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It's not easy to put your thoughts down on paper in the hope that someone will want to read them.
The world is flush with words already. A cursory scan of the millions of personal blogs online reveals that everyone has the same hope as you, e.g., that their thoughts and experiences and opinions are worthy of an audience. Then there are the newspapers, magazines and books published every day. What do YOU have to say that's any different or better than what's already being published?
Thoughts like those are what kept me silenced for a decade of my writing life. Don't let them silence you.
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Publication is political.
Of course, you knew that already. Everything's political, right?
But many writers don't realize just how much politics go on behind the scenes of their favorite literary journals or publishing houses.
Although you'd think that editors would have an easy task choosing the best submissions, "best" is a fuzzy term. What one editor rejects is another editor's treasure.
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Sometimes I wonder where I got the snobbery to believe that books published electronically aren't "real" books.
If e-books were real books, I'd already be the best-selling author I dreamed of being.
After all, my e-books on dating and relationships are read all over the world. They've sold thousands of copies.
So why don't I still consider myself a "published author"?
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I never imagined that I was moving to New Zealand to become a writer.
I had my eye set on a totally different industry. But, once I got arrived, I found that my overseas experience wasn’t what they were looking for. Most industries in New Zealand require a relevant university degree, and my degrees weren’t anywhere close to being relevant.
I was running out of money and desperate. I needed a job, fast.
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A hand writes on a sheet of notebook paper.
The author watches.
The author watches the hand - his hand? - as it scrawls in that familiar handwriting, words upon words, line after line, staining fingertips blacker and blacker with ink.
He sees the deep wrinkles of the knuckles, the vein that snakes across the bridge of his tendons, the mottled marks of age. He wonders how this hand can write so effortlessly, steadily, each movement a masterpiece of economy, until the page is full and a fresh one begun. What guides this hand so perfectly in its motion? He is doing nothing; he is merely sitting, watching a performance he has set into motion, like the first cause in a Deist universe.
The author sees what the hand has written, and it is good.
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Writers often have strong feelings about where to write. The environment has to be "just so." I knew one girl who couldn't write unless it was perfectly silent. Another writer I knew used carefully-selected music to set the mood for his novel.
Some writers have home offices, with books spilling off shelves and coffee stains on their desks. They're the lucky ones. Others make do with a bedroom, but at least they've got a room of their own.
Then there are the homeless writers.
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It took me a good eight years before I shuffled off the chains of academic writing. Make no mistake: the way they teach you to write in school will hamper you in the real world. In academia, you get rewarded for obscurity, density, paragraphs and sentences that stretch on in endless blocks of mind-numbing text. You quote lots of other people to make your own work sound authoritative, and you try to use as many words as possible so that you can get in the full 1500 words without running out of things to say.
In the real world, things are different. The fewer words, the better. Complex sentences are out. Short paragraphs are in.
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