Category: Writing (Page 11 of 12)

Tips for Writers on Getting Started

August 15, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

For many writers, there are few things less inspiring than a blank page.

Filling that space is one of the most difficult parts of writing. I know I’m not alone in thinking this; a lot of folks do just fine once they have something written. The issue is putting words on the page in the first place.

So what are some ways to get started? Here are some suggestions.

Don’t Think, Just Write

One of my favorite kickstarter techniques is to write anything. Promise yourself that you’re going to start with a five hundred word piece that won’t be seen or read by anyone ever again. Don’t worry about whether or not it’s good—it probably won’t be. The purpose here is not necessarily to write something great. The purpose is to warm up for the main event.

How does one discover a topic for this warmup piece? Get it from anywhere. The other morning I was drinking coffee from a mug with a turtle on it, so my story was about turtles. Just look around, pick out something you like, and roll with it. Sometimes that gives you exactly the spontaneity you need to get some words down.

Try a Writing Prompt

While I don’t especially dig these, a lot of writers find them helpful. Just type “writing prompt” into Google and see what comes up. You’ll probably find something to the effect of this: “You woke up to find you’ve switched bodies with your pet turtle, Butterton. What do you do?” Find a prompt you like and start writing.

Again, these don’t need to be exceptionally great pieces you’re coming up with. The point is that you’re writing, and that you’re doing some form of cognitive stretching. Keep it up and you’ll be ready for the heavy lifting.

Keep An Idea Notebook

Yet another way to fill the blank page is to reuse your old ideas. My mom encouraged me to do this and I think it’s brilliant. Buy a pocket-sized notebook and take notes on anything (no really, anything) that interests you. Jot down an interesting phrase you heard someone use, an idea for a story that wanders into your head, a weird news headline that would make for a great book. Whatever it is, write it down before you forget.

Revisit these ideas later. Use them as your own personal writing prompts. They’ll oftentimes give you a great starting point, and maybe, if you’re lucky, a piece you can be proud of.

Defeating the blank page is all about choosing methods that work for you. Likewise, it’s just as important to determine what doesn’t work for you. Discover your process, write, and repeat. And don’t let that empty page scare you.

SEO for Bloggers: A Crash Course, Featuring Wombats

August 1, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

So you’ve decided to start a blog about wombats. I salute you.

It’s a great blog. You’ve got some killer costume ideas for wombats, your favorite baby wombat pics, your top 10 favorite songs by The Wombats. This site is amazing.

Only problem is, you can’t seem to get anyone to visit it. It’s not that the content is poor—everyone loves wombats. It’s just that no matter how good your content is, no one will ever know about it unless they can find it. That’s where SEO comes in.

What is SEO?

SEO is an acronym that stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s just a fancy term for improving your website so that it appears on the first few pages of search engine results. The better your SEO, the more likely folks are going to find your website when they search Google.

How Do I Get Started?

SEO might sound intimidating, but it’s actually pretty easy. Just use words on your website and in your posts that people are likely to search for.

In the case of your wombat blog, your top search term is probably going to be “wombat.” But what else are people searching for when they search for wombats?

As a shortcut, let’s head to Google and type your keyword into the search bar, then see what comes up.

Okay, now we’ve got some good data. Make sure to have some of these terms on the your pages, because these seem to be terms commonly associated with wombats.

Bonus: this is a great way to come up with some post ideas. For example: “Do Wombats Make Good Pets?” Or, even better, “What is Your Wombat’s Poop Telling You?”

Myth: SEO Is About Repeating the Same Words Over and Over

Allow me to digress for a moment. Once upon a time, I was fresh out of college and I was looking for a job—preferably one in writing. I found a company that defined themselves as “reputation management,” something like that. The basic idea was that clients hired them to flood the internet with positive content about the client in order to suppress negative stories that might be floating around the internet.

So yeah. Kinda shady stuff. I didn’t end up working for them.

