In retrospect, being old(er) is kind of fun. You get to discuss boring shit like politics and actually understand them. You don’t feel obliged to stay out until 3 am getting shitfaced with strangers (okay, so I did this just the one time…). I am not ashamed to say that 10 pm is a legitimate bedtime for me now. Also, discussing bowel movements have become a lot cooler.
But really, the best part for me, I’ve found, is that as a writer, I’ve kind of stopped caring what people think.
I don’t mean in a I can’t take criticisms kind of way. I mean that being this old, and having worked on my craft this long, means that I’ve started taking pleasure in it. It means I no longer wait for validation from others to tell me to keep going.
I mean, validation is always nice, and I used to get them a lot when I was a teenager writing in Fanfiction.net. Unfortunately, they don’t really help you get from where you are to where you want to be. To do that, you have to put in the effort, make the grind and climb that cliff with spoons. You have to look at yourself in the mirror everyday and understand what makes you tick, why you do what you do and what you want to accomplish–honestly accomplish. You have to be realistic about these goals, too, because writing to make a living is hard enough without all the personal shit that tends to get in the way.
Taking pleasure in the craft means I can look at a manuscript I wrote last year and actually, honest-to-God, like it. It means accepting that being a writer is not about competition: it’s not about being better than someone else or trying to write like another. It just means being better than I was before, and understanding what that means, and writing the way I used to envision myself writing all those years ago.
It also means being okay with dancing alone in the rain.
I mean, let’s face it. This is a tough industry to break into. No matter how well you write, it’s not going to change the fact that it’s going to take years–if ever–for you to get your work in front of readers. Years before you hear from that first unsolicited reviewer, the stranger who actually bought your work and then liked it enough to say, “Oh my God, where have you been all my life?” And then once you do, more often than not, the excitement is followed by more silence, not the parade and trumpets you were hoping for.
Years and years of silence, interspersed by the occasional fan doing the happy seal clap. It used to scare me. I think it doesn’t, anymore.
I’m almost 50k into Book 3 of The Agartes Epilogues and it doesn’t matter to me that other people don’t know what this means. To me, however, this means that I’ve taken this story past 310k words, that these characters have breathed this much life into the world, that I can see them in my head and want to write more stories about them. It means more to me that I can read my work and not want to tear it apart.
Why do I need someone to tell me that my work is good? Who looks that closely at another person’s life and accomplishments? I am sitting here with these words that I don’t want to throw away and that is all that matters.
As a writer or an artist, there truly isn’t ever a guarantee that your work will achieve any level or status in the world. That’s just the way it is. But you can learn to be okay with the reflection in the mirror. You can learn to take comfort from the sound of words and worlds being made: scritchy-scritch, clack-clack-clack. If everything falls away, if you’re the only one left in the world, and you’re there with a keyboard or a paper and pen, what would you do?
Write like there’s no one watching.
Don’t read The Agartes Epilogues unless you like hearing characters angst more than I do. In which case…don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.
