Sometimes, the writing was bad. By writing, I mean the craft itself was bad. I had poor sentences or awkward paragraphs and in many places I had beats in the wrong places and the story just flowed wrong.

Other times, as mentioned in a few other blog posts, I submitted a scene or even a loosely collected series of narrative events. In these instances what I submitted was not what most people would consider a short story.

The piece I submitted this morning, a 5,100 word urban fantasy short story, is by far the single best short story I’ve ever written. After finishing the first draft nearly two months ago, I have been re-writing it, editing it, and subjecting myself to brutal criticism from an amazing editor (if she had a blog or a mugshot, I would provide a link here).

Several dozen revisions later, I feel like it is a great short story. It isn’t a scene that is being squished into the short story format, it is an actual short story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It has a hook. I think the writing is some of the best I’ve ever done, the beats are in the right place, the story flows fast when it should be fast, slow when it should be slow. All of the myriad of tiny little details that readers take for granted, I obsessed over for months trying to get this story right.

Now that I’ve submitted this story and I can see what it looked like when I started versus what it looked like when I finished and it really is night and day. I didn’t add a mountain of words and in many cases removed some, but the painstaking attention to every detail in every paragraph as well as to the story as a whole really paid off.

This led me to re-evaluate my concept of the editing process. I used to think of writing as a process that consisted of two big steps: you write, then you edit. To me, editing was something that was done after you produced whatever it is you wanted to label your initial draft. This placed far too much emphasis on the initial output and not enough on editing.

What I’ve learned is that writing isn’t what you do before editing. Writing is editing. The initial output is just that, it’s the starting point on a (often very long) journey. What you do to your initial output isn’t a grammar check or a check for punctuation, it’s a check for the thousands of subtle things that writers do at the micro and macro level: hunt down adverbs and replace them with stronger verbs, find passive voice and passive phrases and strengthen them where appropriate, make sure that as you build compound sentences you lead the reader’s mind’s eye from the right start to the right finish every time and at the right pace.

There’s still a million other things to do that I’ve been habitually bad at doing like consistency checking (making sure that if a character is on the ground in one paragraph, they’re still there in the next), object tracking (making sure that the reader’s mental image of a scene is stable and not disrupted by inconsistencies), dialogue consistency (making sure that people talk the way they should be talking given their backgrounds and current situation), beats and pacing check, exposition versus dialog (“say it don’t tell it” etc) checking, and when that’s done there’s a million more things.

I’m not saying these things to scare potential writers. I’m saying these things because I used to look at a draft and say, “this is good enough” and stop 20-40 revisions too soon. Good enough isn’t good enough. It’s very hard for writers to put themselves in the minds of a reader who has never read the story before – it’s been bouncing around in the writer’s head for weeks, months, maybe even years. It takes disciplined attention to detail and the aid of unbiased, objective, and hopefully brutal reviewers and editors to pull out the core nugget of greatness from the surrounding pile of mediocre writing and turn a good story into one worth publishing.

I am hoping that with this new-found respect for the editing process, my future pieces will be better for it. Even if I never get any of my future stories published, I now know how to make them far better than they ever would have been before.

Certainly I fear rejection. I think you are given this fear as an initiation present, a “welcome to the author’s club” trophy that you carry with you as a combination point of pride and burden for the rest of your life. I don’t think fear of rejection ever goes away, we just get better at suppressing it.

What I think I realized this weekend, however, is that underneath the fear of rejection is an even more deep-seated fear, a fear that is often so traumatizing that we can’t even bear to confront it or even admit that we have it. Some writers reading this now probably know what I’m talking about already. The real fear, the paralyzing fear that simmers underneath the frying pan of the fear of rejection and the other things that contribute to writer’s block is this:  the fear that we aren’t actually good at writing.

When I was a kid I took an aptitude test. This test told me that I should consider a career in the sanitation field or perhaps janitorial. At the time I had very few lofty goals outside of augmenting my collection of He-Man and G.I. Joe figures, so this didn’t hurt me much.

What if, as an adult, someone reviewed my writing and said, “you know what, you should stick to your day job.” Nobody (with the exception of a few strange people) wants to be that guy on American Idol who thinks he can sing but ends up in the “embarrassingly bad” clip montage. No writer wants to be that guy that devotes a year or two or twenty of his life to writing, to pouring his soul out onto disk, only to be shown the door and told that his stuff sucks and is beyond help.

I think this is the real cause for so much of a writer’s anxiety. They aren’t necessarily afraid of rejection, though it certainly stings. Everybody knows that even great writers have been rejected – if the story isn’t what they want to publish at the time, or if the editor was in a crabby mood that morning, the story is thrown in the round file. What none of us want is to get all the way to the end of the road and we wind up on the “embarrassingly bad”  writer’s list. We can tolerate being called “unpublished writers”, but, can we tolerate someone telling us we shouldn’t be writing?