Anyway, their SEO approach wasn’t the greatest. They were trying to get their stuff on the front page of Google results by packing each post with the client’s name and a few specific keywords repeated over and over again.

At one point, this might’ve worked—posts used to be ranked based on the number of relevant keywords they contained. But search engine sites quickly found that keyword packing generally yielded poor content. After all, one can only read the phrase “wombat poop” so many times before it becomes overwhelming.

The better approach is to find the right keywords, and then place them strategically throughout a webpage. Plus a little more. Let’s take a look at some other tips.

What Are Some of the Best Tools?

Google Trends is a great place to start. Just type in your topic and you’ll get a nifty graph that looks something like this:

This is perfect for tracking the popularity of searches throughout the year. Though nothing really jumps out from this graph, you can see that wombat Google searches were at their peak in August of 2014. That probably means this month will be a good time to post as many wombat stories as possible.

Scroll to the bottom and you’ll find related searches. This is another goldmine for keyword data—sort of like our search bar trick from before, only wombattier.

The more of these terms you include in your pages, the better your results will be. But remember: don’t force keywords into a post if they lessen the quality. SEO will help people find your content, but if they don’t like what they find, they won’t come back.

What Else?

Here are some other random SEO tips:

Use alt text on every image – As we know, Google indexes search results based on words. So if you’ve got an image with no words associated with it, Google won’t quite know what to do with it. When you upload your images, help Google out by entering alt text that describes the picture.
Link to Other Pages – Google places greater value on pages that have more links pointing to them. Obviously, you can’t force other people to link to your stuff, but if you write good content, they’re more likely to do so. Furthermore, if you link your own posts to each other, that still counts. Just don’t go overboard—at most three per post should do the trick.
Use search keywords in the title of your post – This is one of the first places Google looks when it’s indexing results for a search. It’s essential to have your top terms right there, front and center.

Try these tips and see how they work for you. Also, if you see a wombat, pet it.

There’s No Such Thing as Writing Too Much

June 27, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

A fact about writing: no one ever gets it right on the first try.

Trimming the fat is an essential part of the process. Every first draft has suboptimal word choices, hanging plotlines, bad dialogue, or even just too much writing. It’s this last one I’d like to focus on: if we know that we’re going to have to cut a scene, why even bother writing it?

Easy. Because cutting a few thousand words from a rough draft doesn’t mean the impact of those words won’t resonate in the final draft. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Pen and Paper For example, let’s say you’re writing a conversation between two characters. We’ll call them Roscoe and Winifred, because those names are fun to say.

Roscoe and Winifred decide to take a trip together, and they stop along the highway for dinner. Which reminds Winifred about this one time when she met an alien at a rest stop in Tucson. The alien informed her that an intergalactic fleet would be along on the first day of 2017, which just so happens to be the day Winifred and Roscoe are having this conversation. They pay for their meal, step outside, and boom…there’s the intergalactic alien fleet, waiting in line for milkshakes.

Success! You’ve set up a story—albeit a weird one.

But what if you extend Roscoe and Winifred’s conversation a little, just to see where it goes? Maybe Roscoe reveals that when he was a kid, he told all the other kids at school that an alien landed in his backyard, just so they would pay attention to him. He was lying, of course, but he confesses that it was nice to be popular, at least for a little while.

Is Roscoe’s confession entirely relevant to this chapter? Probably not—this scene is about Winifred and an alien landing, not Roscoe. But still, you’ve discovered something about your character that you didn’t know before: Roscoe was a shy kid longing for attention, and he was imaginative enough to manufacture it. Short Story Writer

As in this example, overwriting is a great way to flesh out supporting characters that might not get the attention your main characters get. Secondary characters are important, but there’s rarely enough space in a manuscript to lend to their backstory. So don’t be afraid to overwrite a little for the sake of supporting characters, and then cut it back later. The more you write about them, the more you’ll learn about them. And that will help them feel authentic to your readers.

