Should you pay for THAT?
Do you need a mentor? Do you need an editor? Do you pay a publisher? (Or should you just sleep with someone to get ahead?)
I know that my memoir reads easy, like a conversation. I know that it reads like I just sat down one day and it all spilled out of me. This is intentional. It’s supposed to read easy and it’s supposed to read like a conversation. I’m not going into what went into perfecting that but just because you read it and it reads easy, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Transferring what’s in your head – what might sound like a conversation – onto what goes on paper, is anything but easy. And yet, I think that the easy is what gave some people the impression that anybody can do it.
Actually, wait – I do believe most people can learn to write, but, as it is with any other form of art, you need someone to coach you and it takes hours of practice.
Or let me put it this way: Triple axel in figure skating looks easy too.
After my memoir came out, I had a lot of people ask me to help them write their memoir. Some of those people often wanted to tell me their story – that often included something to do with addiction – and a number of those people believed that once I would hear it, I would be compelled to write it in the same way I wrote mine. There were usually a few parts to this offer: they read my story – and paid for the book – so now it was my turn to hear theirs, for free, and the payback was me writing it or telling them how to write it.
The problem was, like everyone else I need to make money and spending time hearing a story, and writing it costs money (time is money, etc.), but, naturally, some of those people believed that their story was so riveting and so unusual1 I would want to do it anyway, they didn’t have the time to write it (because they had to work their silly jobs/ parent/ rehab), and having read my story they could tell that it wasn’t all that hard if you had the sort of time I had2. Some knew their story was way better than mine, and boy, would I be sorry I didn’t want to tell it once I would turn down their offer. Some got downright angry about that3.
To be fair, a couple of those connections ended up in ghostwriting gigs when it was clear that those people were serious and understood that writing was a job just like any other one4. But in the beginning, I had a lot of phone calls with people who wanted to tell me about their book idea and so I’ve spent a lot of time listening and reading for free because I felt I did owe them something – because they read mine, because they reached out, because they trusted me, etc. Honestly, I do believe every story is important and worth telling. I felt honoured that people would tell me their story because I knew sometimes I would be the only person who they told it too because they felt they could, since I told them mine. I respect that. Occasionally, I would’ve gotten a chance to tell them about where to find help for their addiction, which is something I was obligated to do as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Eventually, I learned to pitch people back with my ghostwriting offer or my mentorship – in other words, explain how we could indeed write their book and how much it would cost them if I were to help and what it would involve.
The only thing I will still do for free is read for up to five pages and this is to get an idea as to what I will be working with if I do take on a client. If there are no pages to read, I go over the time and commitment needed to do interviews, publishing goals, and the chance of having Lena Dunham reading their manuscript (she read mine and blurbed it and I’ve had quite a number of people ask me to show her their manuscript as well – I mean, why not?). Sometimes, like I said, this would end up in a ghostwriting gig but most of the time it ends up in just having a few chats, except these days, I can tell pretty quickly what’s up and offer an hour-long free consultation. To date, I’ve had a few clients I ended up writing entire books for, all of which have been published (self-published and traditionally published). Those clients seemed happy, one is a lifelong client and a good friend now, someone I helped build a whole enterprise based on what “we” have written.
But then there’s also the former client who disappeared after paying me a tiny advance after I spent days writing a proposal and countless hours talking on the phone about her leaving a cult and the memoir she hoped to produce about that (a proposal we pitched to a publisher too). A client I thought was a friend, who knew about my situation (solo parent, full-time writer, trying to make ends meet), and whose biggest gift to me was to teach me about being more careful with my time, to see my time as valuable.
Which brings me to the point of this post. That point is money. The money not me but you, the aspiring writer, should be prepared to spend, to waste, and to be scammed out of.
Hiring a good ghostwriter aside5, what should you be paying for in order to get your book out? This is the sort of question I’m asked most often – people wanting to know if I had hired an editor to get my manuscript in shape, if they should be paying their publisher to take on their book, should they take some sort of writing course, hire a mentor, or perhaps really invest in this whole business and get a Masters of Fine Arts, MFA, in creative writing.
I believe an MFA is great if you need to feel accountable and need motivation to finish your book6 and if you genuinely believe you will benefit from that and want a degree that you can afford. But not because you think you need a permission and approval from the academia to write your book. You can write your book without a degree in MFA. You have the permission. Fight me. There, I’ve saved you $20,000+
Should you pay your publisher to publish your book?
No.
Should you hire an editor to help you whip your book into shape?
Also, no.
But this is a little more complicated, actually. You can do that if you want to dazzle people with your manuscript, sure, but a publisher shouldn’t be suggesting that. The only time they would suggest that is if they’re trying to save money themselves – because they don’t have enough editors on staff, because they would have to hire one to edit your book. I have never had to pay for an editor. I had to find one to suggest to a publisher but I never had to pay for that out of my own pocket.
What about a mentor?
