For a long time, I disdained the people who focused on getting published. When I was in graduate school, great writers came to talk to us and teach us: Denis Johnson, Ethan Canin, Francine Prose, A. M. Holmes, Jamaica Kincaid, Lucille Clifton, to name a few. (Wow, name-dropping is fun!) Inevitably, the questions that came would be peppered with concern about publishing. I always wanted to know about craft and about sustaining the creative part of a writing life, and to be honest with you, I felt pretty good about myself for that attitude.

When FSG published my first novel, this seemed a validation of my focus on craft over career. Because my novel contained lesbian content, and FSG had not published a book with lesbian content before (except, funnily enough, in their YA division, where they’d published Nancy Garden), people at my readings often asked me, over and over, how I’d gotten my book published. I had no answer for them beyond the hard work I’d put into making it strong.

Pretty quickly, though, my naïveté about publishing and marketing caught up with me. I didn’t know that there was a three-month window after a book is published for it to “succeed” or “fail.” I had no idea what I might do to promote the book. In fact, in the months after my book was published, I was packing and moving across the country, leaving behind all the connections I had to local writers and bookstores.

The head agent at my agent’s office met me and told me that the only advice she could give me was to have fun. I understand why she said that–it was Zen good advice. But seriously, folks, if you are a novelist–and this is more true now than it was then–you are a small business owner or you have a hobby. Those are your choices. You might get published once or twice if you have a hobby of writing books, but you cannot sustain a viable career unless you make it your business not only to write books but also to sell them.

(As an aside, I would like to mention that if you are a writer or anyone who cares about textual storytelling, you’d do well to make it your business to buy books, too, and to promote other people’s books and the world of books in general. If you never buy a new, hard cover book, you are going to have a heck of a time believing other people should buy yours.)

It is still a pet peeve of mine when people who have not written one polished, lovely book are hyper focused on selling it. The truth is that while “bad” books are published all the time, the one best marketing tool you can have is an excellent book. That’s why my motto is: If your readers can’t put your book down, they’ll have to buy it. This implies that you’ve written an irresistible story.  You’ve worked on it until it’s powerfully strong.

But my motto also implies that you’ve then gotten your book into the hands of some readers. These are the two parts to our business, and they can feel antithetical to one another.

In the privacy of your office/ bedroom/ café table, you reach into the depths of your mind and scale the rocks and hard places of your soul/ high school experiences/ life, and you come back with a story. The cadences, whether borrowed, stolen or invented, are yours. The sentences and the images and the characters are all yours. Yours the way a baby you birth is yours. And then you have to put the squalling, fragile creature of your heart out into the world, and what’s more, you have to promote it.

Terrifying.

Absurd.

Reprehensible.

But true.

Here’s the good news: I’ve been studying marketing, marketing with integrity and heart, and . . . (drum roll) it can be fun. You want to get your voice out into the world. You have something to offer readers, and you know this because books have been your lifeline, your pleasure and pastime. Right?

So let’s start here, with your commitment to be what Michael Port calls fully self-expressed. And here, there’s more:

I am teaching an exciting new course called Technique. Set goals, write and master the craft.

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The title of this blog is the title of a recent Guardian article to which I, chuckling and sighing send you. I work with writers, I am a writer, I come from writers and I am married to a writer. I have often said that being published is a lot like not being published. This puzzles people who, as I once did, wander into bookstores, picking up enticing books, reading the cover flap, gazing at the photograph of that mysterious creature, the author, and wondering what it is like to be in that elite group, the published.

When a generous teacher at a two-week writing workshop gave me his agent’s address and insisted that I send her my short stories–I was twenty-one–I returned to sit on the twin bed in the small dorm room where I’d been staying, typing on a manual, non-electric Underwood someone lent me, and I thought, This is it. I’ve been discovered. Life will never be the same again. I surveyed the people I knew. These would remain my true friends, the ones who’d loved me before fame and glory descended. These would be the ones I could trust.

Much as I’d once imagined Sting appearing at my junior high and walking with me through the grounds, thus revealing my essential worth to certain cruel or oblivious people, I now imagined the transformation to come. I went to the payphone in the hallway (just to offer some carbon-dating) and called my mother and then my boyfriend. They each wanted to know if this particular teacher wanted to sleep with me.

Since we were both leaving the state that day and had just said good-bye, I assured them that his mysterious beneficence was not driven by lust but by a genuine belief in my talent. I hung up discouraged by their lack of faith and tried to drift back to my fantasies of fame.

Needless to say, I still meet people everyday who are not only able to see the real me in the face of my fame and glory but who, even squinting and peering, cannot find a trace of the glitter I’d imagined trailing behind me wherever I went. Wanting to be published and being published have a lot in common . . .

What’s surprised me is that even writers I consider much more successful struggle with a sense of languishing in obscurity. I remember about fifteen years ago, Ethan Canin pointing out that the most famous writer in America–he suggested John Updike–could have a conversation on an airplane that began with full introductions, moved on to “What do you do?” and ended with, “Anything I’ve heard of?” Answer in the negative.

I can only hope that wherever John Updike is now, there are delighted readers all around . . .

This is not, however, a lament. Writers are the most generous, wonderful people I know. (Writers being a subset of that category of glorious beings known as readers.) And I intend to make it my business to bouy them up in rough seas. Here is the focus of my coaching and editing:

Momentum. Mastery. Marketing.

When you need one great reader and then thousands . . . .

