So you want to be a novelist?

Well, there’s no one path to take. Novelists come in all shapes and sizes. They’re men and women, wunderkinds and retirees. Some of them are very attractive. The rest of us resent them horribly. And if there was a single magic bullet, or a list of steps to follow that would guarantee publication, believe me, someone would have published it by now. After spending twenty-plus years in the industry and publishing 16 novels, here is what wisdom I have to offer.

1. The Unhappy Childhood

The big joke in the publishing community is that smart editors shouldn’t waste their time at lunches or conferences, but should instead proceed directly to the local elementary schools. There, they will carefully note the boys picked last in gym class, the girls sitting alone in the cafeteria – all of the outcasts, misfits, geeks, dweebs and weirdos – and give them some kind of small identifying tag (much like wildlife services will tag animals to follow their progress through the years). Twenty years later, the editors should track down the kids they’ve tagged, now hopefully grown to more successful adulthood, and say, "Okay, where’s the book?"

UPDATE: I wrote that when I was thirty two. I don’t know if this was ever a joke in the publishing community or just something I told myself, but I still think it’s true. Even though I know writers who’ve had happy, even idyllic childhoods, I do think that it helps to be able to access some species of deep-seated misery. Maybe it was your parents’ divorce, or maybe it was your own. Maybe it was being fat and lonely in high school – which is bad -- or watching your child struggle to make friends and fit in, which is worse. But I still believe that some species of outsider-ness, some access to heartbreak, is going to help you become a writer. 

Why do unhappy kids grow up to be writers? I think because being an outsider – a geek, a dweeb, a weirdo, a smart, mouthy girl or boy who talks too much in class and gets left alone at recess – means that you’re naturally equipped for observing life carefully. You’re not on the inside, you’re on the outside – and nobody’s a more careful, dedicated observer of life than a kid or teenager who’s trying to figure out how to finally fit in with the in-crowd.

Also (and this is totally my own take on things, unproven by any kind of study or research), but I think that kids whose parents are divorced, separated, single, or otherwise un-Cleaver-ish might have a slight edge over those who grew up in happily-married homes. For kids, divorce is a mystery, a puzzle that begs to be put back together – what went wrong? Was it my fault? Can Humpty Dumpty be put back together again? All of these questions reinforce the powers of observation, the questioning spirit, the impulse to try to make sense of the world, all the things that make a writer. Or a mass murderer, I guess, but hopefully a writer. So if you’re a would-be writer whose parents are divorced, be happy. If you’re married, and a parent, and trying to turn your kid into a writer, please don’t break up just because I said so. Because by the time our theoretical young writer has figured out that fitting in with the in-crowd isn’t a consummation devoutly to be wished, and has given up trying to make sense of Why Daddy Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, it will be time for…

2. The Miserable Love Life

Again, a crucial ingredient for the formation of a novelist – romantic humiliation and heartbreak. The unhappy childhood gives you the tools of observation. Unrequited crushes, romantic despair, a few memorable break-ups, will give you something to write about, an understanding of grief. No prospect of heartbreak in sight? I can provide phone numbers upon request.

Now that our would-be novelist has survived high school, heartbreak, and perhaps her parents’ divorce, it’s time to talk higher education. My advice?

3. Major in Liberal Arts (but not necessarily creative writing)

This is something I’ve taken straight from my own mother’s book of wisdom. My Mom is a great proponent of the liberal arts education. Why? Because a liberal arts education, whether you’re studying history or anthropology or political science or English, teaches how to read, how to write, and how to reason. Everything else, says Mom, is just commentary. Once you’ve got the foundation of a liberal arts education – once you’ve slogged through the required reading, written the papers, attended the lectures and seminars – you know how to think. And in order to write, you have to be able to make sense of the landscape of the world. In order to be any kind of artistic innovator, you have to understand everything that came before you.

And a liberal arts education gives you a framework in which to place your own experiences, a context you can use to look at everything else, a framework that any writer needs.

So why not major in creative writing? Here’s a line that bears repeating: a writer writes. If you’re going to be a writer, nothing, not even a difficult major, can stop you. You’ll write poems, you’ll write stories, you’ll begin a novel about suicide or bisexuality or a suicidal bisexual that will forever languish in a shoebox beneath your bed, but you will write. You’ll do it in your spare minutes, you’ll snatch time before work or eschew prime-time TV after. You’ll think of stories while you’re walking the dog or driving to work. You’ll do it because it’s your passion and your calling, because doing it makes you happier than almost anything else, because, really, you don’t have any choice.

What college can give you is the luxury of immersing yourself in a subject that you’ll never have the unbroken blocks of time to study again, an unbroken stretch of time to devote to reading great literature, or American history, or politics. I say, take advantage of everything college has to offer. Learn something new, knowing that writing will always be available to you as both hobby and vocation.

