Here is the myth clear and simple from the writer’s perspective. “I have sold this and that and I don’t need to learn anymore. What I am doing works.”
This myth is so nasty and so subtle that many, many writers just fall into it without even realizing they are in it. I had intended to write on another topic, then I went to a wonderful convention this last weekend and ran into a bunch of writers who were down this myth’s rat hole. Deep down it, actually.
When I hear a writer say they don’t need to learn (in one way or another), I just mentally wave goodbye. Their career is doomed to one of two paths.
First path: They stop selling and have no idea why. They will blame their agent or publisher or an event, but never themselves.
Second path: They sell the same book over and over and can’t change and don’t know how to change and don’t feel they need to keep growing and learning because they are still selling, but will wonder why sales don’t go up and they aren’t read by many people beyond their core readership.
Top writers never, ever stop learning. Long term professionals are constantly learning, since everything always changes so fast. And I don’t just mean keeping up with business. I mean craft issues as well. Just because a writer sold a number of things or two dozen novels doesn’t mean they still don’t have a ton to learn about craft.
The reason I teach workshops for professional and near professional writers is that it keeps me learning and thinking. The reason I write these chapters is because it keeps me thinking and learning and listening. And what is both frightening and fun is that the more I learn, the more I realize how much I just don’t know.
Loren L. Coleman and Kristine Kathryn Rusch pushed me hard for two years to do another master class. They are the other two main instructors at the two week master courses. Their reason for pushing was simple. We all learn so much when we teach them.
They were right. We’ve done two over this last year and stopped again because not only do we learn a ton by teaching, but they are really hard on us to do them. (Learning is always hard.) We might do one again down the road, maybe, but only because of the learning. We lost money on both of them. A lot of money, but it was worth the price because I came out of teaching both master classes with a ton more knowledge and understanding about both the business of writing and the craft of writing.
There is a rule writers should always follow. Money always flows to the writer except for continuing education. Sometimes that education can be a writer’s conference, sometimes a workshop, sometimes just a trip to New York to talk to your editors.
A number of years back I was teaching at a major writer’s conference and Tony Hillerman was speaking and I wanted to learn from him. I was one of the invited instructors at the conference, but luckily, I had an hour off when he was giving a panel, so I sneaked into the back of the room to listen and learn. At one point I realized who was standing against the back wall beside me. Mystery Grandmaster Lawrence Block. He was another instructor at the conference, but we were both there to learn what we could from Hillerman.
How does this I Know Enough myth get started? Actually, it comes from how we all start into this business. We all start by pounding the keys and trying to learn from everything and every book we can find so that we can sell. But in the back of all of our minds is the thought, “Once I start selling, I’ll have it made.”
Logical and normal. Of course, we also believe that rejections will stop coming once “We have it made.” And we believe we will get famous because publishing a book is something only famous people do. And we believe that having a book in print will solve all our writing problems.
Those thoughts are part of our dreams and our goals. We attach to the learning and the years of practice the idea that once “We have it made” all that hard work and pain and rejection and uncertainty will stop. Nope. Afraid not.
Second reason is that learning makes us all uncomfortable. There are entire books about this topic and I suggest you read a few of them. Learning tosses each of us into a state of chaos and our first reaction and desire is to return to status quo. But to apply the learning and to keep learning, sometimes we have to stay in the chaos and confusion for a while until we reach a newer and higher level of status quo. A new level of craft or understanding.
But a writer still lost in the myth that once you start selling you have it made and don’t need to learn will really, really fight this feeling of turmoil associated with learning. The status quo is just fine and dandy. “After all, I’m selling, right?”
This book, these chapters, are aimed at helping writers learn to become long-term selling professional fiction writers. You have no hope if you don’t love to learn, go after learning like it’s a missing food group and you need it to stay alive. Every long-term professional writer I know loves learning. We all struggle with it, sure, but in our cores, we love it, crave it, and go in search of any tiny scrap of learning that will help us through another day.
So running into those professional writers this last weekend who have no real desire to keep learning made me sad for them. Kris and I see it all the time. And the real problem is that if I accused them of this, they would become angry at me.