This is my direction. In the meanwhile, referring back to the article in the Guardian and the title of this blog, let me suggest–as a writer, as an editor, as a parent–that many of the greatest aspects of life are both joy and chore.

Even junior high could be heavenly with Sting at your side. And even writing and even, yes, even marketing your writing, can be a thrill with the right kind of support and a solid plan.

(More to be revealed soon . . .)

Writing is hard. If you are honest with yourself and you really are a writer, you will admit that you like it that way.

I was listening to a quirky little interview with Ethan Canin yesterday, and he as much as confessed that he writes novels because they are harder for him than poetry or short stories. When I arrived at graduate school lo these many years ago, I was surrounded by people who had been considered the best writer in their class or school. Many found it frustrating to be part of the crowd now, to be told they weren’t ready to write a novel or that a story needed profound revisions.

But I suspect that the (many) people who went on to publish and continue writing welcomed–or learned to welcome–the challenge of writing well. There were a lot of people in that class who are doing remarkable work, and who have gotten some serious recognition, too, but all of them probably sit down to the blank page feeling at some level like a beginner. Afraid. Excited. Worried. Trepidatious, even.

Writing is hard. You have to ask yourself questions whose answers you don’t know (Barbara Kingsolver). You have to use your own flesh as bait (Annie Dillard). You have to follow the story, getting better at writing as you go, not waiting to know how to write before you begin. There is no bunny slope.

I just finished reading Mindset, a sort of pop-psych book by Carol Dweck, a non-pop-psychologist at Stanford. She proposed, and has done a lot of research to support, a theory that there are two mindsets that shape how people view learning, risk, challenges, intelligence, ability and self.

The fixed mindset sees intelligence, artistic ability and the like as, well, fixed. These are givens. Therefore, people with a fixed mindset are usually trying to prove that they are intelligent or able, rather than trying to get smarter or more able.

The growth mindset believes that intelligence and other abilities are gained through hard work, effort, learning, struggling and growing. These folks approach challenges and even failures as opportunities to become more intelligent, while the fixed-mindset folks are threatened by challenges which might de-throne them from a status such as “smart” or “good at writing.”

Dweck assures her readers that it is possible to change, that she herself changed from being a fixed mindset person to being a growth mindset person. At first, I found it hard to believe that one could change. This, I saw, put me in the fixed mindset group. At least in some respects . . .

I know that as a teacher, I have embraced a growth mindset, although even there I have been influenced by the reading of this book. But I see many ways in which I have a fixed mindset. And even with my students, I’ve sometimes had the desire to protect their egos instead of pushing them to do their very best. Dweck talks about the difference between praising someone’s qualities and praising his or her efforts. Some of these ideas go against the very grain of how I’ve been taught to interact, to encourage. Dweck shows that folks who are praised for their abilities tend to turn away risks and challenges that might prove that in fact they are not so great, while people praised for their efforts gladly take on new opportunities to grow and get better, smarter.

In the background, I hear Angie explaining this to our lovely babysitter: “If you can remember, and we can’t always ourselves, try to praise effort instead of ability. So instead of saying, ‘You are so strong,’ say, ‘I can tell you’ve been practicing.’ We’re really trying to emphasize the idea that learning and practice and effort are good things, over ‘being smart.’”

To her credit, our babysitter, despite having years of experience with kids, is very open to this new idea and not at all threatened by it. Growth mindset. See?

As writers, we have to encourage a growth-mindset. You simply cannot sail through with no challenge to your ego or your ability. This is a great good thing.

In New York, I taught at the Gothem Writers Workshop. One thing I loved about those classes was that because they were open to anyone but cost a fair amount, the people in them generally had some serious success in their careers but were willing to be beginners again–beginning writers. These are fun folks to teach. They have a growth mindset.

So what can you do to give yourself a growth mindset today?

Drawing from a wonderful chart Dweck publishes (on p. 245):

Accept challenges. Writing is hard. Don’t wait until it feels easy or you think you know what you are doing. Sit down and start. Expect it to be difficult. Welcome the challenge.

Persist in the face of setbacks. Writing seem terrible? Feel stuck about plot? Not sure you are even making sense? Keep going. The way to get better is to practice, to do the work, to keep at it.

See effort as a path to mastery. Someone told me when I was twenty-one that there was a ten year apprenticeship for being a writer. That really helped for for those first ten years. Then I forgot–after the first apprenticeship comes . . . another decade-long apprenticeship, and another. You are not proving your brilliance and talent when you write, you are learning that mastery. You are getting better.

Learn from criticism. No need to get defensive. Your draft is not a submission to a contest that deems your worth as a writer. Your draft is an opportunity to grow. This doesn’t mean you have to listen to all criticism or believe everything someone else has to say about your work. But do be sure you are wringing it for everything is has to offer you and the work.

Find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. This is a big one. There’s a wonderful interview with Jonathan Safran Foer by Micheal Krazny, on Forum, where Krazny quotes Flannery O’Connor’s famous dictum that writing workshops don’t discourage enough young writers. Krazny seems to be hoping JSF will agree with O’Connor, but instead he is so gracious and joyous about finding that his work encourages other people to write. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to it, but it is quite inspiring, and I recommend it.

So, as you head into the New Year, consider celebrating some of the failures and challenges of 2008–risks you took and opportunities you grabbed (often mistakenly, when you hoped you were grabbing the gold ring at the merry-go-round) that made you smarter, more talented, and better than you were before.