Dear Young Writer
By Kristan Hoffman | October 26, 2017 |
Photo by Tekke
Dear Young Writer,
(“Young” meaning where you are in your writing journey, by the way. Not your actual age.)
I may be older and wiser, or I may just be waxing nostalgic, but either way, I’d like to say a few things to you, if you don’t mind indulging me.
First, you are innocent and hopeful, and that makes me smile. You only have the vaguest notion of how books are made, but you know without a shadow of a doubt that you want to be part of making them. You have big dreams and ambitions, and you’re eager to reach them. You’re ready to “starve” for your art, for your career.
But are you ready to work?
Because, my cherished friend, making books takes a lot of hard work. Even if we focus just on the writing part, it’s so much harder than you think. Right now, your writing process is basically just playing make-believe on paper. That’s not a bad thing! You imagine people and places, you watch them in your mind, and then you jot down their stories in a flurry of words. Your only purpose is your own excitement. It’s so pure and self-fulfilling.
But someday it may not feel like enough, I’m sorry to say. More than likely, you will begin to ask each new story, “Why am I writing this? What will it achieve? Will other people like it? Will anyone pay me for it?” Those questions cannot drive a story forward, but they can drive a writer to madness.
It’s so tricky, this business of being creative. On the one hand, you have to be a dreamer, someone who lets their imagination roam, and who enjoys trying to capture those boundless flights of fancy within the limits of language. On the other hand, you have to work within an established system, finding your path through the rules and rigors of publishing, and accepting that not all stories will sail successfully out of the safe harbor of your heart.
To be clear, this is not an either-or situation, and it’s not a battle. It’s more of a spectrum, or a dance. I think most writers exist in constant motion between the artistic and commercial spaces. We try to negotiate the right balance for each story, and for ourselves. We try to forgive that balance for constantly shifting beneath our feet.
Part of me thinks that I shouldn’t mention any of this to you, dear friend, because I don’t want to scare you off. I believe in the value of what you’re doing. Stories shape our world. Please never forget that.
But the other part of me feels compelled to share these truths with you, because I want you to be emotionally prepared for what’s coming. I don’t want you to expect your writing career to go quickly or smoothly, because it probably will not, and if/when it doesn’t, I don’t want that to cripple you.
If you do find yourself starting to lose some of the joy — that spark in your soul that ignites when you’re following a story — try to remember this:
- Ambition can be a good thing, as long as you separate your self-worth from your achievements. Let writing be your companion, not your whole world.
- Don’t underestimate the importance of self-care. Your writing will not get stronger if you are weakened. Take a break. Take a walk. Take a bubble bath. Recharge. Relax. Unplug.
- Living is writing. It all goes into your stories, makes them deeper, richer, more real. So spend time with your family. Hang out with your friends. Explore the world around you. Seek out big adventures, and revel in the mundane.
- At the same time: only writing is writing. People cannot go into a bookstore and buy your daydreams. They cannot read your good intentions. To step into your stories, they need your words to guide the way. So sit down and put some on the page.
With love,
Your Future Self
If you were to write a letter to your past self, what wisdom or advice would you share?
Originally from Houston, TX, Kristan Hoffman studied creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University and later attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Now she lives with her husband and two children in Cincinnati, OH, where she writes both fiction and nonfiction with a focus on feminist, multicultural stories. Her words have appeared in the New York Times, Switchback, and the Citron Review, among others. She is currently at work on a Young Adult novel. For more, please visit her website.
Thank You for this post Kristan.
Dear Younger James,
It will help you later in life if you can do the following now:
Read More Books
Change your major to English
Spend the next five years writing short stories
Build your own writing group
Gain the discipline to look at a fourth draft and start on a fifth no later than 2013.
& Don’t get that tattoo, video games aren’t all that important to you in your thirties.
LOL about the tattoo. And great advice to your younger self!
Kristan, your bulleted list is excellent, excellent, excellent.
Here’s what I might tell late-20s Erin:
Serendipity is for other people. You’re going to have to work.
Oh man, I need to tell that to Younger Me too!
I love this idea :) And your advice is excellent.
#
Hey teenaged Claire,
Man, you’ve got some _stuff_ going on in your life. I know, I know, that’s why you started writing in the first place, to make some kind of sense of things.
Hot tip: keep doing that. It’s going to hold you together when it feels like everything’s falling apart.