And that is where this myth gets really, really nasty and deadly. As with all myths, it is a belief system. With all myths, the belief system is “I know how it’s done, so I don’t have to think about it.”
With agents, most writers want to believe an agent will do the work and save them or sell their books. The belief system won’t allow them to keep learning, which is why these past agent chapters have caused so much anger among some people. These posts forced their belief systems into learning chaos. And the most anger came from writers who had agents, had sold novels, were happy with their agents, and didn’t want to question the system. Of course, without questioning, the agent is free to steal money, slow down a career, and eventually kill it without the writer even being aware anything is going wrong.
With making money at fiction myth, writers not making decent money grab onto the myth that you can’t make money in the business because it gives them an excuse to not learn how to become better writers and better at marketing to make a living. Just lately this belief caused one writer to write me and declaim how he can’t sell, how unfair New York publishing is, and that he’s going to self-publish his own work instead. That writer is not willing to learn and keep practicing so that his work will be good enough to sell in New York.
Every myth in this book is tied into this overall myth of thinking that once a writer starts selling, they won’t have to keep learning.
Notice how I haven’t said a word about the 500 pound monkey in the room? The big, big issue in this myth.
Ego.
Every writer needs an ego to keep pushing through this business. Actually we need huge egos, and mine is no small animal. But combined with my ego is the intense fear I won’t know something, that I won’t have a skill I’ll need to finish the next book, that I will be behind some business trend.
That fear of not knowing just does a tap dance on my ego, keeping it mostly under control and learning. Never once have I ever let the ego win and thought I had enough learning. In fact, the fear always wins. Always. Which keeps me learning and searching for learning.
But alas, a number of the writers I met this last weekend had let their egos win. They were too published, too successful to need to keep learning. They had “graduated” as one said to me.
In one panel Kris and I were doing, Larry Niven walked in and sat down. He didn’t stay long because at that moment we were dealing with beginning writer issues in the panel, but he came in to see what he could pick up. I sat in two of his panels for a short time for the same reason.
Writers need huge egos mixed with a desire to keep learning. I feed my ego by letting the fear of not knowing something turn into a stroke for my ego when I learn something. I still buy how-to-write books and am constantly reading how other writers work and think. And I am teaching a bunch of workshops this year to work out topics I felt I needed to focus even more on, such as Character Voice, Marketing, and New Technologies. I hope to know a lot more by the end of this year than I do now, and then find new things to learn next year. And the year after, all the while practicing what I am learning by pounding the keys and turning out new story and new novel after new story and new novel.
I have published somewhere around one hundred novels now and a ton of short fiction, and written even more, and I am a long, long ways from graduating in this business. The day I think I have learned it all, just toss a shovelful of dirt on my face because I will be dead.
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Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
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This is part of my inventory in my bakery now. (Confused on that, read the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post about making money with writing.) I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie. If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.
And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated. Once this book is done, I will send you a copy. The donations and the comments are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!
If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this article along to others who might get some help from it. Every week or so I will be adding a new chapter on the myths and sacred cows of publishing. Stay tuned. Upcoming are chapters on bestsellers, research, rejections, and so much more. This business has a lot of myths. An entire book full.
Thanks, Dean
“Top writers never, ever stop learning. Long term professionals are constantly learning, since everything always changes so fast. And I don’t just mean keeping up with business. I mean craft issues as well.”
Indeed! I also find that the most successful writers are usually also the smartest ones–smartest about practicing their craft and enhancing their writing business.
Then again, a big part of being “smart” in an applied, real-world way is indeed to keep learning.
I’m a big fan of THE ACTOR’S STUDIO on TV (the James Lippman interviews with famous actors about thie craft, of which there must be well over 100 episodes by now). Lots of learn there. In one of the interviews, actor Danny Glover said that, when he can, he still drops in on his old teacher’s acting classes, or other people’s classes, even if only to sit in the back for a few minutes. He said not only in hope of still finding new things to learn about acting, but also because it’s really helpful to be reminded of what you already know or have already learned. Sometimes a class reminds him of something that he forgot, which is nearly as good as learning something new. I find this happens often when I sit in on other people’s writing workshops, or when I teach–it’s a way of resdicovering things you’ve learned, or reframing them, or seeing them in a new light.
