Writing Advice #7 *with BONUS MATERIAL*

Happy New Year! Send your writing-related questions to: itsottessab@gmail.com. Each week I'll pick a question at random and answer it here.

Dear Ottessa,

What do you think takes amateur writing to professional writing standards?

Love,

Thelma and Louise

Dear Thelma and Louise,

In the mid-aughts, I had a very talented but directionless friend who played cello in the New York City subways. One day he said something that really annoyed me, and I lashed out at him with the meanest and truest snarling insult I could think of: “You’re shitting on all of us when you mix art with beggary. You should throw that dirty money back in their faces. Aren’t you ashamed?” No “real” artist, I thought, would ever accept money for her art. Maybe room and board or a loaf of bread and a jug of wine, toilet paper, antibiotics. Maybe.

(See below for a story I wrote before becoming a “professional.”)

My attitude about money was easy to maintain for a long time; nobody was throwing cash at me for my writing. Nobody knew or cared that I was writing. This allowed me to develop as a writer while giving zero shits about what was or would be popular, profitable, in style, in fashion, or in service of anything that had to do with success, prestige, fame, anything like that. (I kept writing because I felt my life depended on it. Was I nuts?)

I don’t think that I could have achieved any success as a professional writer before spending years as a dogged amateur. Being an amateur means that you can hold onto your acerbic righteousness and nobody will say you’re a “hack.” They’ll just say that you are passionate, or “cute.” (I’m a cute amateur surgeon, so no, you don’t have to pay me. But you can’t get angry if I accidentally chop your head off.)

But maybe your question has less to do with money and more to do with seriousness.

Whenever I put a new book out, I allow myself a day or two attuned to the psychic torture of having my heart, mind and spirit seen, judged, grossly misunderstood, and dismissed, etc. That shit is real. I’m usually excellent at compartmentalizing my self-loathing. It has a very different vibe than the hatred others feel toward me. Nobody’s feelings about me are as powerful as my feelings about myself. Only I know whether I have learned and grown according to a creative calling, if I’ve fulfilled the needs of the project.

In terms of fiction, what matters most to me are: