Fiction - 2/12 - Write to Done

The Art of Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem

A guest post from Ollin Morales of Courage 2 Create

The Art of Mayhem

A year and a half ago my life was in the midst of mayhem. The company I was working for went bankrupt and I was let go. I had just come out of another failed relationship. I had just come to terms with a failed attempt at entering a graduate school, and I was also given the great responsibility of taking care for a loved one with an illness. Yes, my life certainly felt stuck in incredible mayhem.

But mysteriously, in the midst of all this mayhem, all I felt called to do was to write a novel.

This was a very mysterious urge for me because I had been studying acting at a university for 4 years, I had earned my bachelor’s degree in Drama, and had been acting in plays for most of my life. For all intents and purposes, my life was on an actor’s trajectory and everyone, including me, was resolutely convinced that I was going to become a professional actor one day.

But even though I had spent so much time investing in an acting career, in the midst of all the recent mayhem in my life, I was surprised to find that I had no desire to be an actor anymore, and that my true passion was for writing. I had never written a novel before, and so starting it would mean having to embrace the mystery of this urge, and let the future unfold as it would.

My sister had encouraged me to write a blog about the experience, hoping it would motivate me. There was no expectation for the blog to be any bigger than just a personal online journal.

But a year and a half has passed and the blog has gone from obscurity to Top Ten Blogger status in less than a year; thousands of people from around the world visit the blog now and hundreds are subscribed. Today, I’ve completely ditched acting and have become a freelancer writer in order to earn a living as I write fiction. I’ve even had clients take the writing consultation service I offer to my readers through my blog—effectively turning my blog into a business within year.

Meanwhile, I am working on finishing my life’s work, my novel, which is currently on its a second draft.

All of this was accomplished without much intention, but simply by following the mystery underneath all the mayhem, until it led me to the magic.

The Art of Mystery

There is a wonderful book by the late psychologist Dr. Gerald D. May. Dr. May found that in the writings of two Catholic saints, there was a profound wisdom that I believe stretches farther than the confines of any religion.

Dr. May explained that these two saints spoke about the mayhem of life, but they referred to it as “the dark night of the soul.”

Dr. May explained that “the dark night of the soul” is a moment of incredible turmoil in our lives where many of our previously held conceptions and beliefs are called into question; and in which we are forced to detach from feelings, thoughts, or objects that beforehand had given us great peace and comfort. This intense process opens us up to a moment of great mayhem in our lives that may appear very dark to us.

For Dr. May, the reason that this time is “dark” is not because it is evil, but because it is “obscure.” It’s hard to see what is actually going on. Because in actuality, although we cannot see it at the time, beneath all the mayhem, there is actually something wonderful secretly blooming inside of us. It’s as if this dark period is a womb in the midst of our lifetime; and this womb is providing the right amount of nourishment and care for you to one day be reborn as a newer, more liberated you.

Dr. May also said that the “mysteriousness” of this mayhem has a very practical purpose: because if we knew what was going to unfold in our lives before it actually happened, we might end up sabotaging our own success.

The Art of Magic

After I read Dr. May’s book, I wondered if I would I have sabotaged my current success if I knew where I was truly going to end up.

After a moment of thought, I concluded that yes, I would have sabotaged myself.

You see, today I have a great responsibility to my blog readership. They can certainly live fine without me, but from what they have told me, it gives them great joy and pleasure to have me around in a online world that is sometimes so filled with hateful, negative, and sensationalist language.

However, if I had known I was going to be given such a great responsibility a year and a half ago, I certainly would have not started my blog and would have probably ditched my novel.

Why?

Because my intention at the time had been to keep myself loyal to my novel, and any plan to “help” or “inspire” others would have been interpreted by me as a purely egotistical. I also would have likely given up writing the first draft of my novel knowing that, soon, hundreds of strangers’ eyes would be scrutinizing my progress.

So in order to keep me from sabotaging my future success, the process of life wisely kept me in the dark for a period of time.

Fortunately, today, I recognize that part of my purpose in life is to provide inspiration, hope, and encouragement to the struggling writers of the world. Today I continue writing my novel because I’ve already invested far too much time into it to give up now, even if I feel the pressure of the whole world watching.

It turns out there was a method to the mayhem after all.