I have written four novels, a few screenplays, and countless short stories; I have a degree in Fiction Writing; I have attended numerous workshops and conventions–and I still feel like I know Jack Diddly. I don’t think something as simple as getting published is going to change that for me.
I am a craft junkie. I will be trying to learn new things about writing and storytelling for the rest of my life. This is one myth I might actually be able to dodge entirely.
Excellent post and strikes a real chord with me at the moment. I love books on the ‘craft’ of writing and can’t understand other writers that turn their nose up at the idea. I mean what’s not to like? You’re a writer, presumably you like writing and you like books, so you’d think a book about writing would be a no brainer, but there’s a whole army of (largely unpublished) writers who think you can’t learn anything from a book about writing. Strange.
Now, when it comes to the business side of things I have to admit I’ve been a bit shy of learning myself, but thanks to blogs like this one, Micheal Stackpole’s and Joe Konrath’s blog I’m finally making the effort to learn a bit more about the game.
Cheers,
Lee
I think it was Steven R. Covey who might have said — during one of his endless number of professional leadership conferences — that no professional of any sort ever stops going to school. Could be graduate school at college, or a technical certification course, or symposiums and inservices and seminars. Nobody at the professional level ever stops having to learn. Even people with significant education and experience.
I was on a panel at a con this last weekend and the topic was putting more military into Military SF. One thing I pointed out for the crowd — it was a far bigger crowd than any of us four panelists could have expected — was that the real military also has a continuing education system. For use by enlisted and officers both. In order to rise in rank you have to go to school. Could be a civilian college, but it’s also often the military’s many and various internal schools. And this is true all the way through a serviceperson’s career, especially if they jump from enlisted to officer. It never stops.
So far in my 7+ years in the Army Reserve (not even a full timer!) I’ve had to go do three different shools — make it five if you count Basic Combat Training and Advanced Individual Training as two separate schools — and I am due to pass through another school when I get done with the workshops in Oregon next week.
In 2008 when I decided to get back to my writing and hit it hard until I had broken in and was selling, my wife and I discussed the need to send me to school. Not an MFA — no way — but some boots-on-the-ground continuing education, such as Orson Scott Card’s so-called ‘boot camp’ or something else like it. I eventually decided to start with the Kris ‘n Dean Show, and this year it’s a whole week of Kris ‘n Dean ‘n Denise, then the WOTF workshop in late summer, and next year, I will probably line up another week somewhere — Oregon or elsewhere — so I can so and sit and talk to people further down the track and from whom I can sponge insight and info.
I don’t see this stopping, frankly, and my wife and I are preparing to just send me some place — a con, a symposium, a workshop, whatever — every year, for who knows how many years. Because the more I learn about business and craft and strategy — as these apply to being a working author — the more I realize I won’t ever stop needing new information, new perspectives, and being able to go and listen to different authors’ experiences. A few years ago I absolutely believe there would be a time when I had “arrived” and the bread and honey would fall from the sky, and I’d be able to kick back and just write and rake in the bucks and the fame.
Hah! Like all else in life, it seems there is no rest for the wicked. The learning and the work will never end. I am okay with that now. Other things in life have forced me to realize that existence itself is a giant learning experience, and to run away from learning — formalized or otherwise — was probably a bad idea. I’ve tried it before, and it never works out in the end. When I refuse to learn, or refuse to heed lessons, something always goes wrong. Totally foreseeable, but because I didn’t think I had to see it or pay attention, it happened anyway, and then after the fact I was like, oh crap, why didn’t I learn when I had the chance?
When we stop growing, we start dying. A status quo condition for anything or anyone means they are going downhill if for no other reason than the environment or business world keeps on changing – hopefully for the better.
Witness the current publishing environment. Pbooks, ebooks, independent publishers, etc. A writer has to be business-savvy, too, otherwise they’re just writing for themselves. The business environment is changing, so we’d better keep at least somewhat on top of it.
