Things I’d Wish I’d Known When I Was a Younger Writer

I was inspired by Susan Rich’s blog post of advice for young writers and Jim Berhle’s more humorous but equally valid post here. So I thought I’d pass on the things I wish I’d known earlier to you all. Please post your own tips you wish you’d known earlier in the comments!

–Be assertive about seeking out what you need – information, mentorship, etc. When I was in my early twenties, I was waiting for someone to tell me I was good and to tell me what to do to “make it” as a writer. But you know what? No one did. I wish I had known to go out and do more on my own. I got myself a copy of Poet’s Market when I was 19 and read every word in it and read magazines like Writer’s Digest, but other than that, I was clueless when I started out. Even when I signed up with my MA, no one really discussed stuff like how to send out work, how to get grants or fellowships, or how getting a teaching job happened. It was like this was all secret code, and you had to be a member of a secret society to get it. No one is going to hand you everything at the beginning, no matter how good a writer you might be, how nice a person, etc. If you don’t know how to write a cover letter, ask someone more experienced to show you one of their examples. If you admire a poet, write to them, tell them what they have meant to you and ask for advice or help. (You’d be surprised how many of them will respond, even if not all of them do.) If your professors haven’t really paid attention to your work, ask to meet with them after class and talk about your work and their suggestions. Or find a writing group nearby and start meeting with them. I didn’t write for a few years after my MA, because of a lack of encouragement and that feeling of being outside of a closed system, and I regret that lost time now. Don’t wait for someone to tell you you’re good enough. Go out and find the mentoring you need. Sometimes that’s not going to be grad school. It might be a local community group. The Bainbridge Island poetry group I’ve been going to for eight or nine years (or ten or eleven?) now has been much more important to my writing life than either of my graduate degrees, and that is a fact.

–You will probably not regret sacrifices you make for your writing. I had so much anxiety about the money situation. I still do. I grew up in a household with two parents who had grown up in horrible poverty, who had gotten college educations so that they could do better, and they did, but money was still always tight for us growing up. As an adult, I’ve always felt a bit behind the eight ball financially – and money for things like, say, a poetry class or a writer’s conference can seem like frivolous waste. But it is not. Spend in line with your values. You may regret buying that used car, or that house (darn Virginia money pit! Never buy a house with a well! Sorry, had a Richmond house-ownership flashback there) but you won’t regret meeting a writer you’ve always admired or learning more about the craft you really want to excel at. You will not get rich being a poet, in fact, you will probably lose money doing it, if I’m any indication. But it just might be worth it.

–Get involved. Volunteering for literary magazines and organizations gives you an inside view of how things work in the poetry world, and the perspective can do a lot for you as a writer. Those rejections – when you’re the one writing them, you learn that not every poem that gets rejected is a failure, so the writer can’t think of it that way – sometimes the poems just don’t fit a theme or they’ve already accepted a poem about crème brulee and apocalypse or the editor is in the mood for one kind of poetry versus another that day. Fund raising for literary organizations also makes you aware of the limits of audience, and the limits of interest in literature among the general populace, but also how just a few lovers of literature can make a difference. The best thing volunteering does is that it puts you in touch with other volunteers, people who value the same things you do, who believe enough in what they’re doing to do it for free.

–Be curious. The best thing I did early in my writing career was volunteer as a literary magazine reviewer for NewPages.com. They sent me literary magazines of various sorts, some new and some revered gray ladies, and every month I got a new batch, read them, and tried to point out what was unique and interesting about each. If you could force every new poet to do this, I would, because it opened up a whole new world of publishing to me. I also started writing book reviews and that keeps me reading all the time – reading poets I wouldn’t otherwise read, or find, on my own. This is the best way to find out what is going on in the contemporary poetry world – what are the people around you publishing, and why, and how?