6. Get a Dog

Okay, you’re thinking, what does getting a dog have to do with becoming a writer? More than you think. Successful writers need a modicum of talent and creativity, but what they need even more is discipline: the ability to sit down in that seat, day after day, often after eight hours of work, and tell stories, day after day, even if they’re not getting published yet, even if they’re not getting paid. It’s a form of training that’s as much physical as mental in nature – you sit down, you do the writing, no matter what distractions are out there, no matter that you’re tired or bored or uninspired.

Being a dog owner requires a similar form of discipline. You wake up every morning. You walk the dog. You do this whether you’re tired, depressed, broke, hung over, or have been recently dumped. You do it. And while you’re walking, you’re thinking about plot, or characters, or that tricky bit of dialogue that’s had you stumped for days. You’re out in the fresh air. Your legs are moving. Your dog is sniffing the butts of other dogs. It gives you a routine, a physical rhythm, a loyal companion, and a way to meet new people when you’re in a new place. It gets your body used to doing the same thing at the same time – and if you’re walking the dog for half an hour at the same time of every day, it’s an easy step to go sit in front of the computer and create for half an hour at the same time every day. Plus, when you get the inevitable bad review or when someone goes online to announce that your new book is the worst thing that’s ever written, you’ll need some comfort and unconditional love. So go to your local pound or rescue organization, and get a dog. Trust me. You’ll be glad you did.

And once you have a faithful animal companion and furry muse, it will be easier to…

7. Finish Your Novel

We’ve now arrived to the advice you might not want to hear. If you want to publish fiction in the traditional manner, the first thing you have to do is finish a novel. Once you’ve got your manuscript, you can go looking for an agent. Once you have an agent, she can shop your book to publishers. But you’ve got to finish first.

If the very idea of a novel seems huge and daunting, start with some short stories, and submit them to magazines or online journals. Or get a Tumblr, or a blog, or a TikTok account where you read your work. Get used to the feeling of having your words out in the world.

In terms of writing your first novel, there’s a whole world of advice. People talk about morning pages and journals and free-writing. There is no one-size-fits-all way to get your butt in the seat for an uninterrupted spell of time, but you’ve got to find your way. There are a lot of talented, smart, creative people in the world, and the difference between those people and the talented, smart, creative people who actually manage to complete a four-hundred page novel is just discipline and hard work.

So find your way. Make writing a habit, until it feels as essential and as intrinsic to your day as brushing your teeth. Put your work out into the world. Take in whatever feedback you get. Join a writers’ group, if you find that helpful, or seek out feedback online, if that works. If you’re a writer, you’re going to write.

I spent my twenties working for newspapers and writing fiction in my spare time. I published a handful of short stories, got rejected a lot, then, finally, had my heart broken and found a story to tell. By my twenty-ninth birthday I’d completed the manuscript that would become GOOD IN BED, and it was time to….

8. Find an agent

When I was doing my agent search, the Internet barely existed. There was no Googling agencies to find out if they were accepting submissions (or to check whether the agent you had your eye on was still alive). I bought a book called A Writer’s Guide to Literary Agents. Then I went through the acknowledgments of the books I loved. I made a list, I sent queries, I got rejected. I started working with the one agent (out of 25) who was willing to work with me, until I realized she wanted me to change my first novel in ways I didn’t want to change it. I got referred to another agent, who ended up selling my first novel, and many books thereafter. We went on to work together for more than twenty years.

When you’re on the hunt, and you’re getting rejected, it’s easy to feel desperate to the point that any agent who expresses interest becomes, in your mind, The One. Try to slow your roll and ask the things a smart consumer would ask, like, "Can I see your list?" and "What publishing houses have you made deals with lately? Which editors?" and "If you were to represent me, how would you pitch this book? Who would you send it to? What’s your plan?"

A good agent should be willing to share her list, to tell you the names of her other authors, to give you some phone numbers so you can check her references. A good agent will readily discuss who she’s worked with, at which houses, and what percentage of your earnings you can expect to share with her. Most importantly, a good agent should have a vision not just for your book, but for your career — that sounds and feels right to you.

Most authors will tell you that an agent is a combination of editor, therapist, business manager, pep-talker and cheerleader in chief, and when you find your someone, that relationship can feel akin to a marriage. But not every agent-client relationship is forever, nor are the relationships between authors and their editors. Breakups are the rule, not the exception. That’s why you should always try to…

4. Get a Job

The big debate publishing in the early 2000s gave would-be writers two choices: MFA or NYC. If you got an MFA, you went to some prestigious program to study with award-winning professors, workshop your stories with your peers, and eventually, between professor recommendations and the program’s prestige, found an agent. If you chose NYC, you went to live in Brooklyn, got yourself a day job (because Brooklyn’s super-expensive), befriended a cadre of your fellow literati, started making connections in the publishing world, and, thus, found an agent.