Did I say falling apart? Don’t worry about that; life happens, and without a little struggle you wouldn’t have a scale for just how wonderful the other bits are. You’re going to get good at capturing those raw emotions, but this is where my biggest piece of advice arises.
Don’t rush it. Just write.
I won’t even tell you how long it’s going to take. Truth be told, I still don’t know. But one day you’ll be paging back through a whole lot of drafts of the same story, cursing the amount of time that has flowed under the bridge, and then you’ll get to the start (right where you are now!) and you’ll see something.
You’re already good at putting words together, but you don’t know as much as you think you know about life. You need to live a little more before you’ll get good at understanding people and why they behave the way they do. In the meantime, you have to keep writing.
And you have to keep getting it wrong.
Because only by doing that are you going to learn how to get it right, and that’s going to feel tough, and sometimes not even worth it. But it is.
Being right is… a much more relative thing than you think it is just now. One change? Try to dial back that whole perfectionist thing, just a little. It’s possible you could save yourself a couple of drafts if you just trust your story instincts.
Here’s the other thing. Sometimes, you’re not going to find yourself able to write _at all_, gasp, horror, for months or even years. That’s going to feel like the end of the world. But have faith that this is in your bones at all times.
You’re meant to write.
What you have to say is worth reading.
So keep going! One day you’re going to watch your own kids become little storytellers in their own right, and you’re going to think back to how you are right now and know that it was the beginning of you changing the world in the smallest and yet most meaningful way. You’ll share the joy of story. You already do.
If nothing else, that’s enough. There’s so much more to come.
Oh my goodness, I may have to steal your letter for myself!
I love this. “…are you ready to work?” SO true.
I’d add one thing:
Make sure you read (despite the lulling power of Netflix, the need for sleep, the shortening attention span…)! A writer who doesn’t read is like a painter who only stares at blank walls, a musician who doesn’t keep his playlist updated, a chef who turns down delicious foods.
Oof, yes, Netflix/Hulu ARE so tempting and relaxing… But reading is so energizing and inspiring and refueling!
Kristan, this was wonderful. The part about stories shaping our world is so true and it made me realize how they also reflect the times we live in, which means having to wait a long time until the world is ready to hear what you have to say.
Dear Vijaya,
That boy you love–love him right. Marry him. Have babies with him. What does that have to do with writing? Everything. Because you will be a writer-mama. So don’t wait. Don’t be afraid because the very children who will give you no time to write will give you something meaningful to say (I’m paraphrasing Katherine Paterson–you’ll love her books). Keep writing and studying and dreaming, but send out your work. Write what you love, anything and everything, experiment. It’s in your blood. Don’t worry about what others think; only think about being pleasing to God. AMDG. You’re going to love this writing life. XOXOV.
“the very children who will give you no time to write will give you something meaningful to say”
Love that so much! Very powerful for me to think about now that I’m a mom too. Thank you.
Great piece, Kristan.
I was actually asked the very question you posed at the end of your post during a recent interview. My response:
Dear Greg,
Debut novels very rarely do well, so it’s better to start off with your third or fourth. Also, trying to make it as a writer is a grind. The grind is often painful and miserable. Fortunately, pain and misery are very useful in writing something worth a damn.
Never quit. Because you won’t be able to even if you try. Welcome to the Hotel California.
[Insert image of me dropping a mic and confidently strutting away … then blushing upon the realization I still had several interview questions left to answer.]
One more piece of advice I’d give my younger self: Hang out with other writers. Not just so you can learn from one another and improve your craft together, but also so you’ll have people to rant to—people who understand the beautiful madness that often makes you impossible to be around. (I actually just blogged about this today: https://greglevin.com/scrawl-space-blog/what-writers-talk-about-with-other-writers)
Thanks, Kristan. Write on!
-GL
Yes, great advice! My critique group is so vital, both to my writing itself and to my mental/emotional health.
Thanks for this.
Dear Younger Beth,
Live your life and use your notebooks. Write things down–joyful and sad, challenging and easy. Look around every day and find something to remember. Watch people. All in life is fascinating and one day can enliven a poem, a story, an essay, a novel. You’ll get there and as you live, your life will be full.
Oh, haha, are you like Younger Me, who wanted to “save” all her best/prettiest notebooks? Finally I’ve realized that part of their beauty/greatness is in being used, and it gives me great joy to put my mark in them.
“Look around every day and find something to remember.”
I love that.