The Writer's Survival Guide

An Instructive, Insightful Celebration of the Writing Life

Rachel Simon

• Publisher: Open Road Distribution
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781497693852
• eBook ISBN: 9781497693340
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Creative Writing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This inspirational guide for aspiring and experienced writers was originally published in 1997. Written in a friendly, hopeful, and gently humorous tone, it focuses on the creative process and emotional ups and downs of the creative life, providing insights into how to persist in the face of rejection, frustration, feelings of inadequacy, lack of support from loved ones, and more. It also offers practical how-to advice, from organizing your time so you actually sit down and write to reading as a writer. This ebook's rerelease of The Writer's Survival Guide includes a new introduction that discusses the origins of the book and how, in spite of the many changes in publishing and technology, it remains relevant today.

PART ONE

THE BASICS

CHAPTER ONE

THE BIG QUESTIONS

I teach private classes in writing, one-on-one tutorials in which the entire course is tailored to the needs of that individual student.

I always imagine, before I meet with students for the first time, that their big questions will concern technique. How can I make my characters more distinct? Is there a better way to handle the structure of this piece?

Such questions are usually the basis of our first meeting or two.

But inevitably, by the third or fourth meeting, those questions taper off, and in their place spring up different questions. These new queries lurk beneath all the others, poking up from time to time to jolt the writer into self-examination or self-doubt or, sometimes, paralysis. They are, more than characterization or narrative technique, what the writer really wants to know:

Why should I—or anyone—write?

Do I have talent, and how can I tell?

How big a commitment can (or should) I make?

These concerns are almost invariably in the minds of every writer. I have heard them from people so new to writing they never kept a journal before our classes and from people who had published in prestigious magazines and won major literary awards. Regardless of the source, when these questions first emerge in class, it is almost always subtly, perhaps even imperceptibly, like a mumbled Gesundheit or a comment about the weather. Seldom does the student break eye contact; these questions are so trivial, they are not even speed bumps in our class. Or so the student would like me to believe.

But I know better. We (and I say “we” because of course I have been needled by the same issues) ask these questions when we fear we aren’t good enough. We think that there must be “right” answers to these questions, and since we don’t know them, we shouldn’t really continue writing. We must be deluding ourselves. We are impostors.

I’ve come to suspect that many writers were born into families where they were rarely praised. Perhaps their needs were ignored or minimized while the parents battered their way through their own lives. Or perhaps the parents were excessively demanding, holding out some delicious prize, telling the future writer, “Jump! Higher!” while always raising or hiding the prize, ensuring that success could never be achieved. I have even met writers who spent their childhoods being blatantly ridiculed by the people they most respected.

Consequently, many people begin writing with a profound lack of faith in themselves. They might even be wrestling with depression. They know they want to write; maybe they even like writing. But deep down, they don’t feel worthy of writing. It seems so venerable, so important. How could they—measly little they, surely not as resolute and articulate and gifted as any writer they could buy in the airport, much less a Faulkner or a Fitzgerald—grant themselves the permission to go for it?

So they come to me with their souls open. They have been hurting for so long with their secret feelings of inadequacy that they are now aching for reassurance.

I address this by going through each of the big questions, and usually, by the time I’m finished, they feel a little better.

WHY SHOULD I—OR ANYONE—WRITE?

There are no correct reasons to write. We just think there are. We read so many interviews with writers that we get the sense that those who have “made it” must know the way to do it—and that there is, indeed, one way. This is because we forget that writing is not a formula; we think, “Since he succeeded by writing on a laptop computer from four to six in the morning before work, I will succeed by doing the same.” So when writers tell interviewers that they write because they have something to say about “the human condition,” or because they escaped a prison in a third world country and want to expose political cruelty, or because they have a young daughter and like to make her laugh with their stories, we think these should be our answers, too. And woe be unto us if we realize that that is not so.

In all my years of writing and teaching writing, I have heard hundreds of reasons for why people write, but the most compelling one, the one that seems at the core of the most persistent (and usually successful) writers, is that they write because they like to write. Like eating a pizza or splashing in the ocean or savoring a four-minute kiss with a new lover, these writers write because it feels good.

This does not remotely mean that they don’t grapple with characters or language. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a jolly old time every day they sit down to write. It certainly doesn’t mean that they exist in an aura of unrelenting inspiration.

Rather, when writing feels good it means that something, at some point in the process, lights up inside them. This feeling might come through the Zen-like serenity found in hard work, or the simple satisfaction of gliding a ballpoint pen along a white page, or the wonder of seeing something blossom where previously there had been nothing, or the worldly revelations encountered during exploration of thematic material, or the psychic ping! that echoes after two disparate elements connect into a shockingly perfect metaphor, or the delight that permeates as some latent humor snake-charms up from the page, or the tender gratification that carries us through the day after we wring our own heart into tears. It can come in a million ways. But as long as it comes, the writer almost always keeps writing.