Writing more than we think we need is never a waste of time. It’s like digging in the sand at a beach; there’s no telling what we’ll discover.

I mean, without Winifred and Roscoe, we’d never know that aliens like milkshakes.

4 Books Writers Will Love

May 23, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

For anyone who wants to become a great writer, becoming a great reader usually comes first. And if you’re going to be reading, why not read about writing?

Here are four books on writing that I think you’ll really dig.

#1: On Writing by Stephen King

Four books on writing? See what I did there? Anyway…

My girlfriend makes fun of me for talking about this book so much, but it really is brilliant. King discusses so much with relatively little space: his beginnings as a writer, his process, some of his greatest successes, some of his biggest mistakes. He even delves into personal territory, discussing the accident that nearly took his life and made him consider retiring from writing.

One of my favorite parts of this book is the honesty with which King approaches the subject. His recurring message is that not all writers are brilliant, innately gifted people. Many writers, like King himself, just work harder than everyone else. They love writing, they do it every day, and that’s what makes them special.

For writers, I think this is a great message. Essentially, King argues that hard work (with a sprinkling of luck) is going to beat raw talent, more often that not.

#2: Walking on Water by Derek Jensen

Derek Jensen is an interesting guy, and he has a lot to say about writing. Framed by his tenure as a college professor, this is a book not just about the technical aspects of writing—it’s about the purpose of writing, and what good writing should do.

However, this book is not just about writing. It’s about our education system, it’s about identity, it’s about independent thought. Walking on Water has a lot of depth to it, and for writers, I think it’s especially appealing. Unlike On Writing, it doesn’t necessarily offer specific ideas about the process. Rather, this book invites the reader to think critically about what one puts down on the page.

P.S. My favorite part is Jensen’s number one rule of writing, which is “Don’t bore the reader.” Seems like good advice.

#3: Creative Writer’s Handbook by Philip K. Jason and Allan B. Lefcowitz

Full disclosure: this book was assigned reading in college. Neither of these guys were my professors or anything, though, and this book has a lot to offer. Though maybe not as eminently readable as our previous two books, the Creative Writer’s Handbook is still a must-have.

The best part about this book is the detail. The authors go in-depth on a number of the more technical aspects of writing, including point of view, word choice, narrative, drama, mood, and dialogue. And it’s not just for fiction writers, either—there’s a section on poetry, another on creative non-fiction, and even a brief chapter on play writing.

As far as educational books for writers go, this is one of the best I’ve read.

#4: Writing 21st Century Fiction by Donald Maass

Full disclosure, again: I haven’t actually finished this one. But hey, even if the book ended where I am, I’d still recommend it.

Donald Maass is a literary agent in New York, so you know he knows his stuff. His insights into modern fiction are outstanding. In particular, I love the way he outlines the debate between literary fiction and genre fiction.

Essentially, Maass argues that the line between the two has been blurred, and that they both borrow characteristics from the other. Literary fiction sells the way genre fiction is supposed to, and genre fiction now emphasizes prose the way literary fiction does. And that’s just one of his many excellent points.

If you’re looking for insights into the modern publishing industry, this is a great place to start.

In Conclusion…

Read these books! And feel free to let me know if you have any favorites of your own. After all, one can never have enough books on writing.

Five Cool Tools for Writers

May 9, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

Writing is hard.

It’s not just the actual process. Sure, that’s hard, but then there’s the editing that comes afterward, all the planning beforehand, all the hours spent trying to stay organized. And then there’s the matter of just getting your work in front of folks.

Sure, writing is hard. But luckily, like any difficult job, you can use tools to help. Here are five that I’ve found personally beneficial.

Scrivener

If you’re writing a novel, this might be some of the very best software imaginable. Scrivener allows you to do so much. You can set up a cork board to see your story from a high level. You can rearrange chapters at will, plus pack all your extra scenes into the same file as your main chapters. For the indie writers out there, you can export your completed draft directly to e-reader-compatible formats. It’s like its own writing toolbox.

