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Can I Be Honest About a Struggle I Have With This Writing Life?

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Can I be honest about a struggle I have with this writing life? Because recently I went from typing happily to realizing my forehead was flat on the desk.

It went like this. My agent asked me to write up a book proposal for an idea I’ve been toying around with for a long time. She sent me a template to use, and this template was a book proposal recently written by a very popular author for a book the author proposed to write. I’ve been working on my proposal for the last week or so, off and on, going back and forth from this author’s template to my own proposal. I wrote the summary, the bio, and the chapter-by-chapter synopsis.

At one point during the chapter synopsis, I started to get really excited about the book. The chapters felt compelling, the narrative smooth and intriguing and fun. This could be good, I thought. This might just work.

That is the typing happily part.

Then I got to the part in the proposal about platform – you know, how many Facebook fans, how many people read my blog on a daily basis, how many Twitter followers. That kind of thing. But the problem was that I was using this other writer’s book proposal as a template, so I got to see her platform. Her numbers. Her following.

It was probably twenty times bigger than mine. This is the part when my forehead hit the desk.

You know the flubbery, spitting sound a balloon makes when you blow it up but release it before tying it off? That’s basically what happened to me when I saw those towering platform numbers. How can I ever compare to that? What publisher would ever want to publish my book when that author’s numbers are so much higher than mine?

I love writing. I’m a decent writer. I’m so far behind where I should be. I suck.

That was the basic progression.

* * * * *

I’ve learned something, though. At this point in my life, when I start to feel that frantic, chaotic voice invading my head space, I know what to do.

Sit in silence.

Go down deeper.

Listen.

You know what I heard in that silence? The first thing was that comparing myself to any other writer is silliness, a fruitless exercise. I am who I am. I write what I write. I have the audience I have. And, today, that’s good enough. What a relief.

Then, a second thought – when I bemoan my own platform, I’m saying that you guys, my readers, aren’t important enough. When I give into this thinking that my audience isn’t big enough, it’s like I’m wishing you all away for a different crowd. And I wouldn’t do that. I love the crowd I write for. I’m honored that you folks show up and read these words. Sometimes I can’t believe how many there are of you.

Thank you so much for doing that.

* * * * *

All of this to say one thing: the work that each of us is doing is enough. Keep going, friend! Do what’s in front of you to do. No comparisons allowed. One more step. Then another. We’ll get to the top of the mountain soon enough.

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In Which I Have Trouble Making Up My Mind

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I don’t normally share my newsletter posts over here, but I thought yesterday’s newsletter was one I wanted all of my blog readers to catch. (Also, why haven’t you subscribed to my newsletter yet? It’s so simple – you can do it HERE.)

When I left Facebook and Twitter six weeks ago, I wrote a farewell blog post. Maybe social media doesn’t play much of a role in your life, but for me it was a big deal – it felt like I was leaving some dear friends, and I wondered how in the world I would continue to expand my reach as an author without the tools of Facebook and Twitter.

But I also felt an immense sense of peace. Social media had grown into a time-consuming, distracting, noisy force in my life, and I needed a break. As I stepped away, it was with a strong sense that it would be a very long time before I returned. I certainly didn’t think that a mere six weeks later I’d be reconsidering my decision.

The primary force in getting me back into the social media circus is the fact that I recently signed with a literary agent. I reached out to various agents, through a few close writer friends, with the hope that an agent might help me take that next step in my career as a co-writer/ghostwriter, linking me up with more and higher profile jobs. As my agent and I spoke, she expressed her conviction that she could do that for me – but she also wondered if I had any book ideas of my own that she could try to sell to publishers. That sounded exciting.

As we wrapped up our conversation, she said something that left me with the realization that I had a decision to make.

“Okay,” she said, “Get working on your platform. Try to get your numbers back up.”

* * * * *

Social media silence can be a very healthy thing. It can give you the space you need to reevaluate how you’re interacting with the world. It can give you a quiet dwelling, the ability to actually hear and discern the driving voices in your head. But for some of us, either because of our careers or our personalities, social media can also be a huge tool, a wonderful way of staying in touch, or the thing that keeps us from becoming too isolated from the rest of the world.

Just as I was asking myself some tough questions (“Am I selling out by returning? But I miss my friends – wouldn’t it be nice to be back on Facebook and Twitter? How will I keep it from taking over my life again?), I read this, one of my favorite passages from Thomas Merton’s book New Seeds of Contemplation:

“But if you try to escape from this world merely by leaving the city and hiding yourself in solitude, you will only take the city with you into solitude; and yet you can be entirely out of the world while remaining in the midst of it, if you let God set you free from your own selfishness and if you live for love alone.”

