5 things I wish I'd known whenI first started writing

Writing is a form of controlled insanity, it sometimes seems to me. You work in solitude for months or years or many years. You work though you’re certain the world doesn’t need another novel or short story — and certainly not yours. And then when you’ve given your story or your novel everything you have, you send it out to strangers. In the past ten years that I’ve been submitting my fiction, I’ve learned five things that have helped me through the process.

Writing Is About Empathy and Not Cleverness
Writing and reading are both at their core acts of empathy. For me at least, cleverness has no place in writing. It can reveal itself as contempt — for your characters or your readers — and either one will be fatal to the project. I try not to let myself care whether people think I'm smart or not. The poet Clarissa Pinkola Estes has said that “[o]ften the blank page is the only one listening to the soul’s suffering.” I try to set my suffering and my joy down on the page without worrying about what people will think.

Let Rejection Be Your Fuel
One of my short stories was rejected by seventy-seven different journals and contests before it was accepted. I kept sending the story out, again and again, until it found a home. And then, to my astonishment and delight, that story was selected for inclusion in the O.Henry Prize Collection. Even as I found out the amazing news, I was racking up more form rejections for other stories. More red entries in my submissions spreadsheet, and I just doubled down. I wrote more and submitted more and it was an honor to be part of the process. It's the same way with reader reviews of my writing. Some people will like my work and other's won't, but all I can do is keep on going.

Beware of Praise
This one is tough, but I remind myself to focus on thoughtful criticism and not on praise. Nothing is more dangerous when you’re writing than praise. Compliments will freeze you up or, even worse, you’ll start to write for the strokes instead of for your characters. So if somebody says something lovely -- like your prose sparkles or your story has a compelling strangeness to it -- don't linger on it. Otherwise you’ll look at whatever you’re working on now and you’ll start to doubt yourself. This sentence doesn’t sparkle, you’ll say. There’s nothing wonderfully strange about the characters in this story, and then you’ll start to make changes because you want sparkles and you want strangeness and you won’t hear what your characters are trying to tell you.

An exception to his rule is if somebody says that your work moved them. That the characters touched them somehow. It somebody says that, hold on to it. Hold it close to your heart because there is nothing more wonderful than moving people with your work.

Don’t Be Intimidated by Great Writing
I shield myself a little as I am working on a first draft of a novel or a story. I stay away from fiction, no matter how much I want to read a particular book or story. I’ve found that the characters and the prose rhythm of fiction I admire encroaches on my own writing, and so I read poetry instead. As much of it as I can find. Poetry in journals and in collections and on daily poem sites, and I hone in on the poems that fly and dance and move me and I try to use this beauty as fuel for my prose.

Write With Urgency
Write with everything you have in every moment. I have to remind myself about this all the time because it’s easy to forget. Don’t save your best prose for later. Use it now. Use it and more will come.

I'd like to say that I do all these things every day, but in truth I fail as often as I succeed. And still I keep on going, and I'm grateful for every moment I have to write.