Thinking About My Writing Career

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Quite honestly, I feel intimidated. So many authors I look up to have either been professors, or they’ve gone to Ivy League schools such as Columbia or Yale. And then there’s me, working an entry-level job at age 32 and with eight years of work experience, with a BA in Psychology from Ohio State University. I don’t really have an impressive CV, so I start to wonder if I have the smarts to make it as an author.

And the lack of discipline is really a challenge. It’s hard, though, after working all day, to come home and try to create. So I wonder, because I am whining so much about how much my brain is fried at the end of the day, if I really want this?

Good books. I want to write good books, but it’s so hard. It looks easy. It seems like it should be easy. The planning and the ideas is fun. The researching is amazing. The actual writing? OH MY GOD. Let’s just say… um, yeah. It sucks ass.

Ass, I say.

But I know I can do it. I KNOW it. I just need to sit my bootie down and focus.

said she has different sizes of jeans. Big jeans for when she’s writing, because she has to bribe herself with snacks. Smaller jeans for revising, because revising is fun. I know that has her days of wanting to crawl under the desk and whimper. I know firsthand the things goes through to make a good book. If those authors go through that, then I shouldn’t be feeling so alone, right?

But I do feel alone. I feel like my turn won’t ever come, mostly due to my fault of not either producing stuff that’s good enough, or producing nothing at all. Both of which is my own fault, both things I can fix with hard work and DISCIPLINE.

Discipline, because getting halfway to my goal and having the almost irresistable urge to bail is BAD. I’ve got to push through, be willing to write thousands of words that may be thrown out someday just so I can get to know my characters, develop them, and mold them into something readable and saleable.

Because quite honestly? I have no intention of working in anybody’s office (except my own) for the rest of my life. This is a decision I just recently made. What this means is that I have GOT to focus, I have got to work my ass off, because writing is the only way I’m going to be able to do that. I want the whole package. I love copy editing, I do. But I don’t want to have to answer to the rigid rules of an office atmosphere. Ideally, I’d be able to survive off of writing novels and freelance editing, but I know that I have to really hunker down to be at that point.

I miss having a writing friend who I can dish about all this stuff with. 🙁 And I don’t mean just the technical stuff, but all the crazy, emotional stuff too.

Just as an FYI, I made a MySpace for writing: http://myspace.com/ronnithewriter When it asks for the last name, put in Davis. Security measure, you know. To avoid the spammers and scammers.

Anyway, I’m off for now. ‘Til next time.

19 thoughts on “Thinking About My Writing Career”

  2. Okay, I couldn’t add your personal one but I did add the writer one.

  3. Yes, you can do it. And you’re completely right. Just sit that bootie down and focus! Write on!

    Snoop says, Gooooooooo, Ronni!

  4. My Credentials for being an author-

    –Always wanted to be a picture book writer/illustrator–never wrote a thing that wasn’t required for school/doodled excessively, but never tried to create finished art not required in school. I have inattentive ADD and writing long hand hurt. (I’m dating myself here–computers were just getting going when I was in college.)

    Four years of college to be a teacher–no masters (but I did get nominated for teacher of the year my last year of teaching)

    Age 29–Take off a year when son is born to turn a poem I wrote for a college art class project into a pb. Spend a year revising and making a dummy. Get a few personal rejections.

    Year two of near poverty–start book two and illustrations. Get more nice rejections and a few requests for more work.

    Spend year three writing a pb that turns into a novel. Spend a lot of time loving novel writing and figuring it out.

    Next few years–blur–daughter born with cp–write off and on–feel depressed but keep at it when there are times of motivation.

    Novel two sells. So glad I didn’t give up along the way when there were soooo many chances to and naysayer.

    Keep at it!

  5. I was married and working at age 17, skipping college. It hasn’t been easy but I’ve learned enough about writing on my own to sell over thirty books. Believe in yourself and just have fun writing.

  6. You can do it! Although there are lots of brilliant writers, I don’t believe it’s a requirement. I have always believed the line about working harder than everyone else. If you are persistent and work hard at it, you WILL be published! You don’t have to be the best (no matter what it is you try to do). You just have to give 100% or 110%, whatever it takes to work harder than the others.

  7. Lack of an impressive degree certainly doesn’t mean you don’t have the smarts to be a writer…there are a lot of different things that a person can bring to a book…some writers are good with clever descriptions, some are funny, some bring great emotional depth…and most of it isn’t something a degree will necessarily teach you.

