What Do Writers Want?

I am delighted to welcome today to KCB my fellow Climbing Ivy Press author and fellow Brown alum, Brookline writer Susan Meyers, author of Check This Box If You Are Blind, now out in paperback and Kindle edition. Here is Susan blogging on the subject of what writers want once that long-anticipated book finally comes out. --Cheers! Kim

What do writers want, really?

The answer isn't complicated.
Writers want to hear these five words:  You're such a good writer.
Or these five words: You really made me think.
Or these: Your book changed my life.

A needy bunch, aren't we?

I've thought a great deal about publishing over the past year. My memoir, Check This Box If You Are Blind, was published last June by Climbing Ivy Press. It had taken ages to write, but the extra time and endless revisions had paid off handsomely, I thought. I had coaxed onto the page a brave, funny story about my complicated relationship with my brother, a blind man who refuses to admit that he can't see for beans. Some writers, and this is what happened to me, are private people with personal stories that they feel compelled to write.

The trouble arrives when we leap over the garden hedge. We go from private acts of writing to public acts of printing out and passing around.

Publication.  Could there be a blander, more bureaucratic-sounding word for what we writers do with our freshest, most electric work?

The dictionary defines publication as the act of bringing before the public, and there are many ways to achieve this today. It can be as simple as printing a few pages and handing them around in a workshop . . . or signing up to have your book printed on demand . . . or finding an agent, wooing a publisher, and then choosing a cover design.

Some writers don't seem to need readers, and actually I felt just this way when I was younger. But last spring, as I finished my memoir, I felt for the first time that I wanted readers. Lots of them. Publication didn't sound blah to me anymore. It sounded, after the long nourishing meal of writing, like the chocolate eclair for dessert.

And yet, I felt uneasy about it (see private people/personal stories, above). I was so invested in the story I had written. Rewritten. Revised. Revised again. I'd poured myself out, mostly in solitude, at moments uncertain about what I'd gotten down on paper. Now I was opening myself up to reactions, feedback, responses.

Writing can be a pretty messy process. It's amazing how neat and tidy published writing often looks. It's like a magic trick. I still want to laugh, sometimes, when I hand someone my book, because I have such an intimate knowledge of the mess that came first.

And so, for all of these reasons, I had my trepidations. Fellow writers, I am happy to report that most friends and family members (let's leave reviewers out of this) have a sense of how vulnerable a writer can feel when they publish. The compliments, comments, questions I have fielded have been, almost without exception, supportive and wonderful.

Readers, please celebrate your writer friends when they publish. Lukewarm praise is hard for us to stomach. So please avoid this pat on the head: How great that you finished! And here's my pet peeve, the comment I really dislike: What's next? Please, can't we just celebrate this one first?

We writers also want to hear that what we've written is meaningful. We want to hear that our writing matters. We want you to confirm that you are here in this brief life with us, and that we have reached you with our words: That we have shared something important.

Which come to think of it, is something we all want. --Posted by Susan Meyers, January 16, 2012

Susan Meyers' delightful memoir, Check This Box If You Are Blind, is now out and available for purchase in paperback and on the Kindle. PURCHASE NOW.  You can also follow THIS LINK to watch Susan's kick-ass book trailer on You Tube.