If you are a struggling writer (and who isn’t?), you know the problem. From the co-worker who offers you 72 reasons why you should abandon your dream to the friend who’s never strung two words together and yet considers himself eminently qualified to offer you counsel on your writing career, the world is full of unsolicited, unwanted, and utterly unhelpful advice. Perhaps this is true regardless of what kind of work you do, but I can’t help feeling it’s worse for writers. I doubt that most dentists get many suggestions about how best to be a dentist—especially from people who aren’t in the profession themselves—and I don’t think people in business school are often forced to listen to lists of reasons why they should give up.
Having spent a lifetime dealing with naysayers and suggestion-givers, I have found the best way to deal with them is not to offer justifications, storm off in a rage, or feign a sudden loss of ability to speak English, but to respond with a simple statement that leaves no room for argument. As part of my ongoing effort to make life just a little easier for writers, here is a list—in no particular order—of the six most annoying comments writers get, along with some quick responses that will silence the unwanted advice.
1.“Why don’t you try writing like [insert name of fabulously successful writer].” This oft-repeated suggestion falls into the “sure road to success” category of advice. It is based on the assumption that, if Dan Brown sold a gajillion copies of The Da Vinci Code, you can sell a gajillion and one by writing The Michelangelo Cipher. The problem is that that no one can really choose to write like someone else. And, even if we could, it wouldn’t mean we’d be successful. Agents have been deluged with J. K. Rowling wannabe’s over the past decade, but most of them remain unpublished.
My answer: “I’m still trying to learn to write like Jill Jepson. Once I have that down, I’ll give Dan Brown a try.”
2.“Try writing magazine articles (or how-to books, or fishing manuals, or anything else).” This one comes from people who think they would like writing magazine articles or how-to books or whatever, and have somehow gotten the idea that people can become rich and famous doing so. It virtually never has anything to do with what you want to write, nor does it take into consideration the fact that most writers don’t choose what to work on anyway—the work chooses them. I always have scores of stories, novels, and essays hopping around my head like jumping beans. Why would I write something I don’t want to when there is so much stuff I do?
My answer: “Great idea! I’ll do that! Just as soon as I finish my next seven novels.”
3.“Try talking to other writers and find out how they made it.” This might be great advice if you were trying to get your law practice up and running, but it’s generally ridiculous advice for writers. Most successful writers have no idea why their book was selected out of thousands of submissions, or why it sold well, or how they’re going to pull it off again. They can tell you to keep writing, to work hard, to not give up, but you already know that.
My answer: “I talked to Stephen King, and he said the best way to strike it big was to write a novel about a high school girl with telekinetic powers who sets the school on fire with her mind when she’s humiliated at her prom. But he already did that.”
4.“Don’t be discouraged: Some writers wait decades to get published.” Based on the dubious notion that you should feel better because other writers had it worse than you, this attempt to be comforting is anything but. I must have heard it a thousand times before I actually got published, and every time, it felt like I was being hit over the head with a sledge hammer.
My answer: “So my writing career will take off when I’m eighty. Great.”
5.“Don’t be discouraged: [Some famous writer] got rejected 60000 times before she sold her first novel.” This brother-in-law to # 4 is perhaps the world’s least effective attempt at encouragement. If a writer is frustrated about her 10th or 100th rejection, knowing that someone else got a lot more is about as comforting as reminding a person with a two-week-long cold that it might last three months.
My answer: “Oh, good! I only have 59,789 rejections to go!”
6.“Stop being hard on yourself.” Every time I make a thoughtful comment about my work, someone will say this to me. I know it’s meant well, but frankly, I hate it. If a writer says she’s not happy with something she wrote, that her story needs improvement, that she wishes she was better at plotting or developing characters or writing fluid, compelling prose, she’s not being self-deprecating. She’s being honest.
My answer: “You’re right! Everything I write is great! Why, I have no need for improvement at all!”
7.“Why don’t you go to law school?” When my first husband, the late Omar S. Castaneda, was still trying to get his first stories published, his father sent him an ad for electrician training. I still remember the spiral of depression it sent him on. Mysteriously, family and friends think they’re being helpful when they tell you to give up on your dream. I used to get suggestions to become a television reporter, high school teacher, bookstore proprietor, and flight attendant. The fact that I had no desire to do any of those things did not deter well-meaning friends from suggesting them.
My answer, “I already have a career. Like it or not, I’m a writer.”
And that more-or-less sums the whole thing up, doesn’t it? We’re writers. We do what we do. We need to do it our way, not someone else’s way. And we’re not giving up. Get used to it, world.