What about those other reasons, the ones we hear about but that may not seem to apply to us? I write because I:

have something to say

like to read

want to stick it to my dictator/boss/ex-husband/mother

lived a fascinating life I want to document

want to make a lot of money

want to see my name in print

must

All of these—and many other reasons—might well be valid incentives to start us on the path to being a writer. Anything could serve that role: being bored on a Saturday afternoon, taking a writing class because our best friend is taking it too, proving ourselves to all those who have ever kicked sand in our faces. But the reasons why we start and the reasons why we continue are seldom the same.

Years ago, I read a book on meditation that said there are two obstacles to enlightenment: beginning and continuing. It takes a certain confluence of enthusiasm and motivation to embark on the long journey of meditation. Then, after the novice meditator has acquired technique, it takes a whole new shade of enthusiasm and a whole new set of motivations to stay the course.

This is equally true of marriage, or studying for a Ph.D., or playing the violin, or learning classical Latin. We start for one reason; we keep going for others.

All reasons are valid for starting to write. But the one reason that will keep you going is that somehow—in ways you may or may not be able to identify—it makes you feel good.

Occasionally, this answer seems too simple for some students. Yes, they admit, writing makes them feel good, but … but … there must be more to it. How can feeling good be enough of a reason to do anything?

This is always where I realize that the student is not asking me for the correct Why at all. The student is asking me for permission to do something just to do it.

From the day we were born, we were taught that all activities that feel good come with a price. Roses smell lovely but pick one and you’ll get thorns in your fingers. Chocolate chip cookies taste like a sugar Eden but eat all you want and you’ll get cavities. Champagne brings hangovers; fireplaces bring pollution; sunbathing brings cancer; lovemaking brings STDs or heartbreak.

Or, as watercooler wisdom would have it, if it feels good, it’s got to be bad for you.

We do admit that there are a few exceptions. Sleeping, for instance. Stepping into a hot shower. Hugging our children. Laughing with friends. Drinking an icy glass of water on a hot day. With such activities, we tell ourselves, “This will feel good. For that reason alone, I will do it.” We give ourselves permission.

The same is required of writing. If it makes you feel good, that is enough reason to keep going.

You might have been taught that every silver lining comes with a cloud, but that doesn’t mean you have to live in fear of clouds. Let other people be martyrs and submit to lives devoid of fun. Writing won’t do you wrong; it won’t prick your fingers, pad your dentist’s retirement fund, cause cotton mouth, provoke the ire of the EPA, invite melanoma, or make you need penicillin or Prozac. Writing will only get you more connected to yourself and to the world. It feels good because it is one of the best ways, short of dreaming or having a shamanistic experience, to explore your soul.

That is, writing doesn’t only feel good. Writing is also good for you.

And when we have that kind of opportunity, which so few people have, we would be remiss to avoid it. It is a gift of pleasure. Other people envy us because they don’t have it; they see it as a privilege, the way we get the big picture while escaping the same tedium that might enmesh them and thumb our nose at the same traumas that might debilitate them. And they are right. We may contend with the drudgeries of the everyday, and we certainly may get black and blue from the fisticuffs of life, but we do so while knowing there is more. We know we can spy into our own minds and discover not just the familiar creepy basements and closets jammed with skeletons, but also grand halls of beauty, whole wings of understanding, secret passageways between the past and the present, and fragrant terraced gardens that sprawl on forever. We know that the deeper we look into ourselves, the more generously we can view the world. And we want to look. Because we have learned that such exploration is enjoyable and such examination gratifying, and revelation—when it occurs, which it will when you’re writing, at least occasionally, maybe even frequently—is 100 percent delight.

So whenever the Why question begins to creep back in, tell yourself that it’s just you doubting that you are worthy of pleasure. And then tell yourself that a life without pleasure is merely a life. A life with pleasure can be a glory.

DO I HAVE TALENT, AND HOW CAN I TELL?

We worry, and compare ourselves. We sit in our writing classes or libraries and gaze out at others while a little virus of doubt ululates in our heads: She has talent because she writes so easily; he has talent because he produces a story a week; they have talent because they have achieved the nirvana of publication. Look at them all—born with talent. But alas, that seems not to be our fate. We bemoan how writing is hard work for us; we’re lucky to turn out about a story a year; we’ll never get into The New Yorker. Like height and hair color, talent must be in the genes, and how can we fight biology? We may be able to strap on high heels and Clairol our hair, but when it comes to writing, we will simply never give ourselves what our DNA did not.

I have heard this lament from almost every writer I have ever known, or else I hear the opposite: I have talent, and therefore I will succeed, whether or not I ever sit down to write.

The concept of talent acts almost as a military checkpoint inside us. Those who think they might have it allow themselves to pass through and continue. Those who don’t turn back, dejected.

