Stupid Advice I Have Taken about Writing
By Guest | July 22, 2017 |
Please welcome Louie Cronin back to WU today! Louie’s debut novel, Everyone Loves You Back, has been named a semi-finalist for the 2017 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and a finalist for an Indie Excellence Award. A little more about her:
For 10 years, Louie Cronin (a.k.a. “Cronin the Barbarian”) served as Car Talk’s traffic cop, producing the show and ensuring that every call was entertaining. With an MFA in creative writing from Boston University (and a keen eye for the absurd!), Louie is a recipient of the Ivan Gold Fiction Fellowship from the Writers’ Room of Boston and has had fiction and essays published in Compass Rose, The Princeton Arts Review, The Boston Globe Magazine, and on PRI.org. Her short stories have been finalists for both Glimmer Train and New Millennium Writings awards. Louie has been awarded residencies at the Ragdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. Currently she works as a technical director for PRI’s radio show, The World.
You can learn more about Louie on her website, and by following her on Twitter.
Stupid Advice I Have Taken about Writing
When I was 31, I retired from a “good” job as an audio engineer at ABC in San Francisco to write a novel. (“Good” for an engineer, hell for a writer.) I was the first engineer across the US to take ABC’s seemingly generous offer: one year’s salary to get lost. How could any writer turn that down? How could it take longer than a year to write a novel?
Right after I retired, I got on a plane to Boston. (The novel could wait; first I had to visit my parents.) The shaggy-haired, famous-looking, cigarillo-smoking man seated next to me asked what I did for a living. (Funny how men were so interested in my career back then.)
“I just quit my job to write a novel,” I said, beaming.
He raised an eyebrow. “Really?” Turns out he had connections in the writing world. Lucky me! I was so excited I forgot to press him for details.
“Have you written anything before?” he asked.
“In high school,” I said. “And a little in college.”
“Ever published?”
“Uh, no.”
“Do you write every day?”
Did he have any idea what the life of an audio engineer at the networks was like? Of course I didn’t write every day. I barely slept every day.
“I’ve got bad news for you,” he said. “If you haven’t already started writing, you’re not going to do it now. Real writers write. Every day. They can’t not write. You’re just kidding yourself.”
I was such an idiot, I believed him, this random man on a plane. If only I hadn’t sat in the smoking section!
I did try to write during that ill-fated year (at the end of which I broke my leg at the skating rink and spent the remainder of my year’s salary on a walking cast, physical therapy, and an orthopedic brace.) But writing was hard. I was out of practice. I didn’t really have an idea for a novel, just the longstanding urge to write one. I kept hearing this stranger’s voice in my head. Real writers write. You should have started earlier. You’re too old.
I was 31.
At 35, I tried again. This time in New York. I threw myself into it. Classes, a private coach, a writing group. I wrote on the subway platform, on the train, in coffee shops, on my lunch hour. Words spilled out of me. I reveled in the writing life. And I was so happy to be admitted to the club, that when a teacher advised me not to tell anyone at work I was a writer, I believed her.
“No one wants to hire a writer,” she said. “They’ll think you’re not committed. They won’t take you seriously. You’ll never get a promotion!”
So I hid it, which wasn’t that hard. It’s not like my name was appearing in The New Yorker or the New York Times Book Review. And I was good at concealment. I was working at ABC again, never mentioning that I’d already retired from there once, afraid they might demand their money back.
As predicted I did get some pretty negative reactions from employers who figured out I was writer. (Hoarding a month of vacation days to head off to a writers’ colony was probably a tip off.) One boss accused me of “not owning my job,” another of “treating my job like a job.” Well, duh!
And I’ll admit, I did run screaming from job interviews where I got a whiff of exploitation, like the one at the hippie, progressive school where the teachers wore cultish, calf-length skirts and bragged about how much unpaid overtime they put in. Unpaid overtime? My whole writing life is unpaid overtime.
I finally came out as a writer when I applied for my current job, at The World, as an engineer filling in for a maternity leave, a five-month gig. At the interview my boss warned me, “This isn’t permanent, you know. She’s coming back.”
“Perfect,” I said. “I just finished a novel. I don’t want to be tied down right now.” (It had taken me 28 years to write that first novel. I imagined in five months I’d be jetting back and forth to New York for lunch with my agent and editor, and then on a multi-city book tour, trying to sandwich in interviews with The Paris Review and Terri Gross.)
