Why Do Writers Say That and Why Aren’t We Doing Something to Revise/Edit/Modify It?

Keep writing.

Everyone says it. Heck, I’ve said it. Written it, actually. But recently, I’ve started to look at this common advisory guidance with a little more scrutiny.

It comes off as trite. Repetitive. Inadequate and unfeeling sometimes. Especially, when it seems your writing aspirations have been disemboweled from a calm REM sleep pattern and strewn across the greasy shop floor awaiting the blow torch of finality and doom.

Writers who are truly writers…will…keep…writing.

Duh.

Whether or not they share it with you. Even if there’s a delay or two. Or sporadic caterwauling all hours of the day and night over some obstacle, heartache/headache, rejection, or a combination of that and then some.

Keep writing.

Often, it’s established writers who hand out this well-worn electroplate trinket. As imaginative and articulate as we are, can’t we come up with something better? Snazzier? More helpful? Instead of massive wealth being built from “If I had a dime for every time someone told me…” scenarios. There is an embodiment of well-known teenage angst, rolling eyes, and groaning out loud, ”PUL-EEEZ, don’t say it—just DON’T!”

A substantial segment of the writing population is a peace-loving bunch, but we do have our moments. We’ve raised expletives to nomination-worthy art form status, which we channel into our fiction pieces which aren’t actually fiction pieces, but yeah, for sure are mostly fiction pieces. With wide-ranging applications for propaganda campaigns, if secret service agencies knew of our hidden prowess we’d all be living on the down-low to avoid recruitment. Camouflaged as mild-mannered alter-egos. Oops! Sorry, some of us are. Throwing up italic font adjectives to the hardcore ninja writers out there. Respect.

But I digress.

The fact of the matter is there's a lot—no—a TON of rejection involved with writing in the open. A writer reaches a point when the decision is made to migrate away from shadows into the spotlight. To divulge what has hitherto been coveted in secret. Truth be told, it also prevents us from turning into “writing Gollums.” Stroking our secret scribblings like “the precious” until all sense of time is lost, hair has thinned, we have acquired a squinty sacrilegious look in one eye, and an embarrassing mound of mildewing laundry added to strange rustling noises in the trash can.

Pushovers, we ain’t.

Neither are all of us exact specification, motion-sensitive, delicate soufflés that can be interminably ruined when there’s the slightest aberration. For that substantial peace-loving writer segment, it can take so little to make us happy, but when we’re not…hoooo boy!

To step across that threshold from private to public domain forever changes the landscape. Stakes are higher. Because now, what many writers yearn to see and feel is concrete development, unexplored terrain, multiple opportunities, acceptance, visibility, and validation for starters. The public mirror is before us.

Of honest-to-blooming course not is everyone gonna like what we write!

But as in many endeavors, you dust yourself off after getting thrown from the horse, so to speak, and prepare your sore, bruised body to re-mount. Learn to ride or bust. Write or write more. There’s grit and there’s grind. But there’s also an end goal. Nobody I know wants to be that writer striving to make it, following the perpetual “keep writing” rainbow road until they croak and incidentally, have not made it.

It takes so little to make us happy. And right now, the solitary “Keep writing” quip isn’t it. It’s advice that needs a helluva makeover. So here goes nothing as I take a stab at it.

Instead of the phrase “Keep writing” how about:

• Try a different genre or a different POV to spice up your write life. Rather than doing the same thing in different ways over and over again, mix things up. Get out of your head a bit or the rut you didn’t even know you were in. Love freshly made heaven-sent tiramisu? Me too! But not every blessed day. The sneaky bit: It’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of writing expansion. Ergo, if you feel exactly the same, you’re not doing the “different genre or POV” part right. By all means, after hanging out in the nether regions of sci-fi, fantasy, memoir writing, or whatever IS NOT your go-to niche, upon your triumphant return to a favored genre, maybe there’ll be cake. Or at least a refreshed writing perspective which would last longer than cake anyhow.

• Get thy writing to thee Iron Maiden! Yup, Madoka Mori, 2022 Vocal Fiction Challenge Winner, I’m quoting a rule from your playbook. I first saw Mori mention this concept on the Facebook Vocal group, Great Incantations: A group dedicated to Vocal Challenges. Based on the infamous medieval torture chamber, when a writer invokes the Iron Maiden, the written piece placed inside it can be ruthlessly critiqued and picked apart (what most editors would probably do anyway?)