I am fully aware of the power of this word. Although I wrote throughout my childhood, I entered a major writer’s block at eighteen and did not recover until I was twenty-four. I re-began with sentences, worked my way up to paragraphs, and finally graduated to stories. Soon thereafter, I began taking a writing class. Right after the first session, I intensified my pace, trying to produce a story a week so I’d have something new to read each time we met. Often my work elicited excited comments from my classmates, but I wanted something more, though I wasn’t sure what. After my third or fourth story, I found out. My teacher let my fellow students share their assessments of the piece, and then, when it was her turn, she announced to me, the class—the whole goddamn world!—“Rachel has talent.”

This was ambrosia. An acceptance to Harvard and a gold star from the Pulitzer committee. I levitated for days. And wrote harder. Now I knew something. Now my fire burned higher.

Only years later did I realize how influential that teacher’s words had been, and how silly I was to have put such stock in them. I was already writing diligently and daily. I was already writing not because I “had talent,” but because I wanted to write. Hearing my teacher’s declaration of my talent kicked me a little harder and ratcheted up my confidence a notch or two, but I think it also made me believe in the concept of talent—a concept of which I have become increasingly dubious.

What is talent? I have seen writers who couldn’t cobble together a coherent sentence, whose work was so bad it set classes into symphonies of eeks and groans—and who, five years later, were publishing their first book. I have also seen writers who created masterpieces of creative vision in writing class, who seemed destined for some pantheon of Great Twentieth Century Authors—and who, when class ended, never typed anything but space breaks again. The former writers gave the appearance of having no talent, yet they succeeded. The latter writers seemed to have prodigious talent, yet they failed.

Does that mean both kinds of writers defied biology? Or that talent has nothing to do with genes?

My dictionary provides a reassuring answer. Talent, it says, is a “natural readiness in learning and doing in a particular field; an inborn resource that may or may not be developed.”

I like this definition, because it suggests that talent is like a nest in which we can choose to grow—or choose to wither. In other words, this definition refers to potential, not actuality; to choice, not inevitability.

Talent is not You Are Here. Talent is You Can Get Here If You Try.

When we ask ourselves if we have talent, we are asking the wrong question. Success is not predetermined. Some people may write more easily than others, or more prolifically, or with greater acknowledgment by the outside world, but if they don’t really yearn to keep going and achieve greater and greater levels of improvement with their work, they will never achieve their potential.

If you’re working harder than you think possible, and want to keep getting better, and you can admit your imperfections so you can keep learning, and you are willing to go the long haul, then you have talent. Whether that means you are cultivating some mysterious, biological force that was already within you or you are planting a force that wasn’t there does not matter.

In other words, the issue is not talent. The issue is passion. If you have it, you’ll keep moving onward and upward, regardless of whether any teacher has told you that you have talent. If you don’t have passion, you’ll fizzle out, regardless of whether any teacher once proclaimed you a prodigy.

The designation doesn’t matter. Only the desire does.

HOW BIG A COMMITMENT CAN (OR SHOULD) I MAKE?

Writing is not unlike marriage; the more assiduously you work at it, the better the results will be. Sometimes it’s a demanding chore to keep up the optimism and energy, and you pout or complain or forget why you wanted this in the first place. But usually over the years it becomes clear that your efforts are worthwhile and have in fact led to unimaginable rewards. Then you can continue more avidly than ever, richer in faith and conviction, guided by wisdom.

Unlike marital commitments, though, we have no socially prescribed rules of behavior for writing commitments. We see no billboard displays of authors embracing their beloved keyboards. Television programs broadcast no implied messages about the most revered or reviled degrees of literary devotion. Rock songs never address the consistency with which we must maintain our writing fidelity. We are on our own to figure out the rules.

Or to realize there are no rules, except for the ones we make for ourselves.

So how big a commitment can and should we make?

First of all, we need to recognize that commitment is directly related to the permission and passion I discussed above. Inevitably, people who cannot give themselves permission to do what feels good and people who sustain no passion for writing are unable to make a writing commitment at all. Both kinds of people include students who withdraw from class or beginning writers who abandon their newly devised writing regimen after the first month or so. That quickly, they realize that writing means sitting down and doing it—and, as a result, not sewing on a button, or going fishing, or taking a second job, or hanging out after aerobics class at the gym, or attending the theater. They discover they don’t want to spend their time on something that does not give immediate payback in terms of errands completed or money in the bank, or else they realize they love other aspects of life more than they love writing. Either way, the seesaw of wr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Author’s Introduction to the 2016 Rerelease of The Writer’s Survival Guide
• Introduction to the Original Edition, 1997
• Part One: The Basics
• Part Two: The Process
• Part Three: Becoming an Author
• Index
• About the Author
• Copyright Page