I will say that I think it’s a little much for short stories. After all, you probably don’t need character profile sections if you’ve only got one or two characters. Still, it’s the perfect solution for novel writers.

A New Keyboard

If you write on a computer, I highly recommend finding a keyboard that you really like. Having the right keyboard allows you to type faster and with more precision (and also without fear of breaking keys during those exciting scenes). Nice keyboards make more of a difference than you might realize, and they’re also pretty darn cheap.

Mine, for example, is a USB hookup from Logitech. Picked it up at Target for ten bucks. The keys are big and sturdy—works for me since I can become an aggressive typer, on occasion. My Mac keyboard feels a little fragile in comparison.

A Whiteboard

There’s so much you can do with a whiteboard. You can storyboard on it, you can put inspirational quotes on it, you can write random ideas on it. You can doodle on it, if you’re feeling bored. I myself use my whiteboard for keeping track of my goals for the day.

Hang your whiteboard in your work area for easy accessibility. Lucky for me, mine’s actually attached to my desk. When a great idea pops into your noggin, you’ll want to write it down before it goes anywhere. Getting up to find a writing implement might break your concentration. Keep your whiteboard close so you can stay focused.

A Blog

Blogs aren’t physical tools, but they do give readers a reason to come back to your site consistently. This might be getting too much into marketing and sales, but if you have people returning to your site consistently, that means they’ll see your books more often, and that they’ll be more likely to buy. Plus, if you have a good blog, it serves as a sample of your product. People are more likely to buy your writing if they like what they’ve read from you already.

Also, blogging is great practice for any writer, even if you’re primarily writing fiction. You’ll be surprised at how much your writing improves when you simply commit to blogging once a week.

Also, blogging is fun.

A Writer’s Group

Though writers are often thought of as solitary people, you’ll find that few work completely alone; pretty much every writer works with other people to make their stuff better.

That’s why you need people you trust to look at your work and evaluate it honestly. Joining a writer’s group is the perfect way to find those people. They know how to help make your work better because they’ve probably struggled with the same issues.

I found my current group through Meetup, but there are plenty of other ways to discover fellow writers. Try Facebook or the classic Google search. There are even online communities, such as Scribophile, which allow you to critique and have your work critiqued from anywhere. Full disclosure: I’ve never used this service before, but good to know that it’s available.

Bonus Cool Tool for Writers: Coffee

This one needs no explanation.

A Place Where You Can Focus

March 28, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

My Desk

I’m going to take a few minutes of your time to talk about my desk. It’s the kind of desk that needs to be talked about. At length, preferably.

My desk has a smooth, dark wood finish, one large drawer where I keep my computer, another on the side for headphones, my hard drive, and other random items. Above that is a whole shelving unit, upon which I’ve stacked some of my favorite books, and, for some reason, a calculator. My desk also has a whiteboard, perfect for writing down tasks for the coming week, along with the occasional inspirational quote. Up there now: “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.” Kurt Vonnegut said that.

Why should I care about this guy’s desk? you might be asking yourself. First, because it’s the greatest desk of all time (thanks, Sara, for the great gift). Second, because if you’re trying to write, it’s important to have a place where you can sit down and actually write.

There’s a lot of research to suggest that your surroundings often dictate your behavior. For example, if you get in bed at night and stare at your computer for an hour, you might find it hard to sleep. That’s because your body now expects to go on the computer when it’s bedtime, not sleep. By contrast, if you use your bed primarily for sleeping, you probably won’t have any issues falling asleep.

The same applies to writing. If you enter a space which you sometimes use for writing and sometimes use for something else, it’s easy to get distracted.

Before I had my desk, I used to do my writing at my kitchen table or on my couch. But the kitchen table is where I eat, and the couch is where my girlfriend and I watch TV shows after work. After a while, I found that when I sat at the table, I wanted to eat breakfast more than I wanted to write. And when I sat on the couch, I didn’t feel like writing—I just felt like watching TV.

