Unpopular Opinions About Writing
- No fiction book should take longer than a year to write.
Nonfiction is different, you have research, and if it’s one of these ‘I’m gonna solve Jack the Ripper once and for all’ kind of books you are dedicating your whole career to, then it will take you a while. You’re wanting to be thorough, and that is a kind of journalistic or archival work that does, in fact, take a lot of time. I respect that.
But if you’re just pulling a story out of your ass, it’s a year tops. If that book isn’t like 1,000 pages, it should not even take you six months. The most abhorrent bullshit I have ever heard, is whenever some writer (and they’re usually middle aged) tells me they have been working on a book for five or six or ten years. I call bullshit. We’re not supposed to do this, especially those of us, like myself, who has multiple publications. It sounds like we’re picking on people. But I’m sick of this fucking myth that writing is an arduous process that takes decades to do.
It’s not.
Writing, when you have the talent and dedication to the craft to do it, does not take that long. Not everyone is me. Not everyone needs to have my output (5 published books, 4 full length plays, roughly 2 dozen short stories, over 50 articles/essays), but I did all of that before I was 39 (my age at this writing). Actually, 95% of it was done before I was 35. One of those books and a few articles were also in Spanish, my second language. While it took me 9 years to sit down and actually write my first Spanish book, the actual writing of it was just under a year. And that book had me creating an entirely new style of writing, where I had vignettes that imitated paintings. It still only took me a year to write.
Now, when I was fresh out of college, I had an epiphany: the amount of time I spent dicking around online and texting and bullshitting with co-workers, if I instead spent that time writing, I’d have more than enough time to do it. I became a father at 22, maximizing my time was essential — and I did it. Because when I say I’m a writer I’m not doing it for the applause or the likes. I just love writing, and so I dedicate time to it.
I know a guy who has been working on a book for years, and every time he posts on social media he’s out and about festivals, concerts, traveling — always busy. And I’ll ask him, how is your book going, and it’s never done, because he isn’t prioritizing it. That’s the only reason it isn’t finished. It isn’t because writing is hard, it’s just that you have to focus on it.
2. Writer Retreats are for Unserious Writers
The only reason to go to a writer’s retreat to work on your novel, book of poetry, etc. is because you want to escape your homelife. Maybe you have a difficult spouse and want a divorce, but they pay your bills and you lack a spine. Maybe you hate your day job. Maybe you’re having a mid-life crisis. Maybe a quarter-life crisis. But you absolutely have the disposable income. To spend 6–8 weeks not making money is 100% privilege. Sure, some have a stipend, one that will barely cover your groceries let alone your rent/mortgage. Get the fuck out of here.
This rule also applies to people who need to take a year off to write their book. I wrote 4 of my 5 books with kids, and 3 of them while I was in the Army. Get your head out of your ass, and just write your fucking book. You don’t need to go to the mountains or the sea to escape your life. You are a spoiled, lazy person.
While history has plenty of trust fund baby writers, history is also full of people who had regular jobs, families, and larger responsibilities and still managed to write. You’re running from your life, and in fact, should probably write about that. Tell us about all the things you fear and are too cowardly to face. That might actually make a good book rather than your Game of Thrones rip-off.
3. Stop Calling Yourself an Artist When You’re Clearly a Hobbyist
Listen, if you’re over 50 and for the first time in your life writing stories, more power to you. Enjoy it! It can be a lot of fun. You can get a lot of emotional catharsis and a sense of community from telling stories. You have a life full of lessons and perspectives, and you may even have a natural talent for spinning a good tale. You could even produce a few good books.
But don’t tell me you’re a fucking artist. If you had been, you wouldn’t have waited this long. True artists don’t need optimal conditions like copious amounts of free time to write. If writing is in your bones, you’ll make the time at 1am to put your thoughts to paper. And if you’re an American, you have even less excuses. You grew up literate by the age of 5. A true artist is writing stories by high school, because it’s in your fucking blood.
Can you have a prolonged break due to personal reasons? Sure! Life happens and can be very disruptive to the creative process. But you all know exactly the kind of person I’m talking about — the retiring engineer who has always pondered writing a book because he or she is a narcissist and now that they’re retired they need a hobby to fill the time, and books not only fill the time, they get you attention! Books can massage your ego like nothing since your high school sweetheart was dry humping you after prom.
Just say it’s your hobby. There is no shame in having a hobby. Hobbies are vital to a fulfilling life. Hobbies bring enormous joy to their followers. I’d respect you if you said — oh I’m just doing this for fun and to show off to my friends and family. That is a perfectly good reason to take up writing. The arts are as much a craft as they are a pastime, and either one is great! Enjoy the shit out of it!
Just don’t tell me it’s your life-long passion and that you’re an artist when you clearly aren’t! Not everyone can do their hobbies professionally. That’s fine. You don’t need to be a professional. Yet I cannot tell you how many writers have hired me or somehow got a publisher to sign them, and I was assigned to be their editor, who have no business calling themselves artists. They do not care about the integrity or refinement of the craft. They have thin egos, and no interest in improving their story. A true artist wants feedback. A true artist wants to be the best version of themselves.
A hobbyist can do whatever the fuck they want, it’s a hobby. Stop wasting professional editor’s time and energy on your fucking vanity project, Bob*.
4. You’re a Writer, not a Brand
The most nefarious aspect of social media has been convincing people that marketing is the beating heart of existence. We are not products, and the fact that so many creative people, especially those who claim to be progressives (a social movement based on anti-corporate and working-class affinity), can only view themselves through the prism of branding, is indicative of how lost we are. Lost as a society, and as an industry.
When Bukowski wrote counter-cultural poems, he was a suicidal post office worker who didn’t even become famous until he was almost 60. He never expected to become famous. He wrote regularly, and tried to get published for decades, but he was above all else, himself. He was an artist, so he wrote, and he wrote about the subjects he did because that’s what interested him.
I wish we could return to that. My favorite writers, whether Americans like Hubert Selby Jr. and Toni Morrison, Latin Americans like the great writers Julio Cortázar or Luis Rafael Sanchez or Julia de Burgos — they all wrote in the only way they knew how. They wrote idiosyncratic, experimental, confrontational, political, brilliant works of art, and it wasn’t because it was a form of selling themselves. They were just being themselves.
From 2012–17, I was a mini-celebrity. I was featured on Huffington Post, El Nuevo Día, El Post Antillano, Latino Rebels, the LA Times, the Washington Post, NPR, tons of places. The night of the 2016 election I was on Al Jazeera’s online election panel and had a meltdown when Trump won. I was doing events in NYC and organizing events in San Juan, Mexico, Melbourne, and London. I was doing as good as an independent author and publisher could hope for. I even won a national literary award during that time. And then in 2018 a good friend killed himself, in part because he was a writer who nobody cared about. And in his death, still nobody cared. It was a wound for his friends and no one else. His death fucked me up. It was also the first warning sign I had married the wrong woman that I actually listened to, even though it was obvious to anyone else for years, when she dismissed him dying and didn’t even comfort me. Not even a hug.
I began questioning if the people who had been following and admiring me were really my friends. I walked away from everything for a year, and only four or five people even checked in on me. Those people are still my friends, and will always be. But I saw in that experience how empty brands are. I also saw how empty online gestures are. The people online do not care about your humanity, but as an artist, you absolutely must. The online world does not exist. In the real world, your “brand” means nothing, but when was the last time you gave the people you love the most your full attention?
Yes, you are a writer, but you’re a person first. Make sure to nurture your humanity on a regular basis.
*Note: Bob doesn’t exist, that line just works better when directed at someone.