Essay

Advice from an Older, Unsuccessful Writer

Streak early, streak often.

You need to get your ugly in front of the world, and you need to do it now.

Stop worrying about not being any good. Stop trying to be Hemingway. Stop editing your pieces to death. Write and publish anywhere you can, under whatever pseudonyms you need, in order to just get shit out there.

I say this because I've enjoyed writing my whole life and I was kinda good at it, and I always thought I'd be a success. And yeah, I know, advice is useless because it applies to other people, not you. I get that. But it's cathartic to say this, so keep reading, you little shit.

I was so certain I'd be a success, and yet I didn't know what led to success. I didn't ever publish anything. It has taken me years to learn which writers I like and why. Years to learn what makes a short story good. Years to learn how to finish a story or a post that I start.

I'm still learning all of that.

There's a few other things I'm learning. I'm learning that it matters less what you do than where you are — the people you hang out with and what they do, those things are going to matter. The published authors you admire got published because of who they got to know. Many of them worked hard to get to know the right people, but they also simply made genuine friendships with other writers, and they had natural competition between themselves.

This is the way.

Einstein worked as a patent clerk while he continued his scientific studies. No university wanted him. He had his science buddies, and they'd swap theories and papers, and eventually this led to something. He wasn't a patent clerk with a science hobby; he was a scientist who funded his research by clerking at the patent office.

Yes, you have time. Yes, Bukowski is a swell example.

This isn't about that, though.

This is the pleading of a middle-aged man to his younger self, begging him to just stop being so full of himself. Let yourself be shitty. Allow for other people to be better than you. But write your stories and share them. Get them in front of people. Get it down. I wish I had completed more — because even with the technical errors, even with the incompleteness, even with the naïve subjects and treatment of them, there is a freshness to how you see the world that you won't always be able to access. You can fix your stories later if you want to, but you won't be able to return to seeing something for the first time unless you wrote it down.

People tell you you're talented? Listen to them, but don't try to protect that porcelain perception of yourself. Shatter it in front of them if that's what it takes to get better — to actually publish something you're proud of; to publish anything. To work. To do the work. Yes, maybe writing the ugly first draft is easy for you, but it's hard to edit. Then find an editor. But don't allow yourself to coast through this time in your life. We need your stories. We don't need you to be perfect. We don't need you to be great. We need you to open your eyes and tell us what you see, however you can get the words out.

We often are drawn to writers with style, right? We love a terse telling that sparks the imagination. But style doesn't mean shit without substance. It's the substance that style uncovers. Style is the presentation, but it isn't the meal.

I don't care if you serve it on china or Chinet — feed me what's real. Give me the meat. I don't need sides. I don't need it to be pretty. The cheaper foods always need more salt and more spices, but the best chefs start with high-quality ingredients. And you have that already.

This is why writers with hard lives, sad lives — writers who have explored the ugly parts of the world — usually have more to say: because they've gone beyond suburbia. But it doesn't matter. Not really.

Write what you know, they say. But nobody tells you which parts of what you know are the parts we want — the parts we want to resonate with, or the parts we want to experience through you. We all want to feel understood. Your life can help us live something for the first time, or it can help us relive something that shaped us. Or it can help us see the world in a way we didn't see it before.

But you don't need to know how your readers are going to respond. More often than not, the art works through you in ways you may not realize or intend. Don't get in the way of the art. Don't assume you know what it's trying to accomplish through you. Just give an honest effort at something. Remind yourself that it's ok if it's not understood or appreciated. Remind yourself you'll get a million other chances, and that you intend to take them. Remind yourself that this is fun — and even if it isn't fun, it's a part of feeling alive.

Make an ugly draft. Put it away for a week. Make a brutal edit. Put it away for two weeks. Edit it again, and put it out there. That's enough for now. Yes, with a bunch more edits you might polish it into something great, but we don't need the first 2000 posts or stories to be great. When you come back to it in a year, you might see in it something you didn't see earlier — something you would have edited out of it. Let it be a bit raw. Trust the process. Allow enough humility to accept there may be things in there you're missing, and employ enough courage to put it out there even though every inch of you thinks it's not ready and the world is going to think it's shit.

The world likely won't even notice — they're too busy with too many distractions to notice anything of quality anyway. There will be time to come back to it. But not if you never start, or never publish.

You'll stay stuck, stunted, and frustrated.