Victoria Patterson's Letter to Her Beginning Writer Self

In the 29th in a series of posts from authors of 2018 books entered for The Story Prize, Victoria Patterson, author of The Secret Habit of Sorrow (Counterpoint), shares some insights gained through experience.

You have no idea what you’ve undertaken. That’s OK. You’re going to love writing. No matter what happens, it’s yours. But here are some ideas and thoughts.

Don’t suppress who you are—your oddities, wackiness, your un-literary background. You’ll end up closing off the source of your most true impulses. If you alter who you are because of fear of not succeeding, or of not fitting into a capricious market, you’ll hate yourself, and then your work will suck anyways.

Stop asking others, “Do you think I have talent?” It’s like asking, “Should I buy it?” i.e., “Should I buy myself?” No matter how difficult, no matter the obstacles, no matter the years it takes, be willing to trust yourself.

Learn to honor yourself through your failures. Let them contribute to a stealthy self-respect, steadiness, and poise, which will be integral to your work.

Praise your adversity-bred toughness. Many writers have abandoned their craft due to the necessity of rejections.

It’s not that exciting. Learn to appreciate the drudgery. It’s a requirement. The grind becomes part of your ability to write well.

One of your best teachers will be yourself: by copying sentences, paragraphs, pages and pages in private notebooks, from authors you revere. Don’t worry. It’s not imitation. Go hog wild. Copy as much as you want. The magic of these sentences will cast a spell, impelling you toward your own expression.

Try not to worry too much about angering people. Chances are they’ll be angry at what you didn’t predict, and the things you fretted over won’t matter.

Your deficiencies and weaknesses will paradoxically become the best and worst qualities of your prose. Don’t despair. Whatever you don’t or can’t overcome, you can let it be purposeful and useful to your work. But to do this, you have to be aware and alert, otherwise, it’ll hide in your prose, diminishing it, and you won’t even notice.

Don’t use talent as exhibitionism, withholding behind language. Move deeper, risking vulnerability and foolishness. Don’t fall for the easier, flashier accomplishment.

A commitment to your work is not a pledge to achieve fame or success. Try not to dwell over the fate of your work. Instead brood over the writing.

Remember that your truest appreciation comes from silent, absorbed readers.

Learn to live for the next thing you write, and the certainty and thrill when your own work speaks back to you.

Don’t fall for the constant fatuous exhibitionism of social media, a need to be in public view as conspicuously as possible. Most of your time must be reserved for privacy.

Don’t be afraid to write badly, just do it in private, where mediocrity and badness can flourish, and where you don’t have to strain not to be trite, sentimental, or clichéd. You have to loosen up and write badly. Unless you’re willing, you can’t write well. You’ll need lots of privacy for your inevitable bad writing.

One of your greatest attributes is your urgency to write, that vital seed of determination, interest, need, and desire. It’s all yours. You might not know what the story means yet, but you are impelled to tell it, and this fundamental element propels a reader’s interest and can’t be faked.

Be glad that your stories are hungry. If the motivation is trivial to the writing, the story will lack the passion that generates interest, no matter how beautiful the prose.

Try not to worry about intellectual expression or academia. Your respect and delight in the incidental and prosaic details of life are more helpful, as well as your ability to perceive through emotions.

Karen E. Bender's Advice to a Young Writer: Thoughts on the Structures That Hold up the House of the Story

In the 26th in a series of posts from authors of 2018 books entered for The Story Prize, Karen E. Bender, author of The New Order (Counterpoint), shares her thinking.

You start with honesty.

There is the truth that you want to hide, that you think others will turn away from. Combating shame is your currency, your work. It doesn’t have to be a dark truth, though it can be—you can describe a joyful truth, a crooked truth, a funny truth, something that hasn’t been said about the world and that you want to hear. Everything that hasn’t been said—you can say it. Writers reinvent the world, create ways of seeing, through their precise way of depicting what is around them. All you need is your own insight and bravery. You are combating the lies in our culture—all the clichés, all the ads, all the statements people say to explain their world but not yours, not exactly. And lies are so grating because you secretly know that your experience is valid, and that it is right, too.

Woke

The world feels different when you describe it with that specificity, that correctness. It feels brighter, lighter—mostly, it feels real. When you describe the truth about the world, the world snaps awake.

So tell a truth in whatever way you want to. You can tell it through fiction, in which honesty is not literal but is emotional, and needs to feel true. You can tell it through nonfiction, which is literal truth created by you.

