There’s No Wrong Way To Be A Writer
I recently wrote a post for Jane Friedman’s blog about adding meaningful words to lean manuscripts, and in that post, I shared that I struggled early on with the fact that I wrote lean when most of the advice I came across for revisions involved cutting words, not adding them. I became self-conscious of my short drafts and worried I was doing this whole writing thing wrong. After all, if I were a real writer, wouldn’t I have too many words to share, not too few?
It wasn’t until I began connecting with other writers who admitted they tended to write short drafts as well that I recognized my way wasn’t wrong, it was just different. But there are still days I question if writing lean is somehow “wrong,” and I have to admit there are days I wonder if the shorter final word count of The Serendipity of Catastrophe of 73,000 words didn’t deter some of the agents I’d originally queried.
For the most part, when I have these thoughts, I remind myself that there are other writers out there like me and move on. But when I shared my lean manuscript post, several other writers shared that they also wrote lean and worried they’d been doing something wrong as well. And that brought me back to those early days of my writing career when I was so unsure and worried I was doing something wrong and that I wasn’t a real writer.
Everyone’s process looks a little different. As much as I love reading articles about my favorite authors and learning about their process, as a young writer, it was easy to wonder if I was doing something wrong if my writing process didn’t look like waking up at 5am and lighting a specific candle with a cup of tea and then cranking out 3,000 words in one sitting. While it’s nice to have a behind-the-scenes look at how our favorite novels were written, comparing ourselves to other writers isn’t generally helpful. Just because one way of working works for them doesn’t mean it’s the best way for us to work. There’s a whole slew of writers who wake up before the sun to write, and that works well for them. But if you’re a writer who works best at 10pm, then that’s the right time for you to write, and there’s nothing wrong about that.
Ultimately, there’s no wrong way to be a writer. If you write, then you’re a writer. Whether you write short manuscripts you need to add words to or long manuscripts you need to cut scenes and chapters from, you’re a writer. Whether you work best in long stretches of time or short bursts, you’re a writer. The best way to be a writer is the way that works for you.
