sarah eve kelly

Golly, writers have to pay attention to a lot of rules these days.

Not just submission guidelines, either. Like, writing rules.

On one hand, you’ve got industry insiders telling you which paranormal creatures are coming in, and which ones are going out. (I don’t write paranormal, but I think maybe vampires are going out and angels are coming in and zombies are going strong? If I’m wrong, check back in ten minutes and maybe I’ll be right.) You’ve got word count guidelines. You’ve got agents who love prologues and agents who hate prologues. Your novel has got to ask the Seven Vital Questions. You can’t have a Happy Moment until Four of the Seven Vital Questions have been Answered (and this can’t happen until after the tenth chapter). Your novel must not begin with the protagonist waking up from a dream, and certainly cannot end that way. The novel’s Third Vital Question can neither be asked nor answered on Shrove Tuesday.

I love this one: the market can’t handle X, Y, or Z. But don’t write for the market.

All the same people who are giving us these Seedlings of Wisdom are also telling us this: just write. Everything else is procrastination. Just Do It.

Here’s the thing. All these rules need a spreadsheet and I’m no good at Excel (which is too bad, because the temp agencies I’ll be applying to with tears on my CV after my PhD is done really want Excel).

Anne Lamott says of her writing students: ‘The problem that comes up over and over again is that these people really want to be published. They kind of want to write, but they really want to be published.’

It’s a stout thing to say: I write for the joy. I write to create. I write because I have to. All these things are true of me. But hell yeah, I want to be published too. Even in this market, even for the proverbial dozen doughnuts and a stick in the eye. I want it.

And I have to say this, even though it’s gonna make me sound like one of the bad guys: it’s hard to keep your joy. It’s really hard. And it’s not just the market. I think the cacophony of available information and advice can hurt us if we’re not careful. There are so many opinions, so many tips, so many Don’t Go Theres that writers are afraid to move. They’re being told to Just Do It but they no longer know how.

No one ever apologises for this, nor should they. The bar is constantly moving for writers, and it’s the writer’s job to know where the bar is and clear it. Because an unknown writer is nothing, no one: the rules are never going to change to make the unknown writer happy. In fact, a few less unknown writers overall would probably do the world some good. They could move on from writing dreams and do something useful. Patricia Finney says if you get the urge to write, don’t. Fight it every way you can. Only if you lose every one of those fights should you give in to writing. If at all possible, make your mark on the world in some other way.

I say I’ve lost all the fights. I can’t do Excel, after all.

But I submit this: looking for tips and tricks and What’s Hot and What You Must Never Do In A Novel is just like research, and just like reading over what you’ve just written and worrying one sentence for weeks on end. It’s procrastinating. We are being besieged with Rules and while it’s good that they’re there – it’s good that we have access to so much information – there’s an extent to which we have to treat the Rules like pop-up ads and block them out. Otherwise nothing gets done. You know John Irving still writes longhand? There’s something in that.

Writing is terribly, terribly solitary. If you want to write you have to be willing to stand in a corner and just watch without interacting with anyone. The words on the page are yours; whether they ever see the light of day is your call. And the sad sorry fucking truth is that you can’t write for the market: the market is fickle; the market changes. Publishing is slow. You can’t write What’s Hot Now because by the time it’s on shelves, it won’t be Hot anymore. But if you really like What’s Hot Now, write it, because it’ll come back. These things always do.

It’s not for us to be arbiters of the Rules, nor to complain about them, nor to necessarily pay any attention to them until that first draft is in the can. The Rules won’t help you with your first draft. They help you to polish; they help you to present. But if you’re in the Creamy Middle of your first draft, don’t read a tweet or a blog post and panic and go back and change everything. Keep your horse blinders on and keep going.

Once again, most of you probably don’t need to hear this. But I needed to write it down, for myself.

Till next time, if God wills it, &c &c.

Related posts:

1. the magic in writing
2. on universities, tenure, and writing
3. links for writing and reading
4. in defence of writers
5. the matter of detail