Your truth may not be other people’s, and that is fine. It’s not supposed to be. But others may hear your version and say, yes. That is how I move through the world as well. That moment, that connection, is what bonds writers and readers, what nourishes you as a writer, more than anything—it’s the closest we get to knowing what it is to be another person.

You shape the world with your truth. It’s waiting to be shaped by you; this is your opportunity.

You say it.

Then craft.

This is the funnel for your honesty. The way you shape it into a precise container. For art isn’t unshaped life, it is life that feels more vibrant than life. What is the question you want to answer, how are you going to shape your story to answer it? How are you going to use all of the tools at your disposal—sensory detail, dialogue, scene, plot? Play with these craft elements, use them. Don’t feel that you can only be good at one element of craft. If you are a sensory detail person, you can also become a dialogue person. You may hate thinking about plot but it can become your friend. Read many different authors and see how they use these tools. Also, read sentences out loud and see how the words feel as you say them, how the rhythm of the sentences resonate in you.

Then patience.

Being a writer means that much is out of your control. Magazines may accept or turn down your work. Readers may connect with your work or dismiss it. You can’t control how others respond to your manuscript. But you can control your process of revision, how you nurture your work. Take the time to write a story once, twice, as many times as you need to reshape it. Do it again. Be resolute. Be ambitious. Be fearless. As a writer, your power is in your patience. That’s what you can control—the process, your vision, your words.

Kimberly Lojewski Writes A Letter to Her Young Self: On the Dangers of Magic Portals, Nyquil, and Renaissance Faire Carnies

In the 21st in a series of posts from authors of 2018 books entered for The Story Prize, Kimberly Lojewski, author of Worm Fiddling Nocturne in the Key of a Broken Heart (Burrow Press), learns from her own experience.

Dear Young Aspiring Writer Kimberly,

I’m writing to let you know that we’ve finally published our first book! You always believed that it would happen. You persevered and it did. Your very first story collection.

You are not twenty-three like you planned. But forty years is not so old. You’re still in the game. You are only, like, twenty-two years behind Mary Shelley.

Things to keep in mind over the next few decades… no, whiskey does not make you write better. No, obsessively visiting the haunts of dead writers will not imbue you with some magical writing powers. Nope. Crystals won’t work either. Nor will spiritual pilgrimages, or hot air balloons, or playing guitar in the moonlight. You’re going to have to actually write. I know, I know. It’s not what you were imagining.

You will have to make your peace with the editing process, young buck. There is literally no way around that part. Believe me, you’ve tried. They just won’t publish your stuff without it.

MFAs are a good time, full of well-learned folk and lots of talking about writing, but you will have to pay back all of those student loans one day. You really will. I’m serious. Can you please find an adult to explain the risk v. reward system to you? And maybe not buy that eleventh pair of boots, like you’re just spending monopoly money?

On the subject of every boyfriend you’re going to have, they will never “love you the way dry roots love rain.” Stop. Just stop reading so much Carl Sandburg and ee cummings. Put the Wuthering Heights down. And when you get to college, don’t start reading Bukowski. He’ll only give you a predilection for snarky drunks who cheat on you.

Eesh. And the bad news is that even though I’ve kept pretty much all of your juvenile writings and journals… they aren’t quite as deep or probing as we once believed. Just a lot of obsessing over boys really. I hate to break it to you, but they will probably never be published posthumously.

Things that are not going to work:

Medieval fare: Crossing swords: 

Your novel about a girl named Dew Rain who runs away to join the medieval festival. You will never finish it, but you will run away to join the medieval festival and be rudely awakened to the fact that those people are carnies with fake British accents.

You’re thinly veiled copycat series of Sweet Valley High called Sweetwater Valley featuring brunette twins named April and Delilah. I know it seems like a foolproof plan, but the original wasn’t very good to begin with. Besides, Sweet Valley High fizzles out sometime in the nineties.

Also, the one about the teenager who falls through a portal into Ireland? That never takes off either. Yah, I know you really want to write some leprechaun dialogue, but it turns out magic portals aren’t considered a legitimate plot device. I know. I can hardly believe it either.

Lastly, there may come a time when you have a psychotic reaction to Nyquil and decide to write your entire memoirs in a three-day stretch and then send them out to everyone you know. Scrap that idea. Totally scrap it. Stay away from the Nyquil completely. If you get bronchitis, go straight to the hospital. And throw your laptop out the window.

Aside from that, buckle up and love and hate the next twenty odd years. You’ve got lots of living to do. For now, just know that you’ll get around to the writing one day.

