by Anne R. Allen
This week, editor and former agent Nathan Bransford published a blogpost that I wanted to send to all the beginning writers I know. The title is: If You Think Writing is Easy you’re Probably Not Very Good At It.
It’s a little harsher than what we usually hear from good-natured Nathan. (I’ve met him IRL and he’s a sweetheart.) But I understand why he wrote it. He’s been reading unpublished manuscripts for over 20 years and he keeps seeing the same mistakes. He says he can always tell a manuscript is going to be awful if he sees one of two things in the query —
- The writer brags about his own abilities.
- The writer claims all the books being published today are awful.
I have an editor friend who’s dealing with two beginning writers who vastly overestimate their own writing skills. Because they’re both volatile and self-absorbed, she has had to tread lightly with them. She sometimes calls me to vent, and she loved Nathan’s piece, too.
After talking to her, I realized there are some misconceptions an awful lot of beginning writers have stuck in their heads. Those misconceptions keep them from understanding what it takes to learn professional-level writing skills.
I believed a lot of this stuff myself when I was starting out, and I hate to think of all the cringey things I said and did before I finally got it.
1. Writing a Book Makes You a Writing Expert
This is a biggie. Not every writer suffers from imposter syndrome. Some have the opposite problem. They think writing one whole book means they’ve learned all there is to know about writing. After all, it took them 5 years to finish the thing. And it’s 500K words! They don’t need no stinkin’ writing classes. Why doesn’t anybody recognize their genius? The whole system is rigged!!
But, as Nathan says, “No one sits down and simply paints the Mona Lisa. Whether you realize it or not, you’re going to start off writing the equivalent of crude stick figures.”
It takes a long, long time to learn the skills it takes to be a professional novelist. You can’t just say “I have a computer and I can write an English sentence, so I’m Stephen King.” But an amazing number of people do.
2. Current Bestsellers are a Trashy Waste of Time.
Reading what is currently selling — especially in your genre — is the only way to know what your audience is looking for. It also tells you what’s been done to death.
I was such an ignoramus when I started out, I didn’t even know my first novel was in a hot new genre they were calling “chick lit.” And I wasn’t reading it. I was reading classic mysteries, literary women’s fiction, and authors like Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen. Great writers, yes, but mostly not current and not my genre.
Reading classics is fine, but when we’re trying to enter a business, we need to know what products people are buying now — not what sold 100 or even 10 years ago.
When I finally got an agent, she sent me to the bookstore with a list of titles. I was embarrassed I didn’t even know most of them.
3. Confidence Sells: Fake it Till You Make it.
Unfortunately, too much confidence in beginning writers is simply evidence of the Dunning Kruger effect. I talked about the Dunning-Kruger effect in last week’s post on beta readers, and Nathan brings it up too. It’s the scientific study that shows people who are most ignorant about a subject are the most confident.
These are the people who are so good at faking it, they’re never going to make it.
Dunning-Kruger people are the ones who are sure their snoozerific memoir is going to sell better than the Bible and say so in their queries. They love to pontificate, and generally use 20 big words when 2 small ones will do.
They also give out tons of terrible advice to their fellow authors.
A couple of weeks ago, bestselling crime writer Sue Coletta made a comment on Ruth’s post that resonated with a lot of us. She talked about the unpublished writer who gave other writers cruel and clueless advice. Those types abound in critique groups, so beware.
Sue said: “Early on, I took the advice of an unpublished writer who thought he knew everything. This guy got off on tearing apart other writers. The deeper he cut, the better he felt about himself…Interestingly enough, twelve years later, he’s still unpublished.”
Yup. Sue’s former tormenter is a Dunning Kruger poster child. Unless he has a major epiphany, he’s never going to be published. That’s because these people are incapable of learning anything — because they’re sure they know it already.
These people generally can’t hear a word that’s said to them, because when they’re not talking, they’re thinking of what they’re going to say next. They’re stuck in a narcissistic bubble that no information can penetrate.