Preparing For Your Opening Night

I recall that back in my acting days, it was well-known theater wisdom that when a production gets close to opening night you can almost be certain that several things will go terribly wrong: essential actors will drop out, sets will fall apart, props will go missing, the director will come down with the flu, etc.. But as soon as the curtains part on opening night, the mayhem subsides, everything falls into place, and the play goes on with little or no difficulty, as if by some mysterious magic.

I wouldn’t believe this mysterious phenomenon myself if I hadn’t witnessed it every single time I had acted in a play.

It is good to remember that when it gets closer to the opening night of your life, everything can and will go wrong. The mayhem will be everywhere. But if you carry conviction during the dark times, and trust that the mystery will lead you to a better, more liberated space, then as soon as that curtain opens, the mayhem will subside, everything will fall into place, and you may be surprised to find that the show goes on without a hitch.

Just like magic.

Ollin Morales is a writer whose blog, Courage 2 Create, chronicles his journey as he writes his first novel. His blog offers writing advice as well as strategies to deal with life’s toughest challenges. You can also follow him on Twitter.

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Categories: Blogwriting, Craft, Fiction

A Bucket List for Writers

A guest post by Larry Brooks of Storyfix.com

Unless they contain a book ordered from Amazon, writers don’t like boxes.We resent being categorized, stuffed into or shown what appears to be a box that, because someone says we belong there, becomes something into which we feel we should climb post haste. Unless we are writing obituaries or updating the local grocery ads, we believe our work to be art, and where art is concerned there are no rules, or boxes.

When we believe that, at least when it comes to writing, we are wrong.

About both things.

In many other aesthetic pursuits we can indeed reach a level of art without having to fit into anybody’s box. We can skip all that boring discipline stuff and ignore any prevailing commercial tastes and trends and just do our thing.

But where writing is concerned, all that changes. Because in the eternal tug-of-war between art and craft in this avocation, craft is winning.

The acid test on this issue relates to why you write and what you hope to get out of it. If you’re in it for fun, sure, do it your way. But if you want to become a professional author, one whose work attracts a readership and perhaps a publisher with a checkbook, craft simply trumps art all to hell.

Craft depends on discipline. On function as well as form.

And that, by definition, establishes a set of rules that, at first glance, can look a lot like a box. But don’t be fooled.

A guy named T.S. Elliot says it better than I can:

When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost… and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom, the work is likely to sprawl.

And sprawl won’t get you published or read.

Just don’t call it a box.

Here’s the newsflash that rubs some writers the wrong way: there are storytelling principles and expectations in place, at least at a professional, commercial level.

The moment we depart from those standards, if we try to negotiate them or attempt to reinvent them from a context of either ignorance or defiance, our work becomes less than commercial. In doing so we may indeed become artists – very lonely artists – when the higher goal is to become a writer (preferably one with an audience) who has perfected craft to the level of art.

There are consequences to writing without parameters and honoring accepted standards.

When your writing ceases to be commercial you’ve just shot yourself in the foot – at least if your goal is to turn pro – perhaps in the name of art.

The concept of selling out isn’t about writing commercially, it’s about writing at a level that’s beneath you, which is a completely different thing. When you disrespect the principles of craft, you are already in that free-fall.

We all get to choose.

I’m not crazy about rules, either. That’s why I’ve coined another term for the discipline of writing, a way to organize the various aspects of craft into separate yet ultimately dependent categories of essential principles, skills and criteria.

And essential they are.

I like to think of these categories as buckets rather than boxes. I’ve stuffed all the things a writer of stories needs to understand and master – the craft – into one of six different buckets of intellectual and creative awareness, and delved deeply into why they are essential and how they remain connected to each other.

Skipping or mangling these criteria isn’t art, as some might believe. It’s storytelling suicide.

Why we need these buckets.

When you talk about storytelling without differentiating between, say, the essential elements of concept, character and theme… if you view the narrative process as some mysterious and organically intuitive flow defined by obscure, impressive lit class rhetoric more suited to book reviewers than writers of books…

… well, I think I speak for millions when I say there has to be a better, clearer way to wrap your head around the craft of storytelling. One that doesn’t elude you for years and even decades.

I call these buckets of awareness the Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling.

And there is only one rule in play.

Actually, an unavoidable and stark truth: you have to be competent to the point of mastery in all six core competencies before you can write a commercially viable and successful story. A weakness in any one of them will kill your chances.

I didn’t make that truth up. Always been there. Even though you’ve never heard it capsulated in this fashion, or this clearly.

The inherent opportunity residing within these buckets.

