Last week I completed a series on doing things in public. Just getting a first draft out there wasn’t so hard. Going through revision in front of folks, a little harder. But, it’s all blog posts. Yes, I put effort into it, but a post doesn’t represent my heart and soul’s desire and effort. Not like my real work does. I’ve been wrestling the “this is total crap” demon. She laughs a little when I’m writing and sits on my shoulder muttering, “I think that’s the third time you used ‘is.’ This is one passive character.”
Of course, my demon uses expletives.
The point is, it is one thing to put yourself out in this exploratory way where you can take it all back later or explain it away, and quite another to put your heart into something, to really try, and have to show that to a bunch of folks you don’t know. Unless.
Have you ever noticed that submitting to something still feels private? You can hear over and over how a submission process works, know that if your work gets published lots of people will have to read and approve of what you’ve written. And yet, it feels private. You don’t have to see the people who read your work, you don’t have to know that one woman laughed at the scene you’d meant to be poignant and some dude completely wrote off your ability to tell a story because you still mess up on that thing with the commas. You just don’t have to. It only really gets scary when you’ve gotten accepted and you’re about to be printed and get excited and tell everyone and then you have to wait. Because then it occurs to you: Someone is going to hate it, it will get reviewed poorly by somebody. And your grandma will read it and that someone, who you maybe dated or work with, will not tell you that they didn’t like it, to be nice, but then you’ll wonder who is sitting there thinking, “Right. Note to self, I can write better than that and so can my __________.”
Exposure terrifies. If you’ve done a good job—that is held the work in your best esteem, written to the best of your ability, and committed to topics and approaches that feel critical to you—then you’re out there with everything you’ve got. My youngest came up with a slogan that is the best I’ve ever heard for a public not perfect approach: Fun and Dangerous. I want us all to seek out places to push our work into the world and to watch ourselves become better for it.
So what is this blog today? I’m going to give you five ways to live with fun and danger in your writing.
1. Have something to say. Say it clearly.
2. Treat shame like a writing aphrodisiac. When you feel the rise of your blush from embarrassment, remember not just what, but that you created.
3. Always get clear on what’s important to you about your project. Find the emotional truth for you and bring it to every page.
4. Make a master plan for getting your work out there. New Yorker, okay, what next and why? Where do your words belong, where is your audience waiting to find you? What are you doing to get your work there? What are you willing to do?
5. Use your status updates like relevant details, not just details. If you are having a hard time keeping up with your writing goals, you can post how many words you’ve written everyday. I suggest, however, that you use your social media status updates as a way to tell a story, one that others want to read. Tell us the important details, that you’ve sent off the manuscript, that you’ve met the agent, that uou were rejected or accepted or fell in love in the small, but growing, window of waiting to hear back from the publisher.
Okay. I’m exhausted today. Still, I’m going to go back to my novel which feels like using sandpaper as deodorant and keep working. And when I need to think about something else, I’m going to start working on my master plan. Because as it turns out, researching where you submit makes a big difference. More on that… next week.