Five Hard Truths About Writing 

Five Hard Truths About Writing 

I’ve been a writer most of my life. My mom said I started reading when I was three. Through my teen years I wrote stories and poems, though it never occurred to me to seek publication for them. After getting a BA in English, I wrote book reviews and essays, and did some freelance business writing and editing while working in a public library. I finally got serious about writing fiction about twenty-five years ago, when I was at home with my sons. My first short story was published in 2000 and my first novel was published in 2008. Since then, I’ve published two story collections and three novels, and currently have a fourth novel under consideration with publishers. I also continue to write and publish short pieces in journals and anthologies.

As well, for the last fourteen years, I’ve taught non-credit creative writing to adults. There are some hard truths about the writing life I’ve noted over the last twenty-odd years that I’d love to share with my students, but I don’t really want to put them off (I also don’t want to lose my job). Here they are for you, though, dear reader.

You Must Love Reading

You must love reading? Obviously, you’re thinking. At one time I would have thought this point was obvious, too. But I never cease to be amazed at the number of students who say they “don’t read much” or admit that they’re “not really readers”. This never ceases to baffle me. To me, taking a creative writing course when you’re not a reader is like taking piano lessons when you don’t listen to music. While I always wonder why, I suspect these people are deluded into thinking that writing is the path to easy riches, thanks to portrayals of writers’ lives in movies and on TV. Take, for instance, the 2017 film The Wife (based on a novel by Meg Wolizter), which shows us a young writer in the 1960’s who buys a large seaside home in Connecticut with the money he made from his first novel. Even in the 1960’s, that would have been unlikely. Today? Pretty much impossible.

Taking a writing course without being a reader is one thing. Expecting, as a non-reader, to be able to make a go of it as a writer is another. To be a writer, you don’t just have to read, you have to love reading. Do you read a lot? Almost every day? Have you been reading a lot, almost every day, since childhood? If so, you’re probably a writer. Otherwise, you’re probably not. 

Publishing is Hard

Writing is hard, we all know that. Publishing is even harder. It’s so hard that a lot of people quit. I know excellent writers who have quit writing, some who have even published more than one book with small presses. I know writers who have had their hearts broken by trying to get published, or trying to get on with bigger publishers, and have quit. And thanks to factors like the massive consolidation in the publishing industry, it continues to get harder all the time. In comparison, the writing itself is the easy part.

Writers Are Often Envious of Each Other

You’ll never really find out who your true writer friends are until some success comes along for you  – a book deal, a contract with an agent, that kind of thing. Sadly, your success will be a serious downer for some people, and who these people turn out to be may surprise you. The writer friends who can be genuinely glad for you, those who can temper their envy with grace – these people are gems, and you need them in your life. Hold on to them.

An MFA is Not Necessary

Get one if you want. But don’t kid yourself that it’s necessary, and don’t kid yourself that it’s the only way to get published. I asked the editor of my first book, who also edited a literary magazine I’d had a story in (which, in a somewhat old-fashioned sequence of events, led to my first book deal), whether he thought I should get an MFA. A respected writer, he also taught creative writing at a well-regarded university. He said he didn’t think it was possible to teach people to write. You can inspire them, encourage them, give them pointers, he said, but the real ability comes from lots of reading and lots of writing. My own experience as a writer, as well as my experience teaching creative writing, bears this out.

Persistence is the most important thing

Persistence is, in the end, what will get you there. Talent is important, dedication to craft is important. Some people say it’s who you know. If that were true, though, I would have never published a word because I didn’t know anyone when my stories started being published. 

I know MFA holders who quit writing because it was too hard. I know several talented writers who quit because they can’t handle rejection. Again, writing is hard, and every writer, with the possible exception of people like Stephen King, gets rejected. Make peace with those two things and you’re good. 

Ray Bradbury said, “You only fail if you stop writing.” Those often-repeated words help me to persist at this often frustrating, sometimes maddening, but ultimately deeply rewarding work.

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Lori Hahnel’s latest novel, Flicker, is published by the University of Calgary Press’ Brave & Brilliant imprint. Her last book, Vermin: Stories, won an Alberta Literary Award, and was a finalist for a High Plains Book Award, the CAA Fred Kerner Award and the Saskatchewan Foundation for the Arts Glengarry Book Award. She is also the author of the novels Love Minus Zero and After You’ve Gone, and the story collection, Nothing Sacred. Her work has been broadcast on CBC Radio, and has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Joyland, The Saturday Evening Post and many other journals and anthologies in Canada, the US, Australia and the UK. She is at work on a novel based on the life of pianist and composer Clara Schumann.

FLICKER

Cass Reisender doesn’t enjoy her psychic abilities. They appeared after her parents were killed in a tragic accident and led her to Madame Freyja, a travelling fortune teller and all-round terrible person. Swearing to leave both her psychic sensitivity and Madame Freyja behind, Cass starts again in Calgary, Alberta, a city with nothing supernatural about it at all. Then Cass touches a strange antique device and her new life is blown apart.

Transported to West Orange, New Jersey, in the year 1900, Cass meets the dashing Erik Thorvaldsen in Thomas Edison’s – that Thomas Edison’s – laboratory. As she and Erik grow closer, Cass finally accepts herself as she finds love in a life lived across centuries. Yet Madame Freyja lurks in the shadows, hungry for the power of the time travel device. When Madame Freyja strikes, Cass must face both her fears and her past or lose her connection to Erik forever.

Flicker is a playful, fast-paced romp through the golden age of invention, mythology, and the supernatural. This is a novel for everyone who believes in the power of scientific curiosity and the strength of the human heart.

BUY HERE

 

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Category: On Writing