Thoughts on writing and life for August 2022
Nancy Christie
Ohio-based professional copywriter actively looking for freelance assignments
This is an edited excerpt from my August 2022 newsletter, The Writing Life. You can also listen to it on my Living the Writing Life podcast.
Just a few thoughts on the importance of having the right role model at the right time for our writing life.
When I first started my freelance copywriting service as a way to supplement a wholly inadequate income from my day job, I didn’t know what I was doing.
Oh, I knew how to run a business since my ex and I had been co-owners of a sales and service company. So I had a decent grasp of bookkeeping and business costs and the importance of always marketing your services.
And I knew how to write. While working full-time at our jointly owned company, I had also been part-time freelancing for almost a decade. I didn’t earn much, but at least I gained some all-important clips and experience.
But then, realizing that my day job post-divorce would never let me do more than tread water, financially speaking, and that I was just one major expense away from running out of money, I decided it was time to turn my part-time gig into a full-time occupation.
Enter Role Model Group #1: self-employed professional writers whose books touted the possibility of having a six-figure freelance writing career. (Spoiler alert: Even after 25 years, I have never crossed the $100,000 income mark. Sigh…).
I dutifully bought their books, highlighted their instructions, and did the best I could to put my plan into practice. And while I may never hit that six-figure dollar goal, I have at least kept a roof over my head and paid my bills.
At the same time, I started submitting my short stories to literary publications. Again, I didn’t know what I was doing or even why I was doing something that had so little potential for success and even less potential for income, but I just couldn’t help myself. And that’s when I sought out my next set of role models.
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I looked for writers who shared their own experiences with writing and publishing, who willingly revealed how they dealt with their fear of failure and disappointment when rejected without losing their belief in their ability to write something worthwhile. Again, I bought their books and read their articles, taking heart from the realization that much of what I was experiencing was not just due to my inadequacy but was an inescapable component of being a fiction writer.
When I branched out into publishing books—THE GIFTS OF CHANGE was my first in 2004, followed by TRAVELING LEFT OF CENTER in 2014, and then by three more to date—it was time for a new group of mentors: marketing experts who specialized in teaching authors how to promote their books and build their author platform. Since I didn’t have the faintest idea of how to do either one, I had to hit the ground running.
Eventually, with the help of all those book marketing experts and authors who shared their lessons on what to do and how to do it, I developed a book promotion plan (an ongoing work-in-progress!) and little by little, succeeded in getting my name out there and building a reputation as an author of fiction and nonfiction.
Now, as I am attempting to transition into novel writing, I am slowly but surely creating a new list of role models and mentors, broken into two distinct groups. The first is comprised of writers who write both short stories and novels, as a way of combatting that oft-heard dictum that one can either be a short fiction writer or a novelist but not both.
The second group consists of older women writers—say, sixty and up which is my demographic—who are still successfully writing and publishing. Some of them are award-winning and very prolific authors with numerous books to their credit. Others are in the early stages of literary success, meaning they only have a few books out with little or no awards to their credit.
And then there are those who, like me, are attempting to break into a new genre while also trying to reach a higher level of publishing success, without letting the fear of “it’s too late/I’m too old” hamstring their efforts.
I read about them, and if I’m lucky, I get to interview them on my blogs and podcast. And with each addition to my mentor list, I become a little more educated. When they share their rocky road on the way to becoming novelists, I realize that their stories are my story, too. I become a little more emboldened, a little more confident, a little more willing to take a chance and submit my novels in the hopes that someday I too will reach that goal.
Would I be where I am at today without all those mentors and role models? Probably not. Each one of them had taken my hand (figuratively speaking) and guided me along what was for the most part a dimly lit path, whispering words of encouragement to me when I faltered.
And I hope that maybe I too have in some small way served as a mentor for other writers. If there is one thing I have learned in living this writing life, it’s that each one of us has something we can offer to our fellow writers: information, encouragement and fellowship. And it’s our duty and responsibility to do so, as a way of paying it forward.