4. Writers Have Pots of Money and Glamorous Lives.
Not hardly. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I quit my day job and moved to the beach as soon as I landed my first agent. Really.
Of course I had to get another job immediately, and that agent never sold my book.
I believed the popular myth that unknown writers get big advances. We hear about these huge advances that famous people are getting all the time. But that’s because they’re famous. If you’re not, it’s highly unlikely you’ll make enough to live on with a debut novel.
TV’s fictional author Richard Castle has a lot to answer for. Don’t get me wrong. I love Castle. It has just the right touch of humor, and I’ve adored Nathan Fillion since Firefly. But Castle has more money than God. He has a huge apartment in Manhattan that seems to have at least 6 bedrooms, and he can rent the best suite at the priciest hotel in NYC and then not even use it, because — writers are so rich!
Far from true. Even bestsellers have to scrimp. And money comes in by dribbles and drabbles and it’s never there when you need it. Just ask Ruth, who’s a million-copy bestseller.
And how often do we hear about writers in the past who started writing to support the family after their husband died. Thing is — that was over 100 years ago. Right now, beginning writers can’t support a family of gerbils.
Then there’s the myth about the glamorous lifestyle of writers. Scott and Zelda on the Riviera. Hemingway big game hunting and fishing in tropical climes. All those beautiful, brilliant writers in Paris in the 1920s. All that Midnight in Paris stuff.
But you know, even back then, a great deal of what writers did was sit alone in a room wearing ratty slippers, staring at a blank sheet of paper.
Now it’s a blank computer screen, but it’s just as unglamorous.
5. You’re Ready for Prime Time With Your First Book
I was convinced of this. I queried my first novel years before I should have. The synopsis was a tangled mess, the queries were cringey and my book was too long and screamed for an editor.
My second book wasn’t much better. And I queried that to death too. I still couldn’t write a good synopsis, but my bookshelves were filled with copies of the Writers Market and Jeff Herman’s Guide to Literary Agents.
Now that beginning writers have the choice of self-publishing, a lot of first novelists won’t stay on the query-go-round as long as I did. Instead, they’ll throw that half-baked novel on Amazon and wonder why it doesn’t sell. Sigh.
Self-publishing is an excellent way to publish once you’ve learned the ropes, but some beginning writers jump in too soon. As Nathan says, “There’s a reason it’s rare for writers to find publication with the first book they write. It usually takes a while to get good at it. Knowing how to write a sentence is not the same thing as mastering a craft.”
6. Short Stories are a Waste of Time for Beginning Writers
Nothing could be farther from the truth. When I finally did get a publisher, it was because of a short story. It was accepted by a small UK literary journal. But the journal went under. The editor who loved my story got a new job with a book publisher and asked if I had any novels. I sent him Food of Love and the rest is history. 😊
Catherine Ryan Hyde has a similar story. She had an agent, but the agent didn’t like Pay it Forward. However, an agent with Hollywood connections saw one of Catherine’s short stories in a literary journal and asked if Catherine had any novels. Pay it Forward became a bestseller and then a hit movie.
Writing articles for magazines is also a great way to get your name out there. A few years ago, I was actually asked to write an article for Writers Market. I’d come a long way from my days of endlessly searching its pages for a way to get my foot in the publishing door.
And you’re going to be writing plenty of nonfiction short pieces, too, once you’re published. Like, maybe on a blog like this one.
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) February 12, 2023
What about you, scriveners? Did you fall for any of these myths when you were beginning writers? Have you ever met a know-it-all beginner like the one Sue Coletta talked about? Did you believe you’d be rich if you landed an agent and a book contract?
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***
featured image via Wikimedia Commons by ParkerDeen
Hi Anne,
Great post, as expected. I’m particularly fond of “Writers Have Pots of Money and Glamorous Lives” HA! And “You’re Ready for Prime Time With Your First Book”.
