Don’t listen to experts. Be yourself.

 

Don’t listen to experts.  Be yourself.

If you’ve been paying attention, you know I am retired from the Army.  Many years and several “wars’ ago, I was in an Army hospital and got an idea for a short story.  I went into an empty doctor’s office one Sunday, found a typewriter…you remember those…big bulky black things with keys and a roller…and some paper and sat down and typed out the story.  I had taken typing in high school and like most of the males in the class, barely passed it.  I had not used a typewriter in years.  But I pecked out the story one letter at a time, made some strikeovers and left a few misspelled words because I could not find a dictionary and the typewriter did not have a spellcheck key.

When I was satisfied that it was a work of literary art, I put a cover letter on it which basically said: “Here’s my story.  Send money.  Love, Paul” and mailed it off.  I had nothing else to say.   I had never sold anything because I had never written anything that I thought I could sell before, however there was that incident in high school, but I’ll save that for another time.  To make matters worse, I could not find any carbon paper…look it up…so I did not have a copy of the story.  Blind faith? Stupid?  Naive?  All of the above.

But guess what?  Several weeks later I got a nice letter from the magazine saying they were going to publish it and in the envelope, was a check for $80.00. I immediately took my wife and daughter out to celebrate and we bought a dog house.

A couple of days later I told a friend about it and he asked if I read and followed any of the writer’s magazines.  I misunderstood and thought he said rider’s magazines and he was talking about motorcycles.  When we cleared it up and I found out about the magazines dedicated to helping writers I bought them every month, read them cover to cover and found out I was doing everything wrong.  I didn’t query editors.  I didn’t have a list of previous publications for my cover letter.  I could not offer tear sheets.  I didn’t count the words.  And for eighteen months while I tried to do everything right, I sold absolutely NOTHING.  NADA. ZIP. ZINGO.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying don’t follow the rules, but be yourself when you do.  Books and magazines exist for one reason and that’s because people buy then.  They may buy them for the pictures, for the ads, to read at the beach, on the airplane, or like Playboy for the articles.  But you and I supply the words for them.  They want admit it, but they actually need us. Don’t get so caught up in reading how-to books and articles that you are more concerned with the how-to than the do.  Each one you read will give you a different slant on what works, how to write, reach and obtain an agent or editor or where to send your work, and many contradict the last one you read.

No one knows your short story, magazine article, novel or screenplay better than you and if you don’t put the words on the page you’ll never know what someone else thinks about it.  Be yourself and find a place in the yard for that new dog house you’re gonna buy.