Review: You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One)

I just finished You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) by Jeff Goins and I liked it.

I didn't love it, which is fine. I don't think it's the kind of book a person loves. On Writing by Stephen King? That one I loved. But I love King.

This is a short book. It's a fast read. The impact isn't in the time it takes to read it but the time it takes to do the things in it. It was more focused on what I'd call technical writing but that's not right. Writing for magazines, websites etc. Me? I mostly write fiction. I used to write management type posts for a management blog and met some fascinating people in the online management community. Rosa Say is someone I met and whose first book I love: Managing With Aloha. If you're in management now, or hope to be in management in the future I recommend this book without reservation. If I ever got to Hawaii I would be star struck if we met. I'd love to, but am afraid of how foolish I'd look.

I'm supposed to be reviewing You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) and am talking about everything but. Here's the problem. I don't DO the kind of writing that he talks about a lot. I don't see myself shopping myself out to write an article for a magazine. I realize I'll have to do that at some point if I want to be published. I'll need to find a magazine that carries the kinds of things I write. I could also try my hand at writing the kinds of things they carry. That's the biggest stumbling block I had with the book's advice come to think of it. Early in the book Jeff Goins suggests, I believe, that I write for myself. And then, not a chapter later, he says to describe my audience, and then later he says to figure out how to write for certain people. Granted all of these things are necessary, but they're also contradictory. If I'm writing for me and people like me I know my audience. It's me and people like me. But if I then want to pitch a story about birds to a bird magazine (Is there such a thing? I'm sure there is.) I'll need to read that magazine, read their submission guidelines and write the article for those readers. At some point I'm not writing for me any more. I'm doing what I'm told and cranking out widgets but widgets made of words. I'm not ready to be that kind of hack yet.

I don't mean any disrespect when I say hack. I work in management currently in retail. I'm as hackneyed as they come at that job. I never argue politics or religion when a customer is holding forth on either. I nod sagely, collect their money, try and sell them more with add-on sales, and wait for the next person. I GET what it means to do what you've got to do to get along. But I'm naive enough, new enough to writing to think, "I don't want to do that." Translation: I'll probably not make any money at it because there's no money in writing for people who ARE willing to do that.


There were important things in there though. Things I highlighted with my kindle and will share with you now. They're the gems of the book for naive fiction writers like myself, and technical writers who want to write something people will read so they'll be more than just writers, they'll be published authors.

"You’re ready. Ready enough, anyway." (Location 571: Kindle version)

and

"The fear of something is always scarier than the thing itself." (Location 277: Kindle version)

The first quote is one I've said to parents who are talking about their first kid. I say to them when they say, "But we're not ready." That they are ready. They're as ready now as they will be later. Nothing can truly prepare you for the changes that'll happen. You're ready enough. You've got jobs. You've got a home. Now, go make that baby! I think the same could be said of writing. You're ready enough... go write that baby!... then go sell it. I guess that's where it sort of falls apart. Not supposed to sell babies are you? You know what I mean.

The second one is true as well. I wanted to ride a motorcycle. I wanted to know HOW to ride a motorcycle but I had an irrational fear that it'd fall on me, pin me, cook my leg as the muffler sizzles my meaty calf into a low carb snack for the carrion eaters that would find me later. My best friend got me into a motorcycle class for my birthday and at the end was a skills test and voila! I had my license. He helped me face my fears and surprise! The fear was worse than the lessons or the riding. I enjoy riding now. Writing is the same as riding. Don't be afraid. Hop up on that bike and write baby write!

I recommend the book. Even the end which is more about whoring yourself out as a writer, and if you want to be an author you gotta do everything but kiss your johns, just like in Pretty Woman, according to this book, even that part's got good advice in it... even for fiction authors.

Go get it. It's worth your money and your time.

Quote: What am I running from?

From the book "Where the Hell is Matt?: Dancing Badly Around the World." by Matt Harding. 

 

I was in transit.

And for as long as I remained that way, I
felt okay. When I stopped moving, that was
when problems caught up with me

But then I thought: airports are soulless,
antiseptic, and generic. Why am I at peace
here? Why am I only happy when I'm on my
way somewhere?

I suppose the next question is fairly obvi-
ous. But it had only just occurred to me:

What am I running from?

Sourced from Google Books.
(I wish there were a satisfactory way to do block quotes in G+)

Where the Hell Is Matt? (Link leads to the page with the quote in Google Books)

"It will be a place but it will no longer be home..."

I'm on vacation this week and drove The Kid* down to his Gramma's house for the week. We live in Iowa, and she lives in Texas. It's a long drive and we listened to Neil Gaimain's The Graveyard Book. I was planning, as part of my vacation to go visit the town I thought of as my home town for a lot of years... many many many years. Part of me still feels like "I grew up there..." I got directions to it from google maps and everything.

On the drive, while listening to The Graveyard Book (I got it from audible. /hat-tip) a line reached through the speakers and grabbed me by the face and yelled at me.

When the protagonist asked a parental figure if he could return home again he answered his own question:

"If I come back, it will be a place, but it won't be home any longer."

Well there's my vacation plans balled up and tossed out the window. He's exactly right. What I'd have gained by going back would have been some photographs and a feeling of "Wow... this is nothing like I remember it." So. I'm not going. If I start living in my past now, trying to recapture the feelings I felt when I was younger... that's a slippery slope to dottage and I'm not ready to head down that road yet. I'm not ready to start trying to recycle old into new or recapture it. There's plenty of life left to be lived, and I think I'll do that this vacation instead of trying to go back to what was.

Oh, and the book? There's a reason it won a Newberry. The reason is it's a really good book. I enjoyed it and I'm 40. The Kid just turned 18 and he enjoyed it. I imagine younger kids would like it as well. The premise is that a kid's whole family was murdered and he escaped to a graveyard and was adopted and raised by ghosts. That's the short version of the fly-leaf synopsis. Neil Gaiman takes that premise and tells a wonderfully imaginitive story using that as the launching point. I'm trying for a spoiler free review so I'll stop here. I recommend it highly to anybody from 8 to 80.

*I refer to The Kid that way to preserve his anonymity. No names and no pictures of him here... or anywhere without asking him first. He's 18 now, and not a kid... just ask him lol. But will still get that pseudonym while I write about him. He knows it and goes along with it even though he'd have picked something a little more Goth. (I say emo just to irritate him.)