Smile When you Say That.

I saw an advertisement once it read, “Make 100,000 a year as a writer”. The ad went on to explain how you could snag writing gigs all over the place: writing contracts for corporations, writing manuals, medical files, proofingadvertisements, you name it.
I thought, That’s not writing. That’s just putting words on paper. The idea of spending my days up to my eyeballs in lifeless words made me ill.
A little later, I read another advertisement that promised I could make a comfortable living writing articles for magazines. I have no doubt this is true, I know many writers who write almost exclusively for magazines. What rankled me was the next line: Anyone can earn a living writing for magazines! It’s just that easy! Aside from the fact that writing for magazines is not ‘just that easy,’ I had to wonder: why are we preoccupied with easy? What has easy every brought us except a consumer mentality and laziness? Do we earnestly believe that we deserve big dividends from little or no effort?
On Monday, Latayne shared her difficult experience with a friend who thought he’d like to write a book. I’ve had my share of encounters with novice writers (including being one myself), and I’ve discovered some ways to navigate the minefield discussion without exploding.

1. Say no to family and friends. I never read unpublished work from family or close friends. Here’s what I say, “I’m too crazy about you to read this. I’m not objective – I’ll love it and it won’t help you a bit. You need an unbiased reader who will be able to see the flaws, and offer real help.”

2. Say no to co-workers. Recently someone at work said, “I should get you to help me get an agent. I write fiction.” I asked my three diagnostic questions: what did he write? (fantasy) What did he read? (um, uh, well, it’s hard to find good fantasy novels) What classes, workshops, or conferences he had attended? (none so far). By the end of the third question he understood he wasn’t ready to talk to an agent. Just to be certain we wouldn’t have to repeat this conversation, I asked, “Would your writing blow me away? It is exquisite? Is the novel professionally polished?” The conversation was over.

3. Say no to strangers. I received an email recently from someone who knows my parents. I’ve never met the person. He wrote asking for help to become published. I suggested a number of steps that have helped me over the years, conferences, books, courses, associations. And. Nothing. More. I wished him well, and didn’t leave the door open for him to write for more hands on help. Was that unkind? No. He writes children’s book – something utterly outside my experience as a writer. I advised him to start meeting other children’s book writers. He’ll be happy when he does.

4. Say yes-but to colleagues, conference attendees and blog friends. There is a small group of writers I always say yes to. The Novel Matters women (in fact, I think I’ve begged to read some of their manuscripts pre-pub), and two or three others. I do this because reading their work is a joy – and my feedback is usually short an unnecessary.

I make myself available to writers at conferences, and through this blog. I love each encounter – partly because I set the ground rules early. I give these lovely people my ‘yes-but’. 99% of the time, I honestly cannot read full manuscripts for critique. I’m a wife, a mom, a writer, I work part-time, and my husband is a pastor. I make honest assessments of the time I can spend reading other people’s work, and I then I say “yes-but I can only offer to read the first three chapters”, or “I can help with the synopsis.”

Does this list work every time? Nah. I’ve been told I was a bad Christian because I said no to reading someone’s work. I’ve passed on reading someone’s work and regretted it because I would have loved to know more about the story they were writing. But it helps when I remind myself that knowing me and hearing my ideas isn’t anyone’s golden ticket. And that while most of the time I must say no, when I do say yes I mean it, go deep, give it my full attention, and only offer ideas I think will be helpful and constructive. In other words, I just do the best I can with what I have to give.
How have you managed to say no when you needed to? How hard was it? Share!