Time for Next Steps

Whatever those next steps may be.

My "Goodbye" advice to all of us is to Keep Writing.

Who knows? Some day, any of us may receive a rejection letter like this one:

Dear Bob Boulton:

Bob: Thank you for submitting your story to our little magazine. 

We regret, and we are all, all of us, in agreement on this, we regret we are not in a position to publish it. My goodness we can barely sleep at night at the thoughts of this decision.

We want to assure you that your story received due, even excessive, consideration just to make sure we haven't been acting hastily Nine months for a response time is a new record for us. Our editors, as we make very clear in our Submission Guidelines, are all unpaid volunteers who work day and night in the service of the Arts. Every last one of them read your submission and were, each f them, struck speechless. Not only do we ask your forgiveness for not publishing your story, we also ask that you never submit anything to us again. Your skill as a writer and your insights into Hunan Nature are simply so magnificent in comparison with the others who submit to us that for them to read what you have written would we think be unduly discouraging for them. Perhaps the Paris Review might want to look at your work.

But not us. 

Sincerely yours.

So, I will say goodbye to Bob's Write from the Start now with my final two words: Keep Writing.

 

Good Writing

Whether your story or poem is to be found in The New Yorker, The Paris Review or in your top desk drawer along with Emily Dickinson's work, no matter. Good writing is good writing. "Published" or "paid for" is different than "good". Likewise, bad is bad even if it's on the best seller list.

And, to make this even more frustrating, there are different kinds of "good". A successful author of literary fiction I know decided to write a Harlequin Romance and make some actual money. It flopped. No publisher would buy it. Even though she has all the technical craft / skill / art in the world, a Romance wasn't as, they say, "her".

Someone said,"Write what you can, not what you can't."

For a new or renewing writer, my experience tells me -- Don't be too quick to decide what you can and what you can't write. For me, those old devils "What should I write" and "What do other people think I should write" kept popping up.

Simultaneously, I needed to listen to what people connected with in my efforts, and to shake off then opinions of others. Maybe you don't. For me, Writing Groups have been so helpful in this regard. 

Try a lot of things -- short stories, poems, reviews, essays, whatever. The day will come when you can say to yourself, "This may or may not be Tolstoy, but this is my neighbourhood."

There is no single standard for "good". Except to say, what sells and what is good -- these are two different things. Sometimes they coincide, sometimes they don't.

As far as this blog has been concerned, I have tried to limit my self to "writing" rather than "getting published".

Best two pieces of advice I have ever received? "Avoid adverbs." and "Keep writing".

Moving On

Well, it's time I think to figure out a useful way to wrap up this blog. My hopes, were and are, to produce something ("musings" DH calls them) uniquely useful to those beginning to write or renewing their writing life.

There are many sites around where skills can be learned, priorities considered, trends commented on and so forth. What I found missing in my own efforts was "What's it like to be doing this writing thing? Am I delusional? Have others thought this or that, right or wrong?" (Or, in the words of Waylon Jennings about Hank Williams' career, "Are you sure Hank done it this way?")

After 5 or 6 yers of plugging away with a smidgeon or two of improvement and finding myself in at least the right neighbourhood of my own voice, my ability to help others because I too am a just-being-born writer is now past.

I'm not sure what my next stage is, but I'm guessing it will be just as painful, joyful and interesting.

For my upcoming final one or two blog posts, I'll put together a few sentences of what I may have learned, for myself at least, along the way.

Cheers. Bob.