The Single Biggest Mark Of An Amateur Writer

Plus, happy to say On Reflection has a 40% boost rate. :)

Charles Finch is a book critic for the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. He’s also a writer for The New York Times, The New Yorker, the Guardian, the Chicago Tribune and USA Today. If that’s not enough, he’s a bestselling author.

I wrote about him two years ago, on Medium.

He says the single biggest mark of the amateur writer is a sense of hurry. Hurry to finish, hurry to edit, hurry to publish. There’s no page of prose in existence, he says, that wouldn’t benefit from being shoved in a drawer for a week.

The single greatest ally a writer has, he says, is time. He’s not wrong.

When he finishes a story or a book, he tries to put it away for as long as he can. When he returns, the problems are so obvious he’s amazed he struggled with them.

When I tell that to writers, they are aghast.

What? Write a story and ignore it for a week? Perish the thought.

One writer told me she can’t carry it around in her head that long, so she needs to publish and be done with it. But that’s exactly the point. Hitting publish isn’t the only way to be done with it. Letting it sit works, too. Move along. Write other things.

Writing is how you get it out of your head. That doesn’t mean it’s ready for random strangers to read. Because you can’t look at it the way an editor will. Not yet.

When you come back to it later, you can see what doesn’t belong, where you rambled and what isn’t complete. I can’t make anyone sit on their writing for a week or more, but I promise your writing will be stronger if you do.

Time lets you look at your own writing the way an editor or a reader, who are not personally attached, can and will look at it. Speaking of being an editor…

On Reflection is 2 weeks old and wow…

I’m insanely proud to say 40% of our stories have been boosted.

Honestly, that’s a combination of two things. Strong writing by our writers first. But also, being extremely picky about what wasn’t ready to publish.

We accepted the first submission on August 15, two weeks ago, and we’re at almost 10K views. For a new publication, that’s amazing. That said?

It’s been beyond crazy. Thanks to the stupidity of web forms, new writer submissions all come in with the same subject line. The inbox is mind boggling. It looks like this...

On Reflection Submission
On Reflection Submission
On Reflection Submission
On Reflection Submission

Into infinity. Christ. I’m working on making the process saner for all of us.

I’ve gotten through most submissions, but if I missed you I’m sorry you fell through the cracks. Nothing is lost, you don’t need to re-send, and I will get caught up and find a better way to handle submissions while also working full time.

Also, I’ll be updating the submission guide to add the most common mistakes that get stories declined. That should go up in the next few days. At present, probably 70% of new submissions are declined and it’s always the same 3 reasons.

Part of me wants to ask if you can guess those three reasons. :)

My goal isn’t to be a big publication. In the past, that was a writer’s best shot at visibility. There were more views to be had in a publication with 50K readers than a publication with 50 readers. That’s not true anymore.

Now, the number of readers and followers doesn’t matter. Because a boost can give great visibility to a great story, even in a new publication or for a new writer.

So that’s the goal. To have a publication filled with kick butt writing so readers know this is a place to find great stuff to read. Regardless of size.

If you haven’t visited yet, it’s at https://medium.com/on-reflection

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P.S. The share thread last week was amazing. I did indeed find some stories to nominate for a boost and thank you so much. I’ll do that again soon :)

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On Medium…

• The Harsh Truth No One Tells You About Living on This Bitter Earth

• Is This What Aging Really Means, Losing All The People You Loved?

• The #1 Writing Tip From A Literary Critic And Bestselling Author (*)

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This is a free publication, so if you enjoy my writing, please click the heart or share this post. Thanks, and have a great long weekend.

xo,
Linda