031: 3 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Writing
- Click here for ways to work with me + a free character profile template: www.thekatiewolf.com/info
- The last Tuesday of the month is a Q&A episode! Submit your questions for me HERE.
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@katiewolfwrites
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiewolfwrites
3 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Writing
Hi, friends, thanks for tuning in this week, I really had to rein myself in on this episode, because I knew I wanted to talk about things that I wish I knew when I started writing. And as I was jotting down a few notes, the few notes turned into a massive list and I started thinking of all these things, I could talk about all these things I could share. And I could go on and on about this in the episode to be like two hours long, but I'm going to rein myself in, I'm going to I'm going to just talk about three things that I wish I knew, because I think these things are kind of the most important, or the the biggest things that really would have helped me and if you are at the beginning of your writing journey, or haven't started writing yet, but you want to, hopefully, these things will be helpful, maybe you'll be able to save yourself a little bit of pain and anguish when you do start writing or when you continue writing.
Okay, so the first thing that I wish I knew when I started writing is number one, rejection is part of the process, rejection slash negative feedback or criticism. That's all part of the process. Now, when I started writing my book, I knew that I wanted to pursue traditional publication and I knew that querying was part of it, I knew that I would probably have to send out more than one query letter and query more than one agent. So that was in the back of my mind. So I was I was aware of this on a an intellectual level, but I don't think I really understood how much rejection would be a part of my writing journey, not just rejection from querying even rejection from literary journals and websites, when I started pitching to outlets when I started submitting my work to journals, so much rejection, and also the negative feedback part of it. When I started letting other people see my work. When I started letting other people read my writing, I got a lot of negative feedback, I got positive feedback, too, but a lot of negative feedback, especially at the beginning, from people in my life that I would let. you know, read a short story from I remember one particularly harsh. rejection from a literary journal, took me a little while to come back from that one, negative feedback from my writing group that I ended up joining.
And if all of that sounds really daunting and overwhelming, and all of that, like please no, it got, it gets so much better. The first couple of times that someone said something negative about my writing or had a suggestion or a criticism. It was very devastating. And it took me a long time to kind of lick my wounds and like get back out there. But over time, I started to realize that this is just part of the process. It's part of opening myself up. It's part of letting other people read my writing. And I knew that if I wanted to pursue a career as a writer, I knew that if I wanted to publish a book, or multiple books, lots of books, that this was going to be part of it. I couldn't have one without the other. And so thinking of it that way made it easier to accept and also realizing that everyone goes through this gave me a lot of comfort too.
So just just know if you're just starting out, rejection slash, you know, negative feedback is just part of the process. Second thing I wish I knew is that motivation will come and go. Last week's episode talked about this in detail how to write when you lack motivation. Basically, I had this idea that once I started writing my book, especially because I wrote a few short stories before I I tackled a book. I thought that once I started, I would just feel so lit up and so inspired In flow that everything would just come pouring out of me without much effort. And I would always want to wake up in the morning and write for an hour. And you know, my husband would have to pull me away from the computer because I was so in flow and so focused on my book. And that was almost never the case, it was almost never true. The process of getting the first draft out, I have such a love hate relationship with it. And, and I know that sounds crazy, like I'm a writer. But for me, getting the first draft out is tough. It's, it's I love coming up with ideas. I love crafting characters. I love starting a book. But just getting to the end of that first draft is rough. And then I love the editing process. I love shaping it and tweaking it. And the revision process makes my heart sing. I absolutely love that part of writing. But that first draft is rough.
I had to, there were a lot of days where I had to kind of force myself to sit down and write even though I didn't necessarily want to. And sometimes I would find motivation halfway through and realize, oh, actually, I really enjoy the scene that I'm writing, I'm feeling really in flow. And sometimes it didn't. When I was finishing my second book, I set a goal for myself that I was going to write 1000 words a day. And there were days where I did not want to do it. And as soon as I got to 1000 words, I would push away from the computer and be like, ugh, I can't, I can't believe I have to do that again tomorrow. It's just, there's not always going to be motivation. And there's not always going to be these ideal writing conditions, either. It's very easy to romanticize the creative process. It's easy to romanticize the process of writing a book. But really, it's just you sitting down with your computer, and writing. That's it, your laptop, notebook, if you write by hand, whatever.
