Education. There’s no specific degree path- and no particular school that will help you kick in the door of publishers- though the elites might tell you differently. Well, they never tell you much- they just make sure they are on the inside and to hell with everyone else. But we know that their privilege is just the tin foil on the chocolate rabbit. We know because we make the chocolate. Any institution of higher learning in the United States that is accredited and has a library will afford you the opportunity to soar. The label is just a label.
There’s no template to getting published either- well, maybe someone somewhere has an “in”- but the career will not sustain itself beyond the first outing if you are not in control of it. The truth is,- it’s you and your view of things- through the eyes of your characters in the world they live in, that you created and understand so deeply that we crave. We want to know who you are when we pick up your novel- and we will soon find out, and over time too, if you’re the real deal and continue to write great books.
This may be why (and I’m just guessing here) that through all of history, storytellers carry the narrative forward from generation to generation. Historians do what they can and must- but novelists tell you how folks were feeling- what mattered to them- and how they loved. Writers write their stories, and within them, they see humanity as it is- or was, in the case of historical fiction- but all of it, somehow rounds the bend back to empathy. Do I feel what you feel, do we understand one another, are we open to the experience of living no matter what that experience might be? Can we go deep? If I’m hurting, will your story comfort me? Will I be afraid? Will I be hungry? Can we tell the truth, in a world that is completely created in the eye of the subconscious, fed by a voracious imagination? If so, take my job. And it’s a sincere offer. Write to hold on to one another- write to find reason in a world where there is none; write to get to the root- and tell us what it’s like in the process.
And describe it.
Yes, all of it. The room, the view from the window, the cup of coffee in your hands and the weather. Tell me a story as only you can and I’m yours.
