You Wanted a Decision?

You wanted me to have made a decision to become a career writer? Never happened. Maybe because I've always written. Even when I was in acting school. Even when I was singing professionally. It was like this photo - it isn't pretty. It isn't even that great a photo, but that building set all kinds of stories going in my brain. So I grabbed the shot. Acting, singing and writing. It was all telling stories.

True. There came a day when the common thread of communicating stories dawned on me.  At that point, I buckled down to stop screwing around with my stories - as in never finishing anything. Craft became the master. I became the student. For a REALLY long time. *Looks around.* Huh - maybe forever. And when I finished one story and sent it off, the rejection letter came back so fast, I got whiplash. But it was from Marion Zimmer Bradley. Still have that. The next rejection letter was slower in coming, but it was from Harlequin, it marked my first completed novel, and the letter wasn't a crooked photo copy. The editor, bless her heart, very kindly wrote a detailed letter informing me that I didn't know a thing about internal versus external conflict. She was right. I set out to learn.

The second novel never got a rejection letter. It was such a clust....erm...fatally flawed piece of work, it never went out. The third - an agent actually requested the full. I was sure that was it. But no. Also a rejection letter. Several, actually. From all over. A few of them were crooked photocopies.

What made me go from playing around with writing to actually wanting to finish things? Easy. Everything was a story for me. I had to write. I couldn't *not* write. So I might as well see if I could make anything come of that, right?

Also, I should point out, that commitment isn't a one time thing. It's on-going, a decision that gets made day by day. It isn't so much a commitment to writing. It's more a commitment to oneself - acknowledging and honoring that what you want and need (time indulging the voices in your head with some writing time) is equally important as anything else going on in your day. Sometimes that's easier than others. Here's my confession: I fall off the horse. I stop writing for days and weeks at a time. That's not important. Getting up, dusting off and getting back on - that's what's important. And that's commitment.

Happy 4th of July

by Allison Pang

First off, Happy 4th of July to our American readers!

I'm going to try to keep this post short and sweet as I'm currently on my yearly beach hiatus and enjoying a little fun in the sun. (Honestly, I've just been sitting around and reading and /or writing on the beach. It's been very much needed.)

Looking at this week's theme, I'm not sure I really consider myself a "career writer" yet. In some ways I feel it's more of an "elevated hobby." Yes, I've sold some books and I'm working on new ones, but there's always been a bit of holding my breath to see if the rug gets yanked out from under me about the whole thing. One of these days I'll have to get over that - the pipe dream is to do the "full time writer" thing, but I've got a ways to go before that's a real possibility.

As far as when I decided I wanted to be a writer? I did some writing in middle and high school, but I wasn't writing all the time - just here and there. I was mostly a reader more than anything, and any thoughts I had of going to college for something along those lines were squashed because my parents convinced me it wasn't a practical choice. So I did the safe thing and headed into the sciences. (Ha ha, that Marine Biology degree comes in soooo handy these days, let me tell you.)

My senior year of college found me sputtering a bit trying to figure out what I really wanted to do. I took some Creative Writing courses and discovered very quickly that I wasn't a literary writer. The classes themselves weren't particularly useful when it came to the idea of getting published and I just figured it wasn't a good fit for me.

So I stopped writing completely for the next 12 years or so and just moved on with my life. Did the marriage and baby thing and the practical day job thing and figured that was what it would be.

Except at some point I started playing in online play-by-post games - most of them were in D&D type settings and I discovered that I really liked writing in them. (And that I wasn't half bad at it either.) I decided that maybe I *could* do this. And from there I started a collaboration that went nowhere...but the offshoot of that was that I began investigating what it took to get published. Information that had seemed esoteric and hard to come by 12 years before, was suddenly available on the internet - forums, writer groups, and finding other like-minded individuals - everything was right there.

I started writing what would become A Brush of Darkness during this time - it was supposed to be my "learning" book, something I could use for workshops to help me learn my craft. But it started winning contests, helped me get an agent and sold within six months of finishing it.

So I'm not sure I really "decided" to make writing a career so much as I stumbled into it and got really lucky.

The rest remains to be seen. :)

The Career Writer: The Distance Between Decision and Commitment

The moment I decided to become a "career writer" was not, in fact, the moment I actually did anything about becoming a writer. Nope, there was a good year of eating bonbons while watching everything on Food Network and HGTV. Yep, I didn't so much as read.

Clearly, I was destined for monumental success. ~cough~

The moment of the decision came whilst in the throes of Total Life Chaos -- that other kind of TLC. I'd abruptly discovered I was physically incapable of continuing the lifestyle of Checking All The Success Boxes. You know the boxes -- crafted from the finest expectations of society and filled with all the rational "shoulds" and "musts." I'd invested heavily in the facade of the Right & Responsible Way. I was good at Exceeding Expectations ... until I broke.

Amusingly, conforming to what society 

had deemed best for me had made me literally sick.

So I stopped living up to a false ideal. I tuned out all the Theys and Thems. I listened within. It took a while to reconnect with me, my individuality, and my desires. Eventually, I succeeded. After a time, when I asked myself every Hiring Manager's favorite question, "Where do you see yourself in five years," the answer came easily and with truth.

I saw myself telling stories. 

Since a pack of slavering wildebeests can carry a tune far better than me, I knew I wasn't heading to Broadway. A rusty sieve can retain more than my feeble memory, so Hollywood was out of the question too. If I couldn't perform someone else's stories, I'd write my own damn tales and maybe even get them published. I gave myself permission to be as weird and as eccentric as my recovering good-girl corporate-self could muster...but maybe I'd give those super odd inclinations to a character first and see how that panned out for her.

