Advice to my younger writing self

We’re said to soften as we age, like bananas.

Maybe, but don’t let aging soften you in your writing. Remember that a shift of perspective is not a softening of will.

As you grow older, notice that shift—not so much your writing process as your processing. Let go of the  competitiveness you used to feel toward other writers. Instead understand that it’s a big pool, and there’s room for everyone to swim. Learn to root more for other people—friends, students, strangers pouring their souls into stories—than you root for yourself. You’ll find it frees you.

Keep your ambition, but don’t make it about winning. Make it about maintaining an imagination built for chasing stories, honoring the characters who have chosen you as a conduit. You need them to stay interested, and they need you to tell their stories. Those characters, their stories—somehow they objectively exist as real things, out there in the ether, and they have picked you. Just you. Respect that, and be humbled by it. Such notions, and the business of getting it to paper have always mattered, but as you age, let them matter way more than advances, reviews, your ego, or prizes. One small feeling—when a word clicks a sentence into place—beats all of those things, as my mom used to say, by a country mile. You can spend the rest of your time chasing that, now that younger faster people are behind you and gaining ground, chasing the expected. You’re smarter now; look for that detour.

And yeah, writing shouldn’t feel like work, but don’t be tempted into the cliché that it’s play, either. It’s a third thing entirely. Remember those old bumper stickers—Blank is Life? Fishing, Hunting, Music, Coffee?. Writing doesn’t belong there either. Don’t get me wrong: writing makes your life fuller, richer. It turns you into someone, as Henry James said, on whom nothing is lost. Not a bad way to live, eschewing the cultural zombieism. But, also, try stepping away from writing for a while. You’ll discover there’s much more there, beyond the page, and that writing can narrow your life as much as anything else. That “much more” is comprised of tangibles and intangibles that would never fit on a bumper sticker unless you drove a car the size of the moon. None of this diminishes writing’s value. It just means the basket is bigger than you think, a big basket of constant blessings, and writing fills a large a spot in there. But if it falls out, trust there’s still plenty left.

When you revise, lean into the granular work. Write like you’ll live forever. I’ve been revising The Reel Life of Zara Kegg, due out next year from Regal House, and AmericaLand, currently looking for a home. And I’m learning all over again, how one word, just one, can tilt a sentence or change the page—not only in meaning, but in rhythm, tone, emotional pitch. Look for the moments when characters go rogue, ruining all your plans and forging a new path for themselves.

Remember that the whole process of writing is magic—maybe that’s why they call it “spelling.”

Search for that fine, almost imperceptible click where the language aligns with what the moment is trying to hold. There are no rules for this, just your gut. Keep noticing everything. As you enter your third act, feel good about all of it. Let go of covetousness, any smallness of soul. Your writing—any writing—doesn’t belong to you. It doesn’t belong to anyone. It just is. Your job is an easy one: just keep moving.

Always keep moving.