First Sunday Q &A: Process versus Product--Chart a More Balanced Course in Your Writing Life

How to Find and Work with an Accounta... A Letter to the Inner Critic

First Sunday Q &A: Process versus Product--Chart a More Balanced Course in Your Writing Life

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected this month for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by Alexander Milo on Unsplash

Q: My dream is to be a published writer. It's been a long time that I've been away from that dream. I'm recommitting to the journey now. The first resource that I turned to was you and your book, Your Book Starts Here.

I'm organized, I have my writing space, my ideas, my commitment. I've signed up for this newsletter, Your Weekly Writing Exercise. I've signed up for an on-line workshop.

What would your guidance be to move forward? I appreciate any direction that you may have.

A: Publishing is a business. Writing is an art form. To get published, I believe you have to approach both aspects and do them well.

In other words, you have to know how to become a skilled writer (read a lot to learn your genre, get skills via classes and study, practice those skills, get feedback and learn how to use it, learn the process of putting together a book).

But you also have to know how to navigate the business side of publishing (how to tell when your writing is ready to submit, learning how to do the often complicated job of submitting it, how to handle rejection, how to work smartly with a publisher or agent if you get one, and how to market your book).

When an artist decides to move from just creating the art to wanting to be recognized for it, it’s all about embracing these two arenas. In the writing world, recognition is what readers give you—the act of someone reading your work and loving it, even finding it life-changing. But it takes work and educating yourself on the steps.

What I call the process and the product of the writing life.

The goal is to end up satisfied. To feel joy about what you’ve created. But only you can decide what that looks like, what’s enough for you, what you have the ability to work for.

My publication journey of baby steps

For most writers, the desire to publish starts with a longing, a mission, even, to share what you’re creating. Mine happened when I was nineteen. I’d been a visual artist all my life. But I’d lived in France for a year and began to write little stories with recipes of my experiences learning French cooking.

I thought they were fun to read and the recipes really pleased me. So I decided I wanted to share them. I had zero idea of how to do this.

I lived in Sedona, Arizona. It was the mid-seventies, and Sedona was far from the tourist spot it was to become. I worked as a cook on a ranch out on a red dirt road, and I taught French cooking classes in my little kitchen after hours.

One day, I met the editor of a magazine called Sedona Life. We chatted about what I did, and she asked if I’d ever be interested in writing a monthly cooking column for the magazine. I think the pay was something like $25 a month. Just enough to pay for my ingredients when I tested the recipes for the column.

When I dreamed of being published, I had never imagined this as the vehicle. I liked the magazine well enough, I liked the town and the people who’d be reading. But in my innocence as a new writer, I’d imagined publishing would be bigger, with more glory.

Of course, I was smart enough to say yes, though, and put aside my pipe dreams, realize the editor was offering me a step towards my dream. That publishing was a journey, not a destination, as I imagined. The journey would be composed of steps of opportunity, and here was one.

She helped me a lot. I think I wrote my column for the year I lived in Sedona, maybe a few months beyond. The editor taught me how to hone my little stories about French cooking for the Arizona desert readers. More people came to my cooking classes, which helped me pay my rent. I loved experimenting with recipes, and I loved writing.

So it all worked out.

The next step follows

From that monthly column came my writing career. The next gig was a larger magazine, Vegetarian Times. They asked me to write a monthly column for them, an even bigger step. My byline in print nationally.

Eventually, I was published in twenty or so national publications, including the big ones like Food & Wine. From that came a weekly syndicated column in 86 newspapers via the Los Angeles Times. Cookbooks followed. (At last, I thought, a book!) Some of those books were bestsellers for their publisher, one won a big award. I earned good money as a writer now.

But do you see the point of this? It was far from a fairytale. It was a lot of very small steps, good fortune, and hard work. I queried these magazines, these publishers. I got an agent. I worked for all of it.

