So You Want To Be A Writer…
Writing career advice that cuts through the clutter and doesn’t contradict itself
Origin Story
I have always wanted to be a writer. I’ve always written stories, starting from stories where my first-grade teacher died multiple horrible deaths. But somewhere down the line, my fiction just didn’t work, though everyone who read it said they liked how I wrote.
Sometime in 2014, I had a burst of inspiration, and wrote a 5000-word long short story. Somehow, finishing that made me feel confident enough to call myself a writer. I remember sharing it with my husband, who I had just started dating, and he thought I was so cool.
Well, after we married in 2017, I decided maybe I needed to do something with that short story that had impressed this man so much. I joined a writing class, and began several short stories that were better, but still lacked any finish or polish or, often, an ending. But it gave me more confidence to self-publish that 5000-word short story, and I did, on Amazon. I made a few cents, but really, I didn’t even feel like promoting my 99c story. I felt marooned and antsy, and didn’t know what to do with my writing.
The Writing Group
A bunch of writers decided to group up on Reddit. We then moved to Twitter, where we followed each other. Then this happened. Finally, we decided to form a group on Slack, and that’s how TL;DR Press was born. We now edit short stories, provide feedback to emerging writers, and publish them as themed anthologies whose sales go to a charity we choose.
Lots of new writers join the Slack group everyday, and every three months, we have tens of people submit stories to us. Being immersed in this writerly world has given me some thoughts on what works, and what’s possible.
When I go to writing events, or forums for writing advice, I realize my experience is not typical. It’s usually difficult to be immersed in writing, even though technology makes it easier. While it’s easy to ad-hoc connect to individuals and groups every now and then, not seeing the same group of people regularly is what makes it hard to be immersed. I see a lot of bad advice do the rounds, and there’s a lot of making fiction writing seem more mystical and mysterious than it is. There’s also quite some magical thinking, and on the opposite end, so many people who are intimidated by the idea of publishing itself.
I want to offer my perspective on writing and publishing in a way that it could be the one piece you can keep coming back to when you’re confused about something in the writing world.
Getting Started - Finishing Your First First-Draft
Lots of people feel they have a novel in them, but find it so hard to get it out. It gnaws at them on the inside, and makes them feel antsy. A force inside them tells them they are a writer, and yet, they find it hard to put words to paper. And when they do, it’s good, but it isn’t good enough.
There’s others who want to tell stories, but don’t feel putting things into written words is their strong suit. I notice this most strongly in Indians who grew up in cities, and aren’t comfortable with English, or in an Indian language, and feel intimidated by the prospect of expressing themselves in writing.
Yet others like writing, and can write something funny, or touching, but they just can’t seem to write anything long, or involved.
I’ve been all of these people.
There’s many ways to get started, but they all involve writing a lot. You’ll find a lot of writing advice, but it’s hard for you to make sense of it all, if you don’t have any experience putting stories on paper.
So the first thing to do is to think of a story that makes you feel something strongly enough to propel you to write. If you only have a feeling, or an image, or an emotion, or a premise, that’s okay too.
One way to do it is to just start writing, and then see where it takes you. Another way is to write a sequence of events that you want the story to cover, or some sort of rough semblance of a plot, and then start writing.
In both of these ways, please don’t stop and edit or erase what you’ve written until you have written the words ‘THE END’. Your first draft is you telling yourself the story, and so editing before your first draft is done is like you arguing with yourself about what you want to say. So keep writing until you reach an end, and then you can go over and correct things up.
If you aren’t used to writing, start on pieces with short time horizons. Write a flash fiction piece, or a short story. Write stories that have at most three big scenes. This is an arbitrary number of course, but I’ve noticed that that’s the number that most of my better short stories have. And usually they can be cut down to two, and the real stuff usually only happens in one.
Follow it through to The End, just so you know what that feels like to finish a draft. One place I used to get stuck at was going back and editing the same 800 words over and over, and never reaching The End. This is counterproductive. Do what you can to finish one draft, even if it’s imperfect. Once this feeling of ‘The End’ is imprinted in you, you’ll keep chasing it, and it will motivate you to write and finish more stories.
Lots of people don’t follow this advice and they do just fine, which is why you should take this advice with a pinch of salt. But if you don’t have strong preferences, this is worth a try, to get to a finished draft.
Completing your first story
So you’ve finished your first draft. Great.
There’s a lot of people who get here and are confused. Maybe they’ve completed multiple first drafts and don’t know what to do with all of them. Maybe they don’t feel the feeling of having completed a story.
