Writing, Writing, Writing

Permission to not have an End Game

If you are at all like me (ahem, a control freak) then learning how to let go of the results and the outcome is physically and mentally painful. I have to stop many times in the day and breathe and tell myself it’s going to be okay to not see into the future. I have to tell myself consistently this phrase “Mystery is exciting. The unknown is fun. You don’t have to know everything.” I think my sole karmic journey on this earth is to think I know, then not know, and learn how to be surprised. To be re-educated in my “I think I know-ness.” Surprises have in general not been so fun for me. I don’t find them to have come to me in pretty pink boxes with bows and shinny items inside. Instead they are reveals of some deep dark tragedy I have to unearth and fend for myself within its organic excavation, or a trigger I have to contend with in order to properly be around the people I love and not push them away. I have accepted the surprises I can deal with are unexpected compliments, expressions of love, tickets to concerts or plays or presents.

You can’t see the future with writing. You just can’t. You write and then you try and find people to believe in your writing so they, as editors, can help you get it out into the world. When my potential agent for my book on Permission, and a mentor, explained I better start writing my tushy off on permission in places more subscribed than my little ol’ Substack or I will never get a deal, I had to find a solution. I could no longer try to get a piece in the paper once in April and then never try again for two years. If they said this was the platform I was best suited to grow, then I better take it seriously and stop trying to make Canva posts for Instagram that simply cannot compete with flashy carousel videos made by real Influencers. Suddenly everything I have done and lived that I write about in this column is a potential story for a wider audience. But the issue is, you can’t just ramble like you do on Substack when you are trying to write for The NY Times Well, or The Washington Post Health, or NY Magazine Curbed. These editors don’t play around. They want clean, thought out pieces that have substance behind the opinions. And if you have been reading my column long enough you know I say what I say and don’t exactly go out of my way to offer corroboration. I mean, I am not saying I don’t edit my column. I do take pride and spend hours writing each week, but I don’t have a ton of outlines, or research. I am often writing a piece about what I think, and since I am entertaining enough, my subscribers (thank you) continue to stick around.

I recently met Susan Shapiro. She is like any glorious New Yorker. You get on the phone with her and she talks a mile a minute, and overdelivers so much fabulous information, you want to stop her and explain she should be charging a lot more for this gold. She hosts a weekly class where you get to pitch editors of magazines and papers stories. I was completely illuminated when I was referred to her because I have been in the dark and baffled how one ever gets a pitch into NY Magazine, Wired, Washington Post, etc. I was convinced I was different and didn’t count as a published author.

But the big guns to get a book deal is to prove you can get by-lines in the important newspapers (that people still care about) and in magazines like Slate or Salon. So I am learning quick how to write articles and my astrologer told me to just write my ass off every day and not think too much about it and why and it will be revealed what I am writing for. So I think the grumpiness today (I am just now revealing I am in fact grumpy) is because I am being forced to do what I love to do, more than I have ever done it, and I am going into a shell I haven’t been into in a while, and I don’t know what it looks like in here.

The truth is, to write at the capacity I want to this week, I have to allow myself to be far more of a hot mess than I am right now. I want to completely plunge to the other side for a little while in my creativity but I am afraid of what I will let go of. Like worrying I need a wardrobe re-invention, or that I am not eating enough green leafy vegetables, or the calories I am burning in the gym pale in comparison to the chocolate I am eating from the bulk bin at Sprouts. Or I am not sexy enough, calm enough or clever enough for my partner when he calls, and I just want to drone away about nothing on the phone so I can save my brain to write the four pitches I need to write by tomorrow for the class I am taking with Susan Shapiro.

We can have different experiences with our writing personas. My writing persona with screenplays in the 90s and early 2000s was very isolated, pot smoker, sensory sensitivity, irritation, and a constant feeling like I had failed before I had even written the first act. Now, I have a lot more maturity, confidence, and I understand the outlets I want to serve, and the outcome (a book deal) but I feel disconnected to the person I am supposed to be. Do I wear Adidas high tops and crop tops and long sweaters, and stop dying my hair so it becomes brunette again, but get eye lash extensions so I have big eyes and write at 9PM at night because that is when my brain stops thinking about my social life, or my kids, or my calendar or how I want to fuck off with television, or exercise and do anything to NOT plant my ass in the seat and write.

I want more than anything in the world to be published and it is the one place I have to spend all my waking hours pushing myself to not avoid the writing I need to make that dream happen.

How fucked up is that? What is wrong with us as writers? If a baseball player wants to play baseball, he then will practice baseball until his hands bleed. Writers want to write, some will write endlessly and produce 15 books and then there is most of us who are just flat out in combat with our writing career. Then why the fuck are we writers? I have been asking myself that for a decade easily, but every time I go to walk away from writing and become something else, I am back again writing and I think what happened? I thought I gave up writing.

I feel through my writing. I process through my writing. I discover I am actually not a piece of shit through my writing. I write love letters, and I write thank you cards, and I write pieces that will never be seen by anyone because I have no idea who would want to consume it. I wonder why I don’t have more completion in my writing, I mean, it’s so easy to publish books on Amazon, why not just pump out ebooks all day every day? Because it’s not easy. It’s a daily slog and there is only so much time in the day to get the writing done you want with eating three meals, taking a crap, getting dressed, making actual money in your job and transporting/emotionally supporting teenagers. Add in wanting some romance and exercise and frankly I am unsure how any books get done…

But that is not true, and I will tell you why…

When you have an idea or a story or a concept that haunts you, and the material is just downloading so fast, you can give all the free time and more you have to writing that book because it HAS to be written. When we don’t have something to write, we can just dither away with a bunch of bunk no one needs to see but I believe that evokes the creative muses to keep the ideas coming so that when that one idea comes again, you go YES! And off you go again. I mean it’s a miracle anyone publishes anything frankly. I am in awe right now of any published book. It’s a crafty confounding act, getting books written and published, and I say, “Wow,” to anyone who did it. Just wow.

We have made it like it’s nothing now because so many people do it. But it’s still epic.

If you are reading this Substack, I give you permission to brag about your writing. I mean, it is seriously hard to write a book. Post your book link below and tell us all about it, all the time! Self-promote to the point where you are sick of hearing yourself, because honestly with all the noise in the world competing with you, hardly anyone has heard you. You can be louder and more annoying about your book. I see people promote their book and go on tour and then I never see them talk about their book again… which is crazy but I do it too. I got frustrated trying to push a book with Sexual in the title, especially when I can’t sell it in Tik Tok bookshop.

I hope this column gave you hope today, but if not, then that you are not alone. Although, it’s lonely being a writer. I feel a little lonely right now, or maybe its just I wish I was getting a massage.

If you want to write with me, you can do so in a bunch of ways. You can drop a story here in the comments about your latest endeavors as a writer. You can join one of my writing classes. You can do my free resource and then hire me to be your book coach.

I hope no matter what you do to serve yourself, you don’t feel grumpy… but if you do, make a gratitude list as that always pays off for me.