All so very true,
Charlie
CS–Oh, the money and the glamor! But it can be hard to type with all these diamond rings on my fingers. 🙂
Happy Super Bowl Sunday, Anne & Ruth. Six myths to tick off, for sure. I also think a lot of new writers make too much of having to get that “perfect” inspiration to get going. Anne Lamott had something to say about first drafts…
Speaking of the Super Bowl, somebody posted on Facebook this morning, “What I like about the big game is the party, the food, and the advertisements. I really don’t care about who gets the most baskets.” Enjoy the day!
Garry–Or as I call it, Superb Owl Sunday. I have to admit I don’t pay much attention to those baskets, either. Unless they shoot a hole-in-one. Have a happy one. 🙂
Yes indeed. Waiting for the muse to appear is a sure sign the writer isn’t going to make it. And imagining a first draft is publishable.
I know a couple authors who made huge careers as short story writers. It’s a great market.
My first published book was the first full length story I ever wrote, however! I wrote a bunch after that and then completely rewrote the story almost thirty years later. So it really wasn’t my first effort which was indeed awful.
Alex–The short story market dried up for slick magazines, but there still are many venues for short fiction.
Yes, a 30 year old book that’s been completely rewritten isn’t exactly a beginner’s effort. 🙂 Sounds as if that book had some great elements, but when you were starting out, you didn’t have the skills to make them into a great book. I think that happens to a lot of us.
Anne—As always you (and Nathan) are the sanity check on the wild misconceptions that infect beginning writers! Thank you.
I will share my own less-than-glorious journey from nowhere to the NYT bestseller list and the power of writing short pieces. Back in the day, a friend, an productive pulp writer, sold articles to magazines. So many, in fact, that he had an “order sheet” complete with titles (and prices) from which editors could purchase stories. Business was so good he hired subcontractors (like James Patterson these days) and, knowing I wrote blurbs, he asked me to join his crew. In view of publishing’s notoriously lousy salaries, I accepted. His title and my first article? “How I Tell The Studs From The Duds.”
For several years, I spent Sunday mornings offering advice to the readers of men’s magazines and women-oriented mags like Cosmopolitan. I then “graduated” to paperback originals (Hi Paul McCartney!) and learned (without knowing it) structure, how to set up the inciting incident, how to navigate the middle and how to nail a good ending. Yay pen names! (almost all of which I’ve long since forgotten) 🙂
Ruth–You were a “Paperback Writer”! I’ve met a number of writers who got their start writing for a franchise like Sweet Valley High or Star Trek novels. They’d get a title and a rudimentary outline (and of course a pseudonym.) I’ll bet it’s a great way to learn structure–usually the biggest challenge for beginning writers.
How to tell the studs from the duds? Haha! Quite the debut! Thanks so much for sharing your story with us.
As always, spot on, Anne, thanks for this, a very much needed blog post (and Nathan’s too!)
And I loved reading the comments, and yes, our beginnings were all very hard. Mine still is, 12 years on…But I’m learning, still learning, every day! It’s all uphill but I am hoping against hope that the view from the top will be (finally) exhilarating! And wishing the same for everyone else on that slope, half-way up!
Claude–I like your slope metaphor. I guess I feel I’m still on that slope–not quite making it to the top, even after 32 years in the business.
All 6 points spot on. As a Norwegian writer who wanted to write romance, I had more ambition than brains when I started out. Commercial fiction is still not ‘proper’ literature, and there were no literary grants for someone like me. I worked while writing, I did translations, I wrote plenty of short stories, and I wrote novels, and most of it was rubbish. What finally made it click for me was when someone told me writing is a profession. You have to learn it, to study it and to read. The writer who makes it big on her first novel, is a rare creature. Sure, she exists, but that’s more of an anomaly. 25 years and 70 books later (two in English, yay), I’m having a great year 😀
Natalie–Congratulations on 25 years and 70 books! I’m so impressed with people who can write in a second language. I had a hard enough time learning to write in English.
