Awkward and Ugly

A question that comes up with unsurprising regularity has once again arisen in my inbox, like a recurring rash whose ensuing itch I do so love to scratch.  With apologies to the sender of this email, I’d like to post it here.

Dear Mr. Sykes,

I am a rookie Fantasy author from Arizona and am just about to complete my first novel in my planned series.

Considering that not to long ago you to were an unpublished fantasy author who lived in Arizona i was wondering if you would care to explain how you ended up getting ”Tome of the Undergates” published and any other advice you might like to give.

I would greatly appreciate any help you could give me. Becoming a writer has been a dream of mine for a long time and now i’m ready to put my stories out there.

I’d be delighted to give you advice, my friend!  And truthfully, I’d answer these kind of questions more often if it weren’t so darned hard to do so.  See, asking “how do you write,” “how did you get published,” “how do you make it big in this crazy world of publishing” is a little like asking “how should I go through puberty?”  It’s a very strange question to hear and one is never quite certain how to answer it, because, like puberty, getting one’s written word published is a different experience for everyone and to most of us, it’s a whirlwind blur of memories great and terrible that we can’t really recollect but we’re sure we got lucky at least once during.

But, that we may both be more helpful and put this terrible analogy to rest, I’d like to provide some actual answers that you can probably use.  These are the base answers, the ones that you should always return to, for they are the only ones that are provably correct and common to all published authors.

1. Write.

In fact, that’s basically the only way to get published.  At a glance, that might seem just as unhelpful as my previous allegory, but I think it’s probably the last thing on anybody’s mind when it comes to getting published.  I suspect there are a myriad of theories flying around out there as to how it happens: connections, inside bribes, pacts with Satan, what have you (connections are nice, bribes are rare and pacts with Satan are done purely for one’s own pleasure, but they’re not necessary to getting published).  But it’s always going to come down to that.

The best way to get published is to write a story that you love.  If you can write a story that you love that other people also love, that’s fantastic, but it’s also out of your control.  If you can write a story that you love that is also excellent, that’s much better, but that comes with time and practice.  Popularity is something that will come to you, in time.  Craft is something that you will learn with practice (and sometimes many rejections).  Joy cannot be learned.  Joy cannot be trained. But joy is essential to every book and when it’s lacking, it’s obvious to everyone.  Reader, publisher, writer; to anyone, there is no such thing as a good book that is joyless.

By “joy,” I don’t necessarily mean that you need to have buttercups and primroses and leprechauns making out on a stump (if you do, you might enrage some political groups and that would be good publicity; keep it in mind).  But you do have to love what you’re writing, even if you’re writing a bunch of bastards figuring out the best way to hawk a stolen kidney.  When a writer has no love for what he’s doing, when it’s obvious he’s just going through the motions, it’s obvious.  And it’s depressing.  And nobody wants to read it or publish it.

Don’t go through the motions at all, if you can help it.  And certainly don’t go through it before you have to.  Don’t worry about who will love your book, if you’re cornering the 16-year-old unwed Hawaiian mother demographic, if your book provides enough appeal for your average subway worker.  Write what you love and the audience will love it, too.

2. Every Problem You Have Will be Solved by Writing.

Writer’s blocks are overcome by writing.  Writing forces the muse to return to you.  Persistence begets improvement, inevitably.  Every wall can be broken down, given enough headbutts.

When you are rejected by publishers, you should immediately get back to considering what you can do better and then writing it.  When you are rejected by critics, you should immediately weigh their criticism and then go back to writing.  If you are rejected by readers, you should swallow back shame and start again on the next story.

Your first, last, immediate and only response to troubles about writing should be to go back and write some more.  You can’t help but get better at it as you go and you can’t get better if you don’t keep doing it.

Sometimes, it will most definitely feel like trying to climb Everest with a stepladder.  Sometimes, it will feel like fighting a group of kindergarteners.  The response is always the same.

3. Writing is Work.

Work is hard.  Sometimes you don’t want to do it.  You do it, anyway.

These are the only rules there are to getting published.  Anything else is equal parts circumstance and opportunity.  Basically, the best way to get published is to write something that people would want to publish.  Which means writing something.  Which means writing something that you love.  Which means writing something that you love, all the time, even if you don’t feel like it and it’s exhausting and stressful.

This may seem useless to you, of course.  This may seem like saying the best way to be recruited into the Major Leagues of Baseball (do they have leagues?  Or is back to regiments?) is to be good at baseball.  Well, yeah.  How do you get good at baseball?  You do it a lot.

The only bad news I have for you is this.  If this post struck you as helpful, as eye-opening, as inspiring, as earth-shattering, that’s not the best place to be.  That is, if you’re just now realizing that you need to write to be a writer, that’s…well, get to it, anyway.

The good news is that if you found this post to be unhelpful, that if you already knew all of this, that if you’re glaring angrily at your computer screen and saying “well, duh!”  Congratulations!  You’re well on your way!

How will it go for you from there?  I have no clue.  You just keep going and get a little better at it each day until you finally get to a point where you’re happy enough to try.

Like puberty.