Harsh truth 3 (of 8) for writers

You will spend a lot of time reading material that’s better than yours

Reading more fiction will make you a better writer.

To deny this is to deny the very purpose of fiction—it’s to deny believing in the thing you supposedly love and want to get better at.

Nebulous as fiction’s purpose is, one function is to improve thought, advance it, increase awareness of life. Alice Munro stories have been scientifically proven to make people more psychologically astute. Fiction works.

I tell you what’s great: reading the litmags you want to submit to.

Most of us don’t do this when we start out. We have what we believe to be good reasons for it at the time. We sought out the mags we wanted to get published in after writing the thing we wrote. We’re so very sure the thing is finished that we doubt reading the mag will give us any pointers at all. Or, we’re so assured that we’re better than the other authors in there, that we don’t think we have to.

(You shouldn’t submit to places that you think are beneath you—how great do you think it’ll feel when they reject you? Or even if they accept you?)

This kind of arrogance is pitiful. It occurs when we’re not well read enough to evaluate our writing’s quality, or of anyone else’s. We pretend we know we’re good enough already. This protects us from the possibility of reading a story so amazing that it destroys our confidence. Well, then we wouldn’t submit—so that’s not to our benefit, right?

This wrongly assumes that the success and quality of other people’s writing affects yours—or rather, affects yours in a way that should be anything other than:

Positive, improving your writing, or:Inspiring, showing you more than what you thought was possible—or, better than you can currently produce. (Not fun in the moment, sure, but ultimately for the better.)

You should read as much material like this as you can bear before it makes you feel completely incompetent. (It shouldn’t—no one ever wrote or will write the last story—but it does sometimes anyway.)

Writing more will make you a better writer.

To deny this is to deny journaling as a therapeutic tool, to deny that introspection produces insights. It’s to deny fundamental aspects of your brain and, well, existence. Writing more works.

Reading and writing may only work temporarily. I don’t know. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. What you’ll do is read and write so much, either every day or something close to it, that you will minimize those parts of reading and writing that are ephemeral.

Since we know other writers are better than you—at the very least at some aspects of storytelling (though quite probably overall!)—you have something to learn from studying their stories. Since we know other people are writing too, those stories aren’t going away.

I don’t know about you, but the way I act influences the way I feel and vice versa. If I spend a Sunday binge-watching Netflix, I feel like an anxious shut-in waste of space (because I am, that day at least.)  If I show up at work early and complete all my tasks, I feel important and confident (because I am, that day at least.)

We’re rarely worried/angry about what we think we’re worried/angry about. The emotions are real but the underpinning reasons often aren’t. So when it gets to the frustration with our own lack of progress compared to others, a spitefulness between one another, anything petty and time-consuming that’s beneath us, the real reason for all this disappointment is a failure to engage in the richest life available.

If you do rewarding work and are useful/generous/all that good stuff, I find that the worries melt away. There also seems to be an oversaturation of self-deprecating comedy in the culture, which is great for normalising all kinds of foibles–but because of how aware we are of how widespread the bad habits are that we share, I’d argue that we’re too reassured that they’re okay to have and not work on.

The writing equivalent is: you must keep writing. In doing so, you are acting as if there remain other stories to tell. In doing so, more stories become available for the telling. It’s self-fulfilling and can remain unspoken.

Stay (blog equivalent of) tuned for a new harsh truth asap!!