You know, there is a way for all of us to find the silence we need, even in the midst of social media’s chaos, the 24-hour news cycle’s din, the bickering of politics. We can take part in these things and still experience a life-giving practice of silence, if we can step away from our selfishness, if we can set our sights on living a life of love.

So I guess this is the next challenge for me. Returning from my solitude, yet somehow keeping the wonderful peace I found. I hope you’ll keep traveling with me. I think we all still have a lot to learn when it comes to silence, solitude, and living the best life we can…even with Facebook’s little red numbers flashing on our screens.

BIG QUESTION: What are social media’s positive affects in your own life? How do you keep a balance between its noise and finding the silence we all need?

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A Peek Inside My Office (or, The Case of the Broken Prayer Beads)

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Go ahead, open the door to my study. The room is messy. My small desk is covered in books written by friends. There are more stacks of books on the floor. On the door hangs a framed saying that my friend Bryan Allain gave me. It’s a John Irving quote from one of my favorite books, A Prayer For Owen Meany:

“If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”

Look to the left – there’s a seven foot high bookshelf. On one of the shelves is a small glass bowl, and in the bowl lies a mound of beads, a string, some decorative silver pieces. These are the remnants of the prayer beads I bought in Istanbul when I was writing the life story of a man named Stan Steward. He was dying of cancer, he became my friend, and he passed away about six months after I finished writing the book. Now he’s buried somewhere along the Euphrates River.

The thread snapped one day while I carried the beads in my pocket, and now they are there in that bowl, waiting for me to restring them. But it’s not time yet. I don’t know why not. For now, I look at them and sometimes I pick a few of them up and stare into their cloudy whiteness, and they remind me that I will not be here forever. They remind me that my friend Stan is gone. They remind me that there is more to life than the books I want to write, the audience I try to please, the platform I try to build.

* * * * *

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about things like perseverance, fear, and the power of time. I’ve examined my willingness to stick with something for the long haul. I wonder if my past failures (or non-successes) have affected my ability to start new things with passion and commitment. Maybe the last five things haven’t taken off the way I’ve wanted them to – does this mean I should lessen my hope, have “more realistic expectations”?

I’m not sure. These are all questions I mull over.

* * * * *

I was watching a show recently where two men tried to climb a mesa in Utah, one of those steep, rocky plateaus. They had to go sideways along the cliffs for a long, long time before they found a way to the top.

Are we willing to climb, not up, but sideways, for months, years, decades even? Are we willing to do the hard work, the regular everyday work, the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other work?

We need to spend more time celebrating the fact that we are HERE – wherever HERE is. Because we have all arrived HERE with great effort, along trails fraught with danger, the summit constantly in view but for most of us, for now, inaccessible. For once, let’s not worry about THERE. Let’s celebrate HERE.

And if you’ve found a way of life you love, for goodness sake, find the courage to live it.

What aspects of your life right now do you need courage in order to live?

I decided to walk away from my Facebook and Twitter accounts in June (you can read more about that HERE), at least for a time, so this little space of mine depends entirely on you to spread the word. If you read something you enjoy, please share it.

Also, if you’d like to receive my twice-monthly newsletter (basically a few bonus blog posts every month plus information on upcoming books) you can sign up for that HERE.

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The Long Lines Between Us

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Abra walks with me to work
her pink flip-flops flapping the sidewalk
all the way to the cafe,  where she
sits on the tall red chair
huddled behind a swimming pool
of hot chocolate, and cuts out
photos from her magazines
to go with the letters at the top
of the worksheet: M and N and O.

Across from her
in my own red chair
I work with words to help a family
tell the story of their daughter, how she
pulled her hair out by its roots
strand by strand
how she cut long lines in her pale arms
with a broken tape case
how she poured her old pills
into a mason jar
where it stratified, a rainbow
of sand art, documenting everything
that didn’t work.

Abra draws long lines on her
paper, a rainbow of colors
and somehow gets hot chocolate on
her forehead, a dark mark on her
pale skin. We laugh, and I wipe
it off, and we watch the traffic go by below us
on Prince Street. Then, as Abra sits across
from me reading The Moffats,

I spill the words, the story of this tired
young girl, twenty years ago, who wrote her last
journal entry, explained how she would not
make it through October
how the pain was world-heavy
how she planned on walking into the water.

