I launched my podcast Making It Up nearly three years ago with the goal of interviewing writers not for any particular work of theirs, but to talk to them about their lives. I didn’t want to ask them what famous author they want to have dinner with or what their top five favorite books are … yech. I wanted to know what their childhood was like, what inflection point made them want to write, and to hear about the years of glorious rejection letters. Most readers pick up a book and assume the author has always been an author, and they make gobs of money writing. I wanted the real, raw truth.
After nearly 150 conversations with writers of all backgrounds (from NYT bestselling thriller authors, to hopeful debuts, to historians, science writers and poets), I’m still amazed how much connective tissue binds us writers together. A few commonalities I’ve evidenced throughout my interviews:
- Most writers can name a specific person or event that happened in their teenage years that made them want to write.
- Writing is less a plan than it is a purpose. Despite all efforts to do anything but write, the act of writing will burrow its way to the surface at some point in a writer’s life.
- No one sets out to write because it’s a solid business decision.
- Nearly every writer has suffered (or continues to suffer) from impostor syndrome. We all feel like frauds, no matter how successful we may get.
- There is no linear progression to a writer’s career. Some become hugely successful with their first book, but struggle to repeat the magic with the next several. Others find their best sales after ten books. You can’t count on anything, but yet the best may always be yet to come.
- Writers can easily name a peer of whom they envy their success.
- Writing is hard. It gets easier as the muscle for it develops, but it’s never easy.
- Writing is meditation. It’s one of the few times in a person’s day they have to be fully focused and, more importantly, completely present.
- Most writers hate social media and eschew the idea of self-promotion, necessary as it may be.
- Writers view the publishing industry with a mixture curiosity and frustration. We all agree the industry is incredibly opaque, and there’s no formula for success within it.
- Writers in the same field or genre don’t view one another as competition, and are often generous with their time supporting and promoting each other’s work. They view the true competition as anything else that vies for a potential reader’s attention, namely smartphones and Netflix.
- Finally, from my experience, most writers are deeply kind, humble and just happy to share their time and opinions with you.
That last one is a universal truth I’ve seen throughout my podcast career. I’ve never talked to a jerk. Sure, some are shy, awkward, and certainly technologically challenged, but always generous and honest. Moreover, these writers are fountains of wisdom, doling out indispensable truisms from which not only my listeners benefit, but I as well. My favorites include S.A. Cosby talking about the equitability of writing (all quotes slightly edited for clarity):
“I think writing, of all the creative arts — acting, singing, dancing — it’s the one where everybody has the best shot. You can be a 75-year-old first-time author, you can be a 35-year-old author that’s got six or seven books under your belt, or you can be a 21-year-old wunderkind. Everybody has that same shot because nobody knows what’s gonna click, what’s gonna break out. And so for me, writing is that thing where I just feel like it’s the most equitable creative art.”
— S.A. Cosby on the Making It Up podcast
Or listening to Robert Dugoni tell me about taking advice from a friend, which led to him diving into learning the craft of writing:
“He said “immerse yourself in the community in which you want be involved.” So I started going to conferences, and I’d be sitting at tables with people that I had just met, and they’d be talking about these books that they read on story structure, or on character development, and I’d be like, what? So I took a step back, and I took about three years, and I gave myself an MFA. I have about forty binders, all full of different tabs, things like development, tension, what you’re trying to do. I had to learn, and, lo and behold, three years after I initially started, after I’d spent years and years studying, I started to have some success.”
— Robert Dugoni on the Making It Up podcast
Or these wonderful words from Maureen Johnson, who reminds us writers there are no easy roads to publishing:
“Writing is mostly failure, It’s part of the process, so be very comfortable with it. If things don’t go well, that’s fine, because that’s what should be happening.”
— Maureen Johnson on the Making It Up podcast
I leave every interview energized and just a little bit smarter about the craft and industry I’ve been a part of for over two decades. And as I continue to write my novels, produce my podcast, and educate through my writing retreats and personalized coaching, I take comfort in the advice and wisdom of my peers, knowing everything I’ve learned from them only reinforces my belief that being a writer is the best job in the world. Just wish it paid a little more.