But when I sit at the chair at my desk—a roller chair, by the way, which is the coolest kind of chair there is—I’m not in the mindset to have breakfast or watch TV. The only thing I do at my desk is write, so that puts me in the mindset of writing.

Do you need a writing desk? No, not necessarily. (Though if you do get one, I recommend the Micke from Ikea. That’s what I got and, if you haven’t noticed, I think it’s pretty baller.)

I think the salient idea here is to create a space where you only write. That could be a particular room in your house, or maybe a particular coffee shop. Wherever it is, make it your writing space. You’ll be pleased with the results.

Some Things to Remember When Rejection Gets Us Down

March 21, 2016 / Kyle A. Massa

Pencil Eraser

I don’t mean to sound morose or anything, but writing and rejection might as well be the same word. Writejection? Yeah, that’s it.

It’s hard not to get discouraged. It’s hard to work on a manuscript for months or in some cases years, only to have an agent send back a form rejection without even really reading it.

But that’s alright. In fact, we shouldn’t let writejection get us down. We should use it to do better.

Point A: writers need to write a lot of crap before writing anything worth publishing. I’ve literally never heard of anyone publishing their first attempt at a novel. Even an author’s debut novel isn’t really their first; they’ve probably written a bunch more before that one that just weren’t good enough for anyone to read. For context, Stephen King wrote about five novels that didn’t get published before Carrie and Brandon Sanderson wrote around ten before Elantris, his first wide release. That’s the hard truth of writing: the first manuscripts we write are practice, and nothing more.

But that’s okay. No one uses everything they write. Many writers write entire backstories for their characters, or subplots that never go anywhere, or just cool little scenes that are fun, but don’t really move the plot forward. Writing is just like any skill: it’s the work that people don’t see that makes it great.

And another thing to remember about work from pro writers: they write gross first drafts, too. It doesn’t matter who writes them—they are, by their very nature, gross. But remember, we never see first drafts from pro authors. We only read the finished product, which has gone through countless iterations. If you don’t believe me, believe Ernest Hemingway, who said, “I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.”

But here’s maybe the most important rule of all: even the best writers have been rejected just as much as we have.

This all might sound terribly daunting, and I suppose it is. But don’t let it get you down. I mean, if you really want to be a writer, would you want it to be easy? It wouldn’t be worth anything if it was. We have to work hard, we have to write every day, we have to earn those rejections before we can really get anywhere. And that’s how it should be. That’s how we know that what we’re doing is really worth doing.

So when we’re just collecting rejections, there’s only one thing we can do. Today, let’s write something better than we wrote yesterday.

I’m A Writer, But How Do I Tweet?

October 26, 2015 / Kyle A. Massa

For some writers, social media is one of those do-I-have-to? commitments. It might seem like one more distraction from your writing, one more unnecessary to pile onto all your necessaries. I’ll admit it–I used to feel the same way. I guess I just never saw the point in it. Could Facebook or Twitter actually make me a better writer?

Well…no.

But even if you’re this generation’s Hemingway, no one will buy your books if they don’t know you exist. That’s where social media comes in. It’s the best form of advertising a writer can ask for: it’s free, you can do it yourself, and it’s a great way to get a direct line to fans and other authors.

Before we continue, let’s take a step back. I learned what I know about social media marketing from working at a company called TeamSnap. We produce an app that condenses everything a youth sports coach or parent needs into one place. So if you need to know who’s coming to the next game, when and where that game is, and who’s bringing what refreshments, you’ll want to try us.

I help run the social media accounts for TeamSnap. Basically, I post the day-to-day content, answer questions folks might have for us, and drive traffic to our marketing site. It’s a very unique company and I’ve learned a lot about social media marketing from my coworkers.

One thing I’ve learned: people are brutally honest on social media. As a marketer, that’s good information to have; if people are upset with your product, they’ll write angry statuses about it.

