10 Minute Writer

I have decided this year that I will not write articles, e-books or anything else that promises writing success. I have decided this year to focus on one thing: my novel. In fact, this blog will be neglected a little because I don’t want it to take away from the precious few minutes I have daily to write. Additionally, I’ve eliminated all of my internet reading time to mostly things that will make me a better fiction writer. And I’ve picked up Twitter again, but I’ll explain why later.

As a result of this decision, some remarkable things have been happening — I’ve learned MANY new things about myself, and I am very encouraged.

1. Honesty is Better Than Talent. One of the few blogs I do check on regularly is Stuff Christians Like. In this entry, Jon Acuff gently explains why honesty in writing can do more for the world than eloquence. This is a huge relief. I’ve got this honesty thing down cold. I’m not very successful at hiding my warts, so I just let them all be shown. I believe that perhaps God can use me in my writing because it comes so easy and so natural for me to be real.

2. I Should Never Regret Not Getting My MFA. In a very round-about-way, a light bulb went off in my head after I read this entry on Chip MacGregor’s blog. Literary writing is not me. Maybe it was my pride, or maybe I had delusions of grandeur, or maybe I’ve just idolized education a little too much, but I’ve always thought that the “best” writing was exclusively literary (like the type that gets in The New Yorker). Over the years, I’ve tried to read great literary works and then tried to emulate them, but something was always off, and I didn’t know what. Then I would watch The Simpsons (before Season 12) and sigh and say, “Oh, if I had been a fly on the wall in the writer’s room!” Duh. To be true to myself, I should not see myself nor aspire to be a literary writer. Rather, I should stick to what I do best: Comic storytelling. I was disappointed in this for about thirty seconds, thinking that I had “settled”. Then some Twitter friends reminded me that literary writing will not make me happy, it will attract fewer readers, be far more difficult to market, and I’ll just be frustrated. This was a wonderful light bulb moment. So, no MFA for me, thank you. ( Let’s all watch Seinfeld, instead!)

3. Marketing Isn’t Scary Keeping in mind that I do not yet have a product to sell, I learned something about book marketing from my new friend Jody Hedlund. This blog entry discusses how marketing teams work with an author’s strengths to make more sales. Oh, really? No crazi-ness? Somehow, this all made sense to me and I feel better about what hopefully will be a future objective for me.

4. That being said, I am really good at Twitter. This is a fun and easy way for me to gradually build a platform. I get about 10 followers a day (and if you’re not following me, please do so here) This is a better fit for me than daily blogging and it’s a fantastic place to spew all those random thoughts that jump in my brain. I need to stick with what works and not worry about what I’m not doing.

These four things really encouraged me over the last week. I firmly believe that much of this came about because I committed to a specific focus. I didn’t have to take a class, join a critic’s group or even do much but hang out in my kitchen and learn.

Woo-hoo!