{"id":12803,"date":"2020-02-17T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-17T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=12803"},"modified":"2020-01-23T14:19:08","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T21:19:08","slug":"2020-01-23-newsletter-authors-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/2020-01-23-newsletter-authors-note\/","title":{"rendered":"2020-01-23 Newsletter Author’s Note"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This author’s note originally appeared in the January 23rd edition of my email newsletter. To sign up for my newsletter, click here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every week, when I sit down to write the author’s note for this \nnewsletter, I try to come up with something that you’ll find genuinely \ninteresting or insightful. I don’t want to talk about myself too much, \nsince that tends to get boring rather quickly, and I also don’t want to \ntalk too much about writing, since for non-writers that also tends to \nget boring. Most of my fans probably aren’t professional writers, and \nthose of my colleagues who do subscribe to this newsletter probably just\n want to keep tabs on what I’m doing and aren’t themselves fans (except \nfor you, J.R. Handley).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then again, since you’re someone who 1. actually opens the \nnewsletter, and 2. bothers to actually read it, you probably do have \nsome interest in both me and my writing. So I hope you’ll indulge me, \nbecause the thing that’s on my mind this week has to do with a couple of\n blog posts I read by Kristine Katherine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have tremendous respect for Kris and Dean. Their opinions \non writing and publishing had a huge impact on my decision to jump into \nindie publishing nearly nine years ago. That said, their advice has been\n a mixed bag: some of it ranks among the best writing and publishing \nadvice I’ve heard, but some of it has sent me down the wrong path, \nsometimes for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday, Dean wrote a blog post where he explained his big secret:<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It actually boils down to one simple thing\u2026 I don\u2019t care what anyone thinks of me. Or of my writing, or methods of writing.<\/p>

I just flat don\u2019t care.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In other words, the grand key to understanding all of Dean’s\n writing and publishing advice is this: don’t give a damn about anything\n else except having fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of a sudden, everything began to fall into place; both \nhis good advice (don’t let agents scam you, trust your own voice, don’t \nlet writing groups boss you around, don’t devalue your work) and his bad\n advice (never revise anything, never read reviews, do all of your own \ncovers, write everything quickly, don’t outline anything, don’t actively\n promote your books). It all comes down to his core philosophy of not \ngiving a damn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But is that really the best approach?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dean’s advice is very good for writing a certain kind of book. But the kind of books that I want to write are the ones that I like to read: books that really stick with you, either because they get you to think deeply about something, or feel deeply about something in a way you’ve never felt before. And I may be wrong, but Deans approach of not giving a damn seems like a terrible way to write those books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another thing that Dean always talks about is “critical voice.” \nBasically, all writers have two voices in their head: one that \nunderstands story and makes you want to write, and the “critical voice” \nthat tells you what’s wrong with everything and makes you want to give \nup writing forever. Maybe he’s right about that. But does it necessarily\n follow that the only way to write anything is to get your critical \nvoice to shut up?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the last few years, I’ve been developing a new method \nfor outlining my books. I used to think that outlining is terrible \nbecause it takes all the fun out of writing\u2014in other words, exactly what\n Dean says. Instead, outlining helps me to keep my “critical voice” in \ncheck, because when something is broken the outline helps me to see \nwhere the problem is, and how to fix it. It also helps me to eat the \nproverbial elephant one small bite at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is there a useful place for “critical voice” in the writing \nprocess? Can giving a damn actually be the key to writing a better book,\n or making writing fun again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This past week, I was writing a new scene in Star Wanderers<\/em> from Noemi’s point of view. It takes place during the events of Fidelity<\/em> and Benefactor,<\/em>\n when Mariya’s father loses his job and the family doesn’t know what \nthey’re going to do. It felt like a slog until I realized that the \nconversation between these two characters, Mariya and Noemi, offered a \nreally interesting chance to explore questions of faith, doubt, and the \nproblem of evil. Suddenly, the scene really came alive for me, and the \nkey was asking myself “what can I offer my readers here? What will they \ntake away from this?” In other words, giving a damn actually made the \nwriting more<\/em> fun, not less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few weeks ago, Kris wrote a really interesting blog post<\/a> where among other things she said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If a writer isn\u2019t afraid of what she\u2019s writing, then she\u2019s \ndoing it wrong because she\u2019s not stretching herself. You should always \nreach just a bit, go a place you haven\u2019t gone before.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I like that. And if I didn’t actually care about what you or\n others thought\u2014if it was all about myself and “having fun”\u2014I don’t \nthink I’d ever really stretch myself as a writer. Or perhaps I would, \nbut not in the right way. I’d be like one of those bodybuilders, with \nmassive pecks and teeny tiny legs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of which is to say that I think I finally understand now\n why Dean Wesley Smith’s writing and publishing advice is so \nhit-or-miss. And also, that I understand a little better how to write \nthe kind of books that made me want to write in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This author’s note originally appeared in the January 23rd edition of my email newsletter. To sign up for my newsletter, click here. Every week, when I sit down to write the author’s note for this newsletter, I try to come up with something that you’ll find genuinely interesting or insightful. I don’t want to talk… Continue reading 2020-01-23 Newsletter Author’s Note<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[252,531,530,860,599,232,134],"class_list":["post-12803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-criticism","tag-dean-wesley-smith","tag-kris-rusch","tag-publishing-advice","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-why-we-write","tag-writing-advice","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-3kv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12803"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12809,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12803\/revisions\/12809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}