This is such an excellent read, as always. It’s so validating to realize I’m not the only one to find it challenging to navigate these types. I have a couple of No. 3s in every MFA class, endlessly challenging and being otherwise obtuse. One student — not published but not lacking in confidence– threatened to report me if I didn’t change his grade. I invited him to file his grade dispute. It became a time consuming energy drain to document and file all these reports to qualify his grade. The last I heard, he withdrew from the program. Not soon enough.
Thank you for your discussions! Bobbi
Bobbi–It is amazing how confident the unpublished can be. And cruel. There was a bestseller a couple of years ago called “Bunny”–a novel about an MFA program in a fictional New England university that was probably Brown. It’s surreal and horrific in spots–darker than what I usually read, but the whole point was how cruel people can be in these workshops. They started to “kill their darlings” using animals and then people in an orgy of bloodletting that may or may not be metaphorical. An accurate portrayal of what some of these workshops can become when know-it-all bullies take over.
What a pain that you had to go through all that bureaucratic nonsense over a guy who was obviously an entitled brat.
Just starting out, I wanted to be a fiction writer, so I went to college and studied literature and creative writing. In my first creative writing workshop, the prof told us don’t even think about sending out work for publication until you’ve learned your craft. Don’t expect to master your craft until you’re in your forties. Best writing advice I ever got.
Liz–That was a wise man. And brave. Telling people it’s going to take 20 years could seem really harsh. But it is pretty much the truth.
What a disturbing read that must have been! Wowza!!!
Bobbi–It is that. It was a bestseller a couple of years ago. If you’re up to it, the book is fascinating. You get to see into the mind of an MFA student.
Is it possible people think writing looks easy because we learn reading and writing early in life? That it’s considered such a fundamental part of education?
Rich–It could be. I’ve seen people say “Of course I can write. I took English for four years in high school.” But they don’t all think they can be mathematicians or accountants because they had math classes every year. So something else seems to be in play. Maybe it’s that everybody has a story to tell. But they don’t realize not everybody can tell the story well.
As usual, spot on (as several others here have noted)! But I wonder if you’re preaching to the choir … hmmm … I hope your blog has lots of beginning writers, so they’ll see these points and apply them. If not, it gives the rest of us succinct talking points when we encounter beginning writers ourselves. I’m working with three accomplished writers on a series of senior writing programs in our town, and it’s humbling to convince these folks that they DO have a story to tell. Most say that they have nothing to say, and then come out with the most profound material. Astonishing ones! (All we are really doing is giving them permission to be in charge of – to have AUTHORity over – their own writing. The idea is to capture the heart of their stories; the technical stuff can be applied later.) It’s a real pleasure and privilege.
Sally–How marvelous to be teaching writing classes for seniors! My mom did that after she retired from teaching college English. She said the seniors had so much more to say than the college kids, and they were often much more humble. It sounds as if you’re having a similar experience. Everybody has a story to tell, but some people are afraid to do it.
It is marvelous – but it’s more facilitating than teaching. Richly rewarding, in any case.
Ha ha! It took me 35 years to complete my first-begun, second-published novel, and 20 years (in the middle of that) to complete my second-begun, first-published novel. I wasn’t emotionally mature enough to work through the challenges of the first-begun one until I had completed the second-begun one. Toughest writing I have ever done, but the work has seasoned me in preparation for a nonfiction book about police families surviving line-of-duty deaths. That will be a challenge! But I’m eager to do it – it’s definitely a calling.
Sally–That would be a challenge–but probably very much needed. It’s so true that we need some emotional maturity to learn to write well.
It didn’t come across as harsh. I found it incredibly liberating. All I had to do was focus on my craft without the distraction of publishing considerations.