The next step is to edit your draft.
Read through your story again. Maybe you’ve left large gaps in narrative or in facts. I usually like to add things like “<TODO insert name of high-end clothing brand>” so I don’t go off on an internet rabbit hole. Fill them up. Fix any typos or bad grammar. If you find any glaring errors in narrative, make small fixes.
But you’re still too close to your story. So leave it be, for a day, or a week. Then read it again. Changes will occur to you. Make notes of what changes need to be made. Then, go through your list one by one, and implement those changes.
You could also have a friend or family member you trust read your story and give you some feedback. Pick someone who is kind and will be supportive. You could also ask strangers on the internet. There’s the #betareaders hashtag on Twitter, and there’s several writing communities on Reddit, the biggest of which is r/writing. I’ve had mixed results with those, and you need to pick something that works for you.
When they get back to you with feedback, you don’t have to take all of it. Just pick the ones that resonate the most with you, and make those changes.
Sometimes, you’ll want to rewrite your story, because it’s too much to edit in place. You could do that as well. However you choose to edit, pick the choice that makes you want to keep moving over the choice that leaves you paralyzed.
Three or four drafts work for me. Often, I manage with just two. It’s all about your comfort level. There’s friends of mine who go up to eleven. If you’re just starting out, try doing three. You can always do more or less with subsequent stories.
I have a complete story, now what?
Congratulations! It takes a lot to come this far. This is the beginning of a long career, and you will write many, many more stories.
Now there’s multiple things you can do with your story. The traditional thing to do is to send it across to various magazines, contests, and other publications, so they may consider it for publication. This is a long process, which I personally find annoying because a lot of publications take time to get back to you, and during that time, some of them demand you don’t submit the same stories to other places at the same time. But if accepted, you get to see your name in print, and sometimes, you get paid.
There might be some magazines and contests you already have in mind because you read them. There’s also other markets and contests you can find on sites like Submission Grinder, and Submittable. I personally like publications that accept simultaneous submissions, and just shoot my story off to a handful of magazines at one shot.
But this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. There’s other things you can do with your story.
You could put it on your blog for your friends and family to read. Or even on your Facebook. Sites like Medium pay you based on the traffic your story gets, and you only need to enroll in their partner program to be eligible for payments.
There’s also sites like Wattpad where you can share your short story for the community to read. Those are good because there’s already a community interested in reading fiction on there, and they can be highly engaged in the content.
Another option is to release a story on the Kindle store. The pro is you’re putting your money where your mouth is, and your story really, truly feels complete when you’re putting it out there. The con is you’ll have to make a cover, a blurb, and format your story into the Kindle format. Depending on your personality, it could be an incredibly fun thing to do.
The Writerly Life
Now that one story has seen the light of day, you can be motivated to do more.
Some of us feel that’s all the story we have had in us, and can choose to take a break until the next time inspiration strikes. That’s cool.
Another path is to think of all the stories you want to tell, and then try to tell them all one by one. Or maybe all at once.
This is also where you’ll start refining your skills. You’ll realize there’s many different templates to try writing stories with. There’s Dan Harmon’s Story Circle. There’s The Hero’s Journey. There’s Save The Cat. There’s many different kinds of formulae, none of which you have to follow to the letter. I like to think of them as guides and lenses to see your story through, and different ways of thinking about storytelling. They can all be incredibly helpful, for sure.
As you write more and more, you’ll realize you have some strengths, and some weaknesses. You might find you kick ass at dialogue. Or that you suck at writing endings. Maybe you realize your love interests tend to be one-dimensional. Some of us focus on the strengths and try to minimize their weaknesses by making sure they aren’t the highlight.
The right thing to do is to challenge yourself to work on your weak areas, so you become a well-rounded writer. I am, for example, terrible with descriptions. I went to a workshop, where I mentioned to the author that I find it hard to write description, while dialogue comes to me easily. She told me she was recovering from an accident, and in physiotherapy, she finds it hard to use her left side, but she works very hard on using her left arm and leg, so they get stronger and make it easier. After hearing that, I decided never to make virtues out of my weaknesses, and instead to work on them until I’m better.
Another area you’ll find yourself figuring out is your process. We are all complex human beings, who need different things to kindle our creativity. This is very dependent on your personality, and just because it works for your favorite writer doesn’t mean it is going to work for you.