Every so often my new boss and coworkers at The World would ask if I had sold the novel yet. When I said no, they’d wish me luck, cheer me on. The maternity leave ended. I stayed on for a while longer. And then a little while longer. My boss kept asking if I sold the novel, at first excitedly, then politely, then ironically. After a couple of years, he stopped asking altogether.
Five years later, out of the blue, I won a contest and got the novel published. Everyone at work was shocked. You’re a writer? How did that happen? Turns out my big coming out never really took. They thought of me as an engineer. I am having to come out as a writer all over again.
But guess what? That long ago teacher, whose name I don’t even remember, was wrong. My colleagues are happy for me. They take me more seriously, not less. My new boss and my old boss each read my book on vacation. Everyone keeps asking what the next one is going to be about. And the big surprise, lots of my colleagues confess literary yearnings of their own.
So I let a total stranger and a teacher I can’t remember mislead me. What is it about the lure of the writing life that makes otherwise sane people follow these commandments like they came down from on high? Is it that the whole process is so opaque, the chances of success so slim, the rewards so few, the challenges so very hard?
Or is it that when you have no control of the outcome, you get a little superstitious?
In any case, from now on, I intend to IGNORE all writerly admonitions, including, but certainly not limited to:
Sex. Wine. Jazz. Existential dread. Louie Cronin’s breakthrough novel is a coming-of-middle-age story that pays homage to the everyday.
- You have to get up before the sun rises to be a writer.
- If you enjoyed Stephen King, you can’t be a writer.
- If you need to go to a colony to get work done, you’re not a writer.
- If you love to sleep, you can’t be a writer.
- You can’t write a novel without an outline.
- Real writers don’t binge watch.
- If you’re over 22, forget it! All the readers at journals are 18.
- You have to enjoy poverty to be a writer.
- No one reads anymore, so don’t bother.
- If you can give up writing for a week, you probably should.
My advice to aspiring writers: ignore all advice.
One final note: When I was in my 50’s, I decided to take a jewelry-making class. No one said to me, you’re kidding yourself, if you haven’t already made jewelry, you won’t do it in the future. Or real jewelers solder ever day. Or don’t let them know about your jewelry habit at work. They just welcomed me with open arms. We writers could learn a lot from those jewelers.
Have you ever received bad writing advice? What was it, and how long did it take for you to realize it was well worth ignoring? Conversely, what’s the best advice you’d pass on to an aspiring novelist, based on your unique experience?
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
Great inaugural WU post, Louie. Thanks for the candid and entertaining (as well as inspirational) share.
Your suggestion to ignore all writing advice brings to mind one of my favorite quotes about our craft:
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” –W. Somerset Maugham
Thanks again, and congrats on the success of ‘Everyone Loves You Back.’
Best,
GL
Amen! And in “THE MOON AND SIXPENCE” Maugham wrote:- “It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”
how long did it take?? i’ve no idee!!! LOL
best advice is networking, be involved in others’ writing, whether on their team or reading and reviewing.
i’m NOT a morning person and my “muse groove” is late in the evening, so that’s when i write. i know the grammar rules and i know how to break them – and i do! courtesy, never bash another writer to make yourself look better – ’cause it doesn’t. it only makes you look petty and childish.
and read. and read some more.
The unwise advice was preceded by unwise undergraduate enrollment in an English department staffed not by writers, but by professors. I loved them all, but none were published, and their teaching of writing the novel was all by guess. And, actually, we were taught really more about writing the short story than to write the novel.
The advice? “Learn the short forms first, then go for the long forms.” In later years, I realized that an analogy was, “Learn the Volkswagens; the 747s will come.”
“When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.”
Saul Bellow.
So much to learn from this experience, thank you for this!
I know exactly what you’re talking about. Some people in my life know I’m writing my first novel but nobody ever asks me how it’s going. Not even my parents. If I bring it up, they dismiss it like it’s something silly to be doing. Thankfully my husband and a very good friend of mine (a script writer so he knows what it’s all about) keep supporting me! Thank you very much for sharing your story!!
The worst writing advice I’ve received is writing advice I’ve given myself.
