- Joined
- Dec 6, 2006
- Messages
- 188
- Reaction score
- 18
Abstract
In essence, for those of you who don't want to sit through my pathetic story, is that I need to know how to decide what to write. How do you know what you should be doing, what you should be writing? My head is full of details, scenes, atmospheres and ideas, and I know that all of it is "literary" but I make a living writing magazine trash and don't know how to replace the latter with the former.
The story
I live in misery. I've been this way for years and the ailment I suffer from is a special kind of writer's illness, one I've never seen discussed in public or written about. I've never even heard about it before, but I've lived with it for years the way some people carry chips on their shoulder, and now as I approach the curves of middle age at dangerous speeds it's getting acute -- I can use a mentor or the advice of outsiders and I appeal to the board in general for help.
I'm a professional writer, have been for years. You'd know my byline if you looked for it.
And I make a living at it, although of course it's too modest -- right around the national average income, minus the health care and days off.
The trouble is, I deplore every word I've ever written in my capacity as a professional. I've only done it for experience and for a paycheck as I bought time to write the "real" work that I knew I had to.
I don't dispute the quality of my day-job writing -- it's good for what it is, magazine "top ten" lists and celebrity interviews and feel-good company profiles and whatnot. People like it, my bosses like it, it (barely) pays the bills.
But the clincher is, I never wanted to be this kind of writer, I don't consider myself this kind of writer, this is just a means to an end -- keeping my family fed until my ship comes in.
Now I've reached the breaking point where there's nowhere else to sail to: I know these waters and it isn't where I want to be. It's either sink or swim, figuratively, and I need help figuring out what I've been doing wrong.
The dream came early
Way back when I was a college boy and decided that I would live my life out as a writer, I wanted, as I do today, to be a novelist, a writer of great literature: primarily novels, but also stories and all the winsome literary trimming the job requires, including essays and letters.
So I stumbled with the keyboard, learned lots, tried to write novels and stories and essays and letters and failed laughably at them all, and learned some more. I had no teachers or writing friends, but I was clawing a dream, and my fingers refused to give.
After a few years out of school I had experience at a few newspapers and had gotten feedback from lit-mag editors and in off moments of my day job as a tech guy I was beginning to get short articles published in top national magazines.
These articles were nothing I cared about, but they were easy to do and it was a boost to my ego to see them (and see how much they paid). But I never thought I would make it my career -- I hated it as much as I hated the tech job, it was just experience and not the kind of writing that I had to do. I didn't have to write these things, and in fact I preferred not to: I could have had any number of careers and be equally happy. But it was writing, and I was getting paid for its publication, so I thought I was making progress. (The day job paid a lot more, however.)
Meanwhile, I nurtured the dream. I wrote a novel that had a faint glimmer of what I wanted, and I knew that I had to focus on that. I expended too much energy seeking out fellow writers, people of my generation who shared my outlook and aesthetic, on the mistaken notion that a writer must be part of a community in order to succeed -- you know, the next Lost Generation or Beat Generation, the English Romantics, the Left Bank, I was very openly and hungrily looking for something like that. (Although I later dropped this mirage-hunt, I do know from experience that networking and interaction is essential to success). I traveled, found and photographed a number of gorgeous-looking fakers but nobody who was really working at it, so I eventually carried on alone.
Full-time professional
Eventually I grew impatient so I quit the tech job and lined up enough steady freelance work to live on: at least this way I could be said to be a writer. Suddenly I was mired in magazine articles, news pieces, the works. The only word to describe it is "facile," although it was time consuming to have enough work going on to maintain a decent income -- at that point, it became my full-time job.
I never bothered with the literary magazines because I considered myself a working writer -- I write to eat, so the thought of submitting to a journal that nobody reads and getting little or no pay out of it is against all my instincts. I know that there are a few literary journals that pay decently, but it never seemed to me that I (or anyone) could possibly make a living writing for them in the same way that one can write for Sports Illustrated, GQ, PC Magazine, and so on. And postmodernism was not what I was doing, I was not an academic, so I ignored the literary press altogether.
Meanwhile I wrote the "important" work on my own whenver I could, with no publication in mind, no guidelines besides my own crazy heart. The trouble is, while this work felt good to write and I piled up lots of it, it was all twiddlings in the end -- no completed works that could actually be published anywhere.