For instance, some of my friends need to talk to themselves or walk around to be creative. Others need to make mood boards on Pinterest to get into the mood. Some write better alone. Others write better with friends and conversation. A lot of us need our snacks. All I need is either a tight deadline of a few hours, or nothing scheduled after. Most of my writing happens as the last thing in the day. I also like having my ideas on the wall on colorful postits.
Your process doesn’t make you cool or quirky or boring, or anything; it’s just something you use to get writing done. Don’t worry if you don’t fit into any template or if the most popular suggestions don’t work for you. This is one of those places where YOU DO YOU comes first and foremost.
Community
On my morning commute, I found myself wanting to go in to my bright, cool, office, but I always wished I was going in to do a day of writing instead of coding. I quickly realized I wanted some writing colleagues. I liked talking shop with my work colleagues, and I just wanted to have conversations at that quality, but with writing!
Finding friends to write with is important. You don’t have to only talk about writing. With the TL;DR Slack group, I find myself making most conversation about things that are not writing. That helps me be casually immersed in the world of writing, which makes me be okay with weaving in and out of writing. It keeps me connected to writing even when I’m not actively working on a piece, and it keeps my writerly energy up.
The other benefit I get from having a group of writing colleagues is that I can’t anymore fool people with the same garbage over and over again. I used to go to writing meetups, like Shut Up And Write, and to open mic readings. I rarely saw the same person twice, and each time I went, I’d read something new I had scribbled, or the same old piece. People would ooh and aah, but really, I wasn’t making any progress. I wasn’t finishing anything, or creating a lot of new work. I wasn’t challenging myself much. But now, people see me everyday, and it makes me want to build on what I already have rather than start from scratch every single time.
You too, could join the TL;DR Writers’ Slack. Just fill in the form here.
Or, there’s several writers’ Discords and subreddits. There’s also meetups and events at libraries, which can be better for those who are more motivated by IRL connections.
If you don’t find any you like, try creating one yourself. I have done that as well (albeit not for writing), and it can be incredibly rewarding to coordinate a creative activity that helps people in your community.
NaNoWriMo is a great time to find community, because that’s when all the writers come out of our holes to celebrate writing and writerly things. Bookstores, libraries, and even coffee shops host events for emerging writers, and the NaNo site itself offers opportunities for networking and connections both online and in your local area.
Find friends, and stick with them. You don’t have to be writing to be in touch. It’s most helpful if you are friends with writers rather than networked with others in the capacity of a writer, but that’s a personal relationship thing, and different people connect differently. The only thing I consider important is that you should see the same people over and over again.
Don’t feel intimidated to join a group of writers. Most places can be very welcoming, and writing is one of those disciplines where a good writer can come from any background and any level of experience. Storytelling is something very inherent in all humans, and you have it in you no matter what you or anybody thinks.
Novels
Ah, novels. Lots of people don’t consider themselves a ‘real writer’ unless they write novels. I personally believe the ‘real writer’ stuff is nonsense, but I recognize novels are a pretty important milestone for many people.
Novels can be more intimidating to the average writer, but they also give you so much freedom to explore ideas and create fictional worlds in a way shorter forms don’t.
Some people consider short stories practice to write a novel. Some others don’t really feel short stories pouring out of them the way a novel does. It doesn’t matter. Fiction writing is a market where the only thing that matters is your last completed work.
Many people have written entire books on how to write a novel, and I don’t think I’m really adding much to that if I describe how or why to write novels.
But there’s one thing that distinguishes a novel from shorter forms of fiction.
Stamina.
Novels start at 40,000 words. Finishing one requires a lot of stamina. That’s basically what you need to complete a novel. Energy and stamina.
There’s many different ways to acquire and replenish this stamina, and I’ll be talking about the ones I’ve seen.
A lot of first-time novelists write a novel about the experiences they are intimately familiar with. The stamina comes to them from channeling their lived experiences into words. I dip into personal experiences of situations to draw inspiration for my novel.
A superset of this idea is the novel that you feel very strongly about. Some people feel very passionately about certain situations. It could be because it’s their lived experience. It could also be others’ experience they feel needs to be shown to a wider audience. People also feel strongly about sociopolitical issues and characters, and their energy flows from those strong feelings.
Another way to get stamina is to slowly work up to it. If you have experience writing a lot of short stories, and you have worked towards increasing your word count and sticking to the same project for longer and longer durations, your mind can be trained to write a novel.