    Lack of discipline is a problem…I struggled with that for so long…I know how frustrating and downright painful it can be. I got over that part somehow, but I still don’t really know how…

  8. I think I’ll put this in list format; and I’ll apologize in advance for the rambling that’s about to occur — it’s that thing about “brain fried at the end of the day.”

    • The first half of your post nicely summarizes the disjointed thoughts that have been bumping around in my brain, quite noticeably the past several days, but off and on since… uh… junior high school.
      • Much like you: I am overeducated and underemployed with a lame CV.
        • Oooh! Aren’t you and I just so wonderfully smug and full of ourselves, abbreviating Curriculum Vitae rather than settling for the plebian résumé!
          • I’m not being entirely facetious here. I’ve been reading the blogs of a few popular writers lately, and the impression I come away with from some of them (the most popular, as it happens), is that a characteristic of many (not all, but many) successful writers is a somewhat smug self-confidence bordering on arrogance, often disguised under a transparent veneer of self-deprecation.
            • (Of course, my interpretation might be tinged with envy.)
      • It does look easy, doesn’t it? I mean, you sit there and type out a story. How hard can it be? I remember reading something by Robert Heinlein (he’s dead now), who said basically the same thing. He wrote his first story, a formulaic mystery, and couldn’t believe that anyone would pay him to do something that was so easy. So he claimed, anyway.
        • Do you ever wonder if you’re trying too hard to write something good? According to an essay I read years ago by Stephen King, it’s kind of a numbers game. The more you submit, the better your chances. Would it be okay to maybe focus on quantity for a while? Like, take the NaNoWriMo approach: take the first idea that pops into your head and crank out 50,000 stream-of-consciousness words about it.
        • It looks easy, it should be easy; what are we so afraid of? Like the Nike ads say: Just Do It!
        • You already have evidence that you’re good: your first manuscript at least got picked up by an agent. DON’T STOP NOW! Crank out another one!
      • ‘s comment resonated with me: from junior high school, I fancied I’d be a writer “some day.” Well, someday ain’t happened yet. Like Amanda, I rarely wrote a thing that wasn’t for schoolwork, and my artwork consisted of doodles in the margins. I always thought, “some day I’ll write a novel, some day I’ll draw a comic strip, some day I’ll write a screenplay.” Someday isn’t a plan. Sitting down and typing something, that’s a plan. I was thinking just yesterday of all the years I’ve wasted. What if I wrote for half an hour a day, five days a week, for all those years? What if I practiced sketching for 15 minutes a day for all those years since junior high school? I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of doodles I’ve done since high school. Yet that nagging “someday” thought still taunts me from time to time.
        • My dumb little drawings were one of the few things I ever did that my dad appreciated. He really thought, I now realize, that I could have done something with my writing and art. But, I never took it seriously, and never had any faith in my own abilities.

    (Too d@mn long… continued below!)

  9. (… continued from above!)

    • The second half of your post… oh, you name-dropper you! That’s something else I noticed on the blogs I’ve been reading; both the arrogant prats and the cool people seem to mention other authors quite a bit. Usually in glowing terms.
      • Apparently there’s a schmooze-factor to this writing game.
        • Which you seem to be pretty good at! I’ve seen your photos from those writers’ conventions you go to! You already get along great with the published crowd. You’re already one of the gang! You belong there! If you didn’t, you wouldn’t look so happy in those photos, and they wouldn’t look so happy to be hanging and chatting with you!
          • If I even go to one of these writers’ convention things, YOU had better be there to autograph a copy of your latest book for me!
      • Authors seem to hang out with authors. Is it because they’re intellectual equals? Is it due to shared interests? Do they like each other? Are they merely keeping an eye on the competition? Are they all such geeks that nobody else will be their friend?
        • Do you suppose Hemingway was a closet geek? Maybe all that manly-man hunting, drinking, and womanizing stuff was just an act!
      • Anyway, you seem to have quite a supportive circle of writer friends to dish with here at LJ, from what I see in the responses to this post so far.
        • An advantage to LJ writer-friends over “real life” writer-friends: they won’t waste your time and give you an excuse to not be writing! Write first, check your LJ (and now MySpace… like you need another time-sucking blog… emphasis on the suck, ‘cuz MySpace sucks bigtime, and I’d urge you to delete it, but that’s just me) later.
          • (Speaking of things I don’t care for: still too broke to get that tatt, huh? Blessed are the poor!)
    • One more thing, and then I’ll shut up. Wait. Make that two more things:
      1. Unsolicited advice from, no, not a published writer, but rather, from a prolific and experienced procrastinator: it’s not even June and you’ve pretty much read your annual goal of 100 books already. I know they say that good writers read a lot. But reading too much, not to mention watching lots of movies, absorbs a lot of time! Two hours wasted watching a video are two hours you coulda been pounding away on that manuscript.
        • My personal time-suck is… right here. How many hours each evening do I spend surfing teh interwebses? Plenty. And I don’t even have a MySpace. Uh, not that I’ll admit to, anyway.