It’s the same thing with your book. If you’re an author, the people you should be pleasing most (after yourself and your mom, of course), are your fans. So if you’ve got a character in there that everyone hates–the Jar Jar Binks of your novel, if you will–your readers will tell you. In your next book, maybe you can kill that character off, or write him out of your series by inexplicably giving him a position on the intergalactic senate…

Furthermore, having a direct line to other writers is something that didn’t really exist before Twitter. Let me tell you a story: I happened to tweet about a guy named Paolo Bacigalupi, who you might know as the author of The Windup Girl, which Time Magazine named as one of the top 10 fiction books of 2009. Here’s my tweet:

Really loved “Moriabe’s Children” by @paolobacigalupi. Beautiful writing, a unique story, and who doesn’t like krakens? #fantasy

— Kyle A. Massa (@mindofkyleam) July 24, 2015

And here’s the response I got (which I was not expecting):

@mindofkyleam Thank you! I loved writing that story.

— Paolo Bacigalupi (@paolobacigalupi) July 24, 2015

Yeah. This is why I like Twitter.

Don’t think of social media as some stupid thing people spend all their time on. Well, it can be. But it doesn’t need to be. For us writers, social media is a medium through which we can discover potential readers and fellow writers. At its best, it’s another tool in the toolbox (you’re welcome, Stephen King).

So get on Twitter or Facebook and give it a shot.

And feel free to follow me on Twitter here.

Podcasts for Writers

May 25, 2015 / Kyle A. Massa

Being a writer can be really lonely. In fact, the great Neil Gaiman recently compared writing to death, so that says a lot about the process. When you spend your time in a room by yourself, it can be tough to avoid the feeling that you’re all alone.

Sorry. That got really sad, really fast.

Anyway, if you’re a writer and you’re feeling lonely or maybe even a little dead, try listening to a writing podcast. Nobody writes in a vacuum, so it’s encouraging to hear what great writers are doing, what’s going on in the industry, and how you can improve.

These are three of my personal favorites, and, since I’m a bit of a nerd, they’re mostly oriented for a speculative fiction enthusiast. It is known.

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

This is probably my favorite podcast to date. Hosted by writer David Barr Kirtley, the Geek’s Guide has amazing guests each and every week. Just to name a few: George R.R. Martin, Philip Pullman, Margaret Atwood, Chuck Palahniuk, Neal Stephenson, Ursula K. Le Guin, David Cronenberg, and Felecia Day.

Kirtley’s also an excellent host. An accomplished short fiction writer, he knows his stuff when it comes to fantasy, science fiction, and geek culture in general. One of his best moments as a host is episode 145 with Kazuo Ishiguro. At the end of the initial interview, Ishiguro turns the tables and interviews Kirtley on all things speculative fiction. These are two very smart guys going back and forth on where speculative fiction fits into literature and why it’s not always accepted by the mainstream. It’s a very cool moment.

Speculate!

Speculate! was my introduction to writing podcasts, and a good one at that. Hosts Brad Beaulieu and Greg Wilson work very well together on the air and they’re definitely knowledgable on the subject. While they don’t get quite the same number of high-profile guests as Geek’s Guide, their show is still pretty awesome. And, even if you haven’t heard of everyone on the show, it’s always nice to discover someone new.

Every once in a while, they also do roundtable discussions on particular books. These are great for writers because the hosts break down the author’s style, analyze entire passages, and even talk with the authors themselves. If you’re looking for in-depth writing discussion, you’ve found your podcast.

Writing Excuses

Though I’ve listened to this one the least among the three, I like it a lot already. Hosted by Mary Robinette Kowal, Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells, each episode is a fun and insightful fifteen minutes. That’s right–where Geeks’ Guide and Speculate! run about an hour, Writing Excuses episodes go for just a quarter of that time.