The third thing that I wish I knew, ugh it just it almost pains me to to think about this one. And to talk about this one. It's okay to not be good at writing. When you first start. I was not great. The first couple of short stories that I wrote, were not very good. And I can look back now and see. Yeah, I was really learning about how to write, I was learning about how to write dialogue, I was learning about how to write characters, how to construct a story from beginning to end, I was learning as I went, I did not know what I was doing. I'm not someone that wrote a lot as a kid, I tried a couple times, there's part of me that always felt like I should be a writer or I wanted to be a writer. But I just didn't write, I managed to get through college with an English Lit degree, writing one creative piece, it was a personal essay. In the style of if you're familiar with Modern Love, the modern love column, it was it was an assignment where we had to write an essay kind of in that style. I didn't take a single creative writing class, I was scared of it, I was scared that I wouldn't be good. I was scared to open myself up and let other people read what I had written. So I just avoided it completely. And it was very difficult for me to write that one essay that I had to write. It wasn't an editing class. Funny enough, but so I really didn't start pursuing writing. until I was about 30. And writing those first couple short stories, again, like I just I felt like I was just kind of swimming upstream the whole time and I didn't know what I was doing. And but that's okay. That's part of how you get better is you just do it.
No one sits down. And the very first thing that they write is absolutely brilliant and perfect how they put it on the page. That just doesn't happen. That's not a thing. And I had such a fixed mindset about it. If you're familiar with the concept of growth mindset and fixed mindset, I should actually should do an episode about that because that's there's enough there for an episode on its own. The concept of fixed mindset and growth mindset. They come from this book called Mindset, the new psychology of success by Carol Dweck. People with a fixed mindset believe that ability abilities and skills are fixed, that you just you're naturally skilled at some things and you're terrible at other things and there's not much you can really do. And also there's no point in doing something if you're not going to be good at it right away. And that is very much how my mindset was, I felt embarrassed because I had been such a reader my whole life such a reader, I was editing things for other people I was very aware of, of things on the page and kind of picking up on what writers were doing, what techniques they were using. But I It wasn't as easy as I thought to translate that into my own writing.
So please, if you are getting started with your writing, like just know, it's okay. It's okay to struggle and feel like the words are not coming in the way that you want them to. That what you have in your head is not being translated onto the page. The way that you work through that is to just write more and to get better. And to let other people give you feedback, people that you trust, and people that are qualified to give you feedback, of course, to take writing classes and listen to podcasts, like this one and read books and to immerse yourself in that world. All of those things can help you get better. But there doesn't need to be this guilt and shame, that I experienced, about not being good right off the bat. I can look back at I really haven't been writing for that many years. And I can look back at early things that I've written. Well, I haven't, haven't looked at those short stories in a while, I probably should just to see how much growth I've gone through. But my writing skill, I got so much better at writing pretty quickly. But I had to suck at first I had to just kind of feel like what am What am I even doing? Why am I doing this, like I had to just accept that I wasn't going to be great at it. But that's okay, I knew that I was gonna get better. So please give yourself permission to do that.
Again, there's so many things I could have talked about in this episode, my idea of writing and what writing was going to be like, at the beginning or before it even started, did not really match the actual reality of writing and in some way whose writing has turned out to be more enjoyable and better and easier than I thought it was going to be. And in some ways, it has turned out to be more difficult and consuming and fraught with with self doubt and fear and all of those things like more than I expected. So really, I had to kind of go through the process of writing books and stories and all of that to get to this point.
Just a reminder, if you find these episodes valuable, if you learned something if you were able to kind of reframe something in your mind a little bit. I would love it if you would write on Apple podcasts or on Spotify, but you can also take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram stories and tag me at the Katie Wolf. I always appreciate you reviewing and sharing to help other people find this podcast. See you all next week.