Mostly it has been about understanding structure, building characters, and so on. It’s not bad advice, actually, but when I’ve convinced myself that I’ve learned everything I need to know, I’ve been wrong.
Nowadays I think less in terms of mastering craft and more in terms of setting challenges and discovering what more I have to master. That works better.
Thus, I would ignore the advice, “learn the craft”, and instead heed the advice, “learn to learn”.
The only stupid advice I’ve had has been given by me, or more specifically the under confident part of me. F**k it. I’m going for it.
When an editor giving a free manuscript review at a local library allowed me to participate by showing her the beginning pages of my writing related blog, A 1961-65 Park College Diary, she changed my phrase, “each night before I went to bed” to “each night before I went to sleep.” I thought “picky, picky.” Not only that, some nights in college it took a long time for sleep to come.
Welcome, Louie – looking forward to your posts (listened to some classic Car Talk this very morning!).
Have you ever received bad writing advice? What was it, and how long did it take for you to realize it was well worth ignoring?
Yes, and from a terrible source: Lawrence Block. I loved his books on writing such as ‘Telling Lies for Fun and Profit’ and ‘Spider, Spin me a Web’ (if I have the titles right) after I bought them at the Barnes and Noble (autographed copies!!!). But it wasn’t for many years that I finally realized he’s a pantser of upmost proportions, and I’m only comfortable at the farthest-away end of the pantsing/plotting scale – I’m a structuralist and a plotter of truly epic proportions, and that I could ignore his suggestions, nay, had to ignore his strong imperatives that one should write his way.
Conversely, what’s the best advice you’d pass on to an aspiring novelist, based on your unique experience?
Basically, to ignore everything anyone says, just as you did. To take the time to see what works, what helps them write, what their guts tell them. To try things out.
Nice to meet someone who took even longer to get the debut novel out than I did, except that I believe I was working on it the whole time (15 years).
When I was an undergrad, one of my English professors said I’d never get anything published. Many years later, I got a story published in a magazine that had published one of his a month earlier. In the same vein, when I was a student teacher, my first cooperating teacher told me I’d never get a job as an English teacher. My student teaching seminar professor pulled me from her and I finished up somewhere else. A year later, I got an offer to teach in the same high school she was in. Now I look forward to it when someone tells me I’ll never be able to do something.
“Start in the action.” Unfortunately, in attempting to do it, I started in the middle and confused everyone because it’s a book that needs a little world-building first. The other one was that I saw other writers with their plot boards and decided I couldn’t write a novel without understanding story structure completely. Bought a book on it and got myself freaked out by it — 12.5% of the way in, such and such was supposed to happen, etc., etc. I had hoped for a scaffold, but felt like what I got was a straitjacket. Stopped me in my tracks. I’m trying to get back to it.
I hope you enjoyed every piece of jewelry you crafted. Enjoyed this! And by the way, still enjoy CAR TALK reruns. :)
Congrats on your persistence and your success, Louie!
I think the best writing advice is, “Find what works for you.” Writing every day? Great. Writing twice a week or on alternate Tuesdays? Great! Whatever it takes to finish.
Worst writing advice: “write what you know”.
Best writing advice: “don’t ever give up. Just keep writing”.
What a great post, Louie!. Honest, inspiring, and funny to boot. I’m sure many who ventured into writing years after casting aside the initial calling will appreciate your journey. I know I certainly do.
One of my favorite teases now that I’ve shaken off my earlier self-consciousness is that, of course, my university study was in engineering. After all, it’s the degree all serious writers are pursuing these days. ;)
Congratulations on your debut novel. May there be many more to follow.
Took me ten years to write my first two novels (after originally writing chunks of two others that just couldn’t take flight).
I think it took time because I didn’t want slide over plot problems. I didn’t want any reader to think, “Hey, wait. That’s inconsistent.”
Also I was in the middle of living a normal life. I say give yourself some slack.
Mine was–told to be by a non-writer–that you can’t make a living from your writing. Consequently, I didn’t even try. I looked at the pro paying magazines and the competition for publication in them and said “I’ll never get in there.” So I submitted to non-paying, never realizing that I was subconsciously telling myself that I wasn’t good enough for professional publication. Once I decided to toss that worthless advice out, my writing improved dramatically and I started getting personal rejections from pro magazines.
