Standing Up

There are a lot of years, five years more than two decades actually, between the writing of this article and L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume I that contains my story “One Last Dance.” And yet, somehow, for two of those decades I have made my living writing fiction, the greatest job ever invented.

When someone asks what I do for a living, instead of telling them I am a writer, which gets all kinds of difficult discussions going, I say simply, “I sit alone in a room and make stuff up.”

That tends to get puzzled looks, as if they hadn’t heard me right, and then they change the topic. Frighteningly, it is a very accurate description of the job I have been doing for over twenty years now.

Back in the early 1980s, when I wrote “One Last Dance” and sent it off to the very first quarter of the Contest, I only had faint dreams of writing for a living and no real understanding of what that meant. I was just hoping that the judges at the time, Algis Budrys, Jack Williamson, Robert Silverberg and others, would like my story.

Three years later I sold my first novel and went freelance and never looked back.

Seems easy on the surface, but I’m afraid it’s not. But it is very possible. Thousands and thousands of fiction writers make their living from their writing. If you want it, you can get this job as well. But there are a couple things that are critical to getting to it.

And to staying a writer for a long time.

Let me break it down into three major areas and call it a general road map of thinking. If your thinking is right, you can travel to this job.

1. You have to keep learning.

The moment you think you are good enough, you are finished. The learning never stops.

L. Ron Hubbard believed this and not only constantly tried to keep learning, but also helped out writers, not as far along as he was, to learn. If you haven’t read some of the L. Ron Hubbard Writer’s Digest articles he did for writers, you should. They are still very on point even in this new world.

2. You have to make your writing a priority.

Not over your family, but a close second. Over the years I have watched many, many, many talented writers talk about wanting to become full-time professional writers, but then I would see them sitting in bars, or talking with friends about a television show, or constantly spending all their extra money on sports equipment or non-writing trips. They would talk one game and act a different one, then wonder why nothing happened with their writing.

Writing is an international profession. You can’t just spend a few minutes on it here and there and expect results, although many new writers do just that. It needs to be a focus every day, every week, every month, for years and years and years.

That means when you are sitting on the train you write or do notes or read a book about writing. Instead of watching that one show per week, you spend that hour producing new words. Instead of taking that trip to the beach, you spend the same money to go to a writer’s conference to learn.

Sometimes you get up an hour early every day to write so you can spend the time at your job and with your family the rest of the day. There are as many ways of doing this as there are successful writers. You have to make the writing a priority in your life in action, not just in talking.

3. You can’t ever give up.

I could go on for books about all the negative stuff that might or will happen to you, but there would be no point. Stuff will happen. You can’t stop it. The key to making a living and staying in this business is just to never lose focus on the writing. When the world knocks you down, stand up and go back to work.

I have discovered that new writers just think all of us older professionals were lucky and were handed the job of writing on a golden platter. Doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid. We all had day jobs when we started, family to work with, time issues and events that just came in from the outside and smacked us down.

A quick illustration from my own history. After coming back from that first Writers of the Future awards ceremony at Chasen’s Restaurant in Beverly Hills, I was excited to keep writing. I had finished well over a hundred short stories over the previous few years and decided with the energy from the award to tackle my first novel. (I was working a day job at the time.) On a typewriter (no computers in those days) I wrote my first novel ten pages a day and wrote “The End” at 300 pages thirty days later. Then I started a second one. Everything was going great, I felt like I was on the road. Major writers and editors were starting to like my work. I was still getting upwards of twenty-five rejections a week, but I knew it would only be a short time until I was making money at my writing.

Then my house burnt down.

That’s right, just over two months after the high of being in Writers of the Future Volume I, my house burnt down and I lost everything, including all the manuscripts of the short stories I had written. And my first novel and what I had started on my second novel.

Talk about getting knocked down.

Honestly, I stayed down for a time, months and months as I worked through not only the loss of all my stuff, but years of my writing. Writing wasn’t a focus, but it was still important to me. Slowly I climbed back to my feet and started to write again. Not fast, not with much energy or excitement, but I started again.

One year after the house fire, I got a phone call from Algis Budrys. He had managed to put together a test workshop to help the winners of Writers of the Future. (Back to point #1: Education never ends and Algis knew that.) It was in one week, very short notice, and he had invited twelve writers as sort of a test group. (We liked to call ourselves the “Lab Rats.”) Would I be interested in coming to the workshop taught by Algis Budrys, Jack Williamson, Gene Wolfe and Frederik Pohl?

Even though I had no money and had to pay my own way to that first workshop and pay for my own room and board, I said sure. Getting a chance to spend a week learning from those four giants of writing was just too good to pass, no matter how little money I had or how I felt.

At that moment my writing was more important to me again than money and my day job. And I wanted to learn. (See steps #1 and #2 above.)

When I hung up the phone after telling Algis Budrys I would be in Taos, New Mexico, in one week, I knew I had finally completely stood up from the fire. The world had knocked me down and taken all my writing from me, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me.

I was back on my feet and moving forward again. (Step #3)

That’s what it takes.

In writing (and in most jobs and in life in general), it doesn’t matter how many times you get knocked down. What matters is how many times you stand up and get back to writing.

That first Writers of the Future workshop turned out to be a life-changer for me. I met Kristine Kathryn Rusch, my wife, and we have been together ever since, twenty-five years in May, 2011.

And working with Algis Budrys, Gene Wolfe, Jack Williamson and Frederik Pohl reminded me that doing fiction for a living was possible. Very possible. They were real people. Very nice people, very real people, not gods.

And during that class they had us read writing articles by L. Ron Hubbard about how he wrote and kept at it while doing so many other things. Two of the instructors had met L. Ron Hubbard and written at the same time he had been writing. They told stories about the work ethic that L.RonHubbard had and how he kept going, never stopping. Those stories and his articles helped give me a real understanding of how to survive and be a long-term fiction writer.

A simple three things. Keep learning. Keep writing as a focus. And stand back up when knocked down.

That formula is very simple and yet very, very hard to do. But when asked by new writers how I became and stayed a freelance fiction writer, my answer is also very simple.

I just keep going.