Change The World With Words

Christina Katz is still writing about the 52 qualities of prosperous writers in The Prosperous Writer newsletter, and I’m still joining in. This week we’re discussing flexibility.

Being flexible in your writing really will help you to keep writing assignments pouring in, but it’s also important not to be too flexible.

So when should you bend to the editor’s wishes? And when should you stand firm and refuse to flex?

Be flexible about edits.

Also known as” the editor knows best”.

This is a particularly tough one for new writers. You slave away at your first article, story or book, get it completely perfect, expressing every thought just as it formed in your mind, presenting characters on the page exactly as they look inside your head, and then an editor announces that she wants to publish it (Oh joy) and mangle edit it (uh-oh).

Flexibility here is vital. As Maeve Binchy puts it in The Maeve Binchy Writers’ Club:

“Editors are amazing people. They don’t usually write books themselves but they know what’s right and wrong with your writing. They should be listened to with great attention.”

Editors rarely suggest or make edits on a whim. If they are telling you something needs to be cut, changed or strengthened, they probably have a good reason. It may be to do with structural issues in a book length project, or something as pragmatic as Search Engine Optimization in an online piece. It is incredibly difficult to see your own writing with complete objectivity. It’s generally advisable to trust the editor.

Edits are open to discussion, of course, and it can be helpful to ask the editor why he thinks they’re necessary (as I’ve already stressed, he will likely have a good reason). But sometimes you just have to let it go and accept that few pieces will ever appear in print exactly as you wrote them.

How will this help you to keep assignments pouring in?

Editors love to work with writers who are flexible about edits. They just don’t have time to argue about every little change they want or need to make. When it comes to handing out the next assignment, or accepting the next piece you send them on spec, they’ll be happier to work with you if they know you’re not too precious about your work.

If an editor is thinking about commissioning a writer and he has two writers of equal quality but knows one is easy to work with and one isn’t, guess which one will get the commission.

Be flexible about the type of writing you’re willing to try.

Also known as “don’t get stuck in a rut”.

There’s nothing wrong with specializing in a certain genre, topic or style of writing, but there’s also nothing wrong with diversifying. This can be a great antidote to writers’ block (working on a completely different assignment can free up that block in minutes) and can provide you with a more efficient writing routine (enabling you to work on fillers and blog posts between long articles, or short stories and poems between novels).

How will this help you to keep assignments pouring in?

Diversifying with the types of writing you do will lead to a greater overall number of assignments, and short pieces can keep the cash coming in while you work on longer pieces.

There’s another reason why diversification can be helpful. Editors and publishers like this type of flexibility because of the promotional opportunities attached. Writing a short story for a magazine or anthology can help promote a new novel. An authoritative article on a specialist topic can do wonders for sales of a non-fiction book by the same writer. I’ve just been reading the annual fiction supplement to The Atlantic. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that most of the short fiction published in there is by authors with a new novel or collection of short stories to sell.

A publisher will be more inclined to accept or commission a project from you, if she feels you have the flexibility to promote it with other forms of writing.

Don’t be flexible about your principles.

Or as Christina put it in her newsletter, “the truth isn’t flexible”.

Always write with integrity. Compromising your principles or exhibiting any kind of dishonesty in your writing won’t work in your favour.

It’s not always easy to produce truthful writing. Some of the best writing, both fiction and non-fiction, touches on uncomfortable truths. To really bare your soul in your writing is a risky thing, but that’s often when writers hit on universal truths that resonate with readers at a profound level.

I remember hearing a stand-up comedian talking about how risky it is to write jokes about really personal stuff. Sexuality, insecurity, your own personal thoughts and prejudices, what you really do when you know for sure no one else is looking. He says that these jokes tend to get the biggest laughs because of the universal truths they touch on, but they’re always the scariest to perform, especially for the first time. There’s always the risk that the joke will fall flat and the audience will be thinking. “No, never done that. It’s just you. Man you’re weird!”

Writing for publication is like that. You have to take a risk to expose your innermost thoughts and quirks, and you have to hope that your truths are universal and others will relate to them.

Writing true is not for the faint hearted, but being brave in your writing can pay big dividends. Don’t be flexible with the truth.

How will this help you to keep assignments pouring in?

The response to really ‘true’ writing can be monumental. It can be the difference between one letter to the editor and hundreds of letters to the editor. It can be the difference between a few comments on an online article and a few thousand comments. True writing can clog the editor’s inbox and overload the website’s server, but editors love reader response.

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