A writer’s craft and creativity are his main assets. If they stand still, the writer is dying. there’s plenty of other writers out there continually and knowingly improving themselves. They’ll be more than happy to fill the publishers’ slots.
I’ve been a technical writer for over 30 years. I still subscribe to newsgroups, lists, and RSS feeds just to keep up. If I stop doing that, I start being unsaleable. A fiction writer is no different.
My whole professional life, I’ve earned my living in telecommunications, either maintaining and repairing microwave or tropospheric scatter transceivers (similar to the radios that transmit signals to your car radio, except that they transmit in a different frequency range), or maintaining and repairing cellular switches. Very briefly, a switch, whether it’s for cellular, landline, or Internet phones, does two things: 1) it collects billing information for every call made, and 2) it routes phone calls to where they’re destined to go. Obviously, technology is always changing, and in this field you either learn and keep up with the technology, or you stagnate and get left behind very quickly.
I’ve had to train lots of new-hires in my day, and have also written training material and maintenance documentation. I’ll never forget my first experience training new-hires. I quickly discovered just how much I enjoyed it, as well as how much I learned myself while teaching. I’m the sort of teacher who, when I frame a question, I try to find a way to word it to make the other person think. I refuse to make it easy. No one grows or benefits from an easy learning experience. In my experience, people who are always learning have malleable and facile minds and the learning experience for them is always enjoyable, even if it is difficult. Those who don’t enjoy learning have minds that are constrained and intractable, and they almost always view learning as difficult, a necessary evil to be avoided if at all possible.
I’ve transferred my experience in telecom to my desire for a writing career. I’ve read tons and tons of how-to books on writing. I practically have my own 808 section of the library in my home, in fact. I’m always reading a how-to book, either one in my own library that I haven’t read yet, or re-reading an old favorite (I recently reread Lawrence Block’s Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print), or reading a how-to book from my local library. Also, I never limit my reading of how-to books to books on the genres I want to write. I’ll read any how-to that catches my interest because, as I see it, writing is writing and what makes for a good romance novel also has application in horror or fantasy or mysteries. Good stories all share common traits, regardless of their genre.
I also make a habit to not only read lots in the genres in which I want to write, but outside of those genres, too, including risking the supposed embarrassment of reading romance novels. I figure, if someone has written well enough to be published, then I can learn something from them.
If not for any other reason, statistics show that if you’re not growing and striving and improving, you’re going to burn out. (Or get dreadfully bored.)
So true, so true. And not just in writing. In the horse industry you’ll find a lot of the same attitudes. The really good horse trainers will talk about how every time they step foot in the ring with a new horse they learn something new. You’ll see those same trainers at other clinics learning. Yet, you have the ones that insist they know everything and their way is the right way. You usually don’t see them for very long as after a while they fall of the radar.
I had one trainer tell me, something like this, that as a beginner you absorb and learn, as an intermediate you think you know enough (or everything), and then as an advanced rider you realize how little you know and that you will never know it all.
I figure writing is the same way.
Thanks for all the great comments. And I agree completely and find it interesting how this runs across so many occupations.
With writing, just about any writer will tell you “I never stop learning.” Especially if you push them. But that same writer will defend their agent without thinking, even though the same agent has proved toxic to three other writers. And the same writer will refuse to understand how e-books work, or will never bother to even learn contract clauses “because their agent will do that.” Just over a year ago I heard myself tell someone I had no clue how to do anything with fiction on a Kindle or a cell phone and didn’t want to learn. I was proud to be a Luddite.
What I had said sunk in and I suddenly realized I was not willing to learn something new that would help my writing and my business and I went after it at full speed, trying to learn everything. Kris and I bought I-phones, I helped set up a weekend where Scott Carter helped a bunch of us learn how to do our own websites and put up stories and novels on Kindle. I have since set up two complete web sites for a couple of my pen names and have put stories up on Kindle for both me and Kris and when I don’t know something about a new technology in writing, I now go learn it at once.
I didn’t think I needed to learn it up until a year ago, until I heard myself spout this very myth.
