The open book: what writers don’t tell writers about writing (part 1)
By: Caren Gussoff Sumption
Tags: Writing, Writers Life, Publishing, Writers On Medium, Writers On Writing

Hi. My name is Caren Gussoff Sumption. I’ve been a professional writer for more than 20 years. I’ve published 5 books. I’ve been anthologized more than 100 times. I’ve won awards and fellowships and even a medal. I wrote the chapter on setting for the writing book, The Gotham Writers’ Workshop Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide From New York’s Acclaimed Creative Writing School, which you may, even, have on your shelf.

But no, I can almost guarantee that you’ve never heard of me.

That sounds like a whine. I assure you, it’s not. I mean, I’d love to be famous. Hell, I’d love to live just off my writing. But I’m productive. I’m working. I’m publishing.

I’m not sad. I’m as satisfied with my lot as one can be, while still remaining slightly hungry.

I’m — also — tired of all the secrets writers keep from one another (and from everyone else) about the realities of the writer’s life. Pick up a guide, read interviews, take a class — even go through an MFA program — and you’ll learn lots about craft and practice. Super good advice that may shave years off your slog towards objectively good writing (though, again, really, what you need to do is to read, a lot, and write, a lot…but the advice you’ll glean has value). You may even get a bit of guidance on writing queries and outlines and how to submit to magazines and publishers (also good things to know, really).

But you’ll never hear anything about all the betweens and durings and afters. Very few of us will be able to make a full living off writing, even fewer will become well-known. Dedicating so much of yourself to something that may or may not make a bathtub’s worth of splash, with all the sacrifice, the hours (no! years), the energy…after a while, takes endurance, and that endurance requires one or more of the following: financial generosity of loved ones, drugs and alcohol, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, desperation borne of the realization we are lousy at all other things, or (being serious here) a truly comprehensive support system, care for one’s mental health, and a whole lotta self-care.

You’ll read a lot of motivational quotes about never giving up and doing what you love and chasing your dreams and how so-and-so writer and such-and-such story got 7 million rejections before it was accepted. But the truth is: rejection still sucks. Morale gets low. Faking it until you are actually making it is exhausting.

You’ll hear all about how to write a book, but nothing about how to weather self-doubt when a book fails (books fail, even when they are good). How BookScan, the god of whether your book gets stocked at stores, works…or even, wtf BookScan even is. How to cope when you see your book on the remainder table or in the stationary aisle of Family Dollar…or, gut-punchingly, signed copies at Value Village and Half Price Books.

Is it because we think teaching this will scare off baby writers? Is it because we can’t show weakness? We don’t want to admit to being the writer who has failures and disappointments because then we’ll…stink of it?

Or because we want to believe we are ahhhhhh-teestes who are above such worldly, mundane matters, and that writing, our writing, is mystical, magical storytelling-from-the-very-center-of-humanity’s-id that admitting it is subject to the whims and whimsies of capitalism and luck is taboo?

We teach writers how to write. How to be writERs. But not how to have and sustain a career. To fail better and longer. To define success. To keep at it.

I’m no sage. I’m a working writer. I don’t have all the answers, but I have some. And those, I’ll give to you as best I can.