The Secret Sauce to Being a Good Writer
My Essay on Writing from Jane Friedman's Blog, October 29, 2022
*I was honored to have an essay published on Jane Friedman’s blog on October 27, 2022. I reprinted it here. Click the link below the sample for the entire essay. Enjoy.
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Honestly, the No. 1 thing is: Ignore 99.999% of the industry fluff you hear about online. (Yes, I’m aware of the irony I am demonstrating here.) It’s not that people online are trying to fool you on purpose, necessarily, but rather that they all have their own agenda. (And, frankly, bottom lines.)
Here’s a controversial opinion: Writers are born, not made. You heard me right. Let me unpack that.
If you’re a natural-born writer, then you’ll write your ass off either way. If you’re not, no amount of classes or workshops will change that in a fundamental way. To be clear: Sometimes it takes “real” writers years, even decades, to succeed.
A great example is my good writer-friend Allison Landa, whose memoir, Bearded Lady: When You’re a Woman with a Beard, Your Secret Is Written All Over Your Face was finally just published by Woodhall Press after a 17-year (yep!) journey to publication, which had begun while she was still in the MFA program at St. Mary’s.
This doesn’t mean that because you have the internal drive to write but haven’t pumped out profound prose that you “aren’t a writer.” It probably means that you simply have to try harder or in more efficient ways. But sometimes, sadly, yes, there are people who wish they were writers, who enjoy writing sometimes or even often, but alas are not writers for one simple reason: They don’t have that deep, driving force which animates their lust for communication with other human beings via words on the page.
There’s nothing wrong with this. Not everyone is meant to be a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer. Not everyone, ergo, is a writer. In our contemporary culture of constant uplift and positivity, I think what sometimes gets lost is the torn, ragged flag of reality. Because some people are writers and others aren’t doesn’t make this statement pretentious; on the contrary (as Dostoevsky would quip), it makes it honest. (Of course, just my humble opinion.)
The second thing about being a writer is: My God, read a LOT. I mean A LOT. And in multiple genres.
Here’s a gold quote from Stephen King’s classic memoir/writing instruction manual, On Writing: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
Not everyone is destined to be a writer, just as not everyone is meant to be a doctor. Yet it doesn't diminish the value of those who enjoy writing but don't have the all-encompassing drive to be professional writers. Thank you for sharing this Michael.
Interesting example of the "born, not made" thesis. I wonder if those who are born writers are destined to be "made," as well? By which I mean that one can't summon the hunger if it's not there, but those who are born with it are not going to rest until they make themselves. I think of my friend Carol, who I interviewed recently for my Substack. Her debut story collection took 20 years to write and 10 years to find a publisher. This doesn't mean that she was born fully-formed -- she embraced the long apprenticeship of the writing life and made herself into a writer. But she was born with that "divine instability," as Mikhail Baryshnikov calls it, that wouldn't let her rest without getting more pages behind her and then getting those words right.