KEEP GRINDING, WRITERS

“Keep grinding’ is the message all writers tell themselves, but not out loud.

Instead, what they say is their word count for the day.

Maybe it’s a thousand, maybe more.

The message they send is keep grinding.

You’ve heard the story about the poet?

A writer decided they’d write poetry, but it was too hard so they tried short stories.

Short stories were too hard, so they decided to write a novel.

The message? Keep grinding.

If you want to be a writer, you write.

Choose a format, a genre, a style and start grinding.

Make a decision to write and then you’re a writer.

Be A Real Writer? Here’s How:

Find a convenient MFA program that checks all the important boxes: Reputation, expense, location.

Once you graduate, keep sending your work to the literary journals that need people like you.

The top 10 makes a lot of sense. In order: The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Granta, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA Magazine, American Short Fiction, and McSweeney’s. These are all successful American literary journals with high-profile contributors and outstanding reputations.

Anything you get published here justifies your high-end MFA, your low-end MFA, and all the effort and experience you’ve cooked down to a short story.

Another list stops at the top 100.

In some ways it’s ridiculous to rank literary magazines by the number of awards they’ve received, but it still can be useful for writers to figure out where to submit. 

(If you’re looking for nonfiction or essay rankings, go to my Ranking of Literary Nonfiction Markets). 

If you keep grinding and sending work out on submission you’ll get to join the chorus of,

“How long should I wait for a response?”

“It’s rude to keep writers waiting so long.”

“Should I hire an editor?”

Most of all you get to sing the song about low rewards for such difficult work.

Then you see someone you know getting their sub-standard work published everywhere and decide to quit altogether.

Until.

Pssst, Why Don’t You Write A Blog

Maybe you’ve heard the news?

Blogs are dead; blogging is dead.

Writing a blog is the lowest of the low hanging fruit for writers.

But, every writer needs a launch platform for their book, every business with a online presence needs a blog attached to their page.

All of this news goes one direction.

But you keep grinding, sign up for a free blog, or self-host.

Then what?

“Oh my God, I’ve got to post something everyday to stay relevant to online searches?”

Listen writer, you’re going to do what you’ve been doing blog or no blog, submission journey or dead end.

If you’re a particular kind of writer you find ideas all day, every day.

You can ignore them or not.

If you carry your MFA on your sleeve you may look for inspiring material other than the daily drudgery of normal life.

You may ask yourself, “Is this not my Ivory Tower?”

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”

And you may ask yourself, “How do I work this?”
And you may ask yourself, “Where is that large automobile?”
And you may tell yourself, “This is not my beautiful house.”
And you may tell yourself, “This is not my beautiful wife.”

Keep Grinding

You may ask yourself, “What is that beautiful house?”
You may ask yourself, “Where does that highway go to?”
And you may ask yourself, “Am I right, am I wrong?”
And you may say to yourself, “My God, what have I done?”

What have you done?

You’ve created something where nothing had been before.

That is your world to add to or subtract from.

Now you can pop up at four in the morning after a fitful nights sleep thinking about titles and references and metaphors and allusions.

Imminently prepared, you can sit before your screen knowing that whatever you post that day goes out into the waiting world.

What happens when you learn the world is not waiting with baited breath?

That’s what they make tomorrows for, so you can try and be better.

It’s an exciting world when you bend its attention to your work. It’s miraculous, stupendous, and undeserving.

Wait. Undeserving? You? No, not you. Not if you keep grinding.

You will deserve any accolades that come your way due to your work ethic.

I hope this is reassuring to those who need reassurance.