The official tagline of the podcast explains the runtime: “Fifteen minutes long, because you’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart.” They’re pretty darn smart, though. They cover any topic a writer could think of, from agents to outlining to world building to critiquing. Each episode ends with a writing prompt too, which is fun when you’re looking for ideas, which is, like, always.

In conclusion…

Podcasts are really cool. The ones listed above are excellent resources for information on the publishing world, the speculative fiction climate, and just about anything to do with writing. They’re perfect for those days when you need a little inspiration. Plus, they’re free. And you don’t have to be a writer to love free stuff.

Go listen!

…

P.S. Does anyone know of any other good podcasts for writers? I’m always looking, so if there are any you particularly like, please let me know!

Getting Rejections is Like Eating Vegetables

May 18, 2015 / Kyle A. Massa

I apologize in advance to vegans, vegetarians, and anyone who actually likes vegetables.

“I don’t like green food.”

That’s me, age seven or so. This was my go-to excuse for avoiding peas, lettuce, cucumbers, celery, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts–especially Brussels sprouts. The only vegetables I’d eat were tomatoes, and I’ve just recently learned that they’re not even vegetables–they’re technically fruit. (I still don’t believe this.)

So, yeah. When I was a kid, I did not like vegetables.

As I grew older, though, I understood why my parents gave me the veggie treatment. They’re not the flashiest, sexiest food out there, they don’t leave you with the sugar-high of a chocolate chip cookie, but vegetables have the nutrients and nourishment everyone needs to stay healthy.

…

I received a rejection letter today. It was from an online magazine which I’d carefully selected, one that seemed to be a perfect landing place for the short story I was shopping. “Hundredfingers” is the name of that story. It’s only about 2,500 words, yet from first draft to last, I’d estimate I’ve spent over twenty hours on this piece.

Here’s a paraphrase of what I got in return:

Thank you for submitting to our magazine. Unfortunately, we won’t be publishing your piece. Thank you for your time, and we hope you submit again soon.

That was my rejection letter, which is essentially the same rejection letter every other magazine offers.

So, yeah. I do not like rejections.

But for writers, getting rejected really is like eating your vegetables. How else would you grow? How else would you become the thriving, successful writer you’ll be in ten years? Rejections might leave a bad taste in your mouth–but they’ll make you stronger than you’ve ever been.

…

When I was a senior in college, I thought I was going to be a pro writer in no time. I’d been writing a thousand words a day, I’d been getting excellent feedback on my creative work in class, and I had a short story that was the greatest thing since Sandkings (truth: it wasn’t that good).

I spent the next six months of my life shopping this story around. I went to all the big markets: F&SF, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Apex, Lightspeed. I was expecting a heavily-frosted layer cake from these magazines, one with the words “Congratulations, we’d love to publish you’re story!” written in blue icing.

I didn’t get a cake. I got brussels sprouts.

At first, I was devastated. I questioned whether I should be writing at all. Was I good enough? Did anyone but me care about my work? Why was I even doing this?

It took about six months for me to come to terms with my rejection, but when I did, I realized how awesome it really was. Because I actually looked back at my story, this time through a critical lens, and I found glaring hole after glaring hole. I fixed them, I gathered feedback from friends, family, and my Editor-in-Chief (my girlfriend), and I made changes. Big changes. I sent my story out again.

Three months later, I received an email. My short story had been accepted for publication.

…

Rejection is tough to swallow. It’s tough to spend hours and days of your life on a piece, to fall in love with your characters and pour over that one sentence that just doesn’t sound right. It’s so tough to work so hard, only to receive a generic rejection three months later.

But it’s necessary.

Because if you’re a writer, a real writer, all those rejections will only make you want it more. If all you ate was ice cream every day, it wouldn’t be much of a treat. Likewise, if every piece you wrote was published every time, you’d lose the fire you need to keep writing that next one. That better one.

So don’t stop eating your vegetables. Don’t stop getting rejected. I promise I’ll keep doing it as long as you do.

But not brussels sprouts. Never brussels sprouts.