Books from new writers that actually sell are the ones that offer something special. The trick is to understand what this means, and how to make it happen.

The answer awaits inside the buckets that contain the six core competencies.

When one or two of them, as executed in your work, are astoundingly original, creative and compelling, then you’ve just separated yourself from the crowd. A crowd, by the way, that for the most part is already competent in all six, which makes wrapping your head around these competencies (or, if you prefer, sticking it into each of the six buckets) is just the ante-in to the game.

In writing, the essential elements of a story become the physics of what makes a story work, and when viewed as an entire discipline (which is precisely how they should be viewed), they become the stuff of story engineering that cannot be ignored or, unless you spend decades paying attention, intuitively absorbed.

When one or two are super-charged, the entire story kicks into a higher, better gear.

Introducing The Six Core Competences

Don’t mistake this for over-simplification. Storytelling is still hard, and there is a long and challenging list of attributes, skills, nuances and mechanical gizmos you must understand and put onto the page.

That said, it’s a lot easier to group them into six separate affinities that share common standards, criteria and expectations.

Four of the six core competencies are elements, the essential aesthetic building blocks of your narrative. They are: concept… character… theme… and structure (plot sequence).

You can’t skip one and get away with it. And you can’t knock one or two out of the park until you completely wrap your head around what they each mean.

Separating them is essential, because the criteria for, say, concept and theme are very different. Many a manuscript has tanked because the writer didn’t understand this premise.

The other two core competencies are issues of execution, the application of the four story elements to the blank page. They are: scene execution… and your writing voice.

When you isolate these six essential realms of storytelling, they can be broken down, analyzed, studied and practiced in context to the larger, integrated whole of a story.

Once introduced to the six core competencies – you’ve met them before, just not quite this clearly and stripped of mystery and pretense – your entire writing life will change and expand.

Because suddenly, perhaps for the first time, you will understand how to determine what to write, where to put it, and why it works there.

Which, regardless of how you’ve approached storytelling in the past and intend to get it done in the future, has always been the goal.

Larry Brooks is a bestselling novelist and the creator of Storyfix.com, recently named to the top spot on our recent Top Ten Writing Blogs list. His latest book, “Story Engineering: Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing,” has just been published by Writers Digest books, and since its release has been at or near the #1 bestselling spot on Amazon.com’s fiction writing/craft list.

Categories: Fiction

The 3 Traits of a Writer—and Why You Can’t Succeed Without Them

A guest post by K.M. Weiland of Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors.

Writers come in all shapes and sizes, from all personal backgrounds, all walks of life, and all cultures and countries. We’re a varied bunch, but we all have something in common: in order for any of us to make it past first base in this business, we have to possess three traits. These traits are non-negotiable. If we don’t possess all three of them, we’ll never be writers, and we’ll certainly never find marketable success.

What are these traits, and how do we solidify them in our lives?

Trait #1: Talent

In some ways, talent is the easiest of the three, since it’s something over which we have no control. We’re either talented, or we’re not. Generally speaking, talent incorporates one or all of the following:

An aptitude for words, which can include (but isn’t necessarily limited to) an understanding of language and a perceptive ear for powerful and rhythmic phrasings.
An instinctual understanding, however raw in the beginning, of story structure.
An insatiable curiosity, a desire to discover truth, and a willingness to be audaciously honest about the human experience and the world in which it takes place.

I consider talent the least important, simply because it’s the only one of the three traits that is useless without the other two. Still, it’s important to recognize that without that original kernel of talent, all the watering and weeding in the world won’t cause the growth of a burgeoning tree.

Trait #2: Learning

I use the word “learning” instead of “knowledge” because “learning” indicates more than a static pile of facts stored in our brains. Learning encompasses the following ideas:

An ongoing process that suggests a mindset in search of enlightenment more than a simple checklist of facts to be mastered.
A hunger for knowledge that is further stimulated, instead of sated, by the actual discovery of knowledge.
A willingness to devote an endless amount of time and energy to studying the craft.

Even the largest measure of talent can only carry an author so far. We must study to show ourselves approved by reading widely and voraciously, researching the tenets of the craft as seen by other authors who have proven themselves through their own devotion, and seeking and accepting the wise criticism of readers, editors, and other writers. Writing is a skill that can be learned by almost anyone, and it is in the learning that we raise ourselves above raw potential to refinement and eventual mastery.

