I’ve been listening to old Story Grid podcasts, where Tim Grahl, a struggling writer, speaks about the writing process with Shawn Coyne, an editor with years of experience. It’s a great series. Any writer should listen to them, especially those who are just starting out.
They’re a road map, really, of the frustrations you will encounter in your career.
If you don’t feel like listening to the whole series, there’s two episodes which are pure gold, where author Steven Pressfield makes a guest appearance to talk about his book Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t.
Like with other podcasts in the series, you can listen to how Tim Grahl struggles with his writing. In the first part, he confesses his writing sucks, after comparing it into 11/22/63, by Stephen King.
I can relate. For me its authors like John Steinbeck. I don’t know how many times I’ve read The Grapes of Wrath and thought: Dear God, let me write like that! Please!
Let me have that kind of diction, that prose, a story a deeper meaning, a book where the reader will want to stay up all night to finish it.
Pressfield and Coyne try to ameliorate Tim’s feelings, but at some point they had to tell him some harsh truths.
First: you have to give up everything to become a successful writer.
Tim gets upset, say’s that’s BS, a standard response people give to budding writers. Why would somebody give up their house? A happy marriage, being a parent, and so on? This is first time, as I recall, Tim ever got frustrated with his mentors in the series.
Second: stop trying to be like Stephen King.
Shawn Coyne said it best: You have to give your dreams of being Stephen King. Stephen doesn’t dream of being Stephen King, cause Stephen King is a writer.
The chances your first novel being a best seller is slim to none. Nobody is going to read it. Don’t bother worrying about that. Just focus on honing your craft. That internal stuff you can control, like sitting down every day and writing.
But as writers, even more so for those who are just beginning, we want to bargain. We want that first novel to sell. We crave validation that our work wasn’t a waste of time. We don’t want to be a starving artist. We want to skip to the good stuff, the payoff.
You know, like what happened to Stephen King with his first published novel: Carrie.
We can envision that kind of success.
It’s hard, however, to imagine the sacrifices to even have chance of making success like that possible.
What must we do? What must we give up?
Here’s Part 1 and Part 2 of that podcast, where Grahl, Coyne, and Pressfield explain what they mean about giving up everything.
Definitely not on the level of Stephen King, but a prolific writer, nonetheless. I once read an interview with Laurell K. Hamilton, a pretty famous paranormal romance writer. She was asked the typical “What advice would you give to a budding author?” question. She said, “Perfection is an unattainable goal. It isn’t going to be perfect. Just get words down on paper, and when you stumble to what you think is the end of the book, you will have hundreds of pages of words that came out of your head. It may not be perfect, but it looks like a book.” She has also been quoted as saying, “Stop talking about writing and write.”
Two good pieces of advice, in my opinion. Addressing her first point, “I literally wasted decades writing but not publishing what I wrote because my work was not literary quality. Now, here I am at 40, behind the eight ball , so to speak.
On her second point, I am trying to waste less time goofing off and spend more time writing. My pretentious goal is to write a novel worthy of academic study. For now, I am writing erotica for Amazon. I am not exactly proud of this, but it is practice. I set aside a few hours every day to write; if I manage to tap the well of inspiration, I just keep writing. I may wind up scrapping what I wrote that day or using just a line or two, but the way I look at it, I am building a routine.
Good luck on this next journey, Stelios!
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Thank you for your kind words.
Here’s a bit of perspective: Anne Rice wrote erotica. Laurell K. Hamilton’s books can be pretty steamy so I’ve heard. Ken Follet is known to write novels with multiple sex scenes in each book. The same with John Irving. Stephen King doesn’t shy away from sex scenes either when called for. Even Steven Pressfield who wrote the Legend of Bagger Vance and Gates of Fire scribbled out a porn script on spec in his days as a screenwriter. There’s nothing to be ashamed of that. You’ve got to start somewhere.
And its great you’re building that routine.
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