Wonderful as usual, Anne! I’ve taught over 2000 writing students, and by the first class, I could usually tell who was going to make it and who would not. Before I even attempted to write a novel, I had 100 comedy credits, 24 short stories published, and 4 awards. And it wasn’t my first novel that got published! It was my third. It’s all about doing your apprenticeship.
Melodie–So your experience as a teacher was very like what Nathan experienced.
So true that often “first novels” are written by people like you who had huge writing resumes before they tried to publish a novel.
Thanks, Anne, for another great post. I hope all beginning writers read #4 “Writers have pots of money and glamorous lives.” If that’s what somebody is after, they might want to try another vocation. 😊
The Queen of Staves sounds like a fun read!
Kay–Yes, I have to laugh when people say “you’ve had a bestselling book? Why aren’t you rich?” Haha. Yeah, another vocation would be in order. Thanks! I hope you take a look at it.
Excellent advice, Anne! Brings to mind several know-it-all novice writers who contacted me over the years for my editing services, insisting all their overly long, tedious novel needed was a “light edit.”
Jodie–Or they just want you to proofread. OMG. That happened to me when I was an editor. Unreadable dreck. Sigh.
So many writers play down the importance of writing short stories, but writing short stories has taught me so much and provided me with my first opportunity to work with an editor.
Leanne–Short stories teach us to write lean and yes, editors of literary magazines can be pretty fierce with the edits. Good to learn how to look at the work from their perspective.
So what beach did you move to, Anne? 😉
Harald. Los Osos, CA. A little bit of paradise. (Well, when we’re not having killer mudslides)
I haven’ written many short stories, but in recent work with seniors, I have come to appreciate writing prompts. They really get the juices flowing, and a great way to capture vignettes of personal life that might otherwise be lost.
Sally–Early in my career, I took a couple of classes in “automatic writing”. You’re given a prompt and maybe some music and 10 minutes and see what you come up with. I found it jump-started a lot of projects.
I don’t think I was ever that full of myself when starting out (strangely enough, a former supervisor gave me a nudge when she liked how I wrote business correspondence), but I did get advice from other writers who had visited my blog in the early years, and some of those are still doing the short story market in addition to their regular novels.
I did get a very late jump in the writing game (2005 when I decided to get serious, so that put me just a tiny bit north of 40), but i’m having fun and I’m still learning along the way.
Also, did you know that being a writer is like in the top 5 for jobs in Hallmark movies?
GB–I didn’t know that about Hallmark movies, but I can believe it. After all, writers are told to write what we know, and what do we know better than being a writer. 🙂
If you weren’t full of yourself, you probably weren’t an English major. Studying English and Creative Writing makes newbies think they’re world authorities on everything, even if they haven’t actually written anything much but angsty journal entries.
Ah, yes. Did a triathlon or ocean swim at nearby Avila Beach years ago. Nice area!
Thank you for another terrific post. I’ll admit to affliction number one, with the slight addition that it ht me after my first novel was published. I thankfully got over it pretty quickly. The fact that I was a former h.s. English teacher contributed to the illusion.
I enjoy writing short stories (flash fiction especially) more than writing novels, but they just don’t pay enough to be financially rewarding. I look at authors like Jack London and, in the 1940’s Robert Heinlein, Robert E. Howard, and others that could make a decent living writing short stories. Those days are apparently gone forever.
Of course, my four published novels haven’t been financially rewarding either…but maybe one or more of my so far unpublished efforts will be the magic ticket.
Fred–The days of slick magazines publishing short fiction are gone. So are slick magazines, mostly. And the pulp magazines are gone too. People are getting their entertainment as videos on their phones. But as I say, short fiction pays off indirectly. If you can get a short story in an anthology containing work from other authors in your genre you can be discovered by their readers. Or a story can get the attention of an agent or publisher and send your career soaring. So if you like writing them, keep on doing it!
