Hey everyone,
One of the things I love most about writing fiction is that not only do I get to inhabit other characters, people with a worldview different from mine, but if I’ve done my research and job well, I get to see the world from their perspective.
In the last novel that I wrote, I briefly looked at London through the eyes of both a white British woman and an American man. In the book I’m currently writing, I’m looking at small-town England through the eyes of an Asian immigrant and a dystopian India from the perspective of a British diplomat.
What’s been so fascinating— and fun— is looking at the same place through the perspectives of entirely different characters. I find that the experience is so different for each that it may as well be an entirely different place altogether. This is something I’ve been playing with for a long time but that came more into focus more recently with the Black Lives Matter protests. How we can live in the same country, the same neighborhood, the same house even, and have entirely different experiences. I do not experience Britain in the same way my white husband does. And our eight-year-old has already experienced racism in a way that I, not having grown up here, never have.
I never really understood when writers talked about setting and places becoming characters in their own right. But I’m beginning to see it now. How a place can take on a personality of its own through the eyes you see it with. It was at once so obvious and yet so utterly revelatory.
It’s interesting, the more I write and the more experienced a writer I become, the less I feel like I know. The more I cringe at the “do this and you’ll succeed” style of teaching that is so prevalent online and in our industry. It doesn’t take into consideration people’s personalities, their interests, their unique strengths and backgrounds, and their specific points of view.
Success is not a straight line for anyone, but how we each come to it is very dependent on all of those factors. By not taking them into consideration, we not only miss the opportunity to understand and build on our own unique strengths, but also fail to minimize the areas where we hold ourselves back.
When you make decisions in your writing and creative life, you’re not making them exclusively based on best practices. You’re also, whether you realize it or not, making them based on your personality.
When I teach marketing, I know that what gets one person excited will drain the life force out of another. This crystalized for me a few years ago when a writer came to me for help with pitching. She’d had some success with freelancing but was now hitting a wall and she couldn’t figure out why. So we talked and I began to understand what she was doing, what had been working, and why she might be stuck. During our second call, I asked her to stop pitching stories and email editors asking them to meet up instead. Sure enough, the next time we spoke, this writer had called or met up with three editors at top publications but now her pitches were being seen and read, and most importantly, accepted.
I understood, in that first conversation, what this writer had not been able to see for herself. She had a magnetic personality that people really connected to. When she took away the pressure of pitching a story and just relaxed into asking someone out for a coffee or a drink, she was far more effective at it. Mostly because she enjoyed it. Within weeks, she had solid assignments from editors who had never once responded to her pitches.
I’m a big believer that we all need to understand some basic level marketing and knowing how to write a good pitch is one of the best skills a writer can have (so don’t use this example as an avoidance tactic). But if you’re building your business or career exclusively based on best practices without regard to who you are, what you want, and what is aligned for you, then don’t be surprised when you finally build that six-figure business of your dreams only to find that it feels empty and lifeless and all you want to do is burn it to the ground.
I have experienced this personally, as those of you who’ve been here a while know.
It was when I got honest with myself— about what I wanted and what I was willing to do and more importantly, not do, in order to get it— that I was really able to start building a life and business that I not only love, but that I’m wildly passionate about.
I once dreamed that I would spend entire days doing nothing but writing and indeed, most days, that is exactly what I do.
But I had to challenge and give up some solidly held beliefs in order to do so.
Cheers,
Natasha