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“My story was not strong enough …”

Feeling joyfulA strug­gling writer recent­ly wrote to me: “As most rejec­tion let­ters for oth­er man­u­scripts tell me, ‘[My] sto­ry was not strong enough.’ Nei­ther was this one. I don’t think the read­ers will care.”

What would I advise?

A rather daunt­ing question.

Years ago, I was teach­ing a children’s lit­er­a­ture writ­ing course for adults, an evening non­cred­it course. The writ­ing, across the board was poor. It lacked skill, insight, or strength. Peo­ple were quite will­ing to work, and to revise, but it didn’t seem to mat­ter. The writ­ing remained life­less. I began to have this thought: Don’t revise your writ­ing. Revise your life.

The pre­sump­tion, indeed, the arro­gance of such thoughts, kept me from say­ing them. Mer­ci­ful­ly, I kept it to myself. And yet …  and yet.

In my expe­ri­ence peo­ple often wish to be authors, as if being an author was only a set of tech­ni­cal skills which need­ed to be mas­tered to be successful.

Yes, writ­ing, does have tech­ni­cal skills, craft if you will, (they can be learned) but they are used—at their best—in the ser­vice of ideas, emo­tions, and aspects of human expe­ri­ence and con­di­tion. That is to say, writ­ing brings for­ward your life’s expe­ri­ences, thoughts and per­cep­tions. Writ­ing is mold­ed by the depth of your under­stand­ing about that life. Your under­stand­ing of life is what illu­mi­nates and gives life to your writ­ing. Writ­ing does not cre­ate the good life. Life cre­ates good writing.

So to the strug­gling writer cit­ed above I would say to put aside the writ­ing for a while. Spend your time in deep read­ing, look­ing, lis­ten­ing, and ask­ing hard ques­tions (real­ly hard ques­tions) about the things you believe. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly to change those beliefs but learn where those beliefs come from—rote learn­ing or your own expe­ri­ence. Live by ques­tions, not answers.

In short: Enrich your­self, enrich your writ­ing. But start by enrich­ing yourself.

Old cliché, but per­haps true: “A life unlived is like a book with­out words.” 

3 thoughts on ““My story was not strong enough …””

  1. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I think the best first step for many is, “Step away from the screen.” Pas­sive device use is sup­plant­i­ng much rich­er life experiences.

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  2. I had a sim­i­lar thought this week. After trav­el­ing to the Mid­west and spend­ing a few hours with a group of strangers with a com­mon love (for a con­cert), I real­ized I need to break out of my reg­u­lar group of book nerds and church friends more often. It was refresh­ing to hear sto­ries from peo­ple who live hun­dreds of miles away from me, work in fac­to­ries, yet we still have things in com­mon while we wait­ed in line.
    We’re all dif­fer­ent, but we’re all the same.

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  3. The best and most endur­ing books in my life all tell me some­thing about life that I did­n’t know before, or they solid­i­fy a thought that I had only vague­ly been aware of before. It’s the abil­i­ty to put words to some­thing that is new or was back­ground noise that I admire. I want a book to change me. Plot, char­ac­ters, set­ting, theme, all work­ing togeth­er to move my mind for­ward. A book can actu­al­ly not be that well writ­ten and still be trea­sured if it has new ideas.

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