It's the good advice

My essay “Into The Woods,” excerpted from a collection edited by Chad Harbach called MFA vs NYC, was posted last week on Medium. This happened because I insisted that the essay be published somewhere besides in the collection; it’s the only formally structured and edited piece of first-person writing I’ve produced in the last four years and I wanted to make sure people read it. During the six months I spent writing it and then the time I spent on final revisions prior to the book’s production deadline a year later, my life changed dramatically. Writing the essay was part of that change.

I didn’t feel, as I felt with some of the essays in ATHSW, that I was exorcising something by writing, and I didn’t feel, as I did with Friendship, that I was initiating something by writing, inviting something in. Instead I felt almost the same way I do when I force myself to do some kind of organizational task or rote  exercise that doesn’t come naturally to me, like figuring out how to make an Excel spreadsheet. Writing this essay felt like learning, like forcing myself to learn. I feel less like change happened to me and more like I changed myself.

One of the most crucial changes is that since January 2013 I’ve been working full-time in an office (two different offices, but the same one since July.) A few weeks ago I took the day off work and went up to New Hampshire to speak to an undergraduate creative writing class at Southern New Hampshire University.

It was a freewheeling discussion of fiction and I’m sure I said a lot of nonsensical things about how writing fiction is best accomplished, but I did think I was useful as an emissary of “how New York works and how different publishing models work and how to think of your career in terms of money.”  Being the foremost expert on this stuff that many of these students had ever encountered felt like a big responsibility. I did the best I could. And then afterwards a student emailed me (I’d told the students to feel free to email me.)

Her email was great and very honest. She said she was worried about not being able to make a living as a writer, and her own worrying-prone nature would prevent her from taking the leaps of faith necessary to leading the life she thinks she wants. She wanted to know whether I thought getting an MFA or working in publishing would help her get better at writing and/or help her get published.

This is the letter I wrote back.

I vividly remember being your age, about to graduate, and asking myself and other people all the same questions. Looking back, I regret the time I spent worrying about how on earth I was going to be a writer and make a living, when it was so clear that the odds  were stacked against me.  Don’t get me wrong: it’s a valid concern.

I don’t need to be the billionth person who tells you that most writers don’t make their whole living from their writing. For example: I don’t!

I have in the past, though, and that was great, but doing other stuff besides writing can be good too — for your life, your mental health, and even … for your writing. How else will you get the experiences of the world and other people and relationships that you need in order to reimagine them in fiction or memoir?  The key is just to find work that won’t steal all your energy and kill your spirit. This is hard, and takes time, but you will find it eventually if you keep trying.

Definitely don’t worry about not being good enough. Work in publishing if publishing is interesting to you. Get an MFA if you love workshop classes and school. If those things aren’t interesting and fun, don’t do them.  If something else is, do that!  Follow your curiosity and your (sorry to be cheesy) heart. Pretend that you’re sure of yourself, even when you’re not, and you will learn to trust yourself. Don’t wait around for other people to give you permission to do what you want, or to say you’re “good enough.”  You’ll waste time waiting that you could be writing, having fun, learning, and living.

I am pretty proud of the advice I gave her. I am trying to take it myself. Some days, I succeed.

6 comments to It’s the good advice

  • just want to echo all the others praising the piece and say i loved it, too. thank you for sharing all the gory details and really taking us on the journey with you. <3

  • emily

    thank you @sarahspy!

  • Terrific advice. Resonates. Thank you!

  • kim

    Followed your piece in Medium to here….so enjoying having found you on these internets :)

  • Hi! I just wanted to say that I super love your writing and have been reading your stuff ever since that piece in the New York Times like six years ago. Um, for some reason it took me six years to leave a comment?

    Anyway, this is wonderful advice, especially this part:

    “I have in the past, though, and that was great, but doing other stuff besides writing can be good too — for your life, your mental health, and even … for your writing. How else will you get the experiences of the world and other people and relationships that you need in order to reimagine them in fiction or memoir? The key is just to find work that won’t steal all your energy and kill your spirit. This is hard, and takes time, but you will find it eventually if you keep trying.”

    Thank you for this.

  • Dear Emily,
    My name is Christian M. Choi and I’m an incoming student at Georgetown Law. I just read your essay on Medium and loved it; I identified with being lost in a dream, especially a dream in which one’s occupation is a writer because a similar thing happened to me. I was so convinced I would become a world-famous author in college that I didn’t do much else but blog and ended up folding t-shirts at the mall after graduation.

    Anyways, I just wanted you to know that you’re a good writer and I hope you keep writing. If you succeeded once, you can do it again, and although the book didn’t pan out quite how you would have liked, you must have done something right to get a deal in the first place, and after reading “Into the Woods,” it sounds like you’ve grown both as a person and as a writer. Life is a crazy thing and you never know – the next book you write might make all the lives you imagined a reality. I hope it does and I also hope this reaches you.

    Best,
    Christian M. Choi

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