I started writing.

With all the writing came the learning -- about the business first, then about the craft. Hey, I said I was a recovering business wonk. I analyzed the hard rules and sifted through the purely subjective guidelines. I've made glorious mistakes and fabulous friends in the years since I transitioned from decision to commitment.


Any day now, I'll be Published with Pride. Any day now ...

The Moment I Decided to Be a Career Writer

This is a grotto we visited in Hocking Hills, Ohio. Truly a magical place.

I'm a bit embarrassed to tell you all about the moment I decided to be a career writer. When I made that choice, I would never have forseen that it would be more than twenty years before I reached the point where I could be looking at living on what I make from writing.

Though I did know it was a long-shot decision.

So, here's the story. Those of you who've heard it before may be excused.

Back in 1991, I was a graduate student getting my PhD in neurophysiology. Though I loved the subject matter - auditory processing in bats - things with my program were not going well. I'd graduated college in 1988 and entered the PhD program that same fall. Looking back, I can see lots of what was wrong. I felt a lot of (self-imposed) pressure to do something brilliant. I'd chosen a master's bypass because it felt like a waste of time to do the two-step approach. I hadn't really examined what I wanted out of life. And I had this horrible bipolar advisor who pretty much disliked me from the beginning.

Several things happened in 1991. In January of that year, I started dating David. At that point, I'd decided to leave the program at the end of the spring semester, because I was so miserable. He was a fling, someone I likely wouldn't have dated, if I hadn't thought it would be short-term.

I fell in love and we're still together.

Because I was so much happier, I felt renewed commitment to my degree and, not incidentally, to staying with this guy. By that winter, however, it became clear to me that things were not right.

There I was, at the Neuroscience Convention in New Orleans. Back then, this was a gathering of about 60,000 people from all walks of neuroscience study - brain surgeons, computer modelers, psychiatric types, you name it. It's a mind-boggling avalanche of information. I talked to A LOT of people over a few days and it hit me that none of them seemed happy. They all talked non-stop about their work and seemed to have not much else to say. Several days in, my advisor said something snotty to me and I melted down into tears. I had to run outside and sit in the sun, hoping no one noticed me.

After that - and after many discussions with David - I knew that I didn't want that career. As much as I loved the subject matter, I didn't want to become one of those people.

We talked about a lot of options for me. I could go to medical school, which had been my initial intent when I started college. I could become a veterinarian, my childhood ambition. I wanted my next choice to be a better one than the first had been, so I meditated on it.

Then I sat myself down, emptied out my head of all the expectations, the shoulds and buts and what-ifs, and asked myself the question: what would be the perfect life?

To my vast surprise, the answer was Being a Writer.

See, I was never one of those people who say they wrote stories non-stop. I'd regarded my poems and essays as a minor part of my life. Though my writing teachers had encouraged me, really no one seriously suggests writing as a career.

But I had my answer, so I knew that's what I needed to do. Whatever it took, I needed to rearrange my life so I could be a writer.

What did that take? Well, I cut bait on the PhD, got my Masters and ran. I took a series of jobs in the sciences that involved writing also. I took classes from visiting writers and polished my craft. Within a few years, I was publishing regularly as an essayist. I found a job with an environmental consulting firm - the Masters did come in handy - that allowed me the flexibility to write.After my essay collection was published by a university press and it became clear I'd never make career-money doing that, I switched to fiction. Slowly and steadily, I've been working towards making a living as a writer.

The best part is that, even though the main source of my income is still from science, being a writer has sustained me all these years. It's fed me in a way that the science professions never did.

It's been a great career.

ABOVE ALL ELSE, BE COOL

There is one huge thing you need to realize right now about the publishing industry.
Pull in close so I can whisper it in your ear.
Closer.
Ready?
EVERYBODY KNOWS EVERYBODY ELSE IN THIS INDUSTRY!
Truly they do. And they all talk. Now if you have a good reputation, someone likes you, they will tell others about you. That's a good thing.
However.
If you screw up it also means you will be talked about. Word will spread.
Now does this mean you have to sit on your hands, remaining meek and mild, super self-concious and on edge so that you don't ever offend anyone?
No of course not.
Have you met me? I'm loud. I'm big. I have strong opinions about a lot of stuff and gladly share them.
What you do have to do is maintain a level of professionalism.
According to Dictionary.com a Professional is: "a person who is expert at his or her work".
Simple.
A professional handles their work. They maintain their commitments. You take a deadline, meet that deadline. Yes, sometimes you need an extension and there is a professional way to ask for that extension, but a professional holds that card tightly.  You don't get to play it very often. 
What a professional does NOT do is blow off their deadline because they are too "busy" playing Skyrim (or whatever frivolous distraction you are wasting your time with.) or just being lazy.
A professional doesn't blow off a panel at a convention simply because they aren't interested or it's the last day.
A professional doesn't treat readers like some kind of second class citizen, somehow lesser than the esteemed writer class.
A professional doesn't smack talk their fellow authors, or publishers, or agents, or bloggers. If you have a legitimate beef with someone, be an adult and take it to them. Don't tweet it or blast it on your blog.
A professional walks away from a bad review, no matter how unjustified it may be.
In short:
BE COOL AND NEVER MAKE GEORGE TAKEI DO THIS

If you can maintain your cool and be professional then you could have Dean Winchester doing this instead:

 And isn't that preferable?