But I want to share something with you, and I hope it makes your own journey’s easier.

Starting to Make Sense of It All

One of the first books of wisdom I encountered on the road was The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell. From there, I devoured Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey. As I was searching for a way to tighten up the framework of my manuscript, I began to correlate all the brilliant insight from these teachers and various other sources into something I called the Complications Worksheet. I go back to that worksheet each time I start a new project, and the other day while I was on the phone with the brilliant Angela Ackerman (co-author of The Emotion Thesaurus and The Bookshelf Muse blog, I had a revelation. The journey the hero takes in our manuscripts is essentially the same journey many of us take as writers.

THE ORDINARY WORLD

Here we are, bumbling through our careers and family lives, vaguely uneasy and unfulfilled but maybe not even aware that there’s a void inside us, a gaping wound. Why haven’t we written yet? It could be that we tried and failed, or that we had to get on with the business of making a living, or raising kids, or maybe we have a family who has always dismissed writing as a pointless pursuit—something everyone wants to try but only a chosen few achieve. Implying, of course, that we are not good enough. So we shelve our illicit hopes, paint on a smile, and get on with our lives not realizing that something inside is tugging us in a different direction than the path we are still trudging down.

THE CALL TO ADVENTURE

But then . . .

Then we have a dream. Or we read a book, or see a movie, or witness an event that shakes us. Something stirs inside us, an elusive wisp of an idea scented with adventure. It begins to rise and pull us with it, beckoning us to come along, to put our own spin on the wheel of inspiration.

REFUSAL OF THE CALL

Of course we refuse. We’re human. We’re afraid.

We don’t have time, we don’t have money, we don’t have the knowledge to pursue something as overwhelming as writing an actual book.

Or maybe we don’t refuse. Maybe we take those first tentative stops, only to hear someone else, someone who means well, who doesn’t want to see us hurt or disillusioned, make the refusal for us. For our own good. Because really, the idea of writing for publication is absurd, laughable, and we shouldn’t have any um, expectations.

MEETING WITH THE MENTOR

And yet. Someone, somewhere, gives us a few words of encouragement. Maybe it’s something as small as a sentence in the Author’s Note of a book that resonates, or something we read in an interview or on a blog, or maybe we’re lucky enough to know a writer. It could even be that someone reads our first hesitant scribblings and has the kindness not to laugh. These encounters give us our first supplies for the long trek, the first guideposts to set our feet on the long and rocky road. We reach deep and dig out some hidden spring of courage and take that initial, hesitant step.

CROSSING THE THRESHOLD

At the end of Act One, we’ve committed to venturing beyond the Ordinary World of 8 to 5, diapers, homework, cooking dinner, cleaning house. We step into a mist-shrouded swamp, someplace new and different filled with rules we don’t know and emotions we’re not prepared to feel.

TESTS, ALLIES AND ENEMIES

We don’t exist in isolation. Suddenly, we encounter all sorts of other people with feelings and opinions about us and about the journey we are taking.

Some of those people help us, and some make us wish we’d never even thought of writing. Some aren’t actual people at all; our manuscripts themselves serve in the role of every character a hero encounters in his travels: herald, ally, mentor, threshold guardian, villain and enemy, shapeshifter, and trickster. Every role and character tests us in some new way while we sort out its meaning and figure out how to navigate around it or bring it with us. Some of the things we encounter deserve, and need, to be left behind. The people who criticize us to make themselves feel better, the manuscripts that weigh us down and keep us rewriting for seven years. We are better off without them. After a while, that’s easy to see. Other quagmires are harder to recognize. Some people present so much drama we’re worn down trying to help them instead of helping ourselves. Some manuscripts have so much promise that it’s nearly impossible to recognize that they really don’t say anything new that hasn’t been said by a hundred published books already.

We have to fight free of all these things, or drag them with us. Whatever we end up doing, every step of the journey teaches us something about ourselves. Every person, every manuscript, every misstep, every small success helps us settle into the voice that will shape our themes and writing.

APPROACH

Finally, we approach the biggest obstacle. At the time, we probably don’t even know it’s going to be that hard. We’ve got the manuscript written. Rewritten. Edited. Refined. Polished.

We think the story is solid: plenty of conflict, no plot holes, no sagging middle, no weak Peggy-Sue characters. The writing shines.

We’ve gathered our critique partners, our beta readers, and they have trained with us, cheered for us, pushed us until we know that we are ready to battle through to submission. And make no mistake, querying the marketplace is the biggest battle we will face.

THE ORDEAL

We prepare the list of agents or publishers to query, and we think that puts us almost at the end of our journey. In truth, we have barely reached the midpoint.

But it is the most crucial point, the initial test.

Did we do more than write a book? Did we write a saleable book, a book that’s unique, a book that’s the right marriage of story and writing craft? One that readers will eventually hold in their hands and make greater by bringing their own experiences and ideas into the reading?

Addressing this question, we face our greatest fear, the question of worthiness. Have we spent months, years, writing something no one will ever read? We die a little each time we obsessively check the inbox and read another rejection letter.

THE REWARD
Rejection sucks. 

Art is subjective. 

THE ROAD BACK

Having come through the initial battle, we regroup. 

THE RESURRECTION

The faster we race toward that finish line, the more painful it is to trip and fall. But we will go splat at some point. Guaranteed. Painfully so. 

At the climax of the writer’s journey, we are going to be tested again. Usually when we think we can see a champagne bottle set out on the table for us. 

At that moment, while we’re lying curled in a fetal position on the steps leading to the podium and whimpering silently for chocolate, the thought of picking ourselves up and facing the humiliatiom or rejection seems like more heartbreak than we can bear. 

But wait! 

W can pick ourselves up and keep climbing the stairs and laugh in the face of the fall, at least outwardly, or we can lay there in a puddle of tears and wait for Hugh Jackman to come along and pick us up. And while that is REALLY tempting, how much more empowering is it to just get up and laugh?

Everything we create comes from within us. By sharing it with the world, we lay ourselves naked for judgment and ridicule. That’s painful. It’s hard. It’s the writer’s battle. Sometimes it can feel as if death would be easier. Of course it’s easier to give up at this point.

Yep. Writing fiction is hard. But it is both a selfish and selfless endeavor. 

The moment of communion when a reader feels a book was written just for them—we’ve all felt like this when reading, right?—is what lets a book live on and grow beyond us. It’s the elixir we are all hoping to find and bring back. The writer’s holy grail. 

If we want, need, that elixir, we will pick ourselves up after that long night of the soul.

We will be reborn into a world that’s very much bigger even than the one that we believed we had found. We finally know how very little we actually know, and we see the breadth of what we have yet to learn. That in itself is staggering! But if we are committed to a lifetime of learning, experimenting, reaching, we will get through it. 

Believe.

The result you get may not be publication or reaching the New York Times bestseller list. Of course I’m not promising that. But let’s face it–not even that would necessarily satisfy the need of every writer. That’s an external goal, and truly that’s only half the journey. The external part. The internal part is the most important. 

Every book is a brand new journey.

“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.” ~ Joseph Campbell

Write for yourself.