Nathan’s blog is one of the first I started reading consistently, along with yours, Jane Friedman, and Kristen Lamb. Nice to know he’s as lovely in real life as he comes across on his blog 😊
Can I take a moment and be smug and say I’ve never thought or said any of those things? Point 4 did made me laugh, about writers having pots of money and glamorous lives… as if!
Short stories are great, not just for reading, but for writing practice as well. Sometimes I wonder if I should just focus on writing short stories, especially when lazyitis hits while writing a full-length novel 😁
Joy–I was Nathan’s fangirl before I even started blogging. He and Jane and Kristen were my teachers too. I think he became an agent at Curtis Brown right out of Stanford, and his blog was friendlier and more fun than other agent blogs.
I find that writing short fiction between books is a great way to keep writing when I’m not up to diving into another novel.
Oooo! “Angsty” – what a great word!
A phrase that came to mind a lot before these days of “angsty” cultural implosion is “studied ennui.” I think they’re on opposite ends of the same spectrum.
Sally–“Studied ennui”–I love it! New one for me. But it’s a great expression. I think a lot of writers go through a period of studied ennui early on. In college or just out of college, when they’re working at Starbucks.
I should clarify, most of the writers portrayed in those movies are 1) very comfortably well off; 2) have NYC agents; and 3) write for one of the Big 5. Always.
GB–And they’re living in a publishing world that hasn’t existed since 1973.
Hollywood entirely true to form: depicting as the norm what is fantasy. (Ever notice how huge and well-appointed the apartments are for the working-class characters in sit-coms? “The Honeymooners” back in the 1950s sure weren’t living high off the hog.)
Personally, sit-coms bore me – they are all based on deliberate miscommunication.
Sally–And Carrie Bradshaw being able to buy designer clothes on a columnist’s salary? And that apartment on Friends. You’re right that the Honeymooners really conveyed the claustrophobia of a New York apartment.
Sounds like the time is right for a movie/TV series about a not-well-off, agent-less, Indie self-published writer/publisher!
Harald–Actually, I just saw one. It was called “How to Murder Your Husband”–based on a true story. A self-published Romance writer who wrote a blog called How to Murder Your Husband killed her husband for his life insurance because she was so broke. 🙂 Terrible movie. Cybill Shepard can be so funny, but it seemed as if the director couldn’t decide whether to play it for laughs or not.
As always, I love reading your and Ruth’s posts because I either learn something new or I see how I “used to be” and am validated that I am not the only one who went through it! Thank goodness for editors is one of the major things I am grateful for. If it weren’t for those I’ve worked with, I would not have learned as much as I know today.
Love this post!
Regarding “trashy bestsellers” – my biggest fault still:
I work in tv production and you wouldn’t believe how often somebody phones saying, “TPTB just threw this horrible hottest-new-trash-topic on my desk and want me to make a film about it…” Then they bitch and moan – and do the very best job they can anyway. Because they are pros!
As a pleasure-reader, I’m often not a fan of bestsellers, for various reasons that have nothing to do with bestseller status but the books themselves. It’s made more complicated by the fact that my country’s (Germany) bestseller lists in my genre (fantasy) are hogged by decades-old books and foreign authors. I love American authors, but I tend to read in the original as translations can be less than great – and I really should read more German books! They are just harder to find, as strange as that sounds.
But I don’t mind reading a book I don’t particulary like – I learn something anyway. So yes, I’m all for reading bestsellers, even if you do not like them. Knowing what you DON’T like can be a way to find that you’re just standing in the wrong genre’s aisle!
Absolute truth!
Self-published 10 years ago. I have been slowly learning about the art of writing, and the art of taking criticism from editors. I still haven’t learned enough.
floridaborne–So many authors were urged to put first drafts on Amazon in those days. Most of them have long since given up. Glad to see you haven’t! It’s a long learning curve, but it’s worth it!
I am an armature and I know that writing is a lifelong experience; you can never stop learning.
I love reading Anne’s blog. So much to learn and so informative even though I write children’s Picture Books…. well so I say.