GUEST POST: So Much Advice, So Little Time to Write

The best guidance builds confidence, community, and good writing

It thrills me to welcome my very first guest writer to Jasmin’s Jargon! Carrie Lou Hamilton is someone I have long admired. She’s an author with a particular passion for feminism, drug reform, and veganism. (She also has excellent taste in eyewear.) What resonates most with me about her guest essay is the idea that we sometimes hide behind getting advice instead of just going ahead and doing the thing. But don’t take it from me. Carrie has a way with words — not to mention big concepts and an even bigger vision of what a truly empathic society could look like. But like any good writer and dedicated change-maker, before we can achieve that radically compassionate existence, we must put pen to paper. In Carrie’s case, she’ll do so urgently, “pen in fist.” Pen in Fist is her Substack newsletter focusing on writing and activism. Beginning this fall, the newsletter will include monthly interviews with other activist writers. And now, without further ado …

 

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When I gave up my full-time academic job to go freelance a few years ago, I was overwhelmed by what I thought I had to learn to make that leap. I was an experienced and published writer, but as I moved from scholarly work to other forms of nonfiction, surrounded by successful freelancers half my age, I felt like a clueless amateur. 

Desperate to catch up, I threw myself into writers’ workshops and courses. I gorged on online advice. I read and listened to guidance on how to develop a writing routine, how to write accessible prose, how to pitch, how to expand my audience, how to find an agent, how and where to publish, how to market my work, how to boost my social media profile, how to tap into my inner writerly soul.

Some of this information was sound and valuable, but much was redundant and obvious. Eventually, I realized seeking others’ advice was becoming an alibi for procrastination. It fed into my self-consciousness instead of building confidence and the skills I needed.

The more classes and inspirational talks I signed up for, the less time I had to write.

If the number of writing courses, workshops, and coaches out there is anything to go by, I’m not alone in being bombarded with suggestions on how, when, and where to write and publish. The historian in me was curious about this. How did the great writers of the past get along without creative writing programs or online masters courses? Why were so many published writers spending their time telling others how to write instead of, well, writing?

The answer, my friends, is money. It’s not that writers are greedy. It’s that very few can pay the bills on a writer’s income alone. According to a recent article in the Guardian, in the UK the average professional writer (defined as someone who dedicates 50% or more of their working time to writing) earns £7000 (around US $9000) a year — less than a third of the recommended minimum annual income for a single person. Not only does this make a writing career “inaccessible and unsustainable for too many” (most notably, writers of color and those from working-class backgrounds), but it also means most writers are forced to turn to other activities to supplement their income.

I don’t judge or begrudge people who offer writing-adjacent services so they can — to use another bit of freelance lingo — diversify their income stream. I too have been paid to teach writing workshops, and I’ve paid others for professional advice. New writers and those breaking into new genres can learn from people with more experience. And teaching and coaching, like writing, are forms of work that should be compensated. But like most guidance, writing advice is best taken — and given — strategically, to help writers reach our goals, whether those be starting a newsletter, pitching to a high-end magazine, or gathering the courage to do a first poetry reading to a small group of friends.

Changing career and learning new skills takes time, and usually some cash. But there’s the risk of reinventing the wheel. By binging on others’ expertise, I was taking a negative approach, focusing on what I didn’t know instead of building on what I did.

For example, I’m confident conducting research and structuring an argument, but as a nonfiction writer I have lots to learn from novelists and poets about word choice, shaping narrative, and creating vivid description. As a professional editor, I’m trained to watch out for obtuse prose and repetition in others’ writing; but it’s a lot trickier to turn that critical eye to my own prose. I recently reread a piece I wrote about Prozac Nation after Elizbeth Wurztel died in 2020. I was still happy with the main ideas, but I cringed at the paragraphs that cried out for tightening. I’m still signing up for those self-editing courses.

Then there’s all the practical stuff about publishing and publicizing. It’s sometimes said that writing and marketing are separate skillsets and few people have both. That may be true, but writers who develop some talent for marketing are more likely to expand their readerships and earn money from their writing. For someone who came of age in the pre-digital era, none of this comes naturally. So, I turn to people in the know to get a handle on social media.

The advice I find least useful — what really turns me off — is the stuff that’s obsessed with metrics (“Boost those likes!” “Maximize your followers and subscribers!” “Generate clicks and $$ by publishing listicles!”). Self-styled experts who promise that anyone can be a bestseller and make a fortune with the right attitude and enough hard work turn writing into a competition. They ignore the inequalities built into the system, and don’t seem very interested in the quality of the writing. Of course, we all need readers, but we also need to trust those readers to value our style and what we have to say.

While preparing this post, I’ve been rereading my favorite books by Minnie Bruce Pratt, the lesbian poet and essayist who died earlier this summer. Though she’s best known for her writing on feminism, sexuality, and anti-racism, some of Pratt’s finest prose focuses on the politics of money, and the challenges of surviving on a poet’s and teacher’s salary while struggling for social and economic justice for all. In the essay When the Words Open, she writes about coming out as a lesbian writer in the 1970s and 1980s:

How did we find each other? We made a political movement and a culture: we taught ourselves to speak, to write, to sing … with the firm rule that no “stars” would be paid and brought us in to teach us how to write; we would teach each other. And that is how I learned to be a lesbian poet: other lesbians taught me.

Pratt was writing before the mainstreaming of queer literature, in an era when collective-run feminist presses flourished. Both the opportunities and the market have changed since then. But writing collectives and communities continue to thrive, both online and in person.

It’s in these spaces that I’ve found people whose writing I admire and whose values I share, who provide advice on everything from rhyming to rates. As Pratt’s exquisite and fiercely committed writing attests, it’s not a matter of choosing good writing over earning a decent living. The challenge lies in developing ways to support one another as we write, individually, together.

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Carrie Lou Hamilton is a writer, teacher and translator based in London. She’s the author of the book Veganism, Sex and Politics: Tales of Danger and Pleasure and Pen In Fist, a monthly newsletter on activism and writing.