Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Well, I wrote a novel, "Gone Fishin'," and I said, well,

I want to get it published.

I sent it to a whole bunch of agents and some publishers,

and everyone said, wonderful writing,

wonderful characterisation, but it's not commercial.

Can't publish it.

Can't represent it.

I later on realized-- this was in 1987, '88--

I realized that they were saying that the two main characters

are young Black men in the deep South, not

necessarily educated.

There are Black women in it, but they're not

major characters in it.

There's only one white person in it, and she's crazy.

And they said to me, well, white people don't

want to read about Black people, Black women don't

like Black men, and Black men don't read,

so who's going to buy your book?

That was basically the concept.

I met a guy once who wanted to be a boxer.

And so he was working at it.

He was working out in the gym.

He was sparring with people.

And he got in the ring one day with a guy

who hit him in the liver.

Now, in boxing, if you hit somebody in the liver,

it hurts.

A lot.

And he hit him, and the guy was complaining, man, that hurt!

That hurt!

I could feel that!

That hurt!

And the guy who was working with him said, look, this is boxing.

If you're boxing, you're going to get hit.

If you don't want to get hit, you shouldn't be in boxing.

Maybe you should get into some new sport called

hitting, because it's not going to work,

you boxing and not getting hit.

Now, there are all kinds of critics in fiction.

There are all kinds of prejudices in fiction.

There are all kinds of people saying, I never read women,

I never read men, I never read Black people,

I never read white people, I don't read science fiction,

I don't read mysteries.

They have no idea what that means,

like all mysteries are the same, all science fiction's the same.

And you run into these problems-- everybody

runs into these problems.

So what do you do about it?

You live with it.

You say, oh, yeah.

You get hit.

And that's it.

You accept that.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Three ways that are good ways to learn to be a better writer

is, one, to write every day, every day, every day,

never stopping.

No holidays, no vacations, nothing.

Every day.

The second thing is to read your work out loud

so you can hear it, so that you can understand the dialogue,

so you can understand the sentences,

so maybe you can see where it is not working

and where it is working.

And of course, the other thing is that social part of it,

maybe to be in a workshop, maybe just

to have some person that you share back and forth with,

some way to work with others, to actually hear

somebody reading your work.

Some people just want to work by themselves alone,

work on their book.

OK, let's put that person aside from the minute.

If I were writing, I would try to find

a writers' workshop somewhere.

That makes some sense.

They're in every city.

Not these big universities that charge you

$50,000, but a place that costs you $200, $300 a semester.

You come in with 10 or 12 other writers, more or less

at your level.

You're reading from your works.

People are responding to you.

People are talking to you.

So what you're doing is, you're learning more and more

about what you want to do or what

you don't want to do from listening to these writers.

And also, these people are doing things.

They're meeting agents.

They go to something like ThrillerFest,

where they teach you how to get an agent,

how to get a publisher.

Or, you just read books that you think are like your books.

You call the publisher, say, who's the agent?

You call the agent or send them a letter

and say, I would like to send you 10 or 15 pages of my novel,

because it reminds me of this and this and this and this

that you represent.

They will most probably take it and read it.

And they'll answer.

They'll say something.

They probably won't take it, but they might.

And so that's how you go about doing it.

It's very step by step.

And the more people you know, the more

you get introduced to people, the more likely

you are to find somebody who's interested in publishing you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

In America, you're going to get identified as something.

I was a Black mystery writer when I started writing.

And so, OK, I'm a Black mystery writer.

But then I wrote a book of science fiction,

and publishers said, I won't publish.

I said, that's OK, I'll go to another publisher.

Then I wrote a non-fiction book, and then I

wrote a young adult book, and then I wrote an erotic book.

I write everything.

So either you change how you define me,

or you figure out how to sell what I've written.

Those are the choices.

It doesn't matter to me, when somebody else

tries to define me.

There was a big fight on the internet over

whether or not I was a Jewish writer for a while.

My mother is Jewish, so that makes me Jewish, right?

So a lot of people said, well, he is.

Well, he doesn't write about Jews.

There are other Jewish writers who don't write about Jews,

and you call them Jewish writers.

Well, yeah, but--

But that's their problem.

I loved the argument.

It was lots of fun.

On the other hand, when I go to a store,

I've never seen my books in that part of the bookstore that

says, "Black Interests."

It's just, they appear where the mysteries appear,

where new books appear.

And that's fine, too.

It's a thing-- it's OK if somebody else thinks

they've defined you.

The problem comes when you believe

that they've defined you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

My suggestion to you to begin with is to write every day

and to concentrate on doing the best

work you can to finish the book, to make the book something

that you're proud of, that you can understand,

that you wouldn't mind showing to other people.

Once you start showing it to other people,

you run into a whole other series of problems.

People will not want to publish it.

People will reject it.

People will say, what do you think you're doing?

It's going to be all kinds of rejections.

To give you an example, my--

I think 53rd or 54th novel, I sent out,

and I got 17 rejections.

One person actually wrote me back and said,

if I want to come in and meet with them,

they could explain to me how to write a novel.

Now, I've been published for 30 years,

and this woman tells me the stuff, you know what I mean?

But I just have to accept it.

And it's, OK, that's what you think.

It's like the boxer.

You're going to get hit.

If you don't want you hit, you shouldn't be sending it out,

because most people are going to reject it.

Sometimes you learn something from the rejections.

They give you some information, which is helpful,

which is useful.

Sometimes you don't.

Sometimes you're very lucky-- people

want to publish your novel just like that.

It does happen.

You should keep sending things out, you should keep doing it,

and you should keep the faith.

And this may be years.

I won't lie to you.

It might take a long time.

Some people never get published, but that's the minority.

Most people, sooner or later, do get published.

And you will then build a career from there.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I believe that if you are interested in being a writer,

you have to figure out, number one, what you want from that.

If what you want from being a writer

is to write literary novels, then you should write them.

If it's writing science fiction novels, you should write them.

If it's writing both, you should do that.

If it's becoming a critical success,

you should get involved with a university

somehow, write those novels, and do that.

If you want to make lots and lots of money,

you should try to write really popular books,

and you should write the same book again and again and again.

You're going to make all kinds of money,

and you're going to become a better writer, because still,

you're writing books.

But you make that decision.

I encourage you to follow your heart in writing.

If you follow your heart, if you do what you love,

if you get to the place where you succeeded

at starting from the beginning of a novel

and getting to the end of the novel,

then you're doing the best you can do.

You're living in the best moment of your life.

What comes of that later is what comes of that later.

If you decide writing this kind of novel makes money,

or this kind of novel makes critical success,

or I just like writing the books,

I just like publishing them, all of that is fine.

But before doing any of that, you

have to follow your heart inside of writing,

and you have to do it every day.