If you’re just starting out, I think it’s hard to think in baby steps. Most new writers hope for a big break, something magical. What it really is about is working hard at the writing, reading a lot in your genre, getting feedback from other writers and editors, researching publications or publishers, and submitting your work.

Also: holding your dream clearly inside, allowing that you don’t actually know the steps ahead but being willing to be alert to them.

Why do you want to get published?

Why do you want to get published?

Are you willing to go through what it takes to get published?

And what does “being a published writer” exactly mean to you?

There are so many degrees of “being published” now, so many avenues that writers use to get their work to readers.

Start by examining your desire to be published. Mine originated with that little thought: I have something cool to share, it might help others.

You may want to make a living from your writing. That will take a certain amount of work and stamina. You may want to feel as if you’ve achieved something worthwhile. That’s a different amount. But access the core reason, because a strong enough dream will hold you steady when the journey gets challenging, as it will.

And it has to be your dream, not someone else’s. Yes, sometimes writers succeed by doing it for someone else—like to finally prove to a parent that they’re smart enough. But it works better, with less soul-sucking, if it’s your reason alone.

If I’d had the dream of being published for fame or for making my living solely from my writing, I would have taken completely different steps to get there. Mine was a small dream, but just the right size for me.

It moved my dream life, as a writer, into astonishing new directions I couldn’t have predicted.

Product versus process

So let’s talk more specifically about the product versus the process of the writing life, if publication is part of your goal.

You keep the product (the end result, the book you’ll hold in your hand, the poem in a magazine that you show to friends, the online publication you’re proud of) in your heart and mind as you work towards it. But you are actually first involved in the process to get skills and educate yourself. And as you get educated and skilled, how the product looks to you may change.

This month, I heard from four students who recently published. Their journeys and their end product are vastly different.

A man wrote a history of his family’s immigration from Eastern Europe, printed enough copies to give family members for Christmas, and felt very proud of this lifelong dream.

A woman took her memoir manuscript through a decade of classes, private editing, feedback, and reworking. She applied to a hybrid publisher and was accepted. Her published memoir fulfilled her publishing goal.

A writing duo was accepted by a small press for publication of their young adult mystery. They enjoy working with this small press and are very pleased with the result.

A woman was signed by the umpteenth agent she queried. She just got a contract with a Big Five publisher for her novel.

For each writer, what it meant to “be published” was very different, yet each was satisfied by a dream come true. No avenue was more satisfying than another.

Questions to ask yourself

Before you can chart your course and decide what steps will be next, you need to clarify what “being published” means to you. It’s a wonderful time for writers now: publication can mean anything from stories as a game of cards to an audio only book.

For anyone who wants to be published, I put together a post last month about the process of writing, disguised as a checklist for revision. You can read it here. It’ll give you a clearer idea of the process.

For both product and process towards publication, here are the steps I’d recommend:

Journal about what it means to you, to be a published writer. What does it look like? What would satisfy you, within your own abilities?

Study up. Take classes, study the craft. Like learning anything (think: playing the violin!) you need to gain skills. Just because we grow up writing, doesn’t mean we have publication-worthy skills as a writer. That’d be like saying you’re a skilled professional speaker just because you can talk.

Get feedback. You need other eyes on your writing, when you’re ready, to gauge how your skills have grown. Join a writer’s group or a class that offers feedback. Hire a coach or editor.

Read a lot in your genre. Get educated with what other writers are producing. Find out what you love and how close your own writing is.

Continually check back with your original goal of being published. As you educate yourself and gain skills, you’ll need to revisit it and see if it’s still what you want to work towards.

When you’re ready, start learning about the publishing industry. I recommend Jane Friedman’s book, The Business of Being a Writer, for a clear and succinct overview. Again, use the information to revisit your goal and revise as needed.

You can do it. Being published requires a strong dream, enough skills, and the stamina to stay the course. Many writers who started off feeling they didn’t have the talent to be published, were able to get there from these qualities instead.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, what you might try from this, what you’ve learned in your own writing life.

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