A song from the tightrope
A short email from me today, with a single thought in it. Here it is:
Creative writers and, really, creators of almost any sort,
are often asked to perform their best work without any kind of support.
No financial support: you have to write and edit and perfect an entire damn novel before you get to find out whether anyone wants it or has a use for it. For most us, that’s like asking us to do one year’s worth of work before finding out if we’re going to get paid anything at all.
No institutional support: you’ll be doing your work alone. There’s no big surrounding environment to say, “Yes, we’ve asked you to do this difficult thing, but don’t worry, there are career structures for people like you, here is a team which is made up of people like you, and here’s a canteen that offers cheap lattes because we know you like them.”
No tech or knowhow support: If you’re self-publishing, there are quite a few tech dashboards to deal with. If you’re not, you still have to grapple with the intricacies of agent-hunting, which involves a certain knowhow, a knowledge of what to do and how to do it. Either way, there’s a whole lot of technical knowledge which you don’t have, and other people do, and which you will need to master in order to succeed.
And often the support of our loved ones is passive rather than active. “Oh, Joan? Yeah, she loves writing. She’s upstairs now tapping away. I think it’s something about orcs this time? Or is it medieval sailors? Or something to do with tsetse flies? Anyway, yeah, I’m sure it’s great.” I don’t want to knock that kind of support, because that’s necessary too, but there’s a big gap between that and the sort that really sees your project and understands and endorses your passion for it.
And – jeepers. That’s a big ask, right?
In any well-run office, we recognise the need to bring new members of staff onto the team with care. An introduction to the job, to the team, to the tech, to the staff parties and the in-jokes and all the rest of it. Mess that stuff up and you very likely won’t get the best from that newbie – and the newbie, very likely, will be wondering whether to look around for a different job.
And at one level, that basic isolation doesn’t change. I’m playing around on a new project at the moment – very literary, very quirky – and it’s completely unclear whether anyone at all will want to buy it. So am I writing for myself or an audience? For free or for pay? I don’t know. The process of finding out is still months away.
And in the end, Jericho Writers can’t solve that problem for you. No one can. The essence of it is hard-wired into our industry.
But we will do what we can. We ask our Writer Support people to be friends and guides first. We ask them to be absolutely honest with anyone who rings up or emails in. We set them absolutely no sales targets. They aren’t there to sell; they’re there to help.
We also want to enrich our community – and will have a lot more to share later this year. Membership of that community will remain free to all. I know that plenty of writers have come to depend deeply on friendships and relationships first formed in that community.
And then there’s the matter of ethos too. Of course, we aim to work with professional editors, and professional tutors, and so on. We demand a high standard of work and are constantly monitoring it. But do our editor-tutor-mentors just deliver the work and move on? Or do they actually care? Are they invested in the work and the people whose work they nourish? In the end, we don’t ask for mere professionalism. We also want to work with people of genuine passion.
So that’s the thought. This writing game of ours is tough. It’s isolated. It’s probably doubly hard in the context of a global pandemic. Plenty of people have struggled.
We can’t change that basic struggle. Writing is tough because it’s competitive and difficult. It’s tough making the Olympics too, and for essentially the same reason. But we can recognise the challenge. And many of us know what it’s like from our own experience. We’re on your side.
I met wonderful people here. I care about their books and their success as much as my own. A few that I would now call friends. I don’t know where I would be without them. Probably stalking agents forcing them to read my book actually.
This is a very timely post! My current writing project makes me ask myself never-ending questions and most of them are coloured in doubts. But, it can’t be wrong if writing this project makes me feel so great? It actually the only thing in many years that makes me feel extremely good. Isn’t it a great sing?
This community is fab. Writing is a lone activity but being in contact with other writers is a basic necessity and this community ticks that box brilliantly: it has a generous & caring atmosphere. I’m a member of other writing forums but this one is the best!
Big THANK YOU to Harry for all the hard work & TLC he puts into JW.