That, at least, is my understanding of it. That choice was never meant to be about writers of popular fiction. I thought then, and think now, that the best choice for any kind of writer is neither MFA nor NYC but DIY. Go live somewhere more affordable than Brooklyn. Get a job in a new part of the country, or the world. Spend time with people. Listen to their stories. Pay attention to the details that make up their lives – their clothes, their expressions, how they move, how they talk.

For a long time, the job I’d recommend was journalism. I got my start at a small newspaper that did all of those things for me, plus paid me to write. I learned to be productive, even when I didn’t feel especially creative. I learned to write on deadline, how to work with editors, how to make a good story better.

Unfortunately, the kind of job I got in my twenties barely exists right now, because many of the small newspapers that would hire fresh-out-of-college reporters are gone. These days, newbie journalists are more likely to end up composing listicles or editing video than they are writing features or profiles. Which is to say that if you can afford it, or can find a program that will give you a stipend so you don’t graduate in debt, an MFA isn’t as terrible an option as I thought it was back in the day.

And if a creative-writing degree isn’t on the table and a Brooklyn studio isn’t in your budget? Go do something that’s going to take you out of your comfort zone, putting you in contact with different kinds of people, perhaps in a different part of the world. Be a waitress at the snootiest boite in town, and pay attention to how your customers look, how they talk, how they tip. Lead bike trips through Italy, making careful note of the countryside. Be a camp counselor, be a cook, be a nanny. Just do something that takes you out into the world and gives you challenges and adventure, for new faces and new places. Plus, if you’ve followed Part Two of this plan, you’re most likely single, and will want to get out of town anyhow.

5. Write to Please Yourself

So now you’re in your twenties. You’ve got your liberal arts degree. You’ve got a job that’s put you smack in the center of the wild, bustling world. You’re writing – of course you’re writing – because a writer writes. And perhaps you’ve started to think that it’s time to attempt a novel. Perhaps you’re looking around with awed and slightly covetous eyes at the stacks of books about Young Women with Romantic Woes and Weight Problems. Or the neighboring piles of accounts of Young Men with Family Tragedies. Or how Harlequin has launched a line of Sassy Single Girl in the City books. There’s a market for this stuff, you think, and you set down at night and try. Don’t do it.

Tell the story that’s been growing in your heart, the characters you can’t keep out of your head, the tale that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes you up in the morning. Don’t write something just because you think it will sell, or fit into the pigeonhole du jour. Tell the story you want to tell, and worry about how to sell it later (more advice on that to come). And also…

9. Expect the Unexpected

When I got started, there were the Big Seven publishers. Borders was a big, established chain; Amazon was the new kid on the block, the Internet was barely a thing and e-readers and e-books didn’t exist.

These days, the Big Seven are now the Big Five (possibly soon the Big Four, if the Justice Department decides to allow PenguinRandom to swallow Simon & Schuster).Borders is gone, Amazon sells more than fifty percent of all the books in the United State, and readers are as likely to buy a book at Target or Costco as they are to shop at an independent bookstore, and to do their reading on a tablet or a phone as they are to read a physical book on paper.  

I’ve been lucky. I’ve spent my entire career so far at the same imprint in the same publishing house. For fifteen years, I had the same editor, the same publisher and the same agent. Then my editor left. Then my publisher left. Then my agent and I parted ways. Those changes were not easy, but here is what I’ve learned: there’s no single person who can guarantee you a happy and remunerative career. An agent can be a great fit…until she isn’t. An editor can be a dream…until she retires or moves on. Break-ups, be they personal or professional, are never easy. Your job is to try not take it personally, to do the best work you can, even in the midst of flux and turmoil, and to tell yourself that sometimes, when a window shuts, a door can open. It’s hard to lose a person or the situation you believed were essential to your career, the agent or editor with the magic fairy dust that let your prose fly. But it might mean there’s someone or something even better up ahead.

And finally…

10. Read

Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college. Read men, read women, read books in translation. If you’re straight, read books with gay protagonists. If you’re white, read books by non-white authors, and see how the world looks from their perspective. Read travel guides and Harlequins and epic poetry and cookbooks and cereal boxes, if you’re desperate. Get the rhythm of good writing in your ears. Cram your head with characters and stories. Abuse your library privileges. Never stop looking at the world, and never stop reading to find out what sense other people have made of it.

Take care, and happy writing!

Jennifer Weiner
jen@jenniferweiner.com
May, 2002
Updated February, 2022