Five things I have learned about writing

Occasional extra bit, #5

It’s more than fifteen years since I first held a book that I had written. Since then, I’ve had two memoirs and nine novels published, and two other novels and several pitches turned down. (This happens a lot more than you’d think, to a lot more people than you’d think.) I’ve sold in lots of languages. I’m writing a tenth novel with an eleventh under contract (and starting to simmer on my back brain). I’ve been working with writers of fiction, non-fiction and memoir for over a decade, helping them to find their voices and grow as writers.

And do you know what? I still have moments when I feel like an imposter. I am still waiting to be found out. These feelings are not as strong as they once were, but they can creep up on me, sometimes, still, or occasionally stage an ambush. I once called my agent, who was on another call, and then straight afterwards my editor, who was also on another call, and suddenly all I could see, in 7-foot-high neon letters in my brain, were the words ‘THEY ARE TALKING TO EACH OTHER ABOUT HOW TO EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT EVERYTHING ABOUT YOUR WRITING CAREER SO FAR HAS BEEN A HUGE ADMINISTRATIVE ERROR AND YOU NEED TO GO AWAY NOW.’*

I was thinking about this as Harris and I pottered through the fields this morning.** And about what I’ve learned, or discovered to be true. I thought I’d write these things down for you, in case they help if you have times of doubt. (And honestly? I think all good writers have times of doubt. Unassailable confidence inside and out is not compatible with the sort of emotional interrogation that goes with writing.)

1. The best thing about writing is writing.

   I know this is easy for me to say, because I’m published, and I have got to do all the things that once felt impossible, like signing my books at a bookshop, being interviewed at a festival, talking to book groups, writing a short story for a magazine, putting ‘author’ as the answer to ‘occupation’ on a form.*** These are all wonderful moments. But the best thing, I promise, is showing up at the page. All of the most scrumptious things happen there. Sometimes I get to express exactly what’s in my head, which is such a rush. Sometimes something I have been struggling with comes right in a way I hadn’t foreseen. Sometimes I hate every word that I put down, but I know that that’s part of the process so it’s fine. (See 2.) But I get deep and true satisfaction from putting down word after word. Nothing else comes close. So if you are writing, whether you are published/trying to be published or not, I promise you are experiencing the greatest thing about this job already.

2. Writing is craft and practice.

   That is to say, the more you practice, the better you get. Yes, you begin by being a person with ideas, with talent, with imagination, with desire. But, given those things, every sentence you write teaches you something. Practicing writing brings you closer to your authorial voice; it helps you to understand the stories you want to tell; it hones itself. And so writing ten thousand words before you realise you’re barking up the wrong tree isn’t wasted effort. Those ten thousand words, in themselves, taught you a lot, on a sentence level. And by finding that you have gone the wrong way, you’ve learned what the right way is. And, if you can write, you can write, so deleting**** ten thousand words doesn’t matter. They’ve done their job. The number of words available to you is not finite. (This is a good thing.)

3. Writing is not about you.

   Writing is about the reader. Writing is about making the shortest possible distance between the story that’s alive in your mind and the story that the reader conjures as they read.

   So, your job is twofold. First, make things clear. An example: I once spent an entire afternoon in what I can only describe as a colour thesaurus rabbit hole, trying to find the name of the shade of a character’s eyes. I could see it so clearly; that green of a field which hasn’t yet been mowed. I looked at all the greens, all the paint cards, all the art websites. I got really cross and decided I would never write a book again, because what was the point if you can’t find the right word for a green. And the next day, I described my character’s eyes as ‘the green of an imagined meadow’, and knew that I had got it right. Another example: Kingsley Amis once wrote of his son Martin’s work, ‘I sometimes wish he would just write, The man went to the pub.’

   And the second-fold (?!): make things happen. To quote Elmore Leonard, ‘Try to leave out the parts that the reader will skip’. Action - which means feelings, conversations, as well as car chases - is what keeps the reader reading. It also helps us, the writer, understand the characters we’re writing about - it’s in the doing/experiencing that we see who people are. A twenty-page description of a box of snakes might be objectively beautiful writing on a sentence level - but it really isn’t if your reader loses the will to live by the end of the third page.

   I’m aware that it sounds as though I’m saying that writing should be dumbed down, but that isn’t the case at all. Novelists like Jane Gardam, Muriel Spark, and Nora Roberts (to name but three) write with great clarity and surprising simplicity. And their novels are still subtle, intriguing, involving.

4. Publishing is not actively against you.

   I promise.

   Publishing is hungry. Publishing needs books. New ones. (Probably too many new ones.) All the time. One thing that is immediately striking about talking to agents, editors, and anyone who works in the publishing industry, is how much they love books, are passionate about books, and really, really want to find amazing books to publish.

   And a lot of people want to be published, and many of these people are talented and have great stories to tell. And the publishing industry needs to find ways to find these books, among the ones that aren’t good enough, aren’t ready yet, or aren’t commercially viable. That’s why there are submission guidelines, and that’s why rejections are standard or don’t come at all. That’s why some publishers only accept submissions from agents and others have only short submission windows. Publishing isn’t trying to keep you out. Publishing is trying to find a way to find you.

   This doesn’t mean that, if you are clocking up rejections, you won’t be published. Because - as you will know, if you have ever given up on a book that the rest of the world is raving about - we don’t all love the same book, and we don’t all champion the same book, and if we all made a list of our ten favourite books, sure, there would be overlap, but I would bet my horse***** there wouldn’t be two identical lists. Reading is subjective, and passion can’t be faked, and the person who takes on your writing needs to love the bones of it so that they can work with you and get your novel out into the world in the best possible way.

5. The first thing is to finish.

   Spend ten minutes on the internet (yes, even lovely Substack) and you’ll find a lot of advice about becoming a writer, much of which will be about building a following/joining groups/doing an MA/networking/marketing/going to ‘how to get published’ seminars. And many of these things are valuable, especially groups and courses, in terms of saving you from missteps by learning from others willing to share their experience. And all of these things might well help with your writing career. But you don’t need to be doing them all now.

   The only thing that you need to do now is: write the best book you can. And when you know, in your heart, that you have written the best book that you can, you can start to think about how to get published. The only necessary entry cost of a writing career is the time you put in. And that’s not nothing, and it can be hard to find the time, and to prioritise, particularly if you’re not confident or if you’re not well supported.

   But writing the best book you can is the one thing you absolutely have to do. And (see 1) it’s also the best part of being a writer.

   So please, enjoy it, and enjoy the fact that you are backing yourself. You should be proud. You should call yourself a writer, because that’s what you are.

Happy writing.

Lots of love,

Stephanie x

*When I told my agent this he laughed like a drain, which was the best possible reaction.

**I am waiting with some trepidation to see/smell the impact of the unidentified thing he found and ate while I wasn’t looking.

***I was going to add ‘be recognised by a reader in M&S’, but the reader was a friend of my auntie so I’m not sure that counts.

****If I really love the words I cut them and put them in a document that I might go back to later, when I need ideas for something else.

*****I don’t have a horse, but let’s imagine that I do, and that I am the sort of person who would use a living being in a wager. (I just made myself feel a bit ill.)

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You can find some of my books here, and some of the books I have worked on here, and details of what I do here.