The exception here is that absolutely no positive feedback of any kind is allowed. Under these conditions, readers offer criticism (constructive is best but not a requirement) without feeling guilt-laden. The writer is not permitted to offer any excuses or justification for the issues raised about their written piece, only to acknowledge the critique, and perhaps give a humble “thank you.” Not necessarily a walk in the park, but I think this is writing growth gold. Does it mean that everyone’s opinion/view is right? No. Does it mean that all feedback will make sense to you? Nope. Does it mean that your written piece is crap? Not necessarily. But what it does mean, is that you are being offered a rare up-close-and-personal opportunity for unique perspectives regarding a crucial writing factor. The audience. They don’t perceive your work from your omniscient vantage point, but their own. Communicating your message will remain specifically your task but having an unfiltered view into how your writing comes across can have a profound effect on your skills going forward, carving out more clarity, depth, conciseness, and all that other great mojo editors, and more important the public, rave about.

• Decide what writing success means for you and modify that definition as needed while still writing. Winning at writing is individual and variable to everyone. This can be a multi-faceted, multi-step, subject to change shindig but it’s your shindig. Do you want a featured selection and payment by an online publication as your win? Achievement of an elite writing residency or grant? Completion of a book? Do you want validation from your peers? Many writers aspire to make a living through writing exclusively (I’m guilty as charged of that one.) Whatever your objective, find the support structure to write with this in mind. Cast a wide net. Organize a list of publications to pitch. Look outside of the current writing environment. There are tons of platforms, publications, and opportunities. More than likely it will involve change. Stepping up your game. Doing things you’re unaccustomed to doing but on a road to getting things you’ve never gotten before. What was that quote about a comfort zone and nothing ever growing there? Keep writing my tushy! How about plastering that advice with some movement, hot sauce, and success bombs? Even if they are ugly wins. Teensy wins. This does wonders for your creative fuel reserves.

• Let it out or you’ll be in danger of imploding/exploding as you continue writing. Of all the horror scenes to come across, this is by far perhaps the most tragic. Rejection wears after a while. So do stagnation and failure. Seeps under your skin and makes you feel like you don’t exist. Prove that you do (in a legitimate, law-abiding way of course.) Get thoroughly fed up and show it. Shovel it. Then, dare I say it, in the spirit of Britishness, “Keep calm and carry on writing.”

• Keep finding ways of improving your writing. The options available are immense. From old school: Check out a book from the library. To new school: Go online and take a free/paid course or study a skill. Build your vocabulary through reading, crosswords, dictionary diving. Take your pick or get more creative and add to the list. Document it so that you can see the progress. Just come out on the other side, a writer with additional abilities writing ‘in media res’ or with mad metonymy and synecdoche expertise. What else can you do to level up?

(Above: Documented progression from me a year ago...was actually tempted to delete it.)

• Find support structures to assist you when you have meltdowns as you continue your writing journey. It’s rough out there sometimes. Ain’t no shame in your game for needing a figurative or literal shoulder to cry/rant/seethe/whine/ on. Remember, you are an artist. Few can have a full-blown hissy fit to rival us when in a big blue funk. We pull out our vulnerabilities, like the undies we wouldn’t be caught dead in, to splay across the page for all the world to see. Share innermost yearnings and embarrassing moments. Use the public as a sounding board. Confessional box. Have panic attacks and emotional eating binges before a huge deal writing assignment and tell everyone we’re okay when our internal organs have become yesterday’s chop suey. Is there an end to the drama we writers go through? I’d say it’s scientifically possible, but no one has found the bottom of that particular volumetric flask yet. Although our burdens are self-chosen, sharing them with like-minded or soft-hearted others can be soothing and helpful, tethering us to sanity.

And just in case you don’t want to use the routes outlined and prefer short and done, how about saying:

“Write from your soul, keep the pen in its grasp.”

“All the work done up to this point leads somewhere. Stay the path and you get to see.”

“Consider how close, how on the cusp of a breakthrough, you could be to a whole different writing reality.”

“Don’t stop. Not now. Not ever. Writing is life. Keep living.”

“Never silence your distinctive writing voice. It’s the only one existence will ever get and if you don’t write it, it will never be written.”

The quote by Banksy is appropriate. “If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit.”

When exasperation and exhaustion are uninvited companions on the journey, call for backup.

It’s okay.

We got this. We’re all writers here.

I am very appreciative that you read this story. I put a great deal of time and effort into it so that means so much to me!

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Please forward any questions, comments, critiques, and/or compliments to me @thedaniwriter