Trait #3: Diligence

Finally, we come to the most important of the three traits, the bottom of the pyramid, the foundation for the previous two. Without diligence, we will inevitably lack the ability to grit our teeth and put our innate talent or our sought-after knowledge to practical use. Writers who possess diligence are able to bring the following to their writing desks:

A commitment to writing, even in the face of its difficulties.
A certain amount of hardheaded tenacity that allows them to keeping marching right past the inevitable discouragements.
A consistency is showing up for work every day, no matter what else has to be sacrificed.

The writing life is filled with setbacks and even outright failures. Without the determination to persevere, no writer will make it past the starting gates. We have to be willing to devote our time and energy to pursuing our craft, polishing it, and loving it even when it isn’t lovable.

In order to call ourselves writers, we have to act like writers. We must recognize our responsibility to our talent. We must open our minds to studying and perfecting the art of writing. And we must be willing to do these things day in and day out. Writing isn’t always a hobby; it isn’t always a career; but it is a lifestyle. If we can devote ourselves to pursuing these three traits, we can wake up every morning with assurance that we are writers.

K.M. Weiland writes historical and speculative fiction from her home in the sandhills of western Nebraska. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, editing services, and her recently released instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.

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Categories: Craft, Fiction, Habits, Productivity, Reading

Why You’re Only 1/4 of A Writer And How to Make You Whole Again

A guest post by Ollin Morales of Courage 2 Create

About a year ago, when I decided to sit down and write my first novel, my biggest problem with the writing process wasn’t that I was a bad “proofreader,” or a bad “goal-setter,” or a bad “blog monetizer.” No, my biggest problem with the writing process was… my life.

About a year ago, I had already come out of the long and arduous process of trying to get into a Graduate School for Creative Writing. After giving my graduate application my all, and after turning it in, a few months later, I received a response in the mail. I unfolded the letter and then folded it back up again as soon as I saw the word: “Unfortunately” in the second sentence.

About a year ago, I had been let go from my job as an English Tutor because the company I was working for had gone bankrupt after the recession hit. The company loved me, but they could no longer pay me. My mind sort of checked out as soon as my boss shifted the conversation and started with the word: “Unfortunately…”

About a year ago, I had come out of my fourth failed relationship, and for anyone who has ever had a heart-broken more than once, you’ll agree that a consistently broken heart is a vastly underrated phenomenon. It can get the best of you, if you let it. I think I went into shock when my ex-boyfriend pulled over his car and began to say: “You’re a really great guy, but unfortunately…”

Finally, a year ago, someone close to me, who I love very dearly, and who I had been taking care of for two years, fell into another bout of her Depression. For those of you who don’t know, Depression takes over the body of the person you love until you find yourself living with the disease itself. Living with Depression is like coming home and discovering a black hole of grief and sorrow greeting you at the door. The best–and only thing–you can do in that situation is to orbit the edge of this black hole, spin frantically like a lesser version of Mars, and try not to be torn out of orbit and swung into the dark abyss.

That was it. That was the last straw for me. I was no longer in an “unfortunate” situation. I was in a crisis.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had to become wise, and I had to become wise fast.

Why? Because I knew that if I didn’t gain the wisdom I needed to survive in that moment, I would end up drowning in my own ignorance.

Now, the only way I was going to gain that wisdom was to take the steps necessary to vastly transform the way I approached my life.

These were the necessary steps I took in order to go from being 1/4 of a writer to becoming whole again:

I began meeting regularly with a therapist to learn how to deal with my emotions
I trained for a 5K to learn how to deal with my body
I kept a daily journal to learn how to sort through my heavy thoughts and clear the way for the lightness of my truth
I developed a daily meditation routine, hiked in the mountains, and began to pray so that I could learn how to reconnect with the universal, sky-bound spirit that unites us all.
Most importantly, I reached out to friends and family, wrapped my arms around them, and allowed myself to burst open with the greasy showers of pain, letting all that was broken slice through me, until the release of life’s vicious shrapnel lubricated my blackened, rusted heart. It was this “reaching-out” that taught me how important it was to be part of a larger community.

It was all of this work, and this work only, that allowed me to continue my writing, and helped me survive a very challenging year.

So, Then What Happened?

Don’t worry. You’ll be happy to know that at the end of that tumultuous year, not only did I finish the first draft of my novel, despite everything that stood in my way, but I wrote a blog chronicling this journey that went on to become one of The Top Ten Blogs for Writers.