Love,

Mature (you’ll definitely come to dislike that word though)
Published Author Kimberly

Dustin M. Hoffman's Letter to A Young Writer (Probably Himself)

In the 60th in a series of posts on 2016 books entered for The Story Prize, Dustin M. Hoffman, author of One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist (University of Nebraska Press), gives himself a pep talk.

Dear Doubt,
Dear Young Writer,
That is: Dear Young Writer Who Is Probably Me,
That is: Dear Doubt, Embarrassment, Anxiety,

Not much has changed, I suppose, from that first workshop story. The doubt and embarrassment shadows you and will continue. To be a writer is to question your purpose, your prose, your themes, your commas. To be a writer is to doubt and to delete adjectives. Even writing this now, I hesitate to spill advice. But I urge you to build confidence in your gaping doubt. That dark pit will house your foundation. I worry much more about you, young writer who is probably me, when you’re sure and blustering and building stories atop sand. Confidence happens rarely for you, I know, and here I am stealing those grains.

Listen and be humble and be obsessed with writers better than you. There will always be more of them than you’ll ever have time to read, and that’s a shame worth embracing. Compare yourself to the world and find yourself small. That smallness allows you to explore the crannies where tiny truths may have slipped. These tiny truths are much more interesting than the boulders you try to heft on your shoulder when you scratch maudlin poetry on notebook paper, when you turn those angst-filled ambiguities into end-rhyming song lyrics of protest in your punk-rock band. Eventually, young writer who is probably me, you’ll find a small truth hiding, and you’ll write a story about a drywaller you used to work with. You’ll be scared to write that story that doesn’t seem meaningful enough, because it isn’t death or love or revolution or madness. Your story is merely work, merely that living you make and try to forget so you can make big bleeding art.

Putting up drywall: The shape of truth

Listen to the teacher who tells you that drywaller is worth writing about, the drywaller who was your friend when you worked construction, a job that was the opposite of art, of those hulking-with-purpose punk rock songs and obtuse poems. In the corner of that drywaller’s mud pan, behind the dried mud, you might find your little truth. Gripped in his callused hands, there’s something worth writing around. And that you don’t understand the shape of this truth or how to hold something so small is the reason you should try. That you are terrified of getting it wrong and embarrassing yourself and betraying that drywaller is why you should write it.

I’m going to risk a foolishly big truth here: Write the stories you’re scared to write. Skip those ones that feel big enough to be literature. Don’t worry about whether your story has enough in it to turn into a novel and sell a million copies and live forever. Don’t write the stories packed full of relatability for the workshop. If you write your small stories that make your teeth grind and bladder hurt and spine sweat because you’re so scared you’ll get them wrong, I promise there will be pages for you and readers for those pages. And then when you become good at finding more small stories, only write the ones that make you anxious, that you doubt you’re good enough to write.

Under the neon flicker of the short story form, those small stories have a home. Stay anxious as you imagine every reader. Only when you’re worried and doubting will you care enough to find the small truth that fits into the palm of the short story.

Sincerely,

A Not-so-old Writer with More Embarrassment Ahead

Alexander Weinstein's Letter To Himself as a Young Writer

In the 31st in a series of posts on 2016 books entered for The Story Prize, Alexander Weinstein, author of Children of the New World (Picador), shares some wisdom.

Dear Alexander,

How’s third grade? Happy to hear you’ve discovered creative writing! I wanted to share something you’ve yet to learn about your writing: Your work is going to be rejected. A lot. I’m here from the future to tell you that the number of rejections you’ll have by the time you’re thirty-five will reach well into the hundreds. Your first acceptance? It won’t come until after ninety-four rejections. And there’s only one consolation I can offer you: This is par for the course in the writing life.

What you’ll wish, of course, is that the first story you ever write will be published. As a third-grader, just now discovering writing, you think all it takes is to simply finish a book and send it to the publishing houses. They’ll then send you a huge check, the book becomes a New York Times best seller, and you retire from all other work in order to devote your time to writing. Alas, it never works this way—not for you, not for anyone.

Instead, prepare for the following:

You’ll graduate college with an undergraduate degree in creative writing—a degree which you’ll find is mostly good for restaurant work. You’ll toil in kitchens, landscaping jobs, and underpaid interning for years, where no one seems to care about your writing whatsoever. You’ll become a father, the duties of which include many important things, like changing diapers, preparing food, singing lullabies, loving well—but doesn’t include writing.

