Welcome back to the Writer’s Secret Weapon, the newsletter where writing advice meets thoughtful coaching, and then hangs out with over 20 years of working with writers to help them get published.
I’m John, and I want to help you write better. Everything I do is reader (or listener) supported, so if you’re finding any of this helpful or liking anything I produce, please consider subscribing so I can continue to make more things more often and help people just like you get their stories out into the world.
In this space I have 3 rules:
because I think writing advice tends to fail at some combination of those things pretty regularly, and I think I tend to excel in those three things when I’m honest with myself rather than trying to say or write a thing that will please other people or satisfy some algorithm or make me one of the cool kids that’s really popular/successful on this site.
And when I’m sitting here at the desk, I think about those rules often, because I care more about affecting you and helping you improve your writing through more than just writing a few thousand words about commas or plot twists or how you want to post a certain number of times per week per platform. Sure, those things are important, but those things can get learned and absorbed over time without me drilling you on them.
Instead, I come at writing advice from the position that anyone can be a writer so long as they’re supported and with the right amount of encouragement and prep, the skills of writing can be honed. Build a person first, then give them the pen, paper, paintbrush, camera, whatever else, and set them loose on the world.
But I have to be smart about that. I think anyone giving out writing or creative advice needs to care more about the people they work with than their bank accounts or their metrics. Too often the need for numbers overtakes the need to do the right thing, and so many writers end up ill-equipped.
On one hand, that sucks. It’s a shame and upsetting to see good writers discouraged and poorly taught. On the other, I can’t deny that I get a lot of business from writers who have tried other coaches, other programs, other strategies to publish and they ended up stuck or angry or lost as a result. I don’t mind being that lighthouse. I like it. I think it’s what I’m meant to be doing.
Where things get a little hairy and intense is when it’s time for a writer to reckon with themselves, their skills, their motivations, and their expectations, and I’m along for the ride. That’s what I want to talk about today.
Every writer, no matter the draft, no matter the genre, no matter how long they’ve been pounding keys or scratching paper, is going to meet themselves along the journey to whatever creative destination they have.
But it’s not a direct flight. There’s no luxury resort waiting for them, even if they’ve envisioned paradise and 5 stars at the end. It’s more like a flight with a thousand layovers, all flown in one of those old cargo planes that’s just a tube with two motors bolted on where there are no more parachutes Doctor Jones.
The writer is the pilot, they do the flying, that is to say you do the flying. And as much as you might want, hope, and dream for the flight to be supersonic and easy from here to there, in over two decades I’ve never been the co-pilot on a flight like that, even when people became best sellers and hugely lauded.
Because that third rule, that thing about steering into the difficult stuff, that didn’t come from nowhere. That’s a rule that comes entirely from the realization that a writer’s biggest obstacle, your biggest obstacle, isn’t a lack of writing knowledge or understanding what to click on some website, it’s how you think and feel about yourself and your work and how you do you work.
We package all that into a question - “What’s your biggest weakness?” because that question is the source of all the turbulence on our flight. You will run into all your problems, all your fears, all your frustrations along any and all of the routes we can take to get you writing better.
There’s no way to avoid them. Your best writing gets birthed in part out of dealing with your fears, insecurities, frustrations and expectations. They’re not failings. They’re not things you have that successful people don’t have. They’re things you have that you haven’t learned how to navigate yet, so they stick around and make the journey to your success a little (or a lot) more interesting.
Whatever you’re afraid of, while it might not show up on the page in the manuscript, it will show up somewhere in the production of this (or any or all future) manuscript.
Afraid of making mistakes? Afraid to find out your writing skill isn’t where you think it is or should be? Afraid to fail? Afraid of rejection? Afraid to finish? Afraid to succeed? Afraid of finding out this thing you love as a concept is a lot harder as a reality? Afraid to look at how eager you are to make excuses or run away? Afraid to feel small? Afraid to be vulnerable?
All those things and the truckloads of other things we all are afraid of as creatives will somewhere along in your journey and you’ll always have a choice between doing something about them or turning away.
