Thread by @JuliusGoat

PERMISSION
I don’t usually do “Author Twitter” posts because frankly my experience as an author has been short, so I sense my experience in that arena is limited enough that any advice I’d give still feels like speculation—but this one I actually feel qualified to answer.

As the questioner noted there are two questions:

1)How did this happen for you?
2)How did you write something ambitious even though you were unestablished?

But let me make it one question again.

Here’s the one question:

1)How did you realize your ambition as a writer?

I've thought about it a lot. One answer is, I haven't yet. But that's too cute. I've realized much of it.

The answer is: I gave myself permission to, and then I got lucky—but a particular sort of luck.

First, every writer is ambitious.

I understand what the questioner means by ambitious. The Revisionaries is long, and complex, and it’s very weird. It’s not a normal book, as reviewers noted.

But anyone writer is being ambitious.

So my first advice is: own the ambition.

My ambition was to write as well as the authors who had inspired me.

I wanted people thinking Pynchon, Vonnegut, Atwood, Pynchon. Also Stephen King. Toni Morrison. Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Oh, nothing, just the most successful and revered authors in publishing. An impossible goal.

It’s for others to say if I achieved that goal, but I can say with confidence I know I missed it by a lot. But: hitting or missing wasn’t the point.

By trying to jump MUCH higher and farther than I could, I jumped as high and far as I could.

I gave myself permission.

So if I had an instinct to do something absolutely crazy with my story, I trusted the instinct, because I’d given myself permission to write as if I were already better than I’ll actually ever be.

Which made it pretty good.

And, when my first draft was mostly junk, I gave myself permission to edit as if I were already better than I’ll actually ever be. And to set a high bar for excellence. I edited my manuscript six times before submitting.

Which made me pretty good at it.

The next thing is the flip side of the coin.

Publishing, like most of life, is a crapshoot. Skill isn’t always rewarded. Market demands drive publication. Supply of content far exceeds demand.

If publication is the metric, most writing fails.

My 2nd advice is: own the failure.

I did my research before writing The Revisionaries. There are rules for debut books. I knew my book was going to break many of them, which mean that my publication failure, already probable, would be assured.

I was OK with that.

You can break rules if you’re fine with failure.

Let me be clear: I am not saying “you may be the exception, if you break the rules.” I’m saying "if you decide to break those rules, first tell yourself you will fail at being published."

You have to be fine with that.

You have to give yourself permission to fail.

When I did that, I was free to do whatever I wanted—because I wasn’t getting published anyway.

And free to focus only on enjoying my process, doing whatever I wanted, which was to write as if I were already better than I’ll actually every be.

So I did.

I had permission.

Because I had permission, I wrote a book that had almost no change at being published, AND I wrote exactly the book I wanted to write, and had a fulfilling and rewarding experience crafting it.

And, not incidentally, in the process became a much better writer than I had been.

Now: how my failed book happened to be published anyway.

I sent it out for submission. I expected failure, but I worked on the submission for about a year as if I thought success was possible. I let myself be optimistic. Maybe I'd be the exception!

I wasn't. It failed.

I got agents to take a look, which told me that my pitch was OK. But they passed, which told me either the writing wasn’t good enough (which actually I doubted) or that it was completely outside the bounds of what the market will accept from a debut author (which I knew it was).

(An aside: None of this on these agents, by the way.
They *should* have passed! Their job is to make money from books. That means selling books to publishers that will make money. My book broke almost all the rules for doing that! Why *wouldn’t* they pass?)

Because I’d given myself permission to fail, and because I still liked the experience of writing the book so much, this failure wasn't a big problem. I was disappointed but not bothered. I was excited to keep writing.

I started writing another book.

And then …

... I wrote a thread that broke Twitter, which took me from 1,000 followers to 85,000 followers in approximately two days.

Which was a lucky break!

I suddenly had a platform, visibility. Those help the sort of people who make money from books to know about you, and so be in a position to consider taking a chance on you. Things started to happen. And here we are!

The Twitter break was lucky. But a particular kind of luck.

For example: Because I’d given myself permission to write as if I were better than I will ever be, I became a very good writer, which allowed me to convey thoughts in a precise and compelling manner that could potentially break Twitter.

So: a particular kind of luck.

And, because I’d given myself permission to fail, I had written and polished a book that was certain to fail but was nevertheless, against all reason, ready for submission anyway.

So when people came asking what I had, I had something ready.

A particular kind of luck.

I want to end by returning to two ideas.

1)All writers are ambitious.
2)If publication is the metric, most writing fails.

These are broadly true. So, I think my advice is applicable even if you’re not writing a big weird book that breaks lots of the established rules.

Own your ambition. Give yourself permission to write as if you’re far better than you can ever be, and you’ll become as good as you can become.

Own your failure. Give yourself permission to write as if you’ve already failed, and you’ll be free to make the process the reward.

If you do this, then I think you put yourself in the category of people who might become lucky—a particular kind of luck.

And you’ll be somebody who feels rewarded merely by the process, which is the real measure of fulfilling your ambitions.

And that’s my answer.

Those asking about what thread it was, it was this one:

https://twitter.com/JuliusGoat/status/896326301832925184?s=20

Also: Julius Goat, Inc. regrets all the typos and errors.

To be clear: not at all.

Going viral on Twitter was a wild lucky break for me. It is not a standard path, or one I could have planned for. But it wouldn't have led to a book if I hadn't had a book to submit.

And breaks come in all shapes. So be ready.

https://twitter.com/philosipede/status/1421920864371503106?s=20