This is one very, very nasty myth.
This myth comes out in many, many different ways in all of us.
I’m a big believer in learning. I sit around pro writers at every chance I can get, just because I learn by osmosis.
It’s funny, because when I came to my first workshop, the Short Story w/ Gardner, I signed up thinking it was all about networking. I didn’t think writing could be taught because I thought it was all about creativity. Either you had it or you didn’t.
I figured my creativity would be hailed and I would get the secret handshake. That changed fast after arriving.
Now I sit in on presentations that I have seen before because someone might ask a question I hadn’t thought of.
Stagnation is death. I hope I never stop learning. I want desperately to go back to school and earn my master’s. I know I’ll be able to do it one day. In the mean time, I soak up as much as I can from writers around me and the books I read.
Since I’m rather isolated from workshops (living in a non-English speaking country) I find other ways to learn, often self-directed. The idea of not growing and learning makes no sense to me – I read the title of your post and thought “hunh?”
One way I learn is to try different writing techniques. For example, up until now I’ve been a huge outliner, but for my next first draft, I’m going to try something I read here on your blog (thank you) and just start with the title and go.
If nothing else, I’ll learn a lot about myself as a writer.
Alex, if you are used to outlining, expect to be scared to death a bunch of times if you fly into the dark without an outline.
A couple helpful hints on that method that works for some. Outline what you have done each chapter. So when you finish the chapter, do a quick note or outline as to what happened in that chapter. Outline as you go. You’ll discover it will come in handy a lot. Second, when you stop for the day, make notes to yourself as to where you think the next scene is going. And try not to stop on scene ends or chapter ends. Harder to start new the next day.
Have fun.
Yeah, yeah, but I have to confess there are days when I don’t want to learn new stuff. I do it, but I don’t like it.
A while back, I poked my head up and realized that e-books were coming, and just like iPods did to the music industry, there was apt to be some big shuffling of cards in bookland. So I got online, figured out how to put a Paypal button on my site, and stuck some books up — including a couple that came from my blog.
Figured out how to get onto Amazon.com to upload stuff for the Kindle, thanks to a note on Dean’s list by — as I recall — Mike Stackpole.
I’m not making any real bread, though any money is good money, and I have sold a few. The royalty rate is good — 100% for a PDF on my site, and 30% on Amazon.com, now rising to twice that, since Apple’s premiere of its iPad. And a bunch of other readers now loom. Competition is good for business.
Paper isn’t going away, but there was a day around Christmas when Amazon.com sold more e-books than paper ones. And those number are creeping up. There are a generation of folks who are happy to read on laptops and e-readers.
Adapt or die, sure, but These Kids Today with their newfangled radio and duck-tail haircuts and evil rock-and-roll music? I miss the good old days …
I’m doing the no-outline thing with my current novel after having outlined all my previous ones. I’m just over 100 pages and hitting that point where I’m certain it’s pure garbage and doesn’t make any sense. Wish I’d thought of the outlining-as-I-go thing before now. I might take the time to go back through and do it now, but I’m afraid what I’ll find. :/
Dean: Since we’re talking about learning, do you have any recommendations of any kind (books, websites, workshops, etc.) besides your wonderful stuff? I always like to hear where the old pros learn their stuff.
Another interesting post not to mention the Replies. Good stuff.
I was a little surprise at the subject though. I don’t think I would ever have that problem-I have enough other problems-but come to think of it, knowing human nature, I can see why Dean would include it in the Myths chapters.
I keep learning even though not as much as I could. I’ve been thinking of getting a couple of more writing books but when I see a list I’m not sure which ones are good.
And that’s why I stay with a certain story critique forum. A couple of assistant, assistant editors comment on stories and since they know more about writing than I do, I pay attention to what they say. Even though a couple of things have contradicted what Dean has taught.
That’s also one reason why I keep coming back here even though it’s more about the business aspect of writing than the craft aspect. I still learn about writing.
One thing I learned (well, whaddya know?) from earlier blog posts on your site, Dean, was how you teach yourself by writing. When there is something you want to know how to do in writing, you make that a goal in your writing projects.