Loads of people point out that you can always deal with something later, kicking the can down the road, as if some problem can be the next page’s, the next chapter’s, the next manuscript’s problem. Sure, you can do that - if you like your problems multiplied and intensified.
Or is this you just being afraid to deal with tough stuff?
So many, too many, writers give up on themselves long before they give up on their manuscript. They make copious excuses about how busy they are at work, about how something else is more important, about how they’ll have more time or energy later, and then they’ll write so much more later. But later never shows up because there’s always going to be another excuse and another reason to not write or not try or not start or not finish.
If there’s anything you remember from this week’s message, let it be this: There will always be those jobs and those stressors and those things pulling at you in a billion directions. There will always be temptations and reasons and excuses to delay writing. No one is going to give you the perfect time or the perfect space to write, you always have to choose to do it, even when you don’t want to, even when you doing it right now isn’t going to net you long hours of thousands of flawless words. Nobody other than you wants it or needs it to be perfect. You just keep telling yourself that it needs to be perfect because you’re holding yourself to some unreasonable expectation because it’s giving you an explanation for any failure or frustration you might run into.
Put simply: You’re screwing yourself over by creating obstacles and expectations for yourself.
This isn’t a rah-rah speech where I’m going to tell you to somehow magically turn your greatest weakness into a super-strength. Nor am I going to hawk a new class or special exclusive (and expensive) product at you to eliminate those fears and somehow unlock your best writing with the same ease of turning on a lamp.
That’s not for me to do for you. That’s for you to do for you.
And yeah, not enough people reading this will do it for themselves. Sure, you’ll nod your head and say “You’re right” and say something like “I know, I know, yeah,” but since the act of changing and trying is big and scary and hard and you feel judged or you worry about being judged or fucking up, you decide it’s better to just keep doing what you’re doing and hope that somehow this all just works itself out without you having to do anything beyond having a pint down at the Winchester.
Welcome to the discouraging part of coaching. Welcome to the roughest part of the flight.
I’m going to say a thing and too many people will think I’m talking about them while also not enough writers will think I’m not talking about them: The reason why you’re not “better” as a writer isn’t because you don’t deserve to be a writer, it’s that you don’t the work on yourself and on your thinking, and instead you spend so much time on the act of writing because you think that’s hard enough.
It’s only that hard because you haven’t done the other stuff. You’re trying to build a bridge across a big hole in the ground using toothpicks when there’s perfectly good dirt to fill in the hole next to you. But you don’t want to get a little dirty or sweaty and shoveling seems less fun than being imaginative and creative with a hot glue gun and some sticks.
You don’t have to hide your weaknesses or put on some great front that you don’t have any to begin with or try and write something so full of … something that everyone’s dazzled and doesn’t notice any exposed weakness.
You have to address them. Deal with them. Effort to disprove them with evidence. Talk through them. Accept them. Drop the ones that don’t help you.
And while you’re doing that, put words on the page. Not perfect ones. Not the best words in the history of organized thought. Just some words on the page today that weren’t on the page yesterday. Then you keep doing that, not because you’re oath-bound and obligated, but because this is how we fly from where we are to where we want to be. That’s how you get to your goal. Even when you don’t want to. Even when there are excuses and distractions knocking at the door. Even when rationalizations and justifications drop by for tea.
Your weaknesses as a creative aren’t deep moral failings that justify shunning you into the wilderness or voting you off the reality show or abandoning your dreams. Your weaknesses are there because you’re a person, and as the sum total of your weaknesses, your successes, your attempts to be better and do better, you have this vehicle and ability to connect with other people doing exactly the same thing.
This isn’t really about writing “the best fantasy novel” or “growing your brand” or any of the horseshit peddled elsewhere (even on this site, hi Substack, what up), this is about you finding within yourself the dimensions and depths and grace and strength and love and passion and urges and honesty not to compete with other people but to be next to them without competition. Because you belong without a contest or a trial.
Because you’re a writer, and a person, and you’re doing the hard work of being both those things not so you can shut other people up or prove them wrong, but because you have it in you to be good at something and connect with other people in ways you didn’t think you could.
I love you. I’ll talk to you soon.