The Writer's Bill of Rights

This is brilliant. There's a printable version here, and it can be freely distributed with attribution. So go and share!

THE WRITER’S BILL OF RIGHTS

by Robert Dawson

2013

* * *

You are allowed not to be the greatest writer in the world.

You are allowed not to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer, or even that flash contest in your local newspaper

You are allowed to have a day job at which you spend more time than at writing, and that you may be unwilling or unable to give up.

You are allowed to have a family who need and deserve large quantities of your time.

You are allowed to write stories that are not as good as the best thing you ever wrote.

You are allowed to have dry spells. For as long as it takes.

You are allowed to sell stories to $10 markets. As Leonard Cohen puts it:

“I took my diamond to a pawnshop / But that don’t make it junk.”

You are allowed to have a lifestyle that won’t let you get to national workshops, or even your two-bit local convention.

You are allowed to have stories that haven’t sold at all yet—and may never sell.

You are allowed to not be [insert name here].

And you will still be a writer.

And that’s good.

Because otherwise there would be damned few of us left.

Eight

Once, at a writing conference, I learned that the woman I was chatting with was the mother of eight.  Upon hearing this, my first thought was amazement that she was upright, showered, and indistinguishable from any other woman at the conference. My second thought was to ask her for advice.

"How do you find time to write?" I asked.

"It is really hard," she said, nodding sagely like she got this question all the time.

I waited attentively for her pearls of wisdom.

The woman sighed. "There are just too many good books to read. I always get distracted. I'm working on it, though."

And that was it.

It's weird. Over and over it seems, I run into the often-loud opinion that it's impossible to write while there are small children in the house. I don't seem to find the same advice about demanding jobs or graduate degrees or volunteer work or playing DnD. In fact, the only position I've heard as routinely labeled as a black hole for writing is that of being SFWA president.

For me, at least, telling myself that "I'll write more when I'm less busy" or "I'll write when I'm feeling super-organized, inspired, and well-rested" has always been a bigger danger to writing than cuddling a newborn on the rocking chair. Whenever the echo of naysayers begins to creep in, I think of that mom of eight. There are dozens of things I do with my time everyday. I just need to make sure that writing is one of them.

Talent vs. Skill

I ran into yet another post arguing that writing isn't about hard work and persistence -- it's about inborn talent.

That argument drives me nuts.  Not only do I think it's untrue, but the talent-or-nothing paradigm hurts writers.   If writing is about inborn ability, the writer has no accountability.  It's out of your control.  Good writing is something that happens to you...or not.  Bad prose?  Nothing you can do about it -- it's in the stars.

On the other hand, if writing is a skill, then improvement is in the author's control.  You can write another story.  Gets some critiques.  Revise, rinse, and repeat.  You can take action.  When learning is a possibility, you can ask, "What can I do to improve?"

I don't think anyone succeeds as a writer without a lot of hard work.  Maybe a bucket of natural ability will get you there a little faster, but it won't get you there.

As evidence that writing can be learned, I submit this episode of Writing Excuses (click here).  This is the opening of Brandon Sanderson's first, unpublished novel.  It's...umm, well, the Writing Excuses does a great job ridiculing it.  Between that and Elantris, something changed, and I'm sure it took a lot of hard work, practice, and skill-honing.  Brandon Sanderson's now one of my favorite authors.

As a footnote, in my experience, the best writing teachers are those who learned something the hard way.  The author whose lecture taught me story structure?  He used to fumble with it.  The author with brilliant posts on point of view?  I asked her -- and she struggled with POV.  Because they didn't do these by instinct, they can happily articulate their skills to others.

Yes, writers likely have something they're naturally good at -- maybe someone has an ear for dialogue, or a knack for description.  But dialogue and description can still be learned. 

#AmWriting Birthday Party!

Today is the second birthday of #amwriting.  If that looks like a typo, it's a Twitter thing (click here, scroll down, and it'll make sense).

I didn't realize this was a community until recently.  I listened to Johanna Harness talk on about how the hashtag took off and continues to take off -- she mentioned a lot of people see it, think it's clever, and start using it without realizing there's thousands of people in on it.  That was me!

Today's my usual day for a post on writing, and coincidentally, I'd planned to write on goal setting.  The best piece of writing advice I've gotten is to write a book every year.  It sounded a bit crazy at the time.  Then my husband, who'd been at the same presentation, reminded me -- in September.  I had nothing new to start on, and between the recession and a toddler, finishing a draft before New Year's was downright insane.

My husband encouraged me to do it anyway.  Sometimes I only had five minutes a day to type, but during that time, I was #amwriting at rapid speed.  I finished the draft mid-December.

I've kept it up, with two novels the year after, and I'm planning on hitting two again this year (one down, one going strong).  Before then, I'd written a few books, but I planned to finish them when I finished them.  Now I have goals I'm accountable to, with real deadlines.  It means I write more.  And the more I write, the more I learn, because #amwriting is the best teacher.

I didn't know there was a community, but I'm excited to have found others who peck away at their keyboards, whether it's for five minutes or five hours a day.  There's a large group of the #amwriting community posting about their experiences today, all linking to the next blog, so go check out Phoebe Jane for more happy returns to #amwriting.