On August 27 from 10 a.m. to noon, I’ll conduct a workshop in Eatonton, GA on behalf of the Georgia Writers Museum, in support of its mission to celebrate Georgia-born and Georgia-based authors.
The participants they hope to attract are those who are just getting serious about writing, which led me to consider what I wish I knew back in 2000 when I started work on my first novel (the second one to be published),The Five Destinies of Carlos Moreno. I can divide that wish list into three unequal parts: craft advice, appreciation for the writer’s life, and knowledge about the publishing industry. The first two are vastly more important than the third. Why? When a writer is starting out, producing a book is a fine end goal, but the journey is so much more vital in terms of the enjoyment of the writing process and the writer’s ability to abide, because writing is REALLY HARD.
Every time one of my books gets delivered to the world, I want to include an apology to my readers on page 1. I always think I could’ve done better, given more time, more inspiration, and more feedback from trusted readers and fellow writers. However, I love the process of stringing words together and I stick to it. Even though I know I’m going to fail to tell the best story I can, that never stops me from opening a new file and typing “Chapter 1.”
So, on August 27, I’m going focus mostly on craft and elements of the writer’s life. The reason for the former is easy to comprehend: if you don’t develop your craft, you’ll never be a good writer. Nobody’s first draft is ready for prime time. A major difference between a good writer and a bad writer is the ability to spot what is hindering the work, the willingness to throw it out (“killing your darlings,” per Stephen King), and the insight to know what will make the work better in draft two–so you can do it all over again to produce an even more polished third draft, and so on.
I grasped all of that early on. What I didn’t appreciate, though, were the elements of the writer’s life that I needed to assimilate, from a support network of writers and a critique group of talented individuals–who could show me how to make draft #2 better than #1–to the butt-in-chair discipline necessary to do the difficult job of putting one word after another.
A better understanding of the industry would’ve helped me as well, and I’ll spend some time talking about literary agents, acquisition editors, query letters, small presses, self-publishing, and so on, but this is a little like telling a miner in 1849 about the subtleties of selling the gold he’ll pan when he doesn’t even understand yet how to get from Savannah to California.
Inevitably beginning writers ask about the endgame–as if, with the plethora of books already on the market and more releasing every day, they’ve already fallen woefully behind–but I hope I’m eloquent enough to convince them to focus on the journey. As with all of my novels, I’ll no doubt leave the August 27 workshop thinking I could’ve done a better job if I’d only thought of better words and delivered them with more skill. That’s the curse of the teacher as well as the author.