Oh, um—what’s the word for when something good happens, unexpectedly?

Ah, that’s right. Fortunate. Haven’t heard that word in a while. Nice to hear it again.

What does this have to do with my writing?

“I’m really happy for you Ollin, but, what’s the point? I mean, what does this story have to do with me being a writer?”

Fair enough. Here’s the point:

After everything I went through, the most surprising thing I learned was that being a writer requires MORE than just your mind.

Why? Because you don’t write with only your mind. You write with your heart. You write with your spirit. You write with your body. You write as a member of a community.

Now, you can ignore all these aspects of your being, sure, but then you would only be about 1/4th of a writer.

On the other hand, if, every now and then, you listen to the intelligence of your heart, or to the intelligence of your spirit, or to the intelligence of your body, you might find the solutions to about 75% of your writing problems—problems that your mind told you were impossible to solve.

This “well-rounded” approach to writing isn’t always easy. I still struggle to master the skill myself

Take this year for instance. Although the challenges I faced last year are all resolved, this year I am faced with a whole new set of challenges.

Once again, I am being forced to become wise—fast—or risk drowning in my own ignorance.

But this is the journey of life and the writing process, isn’t it? Both require that you have infinite patience. Both require that you fall in love with the painfully slow progression of things. Both require that you face a set of problems one year, master them, then face a whole new set of problems the next year, master those, and keep this going until you’re forced to accept the humble truth: that no matter how much you learn, you will, forever and always, be a novice.

If you want to BE a great writer you need to LIVE a great life

Let me conclude with this thought:

You, as a writer, are FAR more complex than your ability to write flawless grammar.

You, as a writer, have a life to live, and you need to live it well.

Because when you ignore your life, you become like a concert pianist who has been given the best training in the world, the best piano to play, the best musical score to follow, the best audience to bear witness, but who does not show up to his own concert.

On the other hand, when you do pay attention to your life, you not only become the artist who shows up, but the human being who relishes his moment in the spotlight.

much love,

Ollin

Ollin Morales’s blog, {Courage 2 Create}, chronicles the author’s journey as he writes his very first novel. His blog offers writing tips as well as strategies to deal with life’s toughest challenges. After all, as Ollin’s story unfolds, it becomes more and more clear to him that in order to write a great novel, he must first learn how to live a great life. You can connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.
Note: Ollin’s blog, Courage 2 Create is a winner of the Top Ten Blogs for Writers 2011 Contest.

Join Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch in the A-List Blogger Club, and learn to become a top blogger.

Categories: Craft, Fiction

The 7 Secrets of an Indie Editor

A guest post by Victoria Mixon of A. Victoria Mixon, Editor.

Many years ago, when I was a starving writer wrestling day and night with the phenomenal angel of the fiction craft, I got thrown on my back a lot. I’d lie there wheezing until I could breathe again, then I’d gamely hop back up and go at it again.

Wrestle! Wham. Breathe. Up. Wrestle! Wham. Breathe. This went on for a really long time.

So now that I’m a professional indie editor, I know what’s going on at your house. And there are things I’ve learned about this craft that could make this wrestling match a whole lot easier on you. These are my secrets, the things you should know:

1. You need far more discipline and profound human compassion than you think.

You guys. You bring me your precious manuscripts, written in ink from the opening of your own veins, these symbolic versions of the very real and tragic heartbreaks you yourself have survived, and you tell me, “Don’t be gentle. Lay it on me. I can take it.”

Fortunately for you, I’m the wimpiest writer ever in history, so I just ignore you. I know that every mild criticism is a slam to the writer’s solar plexus and every compliment is a faint voice mumbling unintelligibly in the distance.

Only when you’ve gotten a hefty dose of compassion for you, the writer, can you hoist up your suspenders and set about the Herculean task of applying the discipline and ruthlessness your manuscript needs. There are always piles, mountains, avalanches of it. If I simply laid the discipline on you first, you’d be humiliated—silenced.

This is why I’m not just an editor. I’m a writing therapist. Half my job is being really good at handling manuscripts, and the other half is being really good at handling writers.

Writing fiction isn’t expressing yourself, it’s creating an experience for your reader.

And yet we all write because we love it. Right? I’m not sitting here at my desk thinking about you. I’m actually sitting here thinking about me, about the fact that I know something important and I want you to get a kick out of learning it from me.

