Welcome to my new series, Inspiration Fridays! In this series, I meditate on a quote from the current featured book. Today, I’m talking about this quote from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones:
“For every book that makes it, there are probably thousands that don’t even get published. We must continue anyway. If you want to write, write. If one book doesn’t get published, write another one. Each one will get better because you have all the more practice behind you.”
Yes, this week I’m asking us to face a hard, cold truth about publishing.
The odds are against us. And—I hate to say it—they’re even more against us than when Goldberg wrote this statement in the 1980s.
I’m not going to go too deep into numbers, but we don’t need numbers to know that we’re living in an age of book oversaturation—both published and unpublished. You can see it in the way literary agents constantly need to close their inboxes because they’re drowning in queries. You can see it in the book bargain bins at grocery stores. And you can see it in the skyrocketing numbers of titles—traditional and indie—published every year.
To put this into perspective: in 2005, not quite 300,000 titles were published (both self and traditional) in the US according to this article. Now, that number is around 3 million—over 2 million self-published, about 1 million traditionally-published.
Exponentially more people are writing and—thanks to the sharp rise in indie publishing—putting their writing out there than ever, ever before.
Write because you have something to say, because you have stories to tell, because it excites you and makes you feel alive.
This isn’t a bad thing (although the article I referenced above would have you believe so). In fact, I think it’s a great thing. This means more people are awakening their creativity, more people are chasing a dream, more people are learning new skills, overcoming fears, and tapping into new sides of themselves through the act of writing and publishing.
To Goldberg, it’s not the glory of successful publication that should keep us going—it’s those things I just listed above and much more. Prioritizing creativity. Overcoming fear and imposter syndrome. Exploring ourselves. Exploring our world. Dreaming up new ones.
“If you want to write, write.” Goldberg says.” Write because you have something to say, because you have stories to tell, because it excites you and makes you feel alive.
If you want to get published and be commercially successful, that’s fine, too. But don’t value what you’ve written based on that goal alone. Don’t decide to stop writing just because your book or poem or short story or article didn’t succeed. Don’t stake all your hopes and dreams on that one piece, no matter how convinced you are that it’s brilliant and life-changing and that the world desperately needs it. “Don’t,” as agent and editor Mary Kole once said in a workshop I attended, “be precious.”
Instead, put it aside; “write another one.” It may hurt to move on, but it has to be done. In this world, it’s an essential survival skill.
The more you write—the more you dedicate yourself to honing your skills and improving one step at a time—the more likely you will eventually meet with success.
Nothing about writing is easy. Nothing about publishing is easy.
“Continue anyway.”
Related: "Learning to Write Is Not a Linear Process": Inspiration Friday with WRITING DOWN THE BONES
Watch for more meditations on Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, and happy writing!