Five Things Writing Taught Me About Life

Playing it safe isn’t always safe.

Mattie, the narrator of The Art of Crash Landing is a very flawed, not always likeable character. I’ve had people ask me why I took that risk, and while I understand what they mean, I’m not convinced that using a polite, affable main character would necessarily have been safer.

Have a few readers been turned off by Mattie’s acerbic nature? Sure. But, the readers who’ve loved my book have all said they loved it because of Mattie in all her hot-mess glory, not in spite of her.

So what are you going to do—play it safe, or go for it? No matter what you do, not everyone will approve of your choices (or your narrator) so why not live the life (and tell the story) that means the most to you?

Use your peripheral vision.

My first instinct when presented with problems (in writing or real-life) is to confront them head-on and push for a solution. Satisfying? Yes. Effective? Not always.

Writing has taught me that although I can bully a scene into submission, sometimes that’s a mistake. Creative ideas resist brute force; they’re a little shy. But if I just turn my attention to something else, I’ll often catch a glimpse of what I need out of the corner of my eye.

My best ideas almost always come in the shower, or on a walk, or (my personal favorite) while driving in heavy enough traffic that scrambling for a pen and paper would be a grievous mistake. So now, when a problem resists an obvious fix, I’ve learned to back off a little. And I’ve learned how to use the voice-memo app on my phone.

Big jobs are really just lots of small jobs.

It cracks me up every time someone asks me how on earth I managed to write a whole book. Word by word is the right answer, of course, but if I said that I’d sound like a smartass.

But think about it, you build that deck on the back of your house board by board, you knit that sweater stitch-by-stitch, so how else does a book get written? Lots of things seem overwhelming from the outside, but then you just take one step after another and stick with it even when it feels like you’ll never get the damn sleeves the same length. Talent is helpful, I suppose, but dogged persistence is how things get made.

It’s the Process Not the Prize.

When I turned forty, frustrated with how little progress I’d made establishing a writing career, I quit. For seven years I wrote nothing but Christmas cards and thank you notes. When I finally decided to give it another go, I promised myself that this time I’d write for the pleasure of writing itself and not worry about publication.

So, that’s what I did, and guess what? Now I have a novel on the bookstore shelves. When I stopped started finding joy in the process, I got the prize.

I wish I had a nickel for every time in my life when I’ve thought, “When X happens, I’ll be happy.” Yeah well…maybe not so much. Because here I am on the other side of a huge bucket-list goal, and yes I’m happy, grateful, humbled, etc… But you know what? Life is still full of writing and working and doing the laundry and grocery shopping and dishes and cleaning up the dog poo in the yard.

Being happy was never about reaching an external goal. Writing itself is the joy, and Life itself is the gift. I could have saved myself a lot of unhappiness if I’d figured that out earlier.

Don’t Forget the Kumbayas.

We are all experts at labeling people and pointing out the ways in which we differ from one another. Does this come in handy when we create characters and conflicts in our stories?

Absolutely. Thank goodness we’re all different, otherwise how boring would life (and fiction) be? But here’s the flipside to that coin: the books we love, the ones we never forget, the ones that break our hearts and then rearrange the pieces—those are the stories that managed to tap into some deeper, collective truth.

They awaken in us what we’ve always known yet work so hard to ignore—that we’re not so different you and I. We laugh. We love. We grieve. So in your writing and your life, celebrate our differences in all their messy and beautiful glory.

But remember to spend some time gathered around humanity’s campfire, holding hands and singing the songs we all know by heart. I know, I know, what a bunch of cheesy crap. But, what the hell. Sometimes cheesy-crap is all I’ve got, so I’m leaving it just the way it is. Kumbaya, baby. Kumbaya.

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Find out more about Melissa on her website http://www.melissadecarlo.com/

The Art of Crash Landing is her first novel.

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips