A Long Way on a Notebook and A Dream

Hello. The Odd Angle here. Thank you Minion and Maverick for asking me to contribute.

I'm not in the industry, like Minion or Maverick. Like many a would-be writer, I live a life outside of the publishing world: A day job, if you will, to pay the bills. A home to clean. Family to juggle. Pets to care for. And on top of everything else, a need to create.

Writing is both a love and an obsession. And while I would love to be more in the "scene" or able to dedicate more of my life to it, I recognize that there are things that are closed to me, for lack of a better term. There really isn't much in the way of publishing where I am. No real freelance outlets either. And at my age, I think it might be a little difficult to get to where either Minion or Maverick are in their lives.

But would I want to publish other people's works? Sometimes, I admit I find the idea appealing. Sometimes, though, I don't think I could handle the responsibility over holding other people's fragile dreams -- or egos-- in my hands. And while I would love to be my own boss and write all the time, I don't know if I have the hutzpah to do what Maverick does -- give up the comforts provided by a regular job to forge my dream with my meager successes under my belt.

My interests include both academic and fiction writing, usually not at the same time. And I've been known to work on either type of project with gleeful and occasionally singular abandon when they strike me. I fill notebooks and writing journals with ideas, bites, and scenes. I bring my notebook-of-the-moment everywhere: you never know when and where an idea might strike. It's my tie to writing while I'm at work, on the bus, or waiting in the doctor's office. It's a lifeline to my dreams that I don't think I, as a writer with a day job, could do without. More on that next time, though.

Without the time or connections, though, what keeps me at it? Good question, but to answer it, I need to ask myself two others.

First: why do I write?

Because, I love it. For all of the other problems I have with my own writing, I just can't escape the fact that even if I didn't write it down, I would still be creating. I would still have this urge to tell stories. Humans are, to use an oft quoted phrase, storytelling animals. Its how we've created our societies, explained our boundaries, and imagined our futures. And I love the stories people tell each other almost as much as I love telling stories myself. Language, rich and strange, the construction of it to share hopes and fears, dreams and ideas is a beautiful -- and very human -- thing.

Second: what keeps me going in the face of all my other daily expectations of job and family?

Apart from the above? Faith in my own abilities (this includes the ability to amuse myself, if no one else), hope, and a little story I'll pass on to you.

In college, my mother's good friend was an aspiring writer. He was good, but my mother, ever the realist, would warn him that it was unlikely he'd go anywhere with it. Find a job. Drop this nonsense. But, he had faith in himself, hope, and a lot of dreams. He kept at it.

By the time I got to college, he was a bestselling author with several of his books on the New York Times Bestseller list and one book that has since been turned into a play on Broadway.

He kept at it.

He tried hard.

He believed that he could do it.

And so do I.

Even if I have a little of my mother's realism in my "don't quit my day job" attitude.

And, one day, when I finally publish I'm going to dedicate it to both of them.

-The Odd Angle

Next time: Writing for the Real World: My best friend, My writing journal

Surviving the 'Most Depressing Day of the Year'

I'm feeling good this morning (well, nearly afternoon now), mostly, because it’s Friday and I am faced the prospect of two days off, and the end of a very stressful week. Also, I'm very happy it’s no longer Monday the 21st of January; which has achieved cult status as being the ‘official the most depressing day of the year’. So, at least this past Monday I had a very good reason to be a little bit 'under the weather' and frankly wishing I was curled up under my duvet reading something very light and fluffy.

The 21st Of January signifies for many people a sad reality check that even the best resolutions get broken, that those bills from the holidays will not disappear (no matter where you hide the credit card statements), and that your big pay rise isn't likely to materialize this year (or at least not this month). All these mitigating factors lead many people to become depressed. However, they've led me to one overwhelming sense of purpose-- to actually work harder to keep my resolutions. So, c'mon 2008, I'm ready! Let’s make this a wonderful (and productive) year!

Since I've clearly decided that I need a big change, here are my compass points that I will use to gauge my success. Hopefully, at the end of this year I'll be able to update you with my blinding success-- or at least with news that I've broken through the realm of mediocrity.


Cultivate my writing routine. Since I left University I've found that I really lack structure in my writing habits. Before I went to University I had a fabulous writing routine that enabled me to get loads of writing done in the evenings after school/work/swimming. I'm not sure how as a fairly busy teen I managed to get more work done creatively then as a young adult-- but something about work seems to drain me. However, I've been using this excuse for far too long. I believe in small achievable goals, and currently my goal is to get myself into a very good (and somewhat structured) routine.

Write 500 words a day (or at least 2500 words a week). My cohort Maverick posted a wonderful post about treating working on her novel like its work for a client. I can't agree more with her sentiments. My novel(s)/short stories/poems/etc are just as important as work that I do for my ‘day job’; because my writing is a job. I'm very organized, goal driven, and detail orientated in my ‘day job’. I never miss deadlines at work. In other words, I take my ‘day job’ very seriously. Its time I started treating my 'night job', my writing, the same way. Crafting a story is work (as well as an enjoyable process). If I want to succeed at writing I need to force myself to put the time in and meet my deadlines. The only one I'm cheating is myself (and my poor long suffering characters).

Post and maintain this blog more regularly. I think my slacking off speaks for itself.

Submit stories/poems to competitions/magazines. As a teenager I had a lot of success winning competitions and getting published in magazines geared for teens. I'm not sure why this was-- but believe it or not, this early success has terrified me as an adult and caused me to fear submitting to anything, period. I think this is because I'm scared I'll get rejected (over and over again). However, if I never try, I'll always let that fear cripple me. So, this year, I'm looking forward to my slew of rejections and hoping to do something creative with them--maybe I'll use them to make a paper mache lobster piñata that I'll burst when I finally get an acceptance? I'm open to suggestions on this one.

Work on creating a freelancing profile. It’s not secret (at least not to me!) that I'm clearly meant to have a career in writing. I adore working in publishing and want to stay in this industry for as long as possible (my whole life!) but I would also like to spend this year growing as a freelance writer and gaining experience in the world of freelance copywriting. Before I got married I had been actively writing articles for a beauty website (which is ironic as I never wear makeup). Now that I've comfortably settled into married life I would really like to resume freelancing again. So, I'm going to take a deep breath and jump back into the hectic world of freelancing.

Join Writing Group. For me this will be a very intimidating experience. It’s been a long time since I was in a writing group (over a year now) and while I enjoy the support and critiques of a group, I'm very private about my writing and find it hard to pass my work along to others. I'm not good about letting my words go off into the wide world. However, now is the time of year to change all that.

Shakespeare Was a Working Writer

"He should have stuck to short stories. If his novels are read at all in the future, people will wonder what we saw in them."

"A middling playwright...often crude and crass...two of [Beaumont and Fletcher's plays] being acted through the year for one of his."

"...imitative, annoying, and tiresome."

What do the three authors that recieved this criticism have in common? Three things:

1. Their work was written for the common reader, rather than to academics, scholars, and literary critics of their time.
2. They enjoyed enormous popular success and mixed literary success during their time.
3. They are now considered three of our greatest authors.

They are (in order): Dickens, Shakespeare, and Mark Twain.

I remember I was at a writing conference this summer, and one of the speakers was L.A. Banks. This woman is a serious working writer. She writes vampire fiction and romance novels, and churns 'em out at a jaw-dropping one book every six weeks or so (if I remember correctly). I remember listening to her talk and thinking, gosh, I would LOVE to have her career.

But I also want what every other writer wants: validation. I want to be considered a literary genius, my work passed down through the ages, plastered with lofty awards. Yeah, I have delusions of grandeur. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that we all do, to an extent. And even though L.A. Banks is a working writer with a healthy career, nobody is comparing her to Toni Morrison or Jamaica Kincaid.

There is definitely a perception that you can have literary merit or popular success, but not both: that a really excellent piece of writing is so rarified that it's only a chosen few who can truly appreciate it. But when I look at writers like Dickens, I think that he's not really the Faulkner or Fitzgerald of his day; he's more like the Danielle Steele. He wrote popular fiction. And when I look around at the writing out there, I start to think that maybe it's not the recognized authors of our time who will stand the test of centuries. Maybe it's the Stephen Kings and the Danielle Steeles and the Harlequin authors that readers of the future will venerate.

L.A. Banks gave a great talk, but that's not what I remember. I remember standing near her while she was speaking to another writer. They were having a conversation about writing popular genre fiction versus literary fiction. And Banks said something about how there's no shame in being a working writer; after all, Shakespeare was a working writer.

I guess what I realized then was that you don't have to give up a paying career as a writer to be recognized. You don't have to write literary fiction that doesn't sell and work as a creative writing professor. Your genre of choice may be snubbed by the critics of today, but it could be the biggest thing to hit 2100. After all, it's not the most "literary" works that stand the test of time. It's the work that reaches and inspires the common people.

In Defense of Selling Out

Writers, artists, musicians, and actors are all guilty of taking pride in the “starving artist” mentality. Generally speaking, we’re all supposed to eat a lot of ramen, smoke a lot of cigarettes, live in squalor, and create brilliant work. Somehow, our suffering is the engine that drives our genius.

Because so few artists of any category “make it,” the majority of us have to buy into this mentality in order to keep some dignity in our lives. The problem with a truly artistic career is that yes, there is a lot of success to go around. But most of it goes to a lucky handful, while the rest of us go hungry. And the non-successful ones sometimes look at what it takes to become successful—producing work that a large amount of people actually understand and want—and they see it as “dumbing down” their creative genius. So they feel justified in rejecting success and scorning those who embrace it.

I remember back when I was a creative writing student at college. A few weeks before graduation, one of my favorite professors asked me what my plans were after college. Being the blasé dreamer that I was, I shrugged and said something like “write a lot, submit to some magazines, get a job somewhere.” He shook his head. “You really should give some thought to getting your MFA,” he said. “Then you could apply for a teaching position.”

And all of a sudden, I realized: all of my professors thought that this is what creative writers do. They teach. If they’re lucky, they get a cushy job with a sabbatical that allows them to concentrate on their writing every few years. They might be celebrated essayists, poets, and short story writers. But they certainly don’t make a living from their writing. Creative writers who don’t want to sell out nowadays have another option besides starving in a garret: they can be professors.

Nobody ever said anything like: “You really should sign up for RWA. Then you could network with some published authors and learn how to write commercially viable fiction.” If you said anything like that at my college, you’d probably get keelhauled.

The thing is, I never wanted to be anything but a writer. I didn’t want to teach. I didn’t want to be an insurance agent. I didn’t want to do anything but write. And if it meant I had to change the way I wrote to make a living, then fine—I could live with that.


The creative writing department was great at helping me map my literary strengths and weaknesses and giving me confidence. But it gave me no guidance at all about the business side of things. Looking back, I wish there had been more of an emphasis on genre fiction, marketing your writing, how the publishing industry works, and possible stop-gap careers for aspiring novelists. I wish they took our future careers as seriously as they took our raw writing ability.

In my experience, most liberal-arts literary types look down on the nitty-gritty “business side.” They look at popular fiction and see a wasteland of bad books. And yeah, there are plenty of bad books out there. But there’s also a lot of well-written, successful genre fiction. And it sells.

I know there’s a bias out there against it, and I understand why. But I just don’t see what’s wrong with making a living as a writer. I see a lot wrong, however, with letting a non-writing career sap most of your energy and time. So sorry, Dr. Cutter, you can keep your cushy professor’s job. I'm planning on selling out just as soon as I find someone who'll buy.