I started with short flash fiction, then went on to long short stories that I felt very passionately about (6000 words), then several short stories about smaller topics. Then I wrote and edited a 14,000 word choose-your-own-adventure novel, which gave me confidence. I channeled this into writing 25,000 words of a draft, which I then managed to rewrite into 40,000 words (and still going).
Others’ trajectories can be different, but when you hear of someone’s experience writing a novel, look at where they draw their inspiration and stamina from.
An important part of this stamina can also be friends, family, and writing colleagues, so look to recruiting them into being your cheerleaders.
Apart from all this, building structures for yourself, like to-do lists, checklists, schedules, and other methods of organization and accountability, can help keep you going.
It can also help to use story structure concepts, like Save The Cat, or Story Circle, or The Hero’s Journey, or other beat sheets that might be specific to your genre to make sure you’re hitting all the important notes.
It might take you a while, but figure out what combination of these things helps keep you going. It can change over time, and across projects, so keep yourself flexible. But thinking about writing a novel in terms of stamina can be a great way to figure out ways and means to keep you going,
Writing With A Day Job
I was raised with a strong bent towards being financially independent. While I was encouraged to be creative, writing in English wasn’t particularly seen as lucrative unless you had connections. My parents had writer friends who were pretty well off, but usually, they had another source of income, a spouse with a steady job, or connections (usually parents) who helped their career take off.
I grokked pretty early on that I would have some sort of a high-skilled career, possibly in the sciences, and do some writing on the side, and a lot of my role models were writers who worked regular jobs. I’d also dig around to find what my author idols’ lives were like, and it impressed me to no end that PG Wodehouse got famous while still working for HSBC back in the day.
Writing fiction in general isn’t seen as lucrative, and I’m not sure it ever was. Writers usually tend to be journalists, editors, or academics. A good portion of them also tend to be in screenwriting or marketing and communications. A rising number are in technical writing.
A lot of writers I know also teach writing workshops, give talks, teach college classes as adjuncts, or consult in high schools. And that’s just the totally creative ones.
But increasingly, writers I know are in the tech industry. It’s a big trend in India that most of the mass writers these days are those with engineering degrees, who worked in the tech or finance industry for a while, before they became successful enough with writing to rely on it wholly for income.
This isn’t even a new phenomenon. Taking a historic walk around San Francisco, I repeatedly came across how being a longshoreman was a popular, lucrative career, and a lot of longshoremen were creatives who did the job to pay the bills, and spent the rest of their time writing stories, poetry and music.
Another way having a fulltime job helps you with your writing career is you can write in depth about a particular industry, and have that be your USP. Kind of like how John le Carre used his knowledge to write spy thrillers, John Grisham writes legal thrillers,
Is it easy, or possible to write while working fulltime, though? Well, your mileage may vary, but I’ve met a lot of people who do it. Usually it becomes our only hobby, and we end up needing to be a bit more organized about our day, so we can make time to write. Everything ends up taking longer than it would if you write the whole day, but in my experience, work expands to fit the time available, and busy people manage to get more done per unit time than people who are less busy. Or so I tell myself.
In my personal experience crafting a writing process and schedule, short term deadlines help a lot, and realistic goals do as well. Setting aside one month a year in the form of NaNoWriMo helps me get a novel off the ground, which I can spend the rest of the year finishing. Work happens in bursts instead of a consistent hum, and that’s okay.
Ultimately you have to decide your pace for yourself. But do know that it can be done, and your working fulltime doesn’t in itself have to be a body blow to any writing ambitions you might have. Give yourself extra time, and be patient with yourself. Things will move slightly slower, but it will all fall in place eventually. ‘
Getting Published
Now we’re in hearsay territory, because I haven’t finished a novel, I have never queried, and I haven’t been published. I’m going by all the pieces I’ve read and the people I’ve spoken to who have actually been published.
After you finish your novel is when the real work begins. Your complete manuscript that you spent months, or maybe years on is ready. Take a break.
After self-editing your novel, you might want to get some beta readers. These are readers in your genre who might not be friends and family, i.e. you can rely on them for impersonal feedback.
You can use the feedback you get from these readers to further edit your novel, or writing your synopsis in a way that appeals to people.
Then comes the task of finding an agent. To find an agent, you would need to strengthen your first couple of chapters and/or 50 pages, and send them to prospective agents with a synopsis, and logline describing your novel.
You can find prospective agents by looking at books similar to yours, and finding the agents, usually credited in the acknowledgements section. Google and Twitter are also great places to find agents. There’s usually a #PItMad event on Twitter once a quarter, where you get to share your logline on Twitter, and prospective agents will like your tweet to indicate interest.