I can come up with a hundred ideas an hour, maybe more, for these magazine articles that I hate to write. And I can come up with even more literary descriptions and scenes and backstory and characters and atmospheres for what I love, but in the pursuit of this "important" work I never found a form that tied everything together into coherent stories.
After a few years with no breakthrough, and no completed "important" work, and all the freelance living wearing very thin, I was offered a contract to write a non-fiction book. I liked the idea of the book and was an expert in the area, and I thought that this would take me closer to the title of novelist, so I accepted.
While I believed (and still believe) that this book was a good idea, and I suppose that the world is better for its existence, I feel that I'm worse off for having wasted more time in its creation. I don't care about it, not in the deep way I care about my "real" writing -- the gap between them is so big that yes, again, even the day it was published I almost felt repulsed to see my name on the cover.
I learned a great deal through this book, and was able to live meagerly for a few years soley on the income. Meanwhile, realizing that time was slipping away, I fought hard to write the work that was in me, the literature that I had to write.
Victory ... and a plan
I tell you, people, I did it. No need to tell a group of writers how hard it is to write something worth reading. But after a number of years of constant, steady toil, I completed a novel that I'm satisfied with.
Oh it has its many problems, I plan to make my next one ten times better, but as a work, I'm satisfied enough with it to look at it and think that it was worth all the sweat and blood expended.
This, writing literature, is my metier. I know it. I can't do anything else, although I've tried and tried.
This manuscript has me excited because for the first time I feel like I really have something, and I feel like it's the one thing that I have to do for the rest of my life.
But the minutes pass and one eventually has to eat. So as I finished up the novel, I had to begin freelancing again which I've been doing for almost a year now.
After reading some posts here when I joined in December I decided that it was time to go all the way with everything -- I had a finished manuscript, I knew that it was time. So I made a vow that I'd do everything I could in 2007 to get out of this misery and to write only what I must, and make a living at that.
I'm only getting to this post now in almost mid-Feburary because I've been so busy with freelance work that I've barely mustered time to read the board!
What hit home for me was a post by Jamesaritchie, who said that the number one problem with submissions is that they're not written for a market.
I know that's true from 10 years of experience -- I would never consider submitting any query to any magazine without reading it first and getting a feel for what they wanted. If I didn't, I know I'd be rejected in a heartbeat. But by reading the magazine, I can figure out what the editor wants and so my positive response from queries is probably 90%.
But James was talking about stories, not the trashy garbage that I do for a living. I thought about this, and about how I've spent years and years writing my "real" work just for myself instead of for a market, and I just sat there dumbfounded. I think a large part of my problem has been that I wrote my "real" work without a plan -- I never once studied a market first, with the intent of writing something I cared about.
I think of what Maestrowork said in another thread: "I have stories to tell. Lots of them. And I want people to read them." That's it exactly, but I never found a form for my stories -- I have my ten thousand scenes and characters and atmospheres, and I was able to pull them together successfully in this novel, but other than that I don't have any honest-to-goodness stories that I can show for all these years.
I could use some help. I know that I have to find the proper outlets. Jamesaritchie had said that plenty of mainstream magazines pay well for stories, or for stories masked as articles -- I've never heard of that, so I've got to find them.
I've come up with a two-part map to get my life on track. I'm not 21 anymore, so I can't just take off recklessly without one and expect to recover in time; I have to make sure that I maintain an income. What I plan to do is cut down on my freelance work as much as possible while I implement the following:
1. do everything I can to get the novel published ASAP
2. write only stories, essays, and articles that I like
Does this sound like a reasonable plan for a writer in my position?
In terms of (1.), I've begun the agent hunt and have some promising replies -- several agents are reading it, and several high-profile contacts have agreed to read the manuscript and give an endorsement.
But I need to stop freelancing stuff I hate day in and day out, and make progress at (2.). Can anyone give me lists of magazines to look at, offer suggestions, or help me in any way?
This is crazy. I know no one. I am connected with no movement and no groups. I've worked at this for 10 years and have now reached the age where my contemporaries have all settled down with families, become vice presidents and are entirely cruising along midstream in their lives and careers -- and I'm still trying to figure out how to turn the ignition!
