Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

"'The funny thing is that if you were a millionaire like some of these managing directors shaking down seven figures a year, you'd have known to push your way ahead and fill your plate. Rich people can't get enough of the free stuff.' Walter shrugged. There was no reproach in his tone; in fact, there was a wistful admiration in his voice, as if he were beginning to understand how the world worked."

That's a bit of clever dialogue and a life lesson from first-time novelist, Min Jin Lee.

She converted her experiences of rubbing elbows with money and power in the novel, Free Food for Millionaires. Lee will be our special guest next week, serving up practical life lessons from her writing career.

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog: 

It took you five years to finish this book. How did you survive the rejections and struggles of your difficult first-novel days? How did you balance your day job and your writing career?

Min Jin Lee: 

 I found the rejections and struggles very difficult. After my first novel was rejected, and after I realized that I couldn’t finish my two other novel attempts, I was demoralized. Continue reading...

I wish I could tell you something different. I thought about giving up a lot. I wrote little things here and there, because I was trying to learn more technique. I had a romantic notion that if I knew more about storytelling then somehow, my prose would just be better, somehow, be publication worthy.

Stories (and the impulse to tell them), I don’t think can be given or taught, but I continue to believe that a person can learn how to write better. I think you can write much better sentences and scenes through education and practice. W

hat I have come to realize is that much of fiction can be learned best by fooling around and writing loads of bad pages. I wrote some doozies. I wish there was a short cut, but there wasn’t one for me.

I took many writing classes (not with a formal MFA program, though I would have liked that, I think), and I read and re-read all the time. I felt sorry for myself, too, because I couldn’t figure out an easier way.

My day job: I am a housewife and mother. I cook, clean and pick up my kid at school and help him with his homework. I pay the bills, stock the fridge, and do all sorts of unbelievably tedious and necessary stuff that housewives and moms do. When my son is sick with a cold, my workday as a writer is shot.

I couldn’t work every day at a set time, but honestly, I don’t think there is a fiction writer out there, especially, someone without a major book (and even so), who can pull a 9 to 5 day writing fiction. If there is one, more power to her.

For the rest of us, I think this is some sort of unhealthy fantasy that prevents folks from writing. For me, I wrote when my son was at school, at night when everyone was asleep, and on Saturdays when my son was doing sports with my husband.

One of the things about failing/waiting for a long time (it took twelve years to publish my first novel) is that it tests your commitment. I was unhappy—that was true, but I was committed to this idea that I would keep writing. I could not quit. I had this fanciful notion that I had stories to tell, but I had to learn how to do it in the best form possible.

For me, learning how to write omniscient narration was like cracking this code. I think the best way to approach writing fiction (basically, writing stuff with almost no expectation of success, money or recognition) is to fit it into your life in bits and pieces—to never expect this vast stretch of free time or windfall of funds where you can “just write.”

I think a writer should expect discouragement but persist anyway. For what it’s worth, I think the process should provide most of the nourishment, but I would never lie to you and tell you that I wasn’t discouraged. I felt humiliated. A lot.