What Does it Take to be an "Author" Anyway?

And other questions I've been thinking about in the shower

I’m back!

Life’s been heating up for me since January, and I haven’t been around much. Outside the overall chaos of the state of the world, we’ve had to deal with a minor medical issue with our youngest (everything is fine). Between taking on more freelancing clients (both for podcasting and for development editing), working on my own projects, working the day job at the library, AND being the primary caregiver for our kids during the workday, the substack has been relegated to the back burner.

I’m hoping this isn’t the case for the rest of the year. I have several ideas for articles that I’ve yet to get to: a full plot breakdown of the first season of Andor, a series on anti-fascist literature from the 30s-40s, continuing the “Beginnings are Hard” series, and various “craft of writing” one-offs.

I do have some good news: I’ve sold three short stories so far this year: to Radon Journal, Flash Fiction Online, and Incensepunk Magazine. I’ll certainly link them here when they come out (which seems to be around May - July for all of them).

These publications mean quite a bit to me: they’re my first “semi-pro” and “professional” sales, which, until very recently, would contribute to me qualifying for the Science Fiction Writers of America (They still do, but SFWA switched from requiring 3 professional sales (minimum 8 cents/word) to showing that an author has earned a set amount over the course of their career to qualify).

This is a strange place for me to be in. I started writing Lord of the Rings fanfiction when I was about 11. In high school I had a slew of abandoned stories and a few poems published in my school lit mag. I didn’t really start “seriously” writing until about 2011. A group of us self-published a few collections of short stories in college, but my first official sale was in 2019 to Black Hare Press — some drabbles, and eventually a short story for their “Deep Space” anthology.

What I’m trying to say is that it took a long time — nearly 10 years — to achieve any sort of publication where someone actually bought a story from me and nearly 15 years before I made a “professional” sale.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I got here — how my approach to story and writing changed over the years — and how to communicate that approach to others. I’m not claiming to have all the answers. What worked for me may not work for you, and that’s actually a good thing. It means we’re different. We approach the world from different angles, we have different things to say. Diversity keeps the industry alive.

This post is for the people who are working to attain professional publication. Who want to engage with the industry. Those writers who feel like they’re doing everything they can, but just aren’t getting anywhere.

Some people write for fun. This post isn’t directed at them — keep on writing, whatever you’re doing, your art is important. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad or lesser simply because you don’t fit whatever imaginary standard they have for a “real” writer.

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On the toxic “Success Culture” among new writers

I’ve written before about some of the questions I see on the r/writingadvice subreddit or the questions I was asked when I taught undergraduates. Questions like: “What do I need to do to get published?” “Just tell me what to do to get published, and I’ll do it.” “Can you just show me how to write this effectively so I don’t waste my time writing something bad?”

These questions are ubiquitous for a reason: in our age of instant information, Generative-AI, and Bio-hacking, everything seems to have a “trick.” Some sort of secret knowledge where, if you are just in-the-know, you, too, can find quick success. You even see this absolutely inundating the substack world: 10 ways to grow your audience. 15 quick tips on getting an agent. Here are the 3 things the publishing industry DOESN’T want you to know!

I’m here to tell you that it’s all bullshit.

There is no hack, trick, or tip. There is no magic software (and that includes AI). There is no Secret Book of Secrets To Take Your Prose To The Next Level And Cure Your Depression. There is no end-all-be-all craft book. I encourage those of you in search of educational materials to be wary of any person or publication that claims to have all the answers. If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

There is only work. There is only craft. There is only time. There is only effort. There is only luck.

But these questions — these desires for shortcuts — are understandable. Our art is a reflection of us, and no one wants to feel like they’re a “bad” artist. I’ve stopped using those terms “good story” and “bad story.” There are only stories that I deem “Publication Ready” and stories that are “Not Publication Ready.” There are plenty of entertaining stories that are not publication ready.

Below, I’ve gone into a few of the common pitfalls that I’ve seen even experienced unpublished writers make, and go into a bit as to how I approach my own writing process, specifically the mentality by which I approach the craft, which I feel has contributed greatly to my recent successes.

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Simply reading won’t make you a better writer

This one is spicy and will probably get me lightly fried and canceled on socials, but I stand by it. There are plenty of great readers who are not published. In fact, it could be argued that most people who are voracious readers do not achieve professional publication.

Many writing courses will tell you to read widely, both in and outside your genre and they are correct to say this. Reading your genre helps develop your understanding of the cultural moment, what presses have bought recently, what has won awards, etc.