Which leads me inevitably to admit that the reader is the only one in this relationship who counts. I might very well have something you need, but if you don’t want it I’ve done all this work for nothing. Not only that, but you’re not here just for what I know, you’re here for the experience of learning it, and even more than that you’re here for the indescribable magic that happens when you find yourself sandwiched between what you’re learning and how you feel about learning it.

That’s the magic that changes a reader’s life. And the writer’s job is working that magic.

No one can properly line edit their own writing.

This point sucks, but it’s a simple fact, so we might as well all get used to it, the same way we’re used to dentists, freeways, and working for a living. I would far rather be independently wealthy on a chateau patio overlooking the 1920s Mediterranean coast, words like pearls falling in perfect order from my quill, bouncing over my feet and across the worn flagstones.

But that’s simply not going to happen.

Instead, I’m going to write as clearly and succinctly and vividly as I know how, and then I’m going to hand it off to someone else—my writer husband, my writer friend, or the editor of whatever publication or blog I’m writing for—to be line edited. They’ll catch the awkward phrasing and constructs that make a reader stumble over my words. They’ll smooth the rhythm I’ve worked so hard to achieve (and, hopefully, catch most of my typos.)

They’ll see my words the way a reader sees them. And that’s professional polish.

The publishing industry is not Cinderella, and neither are you.

Or, to paraphrase Dylan: they ain’t a-going nowhere.

I know everyone’s breathing down your neck, exhorting you with the authority of wild-eyed fanatics to hustle your fanny out there and get your novel published. I know this is why you ask for blunt criticism and hope to skimp on the line editing, why it’s so daunting to be told this work is, more than anything, about magic.

But honestly. . .what’s going to happen if you don’t get published PDQ? Are the publishers all going to turn into pumpkins at midnight?

No. And neither are you. Novels have been written and published for over four hundred years. They will continue being published a good four hundred years from now. I spent thirty years delving into this craft in the privacy of one cozy little workspace after another, across three states and half a dozen countries, one desk in a closet and another on a minuscule Hawaiian lanai overlooking the endless ocean. You have time to immerse yourself in this craft for a very, very long time indeed before you need to start looking over your shoulder to see if the end is gaining on you.

Seriously.

Your manuscript is in much worse shape than you believe it is, but you have vastly more potential as a brilliant writer than you can imagine.

Now, you may have seen my recent moment of online glory in which I was immortalized in the Huffington Post for being dissed by my agent. That story was absolutely true. Every single manuscript that comes to me is the best, brightest, most word-perfect work of which its author feels capable, and every single one of them has aspects for which an agent with a caustic tongue could get them into the Post.

But that’s okay. I learned how to fix all that stuff.

Even more importantly, every single manuscript that comes to me has its moments of ineffable glory: a facility with words, specific telling details that snap scenes into three dimensions, plot twists and developments that carry me right out of myself, laser-like snippets of dialog and amazing character insights, things that make me sit up, make me laugh, torque my heart exactly the way a reader’s heart needs to be torqued.

These moments are the stuff of which brilliant fiction is made.

Your job is to go beyond the limits of possibility.

Of course, the biggest thing I know that you don’t is that writing fiction is an impossible labor. Great art is never as transcendental as its creator has in mind.

Readers might be happy enough with less than transcendental (but not much). Publishers and agents might be as happy as they’re ever going to get. (It’s hard to tell.) But once you’ve seen your vision and known what it’s like to capture even a fragment of that iridescent substance for your own in words, you will never again be satisfied.

So you keep at it—the impossible. Even though you know it’s impossible. That’s what you, great writers, and immortal protagonists all have in common.

Fiction isn’t really about reading or writing, it’s about living.

Finally, not the biggest thing I know that you don’t, but the most important: there’s no such thing as either “escapist” or “literary” fiction. There is only storytelling to which all of us, readers and writers alike, go over and over again, to find out what life is, learn the basic skills we need to survive it, and discover the unspeakable beauty and subtlety and significance that makes it worth living.

You don’t have to be a writer. You simply do this work because we human beings need it done.

Victoria Mixon spends her time blogging for the vast tribe of aspiring great writers in the blogosphere and editing their work with her suspenders hoisted up. She is the co-author of Children and the Internet: A Zen Guide for Parents and Educators and author of the recently-released The Art & Craft of Fiction: A Practitioner’s Manual.

Categories: Business, Craft, Fiction, Freelancing