My first instinct was to also say no because, again, I never had to hire one and then I remembered that I was in one of those unique situations where I had one when I first got serious about my writing. My former partner was a published author. He read my first serious manuscript, and he had offered a lot of advice – both editorial and publishing advice. All I had to do was sleep with him! Joking aside, we were very much in love! We both offered each other editorial advice, and we mentored each other – I read his drafts and offered a perspective of a younger audience, and he read my drafts with the eye of an expert of what makes a book work, what to cut, what to keep, how to fix my dialogue. Once I read his books, I became familiar with his style as well so I was able to do the same for him with subsequent drafts and at no point did this actually seem like a transactional situation – my devastating looks and dewy youth for his expertise and connections7. I’m just telling you this so that I feel better about whoring out for mentorship. Okay, I’ll stop now – the point is, I had a relationship with someone where I had learned a lot about writing and publishing. I didn’t pay for it unless you count never being sure if people like my writing because they want to sleep with me or because they just like it. I’m fucking kidding! In fact, my ex was never particularly easy on me, he was probably one of my harshest critics and no amount of stay up stockings would convince him flashbacks and going on about people being mean to me as a child were anything but a giant yawn in my stories.
My advice is not to go and sleep with older, curmudgeonly and established literati. But my advice is to find yourself someone in the industry who will be willing to take you on as a student. I know of many relationships between authors where they read each other’s work and coach each other – you scratch my back, I scratch yours, etc. I have a couple people in my life who read my first manuscript but it’s a very small group, and the first person who reads it8 is my agent whom I trust with my life9. She is brilliant, and brutal and doesn’t care about my little feelings at all. And I love her for that. Last book she read, she told me to take out SIXTY pages. The book before that, she had me re-write 70 per cent of it. I trust her precisely because she doesn’t sugarcoat10 (plus, her authors are some of the most successful authors in the world, so there’s that too).
If you don’t have an established author for a lover11, a published12 friend you can exchange your stuff with, an agent willing to work with you, or an MFA/ writing-workshop group13 and if you’re not James Joyce14, Vladimir Nabokov15 but you believe you can totally do this on your own, then congratulations, you are one of the rare ones who can…
figure out how to do a triple-axel on your own!
Otherwise, yes, hire a professional mentor16.
In the next post, I will talk about what to expect from a professional mentor and what it should cost and why.
A word about this Substack. I realized I have a bit of an allergy to making money. But since my last post, I’ve had a number of people reach out and ask if they could pledge some money. I’ve been hesitant about it because I honestly cannot commit to posting regularly – not because I don’t want to, but because I prefer to use my words for writing books and short stories and other stuff like that and I would hate to take people’s money and leave this space empty. But surprise, surprise, money motivates me! And I feel like I have some things to say that might help people – not just about publishing17 but about shame too so watch this space for more chaotic posts. You’ve no obligation to subscribe but spread the word if you can, that would be awesome. For now, my posts will remain unlocked so that if I fck up and don’t post as often as I would like to, you won’t feel like you subscribed to Amway Confidential or something. Thank you for supporting!
Many stories are but content is only half the battle when it comes to memoir. I used to attend 12-step meetings four to six times a week and it’s very hard to top what I would hear in those places. Conversely, you can write a gripping book about not much, in Drunk Mom, the main character spends about 50 per cent of the time sitting in front of her laptop.
A number of people have assumed that I was an independently wealthy housewife after learning from my memoir that I spent a year not working while taking care of an infant. In Canada, we have something called Maternity Leave, meaning for that year, I was paid 80 per cent of my salary by the company I worked for.
Like the guy who kept emailing me with threats of not inviting me to his future Booker-award ceremony that took place in his amygdala.
And they would offer money for my time and expertise. Which I would happily take, provided I believed in the book and could commit to it and delivered what I’d promised.
We’ll get back to that in another post if there’s interest.
Or if you want to teach writing in an MFA program, in other words if you want to teach writing to suckers like you who might be taking the MFA program in order to teach writing in an MFA program, in other words, to teach it to suckers like you who might be taking the MFA program in order to teach writing in an MFA program, in other words…
People often assume that I had an “in” because I knew him and he would push my manuscripts on to his editors. He never had. I met my first agent on my own (see previous post), before I met my ex, I pitched Drunk Mom to an editor – via Facebook nonetheless – that I knew published an addiction memoir because of the research I did. My ex read Drunk Mom for the first time when it came out, along with everyone else.
Besides one trusted friend who reads all of my work. (Hi, B!)
A post on agents will happen in the future.
Seriously, if your unpaid mentor is telling you that you’re a raw talent and a genius it’s probably because you’re sleeping with them.
Who is actually giving you solid, useful critique rather than suspicious praise.
It matters. You want someone who has experience. You’re here to learn, right?
Where you will get as many confusing opinions as they collectively have belly buttons. Lucky you!
Whose mentor was Samuel Beckett. Oops. Here are some others.
This person SHOULD be able to offer you editorial suggestions but they don’t necessarily edit your work – for that you need a professional editor. A mentor can absolutely be both and would charge you accordingly. For example, I offer packages that are customized to what a client needs and what they can afford. And I only take on clients that I believe in – hence asking people for those five pages I would read for free.
There’s been a podcast in the works as well, with a writer friend, so I’m not giving away all the dirt here.