As I was standing on the launching platform for the zipline I looked down about 25 feet and saw metal fences, hard rock, and people, none of which I was particularly interested in landing on. 25 feet below them I saw water. I’d always had trouble with heights so it came as no surprise to me that I had trouble breathing and every fiber of my being told me to turn the hell around, go back on solid ground, and give up. Let someone else take the risk.

That’s when I reminded myself about this one pervasive fact: the only difference between me and the other people on the zipline was what was going on inside my head. If my brain wasn’t telling me that I was going to die, then I could easily get up on the zipline and jump off the platform.

This same conversation goes on in a writer’s head when they sit down to write. Somewhere deep inside, there might be a voice telling this writer that they aren’t good enough, that they aren’t really a writer, and that they shouldn’t bother, that they should let someone else take the risk.

I decided at that moment that I was going to take the risk, that the journey was worth it even if the ending wasn’t the one I’d dreamed of. And so the point of this blog post is that, if anybody is reading this and thinking about spending a year or more writing a novel, they should do it. Don’t let someone else take that risk, because they’ll end up with a novel and you’ll end up with regret. The only difference between the writers writing and the writers pacing is what’s going on inside their head, and thankfully, we have complete control over that. So write. Fear can’t stop you unless you let it.

I will close out this blog post with some inspiring words from Frank Herbert’s Dune about fear:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Writer, go and write. Everything else is secondary.

As if mustering the willpower necessary to keep going in the face of repeated, heart-stopping rejection wasn’t enough, we have to deal with the brutal reality of the need to pay bills, feed ourselves and our families, and possibly even put gas in our cars. Most writers have to deal with the daily choice between spending time doing things that earn money and spending time doing things that are fulfilling (like writing).

I have a demanding day job that often requires that I work from home, work after hours, and even the occasional weekend. In addition to this, I also write technical books on all kinds of computer programming topics, including iPhone, Mac, and Windows Phone 7 programming. When I am not spending time working on those projects, I enjoy spending time with my family – the simple pleasures like watching TV with my girlfriend, going to the movies, getting out of the house on weekends, etc.

So when I step back and look at the potential to spend enough time working on my writing to get good enough at it to get published, the prospects look grim. Any writer will tell you that the secret to being a great writer is to write. You need to write, and you need to do it every day. Just like a guitar player needs to do a few scales every day just to keep the fingers nimble, a writer needs to write a few paragraphs every day just to keep that part of his brain working. Writing is not like riding a bike – the longer your brain spends not writing, the less your brain likes writing.

The question then is, given a busy (albeit rich and fulfilling) life, do you attempt to continue writing even though you know you just don’t have the time to do it justice… or you do throw in the towel and give it up? You hear stories about writers who were able to walk away from their day jobs and become successful, published authors on their first try like Brent Weeks but we also know that most of us can’t afford to take that risk. We can’t walk away from our day jobs and live on Top Ramen for a year while we write our novel only to have it never published. Nearly every published writer tells us that we should never plan on using money from writing to pay the bills because that just doesn’t happen to the average Joe.

For me, the answer is never quit. Writing fiction makes me happy and so I am going to try harder to re-arrange my schedule so that I have more time to do it. Even if I only get to write one paragraph a week, that will have to do. Even if I get 100 more rejection letters this year, that’s going to have to do because of this one important fact:

What I love is writing, getting published is an optional side-effect.

At the beginning of a new year, we often find ourselves facing a clean slate. We figure it’s a new year, so it’s time to start fresh. Time to make promises to do the things this year that we didn’t do last year. Time to make amends for the crappy year we had last year and make this new year one to remember – everything we want it to be!

Unfortunately, this is also a time of denial. A time to kid ourselves and try and sweep the crap from prior years under the rug, look at the shiny new rug, and promise ourselves that the same stuff won’t happen this year. This time of year we fill ourselves with empty promises (we call them “resolutions”) to do more, be better, and achieve everything we’ve always wanted to achieve. Just like there are those who sin all week and then duck into a church every Sunday in search of absolution, there are those of us who use January 1st and “resolutions” as a form of absolution. We tell ourselves that we’ll be better this year.

The trick here isn’t to avoid resolutions all together, the trick is to treat them as goals and make them achievable. We have to pick things we want to accomplish, things that will stretch us and challenge us and make us grow as people or as professionals or as both. Pick something that’s just out of your current reach so you have to take that extra step in the new year to get it… but don’t pick something that’s so far out of reach you’re just going to give up before the end of February.

I’ve got a pile of resolutions that I plan on for this year but I also plan on achieving all of them. Oh I’ve got the usual “lose weight” one, but I’ve been hitting the gym 4+ times per week so I think I may actually accomplish that one if I stick to it long enough. Weight loss is a long, drawn out war of attrition (literally). It’s your willpower versus your gut, and your willpower has to win every day, all day and it sucks the life out of you (well, at least me anyway).

I also have a couple of writing resolutions. This year, I am going to pick one of the open books that I’ve been writing and I’m going to choose just that book and I’m going to finish it. I’m not going to stop and obsess over every chapter I am simply going to grind through the entire book from start to finish and I will end that book. Finishing the book is the hard part. The months of editing afterward are (relatively) easy. I have heard many times that the difference between published authors and aspiring authors is that published authors actually finish their books, aspiring authors just keep starting new books over and over again.

So, one way or another, for better or for worse, I’m going to finish a book this year. In addition, I’m also going to write and submit at least 3 short stories, regardless of my rejection history with short stories. This is because I need to prove to myself that I can continue to love the act of writing in the face of rejection, despair, self-loathing, and all of the other horrible things writers do to themselves when they get rejection letters.

So that’s that. I’ve aired my resolutions publicly and I hope to be accountable to them. Lose some weight, finish a novel, and submit for publication at least three short stories. I wonder what kind of resolutions other authors (published or otherwise) have? Do they fall into the trap of “new year absolution” and just come up with a pile of unattainable goals, or are they pragmatic about it and set fixed, measurable goals that they know they can work toward? I’m always curious about that. I wonder what Stephen King or Neil Gaiman set for their resolutions…

But, we also have the kind of dreams that plague us throughout the day; dreams that comfort us like a warm blanket when we go to sleep at night, and dreams that keep our minds racing while we drive to work, while we eat a sandwich, and pretty much while we do anything. These dreams are literally the stuff of legend. These dreams are the scenes, dramas, and epics that are begging to be written and to be told from start to finish.

What’s interesting here is that there is no magic fairy dust, no faith, no religion, no lucky roll of the dice that will, on its own, make our dreams come true. The only thing standing between us and the realization of our dreams is work. That’s it. Putting one foot in front of the other, tapping one key after another. Certainly we could all use a little luck to help us along, but if we’re still sitting at home in front of a blank screen and 700 pages of unwritten manuscript remain jammed inside our head, no amount of luck will get our story published. What will get our story published, what will pull our dreams from out of reach and into the palm of our hands is nothing more than raw, hard work. Persistence and patience don’t hurt either.

A couple of years ago, I remember saying to myself that I’d never be published. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t good enough to be a published author and that my stuff sucked. My dream of being a real writer remained just that, a dream. Then I changed my dream of being a writer into a goal. I worked and I wrote. I wrote some more. Then I wrote some more. I now have over 14 computer programming books published and I’ve got a short story published in a real, actual, on-paper anthology.

Dreams are things we have that will never happen. Goals are real, tangible things we can put effort toward.

Another dream I’ve had since the day I got my driver’s license was to own a fun, sporty car. In the past I’ve just never had enough money saved up or I’ve needed to drive practical cars or minivans or whatever. As long as I kept that dream as a dream and convinced myself it would never happen, it never happened.

A couple of weeks ago, I walked into a BMW dealership and I special ordered a green BMW 328i xDrive and it will be put on a ship leaving Germany sometime next week. The combination of handling, sporty feel, comfort, reliability and style are unmatched by any of the other cars I test drove.

BMW 328xi in Tasman Green

Instead of pining over what I didn’t have, I visualized what I wanted. I pictured myself sitting behind the wheel of the car I wanted most in the world (within reason… no amount of positive visualization is going to give me enough money to buy a Bugati Veyron ) and I worked toward that goal. It took a lot of scrimping, saving, penny-pinching and skipping on other big-ticket purchases I might’ve made, but I made it. My dream car arrives in a few weeks and I fully expect to be driving this vehicle when my first fantasy book is published. That’s not a dream, that’s my goal and it’s a goal that I work toward every day.

So, while I may not have advice that I can impart on the step-by-step process you need to follow in order to get published, I do know a little something about making stuff happen. Want to be a published writer? Take all that time you spending wishing and write. Take the rest of your spare time and write. Take the spare time you don’t have and make it spare and take writing classes and join a writing group. Get all the guides on how to get published and how to write query letters and hone your craft. Work. Put one foot in front of the other and tap one key after the other. Don’t sit around waiting for divine intervention because your own intervention is what’s going to set things in motion.

Nothing would please me more than to see a bunch of comments on the bottom of this blog post rattling off dream after dream that you folks made come true. Dreams aren’t mythical, intangible pink unicorns. They’re goals you can make happen.

While you’re at it, make sure your characters have dreams. At the very core of a good novel is a protagonist who has dreams and an antagonist that wants to thwart them. Use the feelings you have while trying to reach your goals to make your characters and their struggles to fulfill their dreams more realistic.