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1. Amateurs get ready. Professionals get to work.
Amateurs attend workshops, read writing books, get an MFA, build their author websiteâdo anything but write their bookâbecause they donât feel ready. Professionals know they will never be ready, so they dive in anyway.
At some point you must trust yourself as a writer. You may not know exactly where you are going, but you have to set out, and sometimes, without calculation on your part, the reader will honor the effort itself.
âTracy Kidder and Richard Todd, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction
2. Amateurs beat themselves up. Professionals forgive.
Professionals know that to write is to be in a constant state of imperfection. They know that most of the time theyâll be stumbling around in the dark, hitting one dead end after another. To them itâs business, not personal. Amateurs, on the other hand, use every wrong turn and every misstep as fuel for their running commentary on why they canât, or shouldnât, be a writer.
Elizabeth Gilbert, best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, talks about why self-forgiveness is the most important writerly virtue:
Your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. You will make vows: âIâm going to write for an hour every day,â and then you wonât do it. You will think: âI suck, Iâm such a failure. Iâm washed-up.â Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesnât take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness . . .
3. Amateurs cling to lost causes. Professionals let go.
In my guest post for storyaday.org, I talk about Adele and Gwen Stefani and their recent successes. This year Gwen released her third solo album, and it debuted at number one on the Billboard charts. Adele also released a new album, which surpassed the worldwide record-breaking success of her second album. But both Adele and Gwen struggled for a long time. They worked on their albums for years, scrapping song after song, until they finally found the ones worth keeping.
Itâs hard to throw stuff out when youâre an artist. Even when you know itâs not good, you cling to it; you want proof that youâve accomplished something. But professionals grit their teeth and toss out the junkâgiant slabs of it if need be. They know that the only work worth sharing is the work that moves them.
You canât use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have. âMaya Angelou Tweet
4. Amateurs talk about how hard writing is. Professionals write.
In 2012, a young author named Julian Tepper wrote an article for the New Yorker called âIn Which Philip Roth Gave Me Life Advice.â At the time, Tepper worked at a deli that was frequented by his writing idol, Philip Roth. Tepper recounts getting up the nerve one day to give Roth his newly published first novel. Roth congratulated him and then said:
But I would quit while youâre ahead. Really, itâs an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because itâs not any good. I would say just stop now. You donât want to do this to yourself.
Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love (mentioned earlier) responded to Rothâs advice with her own article:
[S]eriouslyâis writing really all that difficult? Yes, of course, it is; I know this personallyâbut is it that much more difficult than other things? Is it more difficult than working in a steel mill, or raising a child alone, or commuting three hours a day to a deeply unsatisfying cubicle job, or doing laundry in a nursing home, or running a hospital ward, or being a luggage handler, or digging septic systems, or waiting tables at a delicatessen, orâfor that matterâpretty much anything else that people do?
Not really, right? . . .
Becoming a novelist is not some sort of dreadful Mayan curse, or dark martyrdom that only a chosen few can withstand for the betterment of humanity. . . . If youâre lucky, you might be able to make a small living out of this thing. If youâre exceedingly lucky, other people might come to appreciate your gifts. If you are phenomenally lucky, you might become lionized in your own lifetime, like the great Philip Roth himself.
And if that should ever happen to youâif you should ever find yourself both successful and lovedâplease do try to keep in mind that you have been blessed, not blighted.
Take the First Step Today
If you donât feel ready to write, if you donât know what to write about, or if you canât scare off your inner critic, then the first step is to start writing every day. Donât expect anything of yourself other than a few sentencesâno word limit, no time limit, no editing, no judging. The goal is to slowly build your writing muscles.
Yes, at first youâll feel flabby and foolish and sloppy, but youâll get stronger, if you give yourself the chance. And how will you know when a certain piece of writing is worth pursuing? I wrote about that in my guest post on storyaday.org, âThe Real You: What Every Writer Needs to Know about Adele, Gwen Stefani, and Seinfeld.â
If you want to give your writing a serious jump-start, check out Julie Duffyâs Story a Day Mayâa challenge to write a short story every day this month. The point is to write so much that your momentum snowballs, your inner critic gives up, and you get comfortable.
Perfection is less interesting. âAnne Carson Tweet