In essence, for those of you who don't want to sit through my pathetic story, is that I need to know how to decide what to write. How do you know what you should be doing, what you should be writing? My head is full of details, scenes, atmospheres and ideas, and I know that all of it is "literary" but I make a living writing magazine trash and don't know how to replace the latter with the former.
The story
I live in misery. I've been this way for years and the ailment I suffer from is a special kind of writer's illness, one I've never seen discussed in public or written about. I've never even heard about it before, but I've lived with it for years the way some people carry chips on their shoulder, and now as I approach the curves of middle age at dangerous speeds it's getting acute -- I can use a mentor or the advice of outsiders and I appeal to the board in general for help.
I'm a professional writer, have been for years. You'd know my byline if you looked for it.
And I make a living at it, although of course it's too modest -- right around the national average income, minus the health care and days off.
The trouble is, I deplore every word I've ever written in my capacity as a professional. I've only done it for experience and for a paycheck as I bought time to write the "real" work that I knew I had to.
I don't dispute the quality of my day-job writing -- it's good for what it is, magazine "top ten" lists and celebrity interviews and feel-good company profiles and whatnot. People like it, my bosses like it, it (barely) pays the bills.
But the clincher is, I never wanted to be this kind of writer, I don't consider myself this kind of writer, this is just a means to an end -- keeping my family fed until my ship comes in.
Now I've reached the breaking point where there's nowhere else to sail to: I know these waters and it isn't where I want to be. It's either sink or swim, figuratively, and I need help figuring out what I've been doing wrong.
The dream came early
Way back when I was a college boy and decided that I would live my life out as a writer, I wanted, as I do today, to be a novelist, a writer of great literature: primarily novels, but also stories and all the winsome literary trimming the job requires, including essays and letters.
So I stumbled with the keyboard, learned lots, tried to write novels and stories and essays and letters and failed laughably at them all, and learned some more. I had no teachers or writing friends, but I was clawing a dream, and my fingers refused to give.
After a few years out of school I had experience at a few newspapers and had gotten feedback from lit-mag editors and in off moments of my day job as a tech guy I was beginning to get short articles published in top national magazines.
These articles were nothing I cared about, but they were easy to do and it was a boost to my ego to see them (and see how much they paid). But I never thought I would make it my career -- I hated it as much as I hated the tech job, it was just experience and not the kind of writing that I had to do. I didn't have to write these things, and in fact I preferred not to: I could have had any number of careers and be equally happy. But it was writing, and I was getting paid for its publication, so I thought I was making progress. (The day job paid a lot more, however.)
Meanwhile, I nurtured the dream. I wrote a novel that had a faint glimmer of what I wanted, and I knew that I had to focus on that. I expended too much energy seeking out fellow writers, people of my generation who shared my outlook and aesthetic, on the mistaken notion that a writer must be part of a community in order to succeed -- you know, the next Lost Generation or Beat Generation, the English Romantics, the Left Bank, I was very openly and hungrily looking for something like that. (Although I later dropped this mirage-hunt, I do know from experience that networking and interaction is essential to success). I traveled, found and photographed a number of gorgeous-looking fakers but nobody who was really working at it, so I eventually carried on alone.
Full-time professional
Eventually I grew impatient so I quit the tech job and lined up enough steady freelance work to live on: at least this way I could be said to be a writer. Suddenly I was mired in magazine articles, news pieces, the works. The only word to describe it is "facile," although it was time consuming to have enough work going on to maintain a decent income -- at that point, it became my full-time job.
I never bothered with the literary magazines because I considered myself a working writer -- I write to eat, so the thought of submitting to a journal that nobody reads and getting little or no pay out of it is against all my instincts. I know that there are a few literary journals that pay decently, but it never seemed to me that I (or anyone) could possibly make a living writing for them in the same way that one can write for Sports Illustrated, GQ, PC Magazine, and so on. And postmodernism was not what I was doing, I was not an academic, so I ignored the literary press altogether.
Meanwhile I wrote the "important" work on my own whenver I could, with no publication in mind, no guidelines besides my own crazy heart. The trouble is, while this work felt good to write and I piled up lots of it, it was all twiddlings in the end -- no completed works that could actually be published anywhere.
