Writing and Getting It Out There

January 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Carolyn Haley is a writer, editor and artist (as you’ll see below) and we email back and forth every now and then. She sent me the following email in response to my post about 4 Bits of Advice for a New Writer I thought it was a great letter, capturing the sense of “becoming” a writer and she agreed to let me post it here.

Carolyn wrote:

I come from a family of artists, and in my youth I was very good. It was assumed by everyone, including myself, that I would progress steadily and successfully into an art career, probably as an illustrator, since that was where my talent so obviously lay.

Then I went to art school, and my intentions came to a screeching halt. I learned that the craft of art required training and discipline and emotional one-step-removed-ness that I simply wasn’t willing to embrace. I wanted my art to be mine-all-mine and utterly free to come and go with my emotions. I could not function under commercial conditions.

From that point (age 18), I began a long-term shift toward writing and editing, because I had a native talent there, too, and could accept and apply all the training/discipline/removal/etc. that I couldn’t do with art. So I slowly but steadily advanced in that field. Meanwhile, my art fizzled out, until I stopped completely on my 35th birthday (20 years ago).

Yet the artist urge remains and surfaces once in a while. I still consider myself an artist, because that urge as well as the gift lies within me, whether I use it or not.

About 8 years ago, I attended a local event called “Art in the Park,” which was a pretty standard outdoor arts/crafts show with myriad booths reflecting myriad arts — painting, photography, textiles, pottery, etc. And like at most such shows, the artwork was, well, pretty lame. I browsed through it all, thinking snobbily to myself, “I can do better than that,” over and over again, as I’d done all my life.

That day, though, an important mental shift happened. While I was wondering why so many second- and third-rate artists were ringing up sales, the answer came down like an anvil from the sky: “Because they’re doing it.”

It didn’t matter one whit to the universe whether these artists were “good” or whether their customers had “good taste.” The artists were making art, showing it, pitching it, investing in it — and reaping the rewards, meanwhile making other people happy with their work.

Whoa. What did that say about me? Nothing good I wanted to hear, that’s for sure!

So, from that second turning point, I focused my writing efforts on Getting Out There. I’ve since published two so-so books, a whole bunch of pretty-good articles, some occasionally great/occasionally dreadful catalogue copy — all of which has earned paychecks and a few positive reviews (no bad ones yet, keep fingers crossed!) — along with volumes of content for online forums. Concurrently I’ve built a freelance editing business which, combined with my writing, has built a small following and advanced my career to the point where later this year I will be an invited presenter at a conference!

While I am still a long way from being a great writer and editor, I’ve learned so much and gained so much just from doing it. My experience as an artist serves both my creative endeavors as a writer and my technical development as an editor because I know what it’s like on both sides of the fence, and I’ve gained a huge respect for all work that people are brave enough to create because they took the time and energy to try. I continue to be judgmental about quality — my right as a spectator to like what I like — but also I’ve learned to be tolerant of and patient with content — other people’s right to be what they are and do what they want, at whatever level.

What really matters is (1) doing it and (2) continuously striving to do it better. And put it out there.

Which loops me back to why I find your advice essay to be spot-on.

*******

Carolyn Haley can be found on the Net

Carolyn Haley’s books / New ways to see the world

DocuMania / Production support for editors, writers, and designers

Adventures in Zone 3 / Living at altitude in Vermont’s Green Mountains (yard and garden blog)

Filed Under: Creativity

4 Bits of Advice for a New Writer

January 21, 2012 By 5 Comments

In the past month or so, I’ve made a sea-change in my way of thinking about advice to new writers – in advice to myself as well.

Herewith:

1) Want to be a writer? First step. Write.

It’s that simple. Every morning, start your day with a pen and coil-spring notebook, fill 2-4 pages at a minimum with drafts of articles, rough ideas, rants, dreams, whatever. Just write. And write without much editing.

2) Once a week, preferably twice but once is good, take one of those penned works, clean it up and post it on a blog. Do not worry about creating audiences for your blog, do not worry about social media or any of the things you’re supposed to do with a blog. Consider it an online filing system. If people find you, great. If not, great. Doesn’t matter.

3) When you have 15-20,000 words on a single theme take those posts, assemble them into an ebook. Post it to Amazon.

4) Continue.

Note these small details.

A) Blogs don’t have to have a theme other than your best writing. Your very best. This will improve over time but do not go back and “fix” the older stuff.

B) Ebooks seem to do better if there’s a theme you can wrap around the content. You decide on the theme.

C) Ignore magazines, established publishing houses, social media, and your friends comments. Write. They’ll all come to you if you’re really good. Sooner or later – usually later. Or not. Live with it – you’re a writer.

D) Study Amazon. Really study the material in Author Central, the blogs of successful writers. This is your future.

E) This advice is subject to change.

F) No, I don’t care what your themes and topics are, there’s a market for them there.

G) What’s stopping you now?

Filed Under: Business of Creativity, Creativity, Featured

Letters to a Young Contrarian: a book review

January 13, 2012 By 2 Comments

I am currently just about finished Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring)
by Christopher Hitchens and I want to recommend it to you if you’re at all interested in looking at your writing in a slightly different way (as in making a difference with it).

Hitchens died recently and I may be one of the few writer in the known universe who never met him, didn’t know anybody who knew him or even met him, and certainly doesn’t have a story to tell about his life-to-the-metal approach to breathing.

Hitchens has been described as one of the great literary critics of the past 50 years. An all-encompassing intellectual curiousity, a searing wit, well-educated and well-read in only the way the British private schools system can accomplish and something, which to the average American, is something from another planet. For example, he was such a fierce critic of Mother Theresa the Vatican asked him to be the Devil’s Advocate at her canonization process. No target too big and no lack of scathing words to illuminate it were his literary trademarks.

“Letters to a Young Contrarian” is a dense read of advice on how to write and position yourself as an effective critic. He describes the inner issues and focus as one launches out at a target – or not. “There is only one argument for doing something; the rest are arguments for doing nothing” he writes as he introduces the two principles of “The Wedge” and the “Dangerous Precedent” both principles writers should have engraved on their consciousness from this written Theatre of the Absurd takeoff because these are the arguments being used against all writers who focus on the state of the world in an honest manner. For example, the targets of critical writers will present the “Principle of Unripe Time” which states (according to Hitchens) “The Principle of unripe time is that people should not do at the present moment what they think is right at that moment, because the moment at which they think it right has not yet arrived.” And what writer hasn’t put off writing something for some reason? Hitchens skewers every reason you might imagine and more.

This books shows you as much as it tells you. And it will have you reading with an open dictionary and Wikipedia on a nearby screen in the background. This is a book for the odd person out there who wants their writing to make a difference and who doesn’t mind the struggle to make that happen.

It is not light bedtime reading, no matter its brevity, as you’ll have to stretch your wits to focus on this one.There are no easy lessons in point form for the short form computer literate and you had better enjoy working through scattered literary allusions to fully understand the text.

Short. Tough. Dense. Powerful.

I’m reading it, you might want to.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous
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