I did it my way (and you should do it yours)

Decades ago, a slick-covered magazine catering to the libidinous interests of some folks published a short story of mine—my first published work—for which I received 75 dollars. That publisher, as well as a couple more, said yes to additional short story submissions and, certainly proud of those achievements, I cut out the cover pages for those stories and framed them. They’re out in the shed, boxed up since we moved to the mountains. I now adorn our walls with images of critters that come and go across our property: coyotes, bears, bobcats, foxes, squirrels, elk, mule deer, wild turkeys, etc. Haven’t seen a mountain lion yet, but I suspect they’ve seen me.

I’d been writing since I was very young, maybe 12 or 13. My goal, of course, was to become an accomplished author known for writing The Great American Novel—you know, surpassing the accomplishments of Fitzgerald, Cather, Melville, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Updike, Lee, and certainly others. I suppose that is the goal for most aspiring writers, regardless of where their work first appears. But alas, Philip Roth ended up writing literally The Great American Novel, a work about the demise of a baseball team. What was I to do? Roth had beaten me to it.

What I did do was pursue a career not writing. Oh, of course I spent many hours writing. Always writing. But it wasn’t my career. I put my Great American Novel on hold. Life—a roof over my head, mortgages, transportation, food, insurance, utilities—got in the way of that dream for nearly 30 years. Never once, though, during all that time did I think I wouldn’t write again, endeavoring to accomplish what I’d set out so long ago to do.

Freed from that non-writing career in 2003, I hurried up and wrote my first novel. Anxious to see my name in print, I contracted with a publisher to accomplish that desire, spending a whole lot of money to satisfy my vanity. In 2005, they published my first novel.  Lesson learned: a vanity publisher will be happy to publish your storytelling for a price. Whether you’re a fine writer or a lousy one, they will publish you. They’ll do their best to edit your work, and, for a price, they’ll do a little marketing. However, they can’t make dull writing shine. Not that my first novel stank, it just wasn’t ready—something I didn’t see for myself because, well, I was in a hurry. My vanity demanded it.

I don’t know if vanity publishers are still in business these days, given the revolution in publishing a la CreateSpace, KDP, and others. (Some of the self-published works I’ve tried to read would have benefited from vanity house editorial scrutiny, or any editorial scrutiny for that matter.) For some, self-publishing is a vainglorious endeavor.

I recall attending my first RMFW critique session in 2006, held at a Barnes and Noble in Thornton. I’d given the critique leader a short bio, and she announced to the small group that I was a published writer. I cringed at that, then mumbled something about not being a published writer at all. By that time, I’d realized my first novel had not been ready for prime time, and I regretted what I’d done, not to mention the money I had spent.

Critique was a good experience, but for me not long-lived. It served to introduce me to folks who shared my dream and had a passion for storytelling—for putting one word after another to glean some sense of the world, or create fantastical worlds, or in some cases to emulate J.K. Rowling’s successes by affirming imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery.

My short-lived attendance at critique had little to do with critique, per se. It had more to do with my intent not to write by committee. Writing had always been a very personal endeavor for me, and I found sharing intrusive and uncomfortable. (I rarely let anyone, friend or family, see my work before publication.) So too, I was becoming intimate with my muse, establishing my style.

I guess I didn’t get critique. I did get lessons learned from reading authors I admired, studying how they did it, and nodding when they, for example, abjured pronouns or managed to make their prose poetry.

After leaving critique, I sold several short stories and, in 2010, I sold a novel. More novels followed, as well as numerous short stories, a collection of shorts, and another collection due to appear this year. My publishers do not have Manhattan addresses, nor do I have an agent. I’ll never get rich selling stories. In fact, if I depended on royalties to live, I’d be sleeping in a park in a bag and eating at the expense of kind strangers. Getting rich from writing was never my goal anyway.

So, that’s the way I did it. I don’t recommend waiting 30 years to publish your first novel. As I said, though, the day-to-day drudgery of life does not easily beget the realization of dreams. Then again, sometimes that drudgery contributes to the sweetness of dreams that do eventually come true.

 

George Seaton is the author of five novels and numerous novellas and short stories. His short story “The White Buck” appeared in the 2016 RMFW anthology, FOUND. He lives and writes in Pine, Colorado.