Writer-in-training

Over the years as a struggling writer, you’ll regularly wonder if you were truly meant to be a writer or if it was just a hopeless delusion you’ve foolishly nurtured. The dark nights of the soul, inherent in the artistic process, won’t be pleasurable. The stereotypical and often romanticized Life-of-The-Struggling-Writer, while seemingly idyllic in novels, won’t feel romantic or idyllic. Yes, there are always cafés, bars, and coffee shops where you can write, but it won’t feel like Paris. Instead, you’ll learn how to survive on day-old-bagels and thrift store clothes, and in the process you’ll learn to be a loving father, a dedicated partner, a devoted friend, and many other things which will make you a better human, and in turn, a better writer—but won’t necessarily get you published.

All of this is part of the job. Your only duty as a writer during the dark years: to keep writing.

For here’s something you cannot yet know: As you struggle through all the rejections of the early years, you’ll discover that the rejections will make you a stronger writer. Years later, you’ll revisit your early stories which were turned down for publication, and you’ll thank god they were never published. You’ll learn to write stories not to impress other people, or for fame, or because you want publication—but because there’s no way for you not to write. And as soon as you let go of your need for publication, you’ll find your stories unfolding in unexpected ways; they’ll surprise you by revealing things about your own heart that you never knew.

You’ll go to grad school, where you’ll learn how to teach—and you’ll discover that you love it. You’ll make friends there who will become your readers and editors for many years to come. You’ll stay up late, drinking wine and enjoying their company. All of this is good for your writing. And you’ll work on your stories for a long, long time. If we count the start of your writing life as this moment in third grade when you’re first dreaming of publication, it’ll take you over thirty years of steady dedication before your first collection is published. Don’t worry—it’s all worth it—this is what it means to be a writer. The truth is: for you, life ultimately feels better when you write.

As for the secrets of how to make it as a writer, they’re simple: Keep writing, read authors you love, edit like mad, open doors for other writers whenever you can, quiet the inner critic, be compassionate to yourself through all the challenges of the writing life, and be thankful for the stories that come knocking at your door. When you hear them waiting outside, open the door wide, welcome them in.

Patrick Dacey's Brief Warning to a Young Writer

In the 13th in a series of posts on 2016 books entered for The Story Prize, Patrick Dacey, author of We've Already Gone This Far (Henry Holt & Co.), describes what serious effort requires.

A Brief Warning to a Young Writer

If you’re writing fiction, if you feel compelled to write fiction, then you’ve already joined the party, which isn’t a very fun party; in fact, it’s the worst party you’ve ever been to, and, ironically, it’s the one you’ve been fervently anticipating your entire life. Why are you here? Who would spend so many hours alone in a room of infinite voices? Don’t you realize that, by the end of the night, the only thing you will leave with is confusion?

Your entire life is dedicated to the idea of love. Not happiness, sadness, jealousy, rage, or amazement—these are fleeting abstract emotions—but love. Love is poised to exist in us at all times, as is hate. You cannot have one without the other. You love the earth; you hate the people who destroy it, and so on. That’s the main conflict in every story. How can we love and feel loved when everything around us is on fire?

That’s not to say you have to be ultra serious about everything you write. Love is the little fart sounds our bodies make when pressed together, just the same as it is the regret one has from leaving a lover in the middle of the night.

If you’re prepared to take on the question of love, then you must feel everything, you must be afraid, awed, disgusted, impressed, and embarrassed.

You should also want to be read. There’s no point in writing if no one is reading what you’ve written. A storyteller is meant to be heard. Write every first line that comes to mind. Pursue it. Be disciplined. Be open to the source, the voice that says, “It was clear to everyone that A’s eulogy was much better than B’s.” Don’t censor your wild mind. Be a conduit for all that happens in the unseen world inside your head.

Be prepared to spend hours revising what you’ve written. If you find yourself bored by any line, delete it. If you find yourself nodding off by the end of the first page, throw the entire thing away. Make sure you have a good title. Use real objects in the world, and make them magical. Also, write every day. Be willing to go broke, lose people in your life, suffer, fall in love too easily. Get away from whatever is considered a “literary scene,” live alone, write in silence, be a good person, talk to strangers, watch your neighbor’s dog and look at their stuff, take long unplanned trips, be open, be sincere, be honest.

Accept favors.

Say thank you.

Don’t apologize.

Most of all, though, you should understand that if what you’re writing is any good, you will find yourself thoroughly exhausted, possibly devoid of emotion, at the end of the day. You give a piece of yourself away with every story you put out in the world, until, eventually, you have nothing left to give, and you are forgotten. Don’t be dismayed. You were able to create infinite histories recorded in infinite volumes, little treasures to be found when least expected.

You have served your purpose—the only purpose. You have conquered time.