But there is this idea that I’ve seen crop up in various communities over the years — that reading more will make you a better writer — and that is simply untrue if not approached with intention.

“Read more” is only half the sentence.

Does looking at a painting make you a better painter?

Does listening to music make you a better guitarist?

Does driving your car make you a better mechanic?

It’s tempting to answer yes, but doing any of these things without intention is simple consumption, not growth. It’s true that you must read to grow, but the magnitude of that growth is largely dictated by how you approach your reading.

In music, we talk about the differences between listening to a piece, playing a piece and understanding a piece. It’s one thing to know that Green Day’s “Time of Your Life” uses the chords G, D, Em, C, but it’s quite another to know why these chords fit together in the way that they do. Different information is gleaned in each level of analysis. Listening reveals how the notes make you feel. Playing reveals which notes are being used. Understanding reveals why the notes fit together in the way that they do and potentially reveals the composer’s intentions as to when they picked the notes they did.

Applying this to the craft of writing is as simple as approaching a piece a bit differently. Instead of reading for entertainment value, ask yourself why you like the piece in particular. Why is it successful? What is it doing that your writing isn’t?

What we’re talking about here is something called “Field Recons” — a concept I picked up from Timons Esaias, one of my mentors at Seton Hill’s MFA program. You can do a field recon on anything, from plot structures to how an author handles description, to characterization. I approach mine using the scientific method that everyone learned in middle school:

1. Hypothesis

   1. I think that Jim Butcher used the traditional P.I. murder mystery structure in his novel “Storm Front”

2. Observation

   1. Here, I re-read the novel, taking note of the plot points, like so:

      1. CH 1

         • Character intro

           • Defining Trait:

           • Misbelief:

         • Inciting incident /Primary Mystery introduced

         • Secondary Mystery introduced

           • Vague phone call.

             • How is it tied together?

             • establishes a ticking clock

         • Summary

           • Dresden rcvs 2 phone calls, seemingly unrelated. One is to find Victor Sells -- Monica, his wife, will meet Dresden in his office later. The other is from Murphy, a Chicago PD cop on a murder investigation

      2. Ch 2

         • Gruesome murder scene

         • Intro to “big bad magic spell that will drive the plot”

         • Uses murder to explain magic system

         • 2 victims

           • Scope Broadened:

           • World Broadened:

         • ENTER RED HERRING SUSPECT 1, TIED TO ONE OF THE VICTIMS:

3. Analysis

   1. Was the author successful? How/Why? What chapters progress one plotline or the other? How does the character’s misbelief interact with the events of the plot, etc?

4. Conclusion (Reflection).

   1. This reflection part is important. For me, it looks like freewriting on what I’ve found and trying to find applications for my own work.

I cannot stress enough that the actual physical act of writing this as a report/rundown as if someone else is going to read it is important. It’s where the magic of this exercise lies. When I was first starting out, too often I would think about these things and say to myself “yeah, yeah, I got it now.” Writing down your observations and your line of reasoning helps you clarify your thoughts. It puts high concepts in your own words. It, essentially, forces you to teach yourself, even as you pretend to teach the imaginary reader of your “report.”

For other examples of this, check out our “Beginnings are Hard” series.

I even did this recently with my piece that Radon accepted. The story was originally written as a flash, but Radon’s editors wanted more conflict and deeper characterization. Their critiques pretty much necessitated that the flash be expanded to a full short story. Ironically, most of my experience with the craft has been on the two extremes of the length spectrum: Flash Fiction and Novels. So, I read every Nebula and Hugo ballet short story for the previous two years. I learned that most short stories were written in such a way that did not get bogged down by character actions/blocking. Very rarely did I see people rubbing their noses, or grinning, or walking across the room, or stopping and turning, or rolling their eyes. Most stories were told with complete economy of language in a style that I’m tentatively calling “Close Summary.” See the most recent Hugo winner here.

This method requires you to be honest about your craft and self-reflective. I had a few false starts working on my Radon edit because I hadn’t adequately developed my short story “toolbox.” Instead of throwing up my hands and saying “wow, I have writers’ block” I took a step back and reflected. “Why is this so hard?” “What isn’t working?” I realized, in the flash version of the story, I had prioritized economy of language and voice, quite literally eliminating every non-essential character action/thought. Once the hard limit of 1000 words had been removed, however, I stopped doing that, and my prose was reading more like a novel than a short story, and it did not blend well with the prose I’d kept from the original flash fiction piece.

