The Power to Encourage Other Writers

Ever since the Pasadena Festival of Women Authors a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about the power that writers have to encourage other writers.

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how well-established writers can drop the tiniest of phrases, apparently not even meaning to inspire their less-experienced peers, and change the course of their lives forever.

That may sound hyperbolic, but I’m not kidding. It was a theme among the writers that spoke at the festival. As it was last year, and as it is when most writers talk about their journey to completing their first novel.

Now-Famous Writers Get Inspired

Jung Yun talked about being an administrative assistant when she dared to admit to an author whom she admired that she wanted to write fiction too. The way she told it, he crossed one leg over the other, threaded his fingers around his knee and said “so what are you working on” and she was done for. Such a vivid memory.

Then there was Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney. I loved this. She had convinced herself, in her 20s, that she “just didn’t write fiction.” She had tried and failed. It just wasn’t her thing. In her forties, a friend of hers (who was a published fiction writer) read one of her essays and told her she should be writing fiction. When Cynthia gave her usual “I don’t write fiction” response, the friend leaned close and said slowly, something like “put it third, change the names, and make some shit up.” And boom. She started writing fiction.

I’ve heard so many writers talk about these types of moments. And maybe it’s because they’re writers, but they tell them in such vivid detail. They are clearly pivotal moments.

My Own Story

I’m no famous novelist, but if I ever am, I’ll have one of these moments to share, too.

It was 2009. I had just wrapped my third semester at USC, in a masters program for writing, and had taken Janet Fitch‘s class on writing fiction. I really admire her as a writer.

The director of the program hooked me up to work the front check-in desk at the PEN Literary Awards night in Beverly Hills. I ran into Janet Fitch in the bathroom, and as we were saying hello, in walked Sandra Tsing Loh. Janet introduced me. I told Sandra that I was signed up for her memoir class in the spring.

It was then that Janet totally floored me by telling Sandra that I was the best student she’d had that semester (that *might* have been the wine talking because she had some really good fucking writers in her class that semester, but still – flattered!). Then she turned to me and said “if you’re planning to write anything but fiction – just stop.”

Well, needless to say, I floated around that place for the rest of the night. When I got to my writing desk the next morning, I jotted down what she had said on a post-it note and stuck it to the wall over my laptop. The fact that someone, whose writing I so admire, thought I had such potential as a writer meant the world to me. It still does. I think of that night fairly often, usually when I’m feeling like maybe this whole fiction thing isn’t working out.

I doubt she even remembers that. It was so not a big deal, but to me it meant to world.

Encourage Other Writers

So, if you happen to be a published writer, be generous with your encouragement.

Don’t bullshit people of course, but as Jung Yun’s story highlights, all you have to do is engage an aspiring writer as a peer to make him or her feel special. Seriously, we’re such fragile creatures sometimes, us writers, but the smallest things can keep us going.

Do you have a moment when you remember being encouraged in your writing?