This Is The Only Way – Except It’s Not
I was in a writer’s group once. It’s hard to find writer friends and writing can be a lonely endeavor, so I was thrilled to find a part of their community. We all had the same goal: publish our work. I was excited about being among folks navigating the same waters as me, excited for the support, to offer advice in turn.
Until I became riddled with anxiety.
It seemed there was only one way to go about publishing. It involved many rounds of beta reading and editing before moving into querying agents. Querying agents included setting up accounts on several websites, some paid, others not, writing and re-writing a query letter and then re-writing it again before having it critiqued before another round of re-writes. There was sending it out to agents – but only a few at a time, can’t query too many – and updating trackers and waiting, waiting, waiting. If you were lucky enough to get a request, there was polishing and sending and more waiting and if they liked it, more edits, more waiting, a big ‘ol question mark as to whether a publisher would want it. And if a publisher did want it? Excellent! Your book will be on shelves in…a year or two.
This was the only way.
There would be no discussion about alternatives.
There was also no room for discussion on how to write a book. You were to outline it and you most certainly needed to hit all of the exact plot points required for your genre of a book. It had to be within this many words and you should write in this POV instead of that POV and it had to be double-spaced, this size font, on and on and on.
This was the only way.
The folks in this group were also riddled with anxiety. They talked about their anxiety and all of their struggles with whichever of the above-mentioned steps of the ‘try to get published’ process they were in. They talked and talked and talked about the stress, the frustration, the loops of self-doubt they were stuck in. They complained about how slow things moved, worried over how they couldn’t fit their story into the frame of plot points and word counts everyone else in the group told them they simply had to hit. They spent time making mood boards and playlists to distract themselves from spiraling.
This was the only way, even if it wasn’t working for them.
Confession time.
I have yet to outline a story. I don’t follow “necessary” plot points like a meet-cute in this act and a break up in that act. I write the story in my head as it comes, let the characters that are so real to me when I’m writing tell their stories. Sometimes I write in first person, other times I’ll choose third. I do what works for me, what makes sense for me. Because there is more than one way.
I think we can get wrapped around the wheel of thinking there is only one way to do something. I’m guilty of it. For a long time, I thought there was only one way to get my books published. I had to follow the tried and true path, the one that so many people insisted was the only way forward. I had to listen to the couple members of the group that had been successful at getting published, had to do things exactly as they did.
It was the only way.
You may have noticed I don’t mind breaking the rules if they no longer serve me (and no one is going to get hurt and a major law isn’t going to be broken, of course). The reason for that is that I’ve learned there is almost always another way. There is almost always another option. If we’re meeting resistance one way, that doesn’t mean we have to quit or that we have to keep banging our heads against the metaphorical wall. We can stop and start over, try a different way.
There is almost always another way.
If something isn’t working in your life, consider if you need to try a new way. A new path forward. If you’re doing the same things you’ve been doing for ages and nothing is changing, that’s a good sign it’s time to try something different. Even if your environment tries to tell you there is only one way.
We always have options.
Don’t be afraid to look for another one.