Through a close, intentional reading of these award-winning stories, I was able to diagnose a weakness in my own prose — and publication resulted.

Read for understanding. Read to pull back the curtain of the piece to glean how the author accomplished a successful story.

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Improvement Mentality and Humility

If you were to ask me a few months ago “What is the most important trait for the aspiring author?” I would have said “a mentality of constant improvement” — that drive to look for an edge to make your work better, or different, or unique.

I still think that’s important, but far more so is to approach the craft with humility. There’s a lot of ego wrapped up in writing. Why wouldn’t there be? You are creating something out of nothing. That’s incredible! But over the years, I’ve seen students, peers, and even published authors stop pushing and start assuming that they’re “done” with learning.

“I've been doing this for ten years, what else is there to learn?”

“I have a professional publication already. I did it!”

This quickly gives rise to frustration when other successes don’t follow:

“The industry just doesn’t get my work”

“My politics are too strong for the market”

“The market is rigged against straight, white, men.”

These statements shift the onus of success onto a nebulous entity, “The Market,” and away from the author. While it may be true at times that certain cultural moments call for certain voices to be amplified and others to take a back seat, there are still plenty of straight, white men who achieve publication every day. While it is also true that pro-paying markets do have astronomically low publication rates (Clarkesworld has reported, I believe, a number of less than 0.5%), this is more due to the absolute onslaught of stories being sent to a relatively few number of markets.

Rejections are usually sent for a few reasons:

1. The story does not fit the market. This is, perhaps, the most common one. Apex likes dark fiction. Radon is a journal of Anarchism and Transhumanism. Flash Fiction Online likes character-driven stories. Sci-Phi likes explicitly non-character driven stories and “found fiction.” There is a reason that my first professional sale came from a magazine that I’ve read slush for, on and off, for ten years. It’s not because I had an in with the editor or used industry connections — it’s because I understood what type of story Flash Fiction Online likes to see. The story had already been rejected in the second round of Apex’s flash fiction contest and by Factor Four. And looking back, those markets were right to reject it because it didn’t fit their market.

   1. Now, that’s not to say that you should self-disqualify from a market. I’m generally of the opinion to send your work everywhere. I never thought I’d be included in a Journal of Transhumanism and Anarchy — but I was. And the story that was accepted there does have transhumanist and anarchist themes that unintentionally worked their way into the piece.

2. The story is not professionally written. This is a loaded phrase, and it’s the crux of the craft discussion. “Professionally Written” means everything from “This is a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end, a character, plot, and conflict” to “The sentences are well-written” to “the grammar is mostly correct.”

3. The magazine has already bought a similar story, recently.

We cannot control #1 and #3. Presses buy what fits them. We can only educate ourselves on what their preferences are, and obviously we can’t control who writes similar stuff. We can only control #2 — and that lies in sharpening our craft.

Look, I’m probably one of the more “formally” educated writers out there. I went to school for nearly 7 years to study writing: 4 working towards an undergraduate English degree with a writing concentration, and 2.5 getting my M.F.A. in Writing Popular Fiction. I then went on to teach writing at a university. My default, however, is to assume that I have only scratched the surface of the craft — that there is so much more to learn and implement. I’ve also found that my students who embraced the craft with humility wrote consistently better stories at the end of the semester than students who approached assignments with their ego.

I’m not saying that market conditions don’t sometimes dictate sales. I’m not saying that, at times, the cultural moment calls for amplifying certain voices. I’m certainly not saying that you shouldn’t enjoy your successes.

All I’m saying is that approaching the craft through the lens of “student” can only help you along on your writing journey. Check your ego at the door to your office. You may be wildly successful with hundreds of stories published. But those stories are not this story. Write with confidence, not entitlement.

In grad school, I told my first mentor that I was approaching our student/teacher relationship like an athlete would a coach: I may not agree with your critique, or with what you’re asking me to do, but you’re the expert and I am the student. I will take by best shot at implementing what you want to see in the interest of becoming the best writer that I can be.

In everything — every story I read, T.V. show I watch, craft book that comes across my desk — I ask myself “What can I take away from this?” And then I write about it. I journal about it. I tear the story apart to see how it works because that author or director might be doing something that I haven’t learned yet.

So, what does it take to become a published author? It’s not talent, skill, connections, or money [though all of those things do help].

It’s humility.