I can come up with a hundred ideas an hour, maybe more, for these magazine articles that I hate to write. And I can come up with even more literary descriptions and scenes and backstory and characters and atmospheres for what I love, but in the pursuit of this "important" work I never found a form that tied everything together into coherent stories.
After a few years with no breakthrough, and no completed "important" work, and all the freelance living wearing very thin, I was offered a contract to write a non-fiction book. I liked the idea of the book and was an expert in the area, and I thought that this would take me closer to the title of novelist, so I accepted.
While I believed (and still believe) that this book was a good idea, and I suppose that the world is better for its existence, I feel that I'm worse off for having wasted more time in its creation. I don't care about it, not in the deep way I care about my "real" writing -- the gap between them is so big that yes, again, even the day it was published I almost felt repulsed to see my name on the cover.
I learned a great deal through this book, and was able to live meagerly for a few years soley on the income. Meanwhile, realizing that time was slipping away, I fought hard to write the work that was in me, the literature that I had to write.
Victory ... and a plan
I tell you, people, I did it. No need to tell a group of writers how hard it is to write something worth reading. But after a number of years of constant, steady toil, I completed a novel that I'm satisfied with.
Oh it has its many problems, I plan to make my next one ten times better, but as a work, I'm satisfied enough with it to look at it and think that it was worth all the sweat and blood expended.
This, writing literature, is my metier. I know it. I can't do anything else, although I've tried and tried.
This manuscript has me excited because for the first time I feel like I really have something, and I feel like it's the one thing that I have to do for the rest of my life.
But the minutes pass and one eventually has to eat. So as I finished up the novel, I had to begin freelancing again which I've been doing for almost a year now.
After reading some posts here when I joined in December I decided that it was time to go all the way with everything -- I had a finished manuscript, I knew that it was time. So I made a vow that I'd do everything I could in 2007 to get out of this misery and to write only what I must, and make a living at that.
I'm only getting to this post now in almost mid-Feburary because I've been so busy with freelance work that I've barely mustered time to read the board!
What hit home for me was a post by Jamesaritchie, who said that the number one problem with submissions is that they're not written for a market.
I know that's true from 10 years of experience -- I would never consider submitting any query to any magazine without reading it first and getting a feel for what they wanted. If I didn't, I know I'd be rejected in a heartbeat. But by reading the magazine, I can figure out what the editor wants and so my positive response from queries is probably 90%.
But James was talking about stories, not the trashy garbage that I do for a living. I thought about this, and about how I've spent years and years writing my "real" work just for myself instead of for a market, and I just sat there dumbfounded. I think a large part of my problem has been that I wrote my "real" work without a plan -- I never once studied a market first, with the intent of writing something I cared about.
I think of what Maestrowork said in another thread: "I have stories to tell. Lots of them. And I want people to read them." That's it exactly, but I never found a form for my stories -- I have my ten thousand scenes and characters and atmospheres, and I was able to pull them together successfully in this novel, but other than that I don't have any honest-to-goodness stories that I can show for all these years.
I could use some help. I know that I have to find the proper outlets. Jamesaritchie had said that plenty of mainstream magazines pay well for stories, or for stories masked as articles -- I've never heard of that, so I've got to find them.
I've come up with a two-part map to get my life on track. I'm not 21 anymore, so I can't just take off recklessly without one and expect to recover in time; I have to make sure that I maintain an income. What I plan to do is cut down on my freelance work as much as possible while I implement the following:
1. do everything I can to get the novel published ASAP
2. write only stories, essays, and articles that I like
A. find markets that pay well for the kind of quality pieces that I want and have to write
B. study these markets
C. write something for them and submit
B. study these markets
C. write something for them and submit
Does this sound like a reasonable plan for a writer in my position?
In terms of (1.), I've begun the agent hunt and have some promising replies -- several agents are reading it, and several high-profile contacts have agreed to read the manuscript and give an endorsement.
But I need to stop freelancing stuff I hate day in and day out, and make progress at (2.). Can anyone give me lists of magazines to look at, offer suggestions, or help me in any way?
This is crazy. I know no one. I am connected with no movement and no groups. I've worked at this for 10 years and have now reached the age where my contemporaries have all settled down with families, become vice presidents and are entirely cruising along midstream in their lives and careers -- and I'm still trying to figure out how to turn the ignition!
Last edited: