A reader writes:
My name is NAME and I’m currently a junior at COLLEGE COLLEGE. My friend, NAME, who is in the same graduating class as me, referred me to your website. While I am a ACADEMIC MAJOR in a WORLD CITY right now, my true passion is writing poetry, and I’m trying to develop my skills in writing short stories. I am fairly certain that I want this hobby to become my career, but I don’t know where to even start! I will be the first person in my family to graduate with a 4-year degree, so I don’t have any relatives with applicable experience or knowledge. Do you have any advice on where to start?
I’ve been sitting on this question for months, and for our readers who are farther along in their writing careers I’m sure you understand why.
Where to start? Where to start? Is there a more impossible question to answer than WHERE TO START?
The advise that springs to mind is of the “just write” variety, advice that I will not give. “Just write” is dismissive and minimizing, like telling someone who’s clinically depressed that maybe they wouldn’t feel so crummy if they just lightened up and, you know, tried to have some fun and not worry so much all the time.
I couldn’t do that to you, NAME from COLLEGE COLLEGE. You say you have the desire. Very well. Now let’s put some shape to all that ambition. Let’s get you doing a web project.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
Mark Twain
Another way of approaching Twain’s advice is to take the “complex overwhelming task” and shrink it—in its entirety—until it’s small enough to be manageable.
Becoming a writer is a simple matter of mastering ideas, emotion, insight, subtext, research, writing, rewriting, polishing, publishing, marketing, publicity and finding, building and maintaining audience. You’re going to do all of those things, but on a scale you can handle.
Here’s what you need to do:
Pick the project
That memoir about your experiences growing up as the daughter of a cruel pineapple magnate is not a project. That’s your life’s work. A project is something like Skull-A-Day or SMITH Magazine’s Six-Word Memoirs. You will pick a project that is finite, manageable and low stakes, something like 36 Poems about Strawberry-Banana Yogurt.
Do the project
You will write your 36 poems about strawberry-banana yogurt. Or, if you are acting as an editor/curator, you will collect your 36 poems about strawberry-banana yogurt. (Per Doug’s comment, you will also need to set a deadline.)
Produce the project
Your project has to be public, but you’re not going to wait for permission. You’re going to put up a website (36PASBY.com is available, btw). You’ll do this yourself, or you’ll gain the invaluable experience of collaborating with other people who have different skills than you have. Either way you’re going to make it look rad.
Support the project
You will do all the things that people with “real” books do. You will throw a launch party. You will start a Facebook group (even if you are over Facebook). You will pitch a story to your local newspaper. (Again, if you’re up to the task, then collaborate. Doesn’t everyone know an aspiring publicist?)
Put an end to the project
The point of this exercise is to be quick and light and effective. If 36 Poems about Strawberry-Banana Yogurt takes off, then that’s great. If it doesn’t, then you will have already built in a sunset provision. Let your project be what it’s meant to be. Then walk away.
Rest
Rest is important. Rest now.
Asses the project
How did it go? What went wrong? What went right? What was in your control? What was out of your control? Be honest with yourself, but also be kind. It’s just a project.
Learn from the project
This whole time you’ve been (lightly) learning about what you do well, what you struggle with, what you think you could improve, what you’re always going to be hopeless at. Now take a moment to write down the lessons learned.
Rest again
Did I not mention that rest is important? Please rest again.
Do another project
Take what you’ve learned from the first project and do another one. And another. And another. And another. With a little hard work and luck these projects will grow in scope and size and important.
Then one day you’ll wake up to find that your next project is that memoir about growing up the child of a cruel pineapple magnate. Project and life’s work have become interchangeable. Fortunately, the muscles and skills you developed doing your web projects apply quite nicely. You’ll also find that you’ve managed to collect some friends, readers and collaborators along the way.
Then the book comes out, and you go on the radio, and the interviewer asks you how you got started as a writer, and you’ll smile and tell her about 36 Poems about Strawberry-Banana Yogurt and that story will absolutely kill.
You win. The end.
