if it's going to sit in a notebook unread? There's certainly the therepeutic part of getting thoughts out in a linear fashion; to write feelings is to make them real so they stare back at you. Sometimes what ends up on the page doesn't seem right and further honing and editing can help clarify what you think is inside. And this is good. Still, the ultimate reward is having someone read your story and get something out of it. A little compensation would be nice as well so it can become a fulltime endevour. It's also, for me anyway, the most difficult challenge. It's really not that hard to jot down some words. The hard part is throwing it out there to see if it sticks and open it up to criticism.
Fortunately I know I'm not the only one. To wit: two of my Amazon reviews of relatively small press books resulted in retaliations by their authors. One is for a book about Burma Shave signs I purchased at Reno's automobile museum after a long Burning Man weekend.. The author writes of my review:
I don't like criticism--most people don`t, I suspect--but I take it to heart, search through it, think about it, and if I find it credible, use it to improve my writing. That's how I've survived as a fulltime freelancer for the past 33 years. However, in this case, I find this review without merit: a hastily-written, poorly-thought-out put-down of a book the reader obviously did not understand.I don't like criticism--most people don`t, I suspect--but I take it to heart, search through it, think about it, and if I find it credible, use it to improve my writing. That's how I've survived as a fulltime freelancer for the past 33 years. However, in this case, I find this review without merit: a hastily-written, poorly-thought-out put-down of a book the reader obviously did not understand.
While any sting from the author's comment faded after re-reading my brief review (it still sounds about right), the author's defensiveness is completely understandable.
A more entertaining author rebuttal is of a backpacking food book. This guy takes defensiveness to a new level, to the point where the reviewers felt compelled to reviewing the reviews and not the book. The unfortunate part is that the author rebuts nearly every low to mediocre review. I feel badly for the guy. Clearly he believes what he writes, and one would hope that would be enough. As I wrote in my reply to his sarcastic rebuttal, "It is unfortunate that you feel the need to defend most (if not all) negative reviews of your book. If you cannot stand to have your baby subject to criticism then I would recommend another line of work." And therein lies the rub. It's the hardest part of the transition from writing in notebooks that you know won't have an audience until your kids find them in buried in a dusty box in your estate.
When the fear grabs hold, it can be helpful to refer to encouragement from other artists (this word is used loosely and only as a catch-all for those who put their work into the wild). The following from Steve Albini's entertaining Reddit A.M.A. rings true - just pretend it's about writers and not musicians:
“The most destructive thing a musician can do is start worrying about whether or not other people will like the music. … They’re not in the band. Just make music that stimulates you and don’t second-guess yourself.”
And with that one more of Gladwell's 10,000 hours is clocked.
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