What Writing Promises, and What It Doesn't
It’s Friday night, March 15th, and we’re beginning our descent into Baltimore, 200 or so souls powering through the atmosphere, the clouds a never-ending carpet, the sky at dusk a gentle thing. There’s a line of pink along the horizon, like a dash of paint, and a line of yellow where the setting sun still reaches beyond the evening shadows.
There are a million exciting and beautiful places to go in this wide world, but is there anything better than flying home?
Recently there’s been a lot of talk about the publishing industry, mostly facts, mostly hard facts, about the writing life and how it bumps up against the gatekeepers and the marketing budgets and the advances that need to be earned out. The platform-building and the preorders. The grind and the pennies.1
I’ve experienced most of the publishing challenges that have been written about. I get it. Publishing can be brutal and feel unfair and often lead many writers to wonder, what’s the point? Why is this so hard?
And these are important conversations to have. Changes can be made. One new publishing house, Authors Equity, is even attempting to make some of these big changes, the kind that, if they’re successful, could shift some things in the publishing world. (Though if you read Chuck Palahniuk’s piece, “The New 800-Pound Gorilla in the Room,” you’ll see that every model has its drawbacks.)
What’s a writer to do?
If I’m honest, these kinds of conversations can easily overwhelm me. The problems seem so far above my pay grade, so impossibly huge. In the great tributaries and roaring rivers of writers, I am just a tiny, backwoods stream trying hard to make it to the sea.
So, what can those of us with little to no influence in the writing world do? What does writing look like for the rest of us? What are the mindsets that will help us stay creative no matter how our writing makes its way in the world?
I was thinking about this on the plane, and these are the three that came to mind, three nuggets of wisdom that were passed on to me at some point and stuck. Here they are, these things that have somehow kept me writing. Take them or leave them:
Write for yourself (the audience comes last). This idea has completely shifted the way I tell stories. For years and years and years I tried to mold my writing into something that everyone else would like. I toned down the language because such-and-such relative might read it and I didn’t portray those kinds of situations because a particular type of reader might be offended and I didn’t want to get into that story because most people would probably think I was borderline insane or heretical. But I really wanted to write with the edgy honesty of Anne Lamott and the brutal reality of Cormac McCarthy and the reverent irreverence of Jose Saramago and so finally a few years ago, after my then-current book contract ended, I decided I’d stop writing for other people and write for myself.
And then recently I saw this video by Rick Rubin in which he uses the language, “The audience comes last,” and it just resonated with me.“I’m not making it for them. I’m making it for me. And it turns out that when you make something truly for yourself, you’re doing the best thing you possibly can for the audience.”
So if you, like me, are feeling overwhelmed by all this publishing talk, remember: the publisher, the agent, the editor, they’re nothing more than an audience. Don’t make it for them. Make it for yourself first.Tend your garden. For some reason I link this piece of advice with my friend Michelle Derusha or perhaps a conversation I had with Jennifer Dukes Lee, though I can’t be 100% sure. In any case, this mindset is what I continually come back to when I’m feeling like my platform isn’t big enough or my audience isn’t expansive enough.
Tend your garden. And by that I mean, serve the audience you have. But wait, Shawn, you just said not to worry about your audience! I’m confused!
No, I said the audience comes last . . . but that doesn’t mean you never consider them. And it’s the audience you have, not the audience you wish for, that you should be serving.
If you’re writing for a Substack with 10 subscribers, don’t belittle that or demean it in your mind. Serve those ten writers to the absolute best of your ability. Don’t give them shoddy work. Don’t cut corners. If you’re writing with an email list of 10,000 but wish you had 100,000, don’t brush them off because they’re not the size of audience you wish you had—write for them. Do good work. Tend your garden.
The other thing that happens when I’m tending my garden is I get to stop looking around at the massive factory farms and endless fields and huge gardens of those around me. I can stop worrying about growing my garden to catch up with someone else.
I can just tend my own garden. Today. The one right here in front of me.
(An aside . . . thank you for being part of my garden.)Finally, remember impatience is an argument with reality. This is another Rick Rubin principle that has served me so well, in life as well as in writing. When I’m in a rush to get the kids somewhere, and I’m sitting at a stop sign, and there is no gap in the traffic for me to pull out, I remind myself, Impatience is arguing with reality. There’s nothing I can do to make this go faster. Patience. And when I wish one of my novels would find a publishing home, but it’s not, I remind myself, Impatience is arguing with reality. There’s nothing I can do to make this go faster. Patience. Keep writing.
So often, our impatience is simply us wasting time wishing things were different, in many cases things that simply cannot be hurried or changed. There is a road we all have to walk. Our writing journey is set before us. I’m constantly reminding myself to stop trying to rush ahead on that path, live in the present moment, stop arguing with reality.
If you’re writing in order to become well-known or make a living or even for more valiant reasons, such as you have a beautiful and crucial message you want to share with the entire world, it’s important to remember these are not things that Writing promises to help you do.
Writing does not promise that it will help you make a living or pay the bills or even add one cent to your account balance.
Writing does not promise to eventually make you famous, if you just keep at it long enough.
Writing does not promise to solve all your problems.
So why the hell are we doing this, anyway? Why are we spending all this time with words, telling stories, sharing our pain?
What does writing promise?
To join you on the journey.
To always be waiting there for you, always available when you need it.
To help you believe things about yourself and the world that you might not otherwise have the ability to believe or discover.
And as Anne Lamott writes,
Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul . . . We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.
The absurdity of life. The absurdity of families. The absurdity of publishers.
Writing helps you clap along with it all, helps you sing loud in the storm, perhaps not changing the storm, but still reaching into the hearts of those around you.
Finally, another quote from Chuck:
The tech will change. The business will change. You may or may not ever get paid. But no such change is forever. And if you’re writing for any reason other than that you love to write, you’re chasing a phantom.
Pretty much everything except your story is beyond your control.
Back in the airplane, as my ears pop and the plane drops slightly and the clouds wrap around us, as the wings shimmy and shake and the invisible ground draws near, this thought: writing has always brought me home. Not always by the most direct route, and not always over smooth and easy ground, but in the end, writing has always shown me the way.
In the words of Bluey’s father,
Some recent posts on the difficulties of the publishing world: “Some Meandering Thoughts on Quitting Publishing” by Lore Wilbert, “The Day I Decided to Quit Book Publishing” by Jen Pollock Michel, “What is a Publisher’s Responsibility?” by Kaitlin Curtice, “Confessions of a Christian Ghostwriter” by Timothy Willard, and “The New 800-Pound Gorilla in the Room” by Chuck Palahniuk.
So so good, Shawn. Thank you the ways you lead us through.
This is so helpful and encouraging -- thanks!