She was a little girl, once.

Life with my Abra is August, and it is hot.
Nothing like that October when the girl
walked into the water, nothing like that.
October has smooth breezes and rainbow leaves.
August shadows are dim and uncertain,  like
underwater lines – October shadows are long and
sharp.

The cafe windows are clouded with dust. There
is no clear view of the sky.

Abra and I walk home along the lines of traffic,
past cars idling,
waiting for the light to turn,
waiting in the August heat. We walk Prince Street, and
I hold her hand the entire way.

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The Long, Slow Road to the Top

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Sam, taking in the Grand Tetons, standing on the edge of Yellowstone National Park.

It was just over three years ago that my family and I took a four-month trip around the United States in a big, blue bus named Willie. We left in February, and it was in the early spring days of May that we arrived at the base of the Tetons and began the long, slow trek to the top. I’m not sure that I would recommend driving a 20,000-pound vehicle up a 10% grade on a winding, two-lane road.

That diesel engine chugged along so slowly that at some points it felt like we might start coasting backwards. My hands were white-knuckle grasping the wheel, not because of the speed at which we traveled, but precisely because of how SLOW our progress was. We followed hairpin turns and chugged along narrow stretches without guard rails, sections where we could look down on either side and see rubble and evergreens and wilderness.

The journey to the top of that mountain range was tedious and heart-burn inducing. It was much slower than we would have liked. The road up was perilous and beautiful.

But the view at the top was breathtaking.

(Yes, I know, we did lose our brakes on the way down, but let’s put that to the side for a moment.)

* * * * *

My point is this: you have a long, difficult road ahead.

Encouraging, eh?

I think it’s important to realize this and settle in for the long haul. Our culture has sort of arrived at this point where the prevalent message is IMMEDIATE SUCCESS and SHOOTING STAR and UNEXPECTED RISE TO THE TOP. Businesses should be immediately successful, musicians should be selling tens of thousands of albums tomorrow, writers should be on the best-seller list within a few months of the release of their first book.

The top is right there, within your grasp! WHAT IS TAKING YOU SO LONG?

When the trajectory of our rise is not as fast or as famous, it’s easy to get discouraged.

Don’t get discouraged. Keep plugging away. Keep your foot on the accelerator. Keep moving forward.

* * * * *

This morning Maile and I sat at the table at 4:45am drinking coffee and having a delicious, quiet morning before the kids descended. We don’t always wake up so early. I happened upon a list of the books I’ve written in the last six years, since the beginning of this crazy adventure of ours in which I decided to try to write for a living. There are nineteen books on that list, some traditionally published, some self-published, some not yet published.

That means I’ve written around a million words worth of books.

I’m closing in on my 1,000th blog post. That’s approximately 500,000 words of blog posts.

And you know what? I don’t have any best sellers to my name. I haven’t made millions of dollars. Very few people have ever heard of me and my writing. In fact, I only had my first serious conversation with a literary agent earlier this week. After six years of writing. After 1.5 million words.

It’s been a long, slow, precipitous road.

* * * * *

Let’s keep going, you and I. Let’s keep our foot on the accelerator. Let’s not worry about the select few who shoot past us on their motorcycles, racing to the peak. The top will still be there when we arrive, whatever that might look like. It will still be there. I promise.

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The Real Reason I’m Leaving Facebook and Twitter

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There is this incredible scene in the movie version of The Lord of the Rings where Frodo offers Lady Galadriel the One Ring. His offer surprises her, and she imagines what she could accomplish with that kind of power:

In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!

As she speaks she seems to grow in size and her voice becomes terrible and massive. But then, somehow, she refuses the Ring. Somehow, she turns away from all of that “potential.” She suddenly seems older, almost frail. But also relieved:

I have passed the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.

Choosing to diminish is perhaps one of the most counter-cultural things we might choose these days. Choosing to become less (or perhaps to remain who we truly are instead of seeking to be something greater) is the hard way of downward mobility Henri Nouwen talks about.

Why not put the things you know are important, things like your family or your community or your true calling, on the back burner while you take some time to make money, to grow your following, to build a career?

This is the question we are confronted with every day, and how we answer will determine the course of our lives.

* * * * *

We are, all of us, offered Rings of Power. We are all, from time to time, presented with things that, if we take them, promise to increase our platform, our influence, our own little kingdoms. But there is always a price.

Always a price.

Recently I’ve realized that, for me, one of those little tiny Rings of Power is Facebook. That might sound kind of funny to you. Innocent little Facebook? Maybe for you, Facebook is not a problem, but for me? Facebook whispers many promises, the kind that appeal to me and my own deep-seated issues.

“Look at how much they like you,” FB whispers.

“You’re a good writer – the likes are evidence of this.”

“Look how popular you are – so many friends and fans and followers.”

“I’ll help you sell books,” Facebook reasons. “How will you tell anyone your new book is out if I’m not around to help?”

“Publishers won’t be interested in your work if you’re not on Facebook,” Facebook says.

Facebook knows how to speak my language (as each of our own Rings of Power know how to do), and the reasons pile up on one side of the scale, daunting and beautiful and so weighty, so important.

On the other side of the scale, measured up against all of those appealing, valuable, rational reasons for staying on Facebook, are the weightless, powerless, plain-vanilla-kind-of-reasons. These reasons comes to me in a still, small voice, the kind of voice that is not overpowering in the least, the kind of voice I have found easy to ignore in the past. The voice whispers, “Your life is too noisy, your mind is too cluttered. You need to trust that I will make you everything you need to be, that I will give you good gifts. You need to trust that I will not forget about you.”

They sit on the other side of the scale, the weightless reasons, full of silence, simplicity, and trust.

* * * * *

One of the things I heard loud and clear during my 48 hours of silence a few weeks ago was this: “Withdraw from social media. Look for truth and love in the silence. Spend less time caring how many likes you get and more time breathing, more time listening.” I came back determined to do exactly that, but I am learning something about myself: I do not have the strength, right now, to turn away. (Even this moment, as I write, I am checking for likes on something I posted a few minutes ago.) I am not like my wife, who has a FB account she rarely checks. I’m addicted to what Facebook has to offer, and the only freedom for me is the freedom that comes in giving it up completely.

This voice, what it is asking me to do, it doesn’t make any sense. By all accounts, a writer such as me should be building a platform, not dismantling a section of it. I should be posting multiple times a day, using Facebook to grow my reach and my readership. I should use it to become friends with influential individuals. I should be targeting likes and shares and using Facebook to make my voice louder.

But I’ve learned something these last five or six years – when that still small voice speaks, even if what it says doesn’t seem to make any sense, listen. When it tells you to sell and move, do it. When it tells you to go on a cross-country adventure, listen. When it suggests you go on that overseas trip even though you’re in the middle of a tough time financially, go.

The problem with Facebook and social media is that, for most of us, it becomes the noise that blocks out the still, small voice. We forget how to listen. We become battered, driven by the noise around us, the noise that at first has so much to offer, the noise that speaks to the wounded parts of us. So we join in, we shout a little louder. We lose sight of the fact that suddenly all we’re doing is screaming to the world…about ourselves.

“Look at me! Look at me!” we plead, trying harder and harder to project our voice above the chaos. But the louder we shout, the smaller we become.

I’ve become so small. So silly. I’m sorry I haven’t been a better listener. I’m sorry I’ve added to the noise in your life.

* * * * *

I have to be honest: in my heart, I’m still not okay with diminishing. I still want to be famous and popular. Like Galadriel, I want my own little kingdom to be “stronger than the foundations of the earth.”

But I also know the relief that will come at the end of the week when I deactivate my FB and Twitter accounts. When I click those buttons and no longer have access to those particular addictions. In that moment, I will have passed a test. A small test, perhaps, but I will have chosen to diminish. I will have chosen to remain me.

Can it be that the meaning in my life has less to do with having thousands of “followers” than it does knowing the people who live in this small part of my own city? Can I somehow believe that the new creature I am destined to become might not be bigger or fancier or more popular, but smaller and kinder and simpler?

Simply me. Only me.

I’m starting to believe “me” might just be good enough.

* * * * *

Farewell, Facebook and Twitter. I say that with a little disappointment, a little sadness, a tinge of anxiety, and a huge sense of relief.

Farewell.

* * * * *

I’ll share this post through the weekend and then close my accounts. After that I’ll still be blogging about once a week and sending out an email newsletter a few times a month (you can subscribe to that in the upper right corner of this page). I’ve met so many wonderful friends through Facebook and Twitter over the last few years, and I hope we stay in touch. You can always contact me through the blog or email me at shawnsmucker(at)yahoo(dot)com.