Seven Years
A quiet moment in the Crew’s Inn, on Ocracoke.
Each year, I write a letter to myself back in 2017, my first year writing for magazines. What would I tell the girl who walked into her first interview wearing a too-warm hunter green blazer, the girl brimming with both hubris and crippling doubt?
Some of the things I would tell her are practical (print your drafts and mark them up in pen, but not red pen). Some advice is more about living a life (don’t let passivity masquerade as patience, and someday you’ll live in a neighborhood where jasmine season is a thing and you won’t believe you’ve lived 30 years without it).
I don’t know if she’d be ready to absorb any or all of this; some wisdom only comes after bleeding a little, and watching the scar turn shiny then fade over months and years. But I’d like to think the girl in the blazer, she of the high hopes and big fears and tender heart and strange mind, would at least hear me out. Listening is a skill she’s developing, after all.
So, here’s what I would tell 2017 me:
1 – Directional goals work better for you, as opposed to achievement-driven ones.
This is probably advice you’ve already seen, but will ignore until one fateful New Year’s Eve when you’re sitting in a coffee shop with peach cinderblock walls, trying to review your year and set some goals while also spying on a guy who’s doing a close reading of the stoics.
An achievement-driven goal sounds like: I will be published by [insert prestigious publication]. Maybe a better version of this is: I will pitch [insert prestigious publication].
But neither of those do much to actually shape your life.
A directional goal sounds like: I will do at least one thing every day to keep my writing moving forward.
Instead of feeling like you have to put in two hours of solid research for the work to count, if you’ve put in 20 minutes to read a letter from 300 years ago, you’ve done your job. This also keeps you from prematurely feeling like you’ve done something impressive just because you’ve written down a lofty goal.
2 – If you’re stuck, you usually need to cut something from the piece.
And you know in your guts what it is, and you don’t want to cut it because it involves one of your favorite lines. Other pretty phrases will come and find you, I promise.
Here’s a tip I learned on a writing blog: Start a “graveyard” document for lines/paragraphs you have to cut, and lay your darlings to rest there. You might resurrect one out of every 15-20 lines in the graveyard, but having a gentler place to bury them (one copy and paste away instead of the looming finality of the delete button) helps you make necessary cuts sooner rather than later.
The best nonfiction stuff you’ll read is a mix of beauty and substance, but the beauty always supports the substance – not the other way around. Don’t let vanity run the show.
3 – You’re going to have to compromise somewhere.
Don’t let the ideal be the enemy of the good enough.
In the ideal world you can wake up on your own time, dedicate all your hours of all your days to this work you love, with no worries about financial security.
There’s a version of creative life that involves putting most of your hours into the craft and just scraping by, no retirement account in sight – but you’ve decided that a certain level of financial security is important to you. Fair enough! That compromise is a choice; don’t relitigate the decision every time you sit down to write for a measly 30 minutes. The minutes are measlier when you spend some of them yearning for a life without a thousand little compromises (a life that doesn’t exist).
Even the work itself will hold compromises. You don’t want to create the kind of pieces that have a quick turnaround, the kind of stuff that could build A Platform™ for you in a few firings of the confetti cannon. Fair enough! Do your slow work, and build brick by brick. But don’t be disappointed that, in valuing your quality of life/privacy, you miss out on the rewards of nonstop content creation.
All this to say: You pick your sacrifices.
Either you’re going to write during daylight hours (better for your brain) and work at night (ugh working after dark is no fun), or vice versa. You might have to go to bed earlier so you can get up and give your best hours to this work, or steal some time over lunch, or neglect evening chores for getting a paragraph down. You’ll learn to light candles during these scraps of time to mark them as set apart and beautiful. Someday, you’ll even be thankful for the patchwork.
4 – There’s a difference between an edit that’s tough but fair and a bad edit.
You’ll find the difference after doing some dishes and taking a walk. A bruised ego does rankle your mind for a minute – but only for a minute. Tough but fair edits make their point, and wait for you to take them in, unbothered by your pacing. Before you know it, you start reworking sentences, swapping paragraphs, and creating something that is stronger. Tough but fair edits are essential.
All of that said – if you are sure it’s not a bruised ego, and the tangles in the piece only get more and more snarled as you try to incorporate the edits, push back. Ask for clarification, hop on the phone. Don’t be a pain, but don’t be a pushover. It will save everyone involved a lot of time.
5 – If you’re shooting for a masterpiece, you’ll end up with faltering work.
A reader can tell when you’re glancing over their shoulder, eyeing the rest of the room for influential readers and legacy. By aiming for perfection, you create distance between you and the reader. If you’re shooting instead for decent, serviceable work, you might have something to go on.
A corollary: When you want so desperately to impress (a new editor, a crush, some successful writer you connected with on Twitter), another pitfall is writing in defense mode. You would have made so much more of this piece if it weren’t for the circumstances of the reporting trip, or reticent interviewees, or brain fog, or, or, or.
Accept the material you have to work with – the actual source material and your own self – and commit to giving the piece your best. Better to start from that place than getting there after going endless rounds with a bad draft.
6 – Even in the drought, time is not wasted.
During a career switch that demands all your time and energy, you’re going to worry that your ability to write is atrophying. You’re going to fret that giving many of your hours to work that pays your way to a different life is selling out, whittling away your ability to notice the outside world.
Your time will be more limited, it’s true. And there will be a gaping year and a half when you resign yourself to the fact that all you’re able to write is journal entries, text messages, or emails. And life will go on. And eventually, the door will crack back open – and you’ll be ready for it.
While you will be a little rusty the first time you pick up a phone and call a stranger again – rushing through words at a break-neck pace, having to repeat those same words about three times – the magic of asking good questions and eyeing small details will snap back into place.
The best thing: Because time changes people, the work still matured. Even without a single word published.
Your perspective is sharpened (and softened) by an extra year or two, and all the challenges you faced. You’re a little less likely to lean on your old crutches, less likely to take things personally. You’re less impressed with yourself, and every word you’ve read seasons your next endeavor.
Cheryl Strayed was right when she wrote:
The useless days will add up to something. The s****y waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.
A growing life will grow your work. Keep reading, keep writing stuff no one will read. Take your time.
The other letters in this series:
Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5
(Did some writing I’m really proud of in year six, but it’s of the “only my workshop mates will read” variety – plus, the anniversary mile marker coincided with a big move! Some of the lessons from year six are certainly combined with this year seven letter.)