You learn by doing. “En gerundio” as the Spanish say.
Yes, you do the work to find out how something (in my case, most recently, it’s been telling a story from more than one point of view) is done – and then you go do it. Over multiple writing projects, as needed.
Scary, or just plain difficult. But a valuable approach to learning.
As applicable to writing as it has been throughout my 30-year career in software development.
But, “making shit up” for a living is more fun!
Here’s an article that sorta relates: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/does-education-make-you-happy/
Yeah, every time I hear myself say “never” or “can’t do it x way” or such, I go out and do it, LOL.
Love it! My day job involve flying aircraft. If I stopped learning in that sphere I’d be more of a risk than I may already be… If I stopped being curious, I’d be a lousy trainer of other pilots. If I stopped listening to people’s opinions on how to make the operation safer I’d be failing to use all the resources available.
I hope all that translates in to making me a better writer as I continue to learn.
Fascinating article you linked to, Natasha. I’m currently unemployed, but I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time, but I know why that is, too:
1) I’m not working for my former employer any more; they constantly screwed up my paycheck; no other employer has done this to me as much as this last one.
2) I’m doing everything I can to find work and still collecting unemployment compensation, but —
3) and this, I think, is more important — I’ve come up with a daily routine that I follow: It starts a minimum of 4 hours of writing time each morning, with an hour of “class” (or education, if you prefer) each afternoon. I’m currently going through a course on Classical Mythology offered by The Teaching Company; it’s self-paced, on DVD, and college-level material. When I finish that, I’ll move on to learning Portuguese because my girlfriend is Portuguese. Then each evening I’ve set aside a few hours for reading (for both entertainment, usually novels, and for education, usually books on writing, or sometimes something that I’m researching).
Basically, I’m using this period of unemployment to really push forward on my desire to have a writing career. I see it as an opportunity to transition out of telecom.
Hey, Dean. I think you’re absolutely right. I’m just a beginner with a couple of semipro sales and I had one question.
When I am at a creative writing class led by students, I usually don’t hold their opinions in very high regard because I don’t think they know very much about writing. They’ve never submitted anywhere, much less been accepted. Does that tie back to your section on which workshops are helpful and which are not?
Of course, I have much to learn. To make sure I’m getting professional level feedback, I’ve been applying to major workshops. But I’m not totally convinced that feedback in student workshops is always helpful.
Andrew,
Yes, it does link back to the Killing the Sacred Cows on workshops. Read that one. There’s a link to it under the Sacred Cows tab at the top of the site. Take a look.
G.D., that’s a great plan. Make sure you are reading Kris’s Freelancer’s Guide on her site. She started those to help people who wanted to use this current world situation to make the jump to freelancing. She has a ton of helpful stuff in them.
Cheers
Dean
I remember how happy I was back when I was piling up rejection slips. Then I had a few sales and a lot more rejection slips, then some rejection slips. And I’m happy again. Everywhere I go I see where I can learn, and every book I read reminds me of what a wonderful craft this is. I think the most miserable time in my life was during that short period when I thought I was “making it.”
Scott Nicholson
I tell you this because it fits the topic… I once heard it said that, “Genuine education is the perpetual discovery of one’s own ignorance.” I can’t begin to tell you how many times that truth has caused me to laugh at myself.
The prospect of learning something new leaves a writer with a choice — run for the cover of denial or relish the quickening of the pulse that makes you ponder how this new information could infuse your work with a new energy that will open up the power of your work and thrill the socks off your readership. If you truly love your craft, how could you resist learning more?
Dean, I’ll see you at the April workshop.
Best Wishes,
Marta
I might have a bumper sticker that says, “Oh no! Not Another Learning Experience!” but secretly I love learning. And even though it sounds masochistic, I particularly like learning that is uncomfortable and painful and confusing, because that’s the learning that is most important. Sure, sometimes I avoid it without thinking, but then, when I stop to think about it, I realize how useful it is.
Mostly, though, learning and discovering new things is the very reason I write. Without learning, life (and fiction) would be boring.