        The next time you pick up a new book to read, why don’t you set it down and fire up the word processor instead. After pulling out the ethernet cable.

      2. Just curious, and I hope this isn’t a depressing query: have you had anything published? Short stories, non-fiction articles, “Humor in Uniform” in Readers’ Digest? I’m sure you’ve heard it a ka-jillion times, that non-fiction is easier to publish than fiction. Your write-ups about your trips to Chicago, Disney’s Lands, and various places you’ve what-evered are usually entertaining and informative. Have you tried knocking out 500 words about some aspect of these places and shotgunning it off to a dozen travel-related magazines? I don’t really know what I’m talking about, never having tried it, but things I’ve read have suggested this approach. If there’s any truth to the “advice,” I would think you’d have a pretty good shot at getting your name in print that way. That by-line might give you the motivation to keep hammering away at the novels.

    Okay. This reply is probably over-length. [EDIT: yup!] Gosh, look at how many words [EDIT: 1200!] I cranked out in response to a LiveJournal post! You’re right, writing is easy! It’s figuring out how to get paid for it that’s tough!

    Thanks for a thought-provoking entry, and for the kick in the unfocussed bootie you’ve provided.

    Now stop lollygagging on teh interwebses and go write something!

  10. To answer your questions:

    1. I actually don’t get to hang out with writers often, unless I’m at a convention or an author signing, neither of which happens more than once a year for me if I’m lucky. I see only every six weeks even, if I’m lucky, and he’s my boyfriend.

    2. As for the tattoo, my friend is going to buy it for me. 😛

    3. As for the book list, no, I don’t believe I read too much. I read FAST, that’s what I do. I also read books FOR work, LOTS of them, and that’s what’s contributed to my 100 book goal.

    4. I haven’t been published since right after high school, when I wrote a couple of articles for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

    5. I know there are people who go for the quantity vs. quality for whatever, but I cannot, not at this point. To break in, I have to be GOOD. And it’s possible that I am trying too hard to be good, but I can’t accept any less from myself. I don’t want my book on the $3.98 table a month after it’s come out.

  11. I think I need to start taking in caffeine. Work drains me, especially the days I don’t even HAVE work, so by the time I get home, the last thing I want to do is spend time working some more, no matter how much I enjoy it once I’m in the midst of it. I come home and go straight to bed for an hour. And my job is not that hard, just very mentally taxing sometimes. But if I had more energy, I think I’d be able to write more. Seems like all the good writers drinks lots of coffee. For me, it’ll be Red Bull, though.

  13. Maybe try exercise, instead of caffeine? It’s an energy boost without the crash at the end.

  14. That would make me do nothing but head to the kitchen and stuff myself, which would put me in a food coma and cause me to go to bed.

    I’m not really into excercise, unfortunately.

  15. I think we all feel like you. I know I do… especially today…just rejected by EE and I wonder if ALL I will ever be is second best and a Mom to my 6 month old. (he liked my writing, said it was strong.. liked my plot, but the book just did not click enough with him to sell it) Somehow we keep going, you did AND landed an agent. That is huge working full-time and being a Mom. I see the window of opportunity closing a bit each day as the writer fades and the Mom takes over. But I want to be published…

    I guess we just have to yip out loud and keep moving forward.

  16. Thank you for validating. *hugs*

    And you know what? Being a mom is a VERY important job. 🙂 But I’m sure you know that. Feel free to email me anytime.

  17. Gosh. I know what you mean. I have an easy job now that is so great for writing, but it was a lot harder to write when I worked at Sears. I was so physically exhausted from all I had to do, and so emotionally drained from how mean customers and upper management were. I hardly wrote at all in the 4.5 years I worked there.

    And I can’t drink caffeine–it gives me heart palpitations, not energy. So I couldn’t even turn to that!

  18. Re: #5: Holy crap. I swear I had those precise thoughts just today! I’ve had horrible visions of the $3.98 table.

    Then I realize that I’m not even agented yet, because I’m not finished with either manuscript I’m doing, and I feel arrogant for ever having thought my book would end up in a store period.

    You are too cute! I am sorry you’re frustrated but your journals are enjoyable.

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