I always recommend JW to others whenever I can.
(Spread the LOVE…❤ 💛 💙 💚 and the links…)
Thanks!! Much appreciated. This community is due a bit of a tech upgrade, and that’s in the words too …
It’s the weekend, so I want some fun. Harry says he’s on a fresh writing project: ” very literary, very quirky.”
A challenge: Guess Harry’s literary and quirky book. Me first:
‘John Dee, conjuror, and sorcerer to Queen Elizabeth the First, is tasked to solve a spate of murders at Elizabeth’s Court. Murders that become ever closer to the Virgin Queen herself.’
Written in the dry style of Martin Amis…….
It’s a lot stranger than that … 🙂
How true is this? The process of getting to be a published author is so counter-intuitive. Produce the perfect specimen with no guidance or even an indication that you’re on track. Spread your dreams under the feet of an agent who you’ve got about 20 seconds to convince you’re sassy, determined and talented enough for them and get rejected in half that time. Spend ages obsessed with an idea or a character who takes over your life only to feel like the King in the story of the Emperor’s new suit when the little boy (eg agent/publisher) points out the obvious. I know it’s nothing personal and it’s like you’ve got a bottle of red wine when they’re looking for white but to keep submitting in the face of blanket rejection is very hard and once again, counter-intuitive.
Absolutely!!! It is hard AND you’re meant to be your best creative self the whole while.
Good, wholesome post, Harry.
It is (always in the end) down to us alone. Not the partner, the dog, or your best friend, or neighbour’s uncle’s sister who once knew someone who published a church pamphlet. Each of us wannabes would do well to remember the pitfalls of having ones head in the clouds. Nasty as reality is and can be, it’s better to enter a cave knowing there might be an axe murderer in there, than not knowing. As I see it, for most, ‘trad’ publishing will forever be a dream. For others, ‘self-pub’ will be an achievable haven and/or reality.
That should never stop us from trying to reach for the stars though! Having guidance and support, rather than criticism, will forever be appreciated and educational for the novice writer. Knowing how to spot it could be a tutorial in itself. Whilst a teacher’s job is to teach and debate and provide a forum for such things, a novice needs to listen and use that info and chance wisely, picking and choosing the goodness as they go. Writers need tools, which Jericho is awash with; and thank goodness for video replay!
Plato gave the world (and by inference, us writers) a great tool when he said: Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance. That should be one of the mantras when it comes to a writer reading book reviews and advice, solicited or otherwise.
But we the writer must learn to know what we need. There is an ocean of “stuff’ out there to bamboozle us. We must work at what we do by using all the tools to hand, and, even in the most repressive of times, be realistic, and true to our ideas and ideals.
Hopefully, your lost mugs of half-drunk tea will have been washed out by rain now, and busy drying in this hot spell? Maybe you’ll get a first early crop of new spectacles this weekend, too?
Have a great, and I hope peaceful holiday weekend (is that ever possible with small humans in the home?).
Four small humans … and one nasty tummy bug as things turned out. I only got to sleep finally at about 8.00 am!
Oh my lord! I am sorry to hear this. Currently, I’m on 4 hours of sleep a night, but I don’t have 4 small people to care for. Take care and keep your strength up! I’ll mention you all in prayers tonight! The sun will help I’m sure!
i didn’t realize I needed this message until i read it! just lovely, harry. writers always need to remember they’re not alone in their aloneness and that the act of creating is always sacred and noble. lovely.
Thanks, Maeve! I honestly didn’t know what I was going to write until about 5 minutes before I say down to write. Sometimes the words just come …
Yes, it is a big risk and sometimes I ask myself how I got up on this tightrope and why the hell I don’t call for a ladder and climb quietly down. But I’m so far across now and can hardly measure if going back or forward would be less painful.
This forum has often offered support in the form of other crazy people who are attempting to balance and make it across and occasionally I’ve managed to snatch some words of advice from the professionals. So thanks for that.
Now back to the wire…