Once you have an agent, it could happen that they help you edit your novel further, but usually, a publisher agrees to your novel, and gives you a contract. You get an advance, and agree on how royalties are calculated. You also iron out details of how many books are going to be printed and circulated, as well as any marketing details.
This whole process can take a year or more.
I personally dislike this whole process and the gatekeeping that comes with it. I also feel a bit removed from the tropes and beliefs that go with the territory of writing literary fiction and/or domestic thrillers, and I’d rather publish it all by myself, iterate quickly and learn to do better.
Social Media As A Writer
Social media as such is a vast topic to cover, and there’s many different niches and ways of doing it. Everyone’s experience is different, especially since marketing your work can be so personal to each one of us.
That said, every writer wonders if they need to be on social media, and about how they can utilize social media to be a better writer.
First off, you don’t need to be on social media to be a writer. A lot of established writers I know are barely on social media, and when they are, they don’t have huge legions of followers. You are better off spending energy writing than updating social media.
But there’s definitely benefits to be had from social media. These fall into two categories: 1) Finding colleagues, and 2) Finding an audience.
Finding colleagues is definitely easier on social media. There’s several hashtags, like #writingcommunity, which you can use to find other writers. There’s several groups on Facebook which are writer-focused. I assume other social media, like Snapchat and Instagram are also great with finding other writers, who you can network, and discuss your art with. You can also hear about opportunities for writers, like contests, publications, workshops, and scholarships.
Finding an audience is definitely harder, and demands different tactics. One important thing is to NOT confuse finding colleagues with finding fans. When you do a follow train on Twitter (threads where you can promote yourself for others to follow), you are attracting colleagues, not readers. Colleagues can be readers, but not always.
Finding your readers involves content marketing. I’ve gone through a lot of books, and the advice always boils down to having a blog or a website, where you post content, and you promote your content on social media. All your social media promotion should lead back to that blog or website. It’s generally advised to put out content once every week or two weeks. Regularity, more than frequency, is what is important here.
One big concern I see is from introverts and others who don’t enjoy talking about themselves. They feel uncomfortable promoting themselves on social media. I understand this, as someone who is all of those things. I realize there’s no one right way to do social media. On my Twitter and Substack, all I do is be myself, and hope to attract people who are into things I say and do.
I follow some people who share a lot about themselves, and others who are happy to offer opinions on popular trends. I have tried copying what others do, and it doesn’t work for me most of the time. I have realized that each one of us has unique strengths with how we communicate with people, and leaning into that helps us attract our most authentic audience.
Making Money As A Writer
This is another thing I don’t have much experience with, and I’m going off of hearsay.
It’s considered relatively easy to make money as a writer. There’s lucrative kinds of writing, like technical writing, marketing, and communications. Editing is also a good way to get paid for writing skills. Nonfiction has a lot of varied avenues to make money.
However, making money writing fiction seems like a harder problem.
There’s several paying markets where you can submit your short stories. And when you finally get a publishing deal, it can bring in money as well. I’ve seen advances being in the $5-10k range typically, though higher isn’t that unusual.
Self publishing can be lucrative if you approach it like a job. Most of the people I have heard of who make money off of self-published fiction have the following characteristics:
They write a lot, and regularly.
They publish a lot, and regularly.
They price competitively.
They stick to one genre and write extensively in that genre.
They often publish series. If they write fantasy, they write a lot in one universe.
They really understand their market, and work very hard on marketing their work.
So these are the skills to learn and work towards to have a lucrative career as a self-published writer.
Conclusion
After meeting so many writers from so many different walks of life, who write about so many different parts of the human experience, I can only conclude that telling stories is a big part of being human.
We all have it in us to write, and we should take advantage of it to tell every imaginable kind of story. I personally feel it’s not necessarily something that can always be profitable, and we shouldn’t let monetary issues stop us from telling our stories.
While writing is definitely a creative profession, I consider it a craft. You can hone your craft and get better at it. It’s okay to impose rules on it, and a structure. It doesn’t take away from the creative aspect; rather, it frees you to focus on your best ways to be creative, and to tell your stories in a way others will listen.
The business side of writing is something that can be confusing, but getting comfortable with contracts, rights, money, and other such things can be very important in protecting your art. Being comfortable with marketing is also a skill that goes well with creating art.
Writing is an extremely frustrating, extremely rewarding craft. You are in for a world of wonder. Happy writing!