*** And if someone zooms in here and says you really can’t make a living from your writing, you may want to question what other people are telling you, too. ***
The worst advice I ever got was more a constant background theme than a blatant statement: you have to be literary, you have to do something that’s never been done before, you have to be constantly challenging yourself and the reader.
There’s some truth in some of that, but there’s nothing wrong with using an old form, or with writing books people read for comfort rather than challenge. Or with not being ‘literary’.
Best advice: find what works for you.
The worst writing advice came from my high school English teacher, in 11th grade to be exact. He told me repeatedly that I’d never make it as a writer, that I had no talent, and should simply stop writing altogether.
Turns out he was wrong. After working miscellaneous and random jobs for almost two decades, I am now self-employed as a writer, and doing well at it.
Haha, this is a great post. (Also, I loved Car Talk. Thank you!) It’s funny, I’m so addicted to writing advice, and yet I know at the end of the day, the wisdom I need to listen to most (in order to write) is what’s already inside my own head…
I am an ex-Engineer (fired over 30 years ago for taking too much vacation) turned writer. I am not a novelist, however. I write non-fiction. I lived under the poverty line for several years. Today at the age of 68 I live happy, prosperous, and free, making an income better than 98 percent of working stiffs. And I only have to work one or two hours a day.
These are the best pieces of advice that I have followed to achieve the success that I enjoy today:
“If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”
— Anna Quindlan
“I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.”
— G. K. Chesterton
“Seek above all for a game worth playing. Such is the oracle to modern man. Having found the game, play it with intensity; play as if your life and sanity depend on it. (They do depend on it).”
— D. S. Ropp
“You are never given a wish without the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.”
— Richard Bach
“To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your work.”
— Sister Mary Lauretta
“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”
— Fred Wilson
“It’s better to have a short life doing what you like doing than a long life doing what you don’t like doing.”
— Alan Watts
“The worst days of those who enjoy what they do, are better than the best days of those who don’t.”
— E. James Rohn
“The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you’re playing by somebody else’s rules, while quietly playing by your own.”
— Michael Korda
“The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.
— Henry David Thoreau
“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.”
— Christopher Morley
“It’s better to do a sub-par job on the right project than an excellent job on the wrong project.”
— Robert J. Ringer
“Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don’t want to read.”
— Michael Korda
“The amount of money you make will always be in direct proportion to the demand for what you do, your ability to do it, and the difficulty of replacing you.”
— Earl Nightingale
“In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.”
— Aristotle
“It is cruel to discover one’s mediocrity only when it is too late.”
— W. Somerset Maugham
“Even at your Best, someone will always have something negative to say. Pursue Greatness anyway.”
— Tony Gaskins
“My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
— Jane Austin
“Extraordinary people survive
under the most terrible circumstances and they become more
extraordinary because of it.”
— Robertson Davies
Incidentally, my following these principles has resulted in my books (mainly self-published) having sold over 960,000 copies worldwide. A lot of people who used to laugh at me and my ideas (and give me bad advice) now resent me. So what? I am the one who gets to fly Business Class, even First Class to London, more often than not. Better still, I am the one who receives letters, emails, and phone calls from readers who tell me that my books have had a profound influence on their lives.
I’m a tad late to this party, Louie, but what you said had me nodding and laughing and rolling my eyes (at myself). I have read so much writing advice it would probably fill a library – or at least a few ring binders.
I started writing my “first” novel at the age of 13. My Mum told me writing wasn’t for girls (say what?) Have no idea what happened to it.
My junior high English teacher wrote on a composition piece, “Why can’t you write like this all the time?!!” (emphasis hers).
Left school in 9th grade to support my invalid mother when my Dad died.
Worked – married – 3 kids – divorced – took in ironing blah, blah.
Age 40 – had two-part Sci-Fi story published in magazine. Took me a couple of months to have the courage to read it (seriously.)
Age 60 – Started writing a YA crime/mystery novel.
Age 69 – finished final draft of said novel, which is now being edited (third time.)
Do I write every day? No.
Do I wish I could write every day? Yes.
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…
… what will happen next? Who knows, but I live in hope.
Many thanks for this. Just tell yourself that random stranger in the smoking section is probably dead from lung cancer now!