Late in 1993, after a lot of discouraging experiences attempting to sell my fiction, I decided to “quit fiction writing for good” and I wrote nothing but personal journals and technical manuals for a year. I began writing fiction again early in 1995, but with a difference. I did it, as I’d begun as a girl, to please myself, primarily to complete a story I thought had to be written or it would drive me nuts. That story had been percolating inside me since I was seventeen. I surprised myself then by doing some of the best fiction writing I had in my life to that point. My decision at that point to please only myself with what I wrote carried me through a kind of barrier into a different way of looking at writing fiction.

There’s a point where the writer has to throw out all the advice, all other opinions, and write the story that’s inside her, the one that haunts her, that begs to be written. If she begins to do it only to earn money or fame, her enthusiasm may dampen. If she exposes her writing to the wrong kinds of criticism at the wrong time, her passion may be crushed, or she may write more to please others than herself—sometimes so many others that she feels pulled in all directions at once. I’ve done that in the past, and I found myself doing it again recently—writing to please too many others. Maybe from time to time I need to “give up” again, if only to get back on track with the writing I’m supposed to do.

Of course the writer needs to learn the basics, hone her skills. Then, after writing for self, she needs to be willing to let someone edit her work and be open to revisions. The two-minute rule mentioned in the blog Eric referred to makes sense, too. Something in any story needs to draw the reader’s interest in as soon as possible, unless the writer just wants to hide her novel in a drawer and bring it out to read on her own now and then.

But I think a writer needs to begin any work of fiction out of love, a personal hunger to write it. Something has to draw the writer in, make it worth the effort, and perhaps make it impossible not to write. It may very well break the writer’s heart. In fact, maybe a writer has to let a story break her heart a little to do it right. Maybe fiction is meant to break out of one’s heart, the way love does. I usually know I’ve gotten somewhere or succeeded at something in a manuscript, when I find it brings me to some deep, heartfelt emotion.

Writing for myself sounds selfish and not very businesslike, but I think my best writing happens when I do. I’ve learned the most about myself when writing this way, and it’s the most honest writing I’ve done.

Themes emerge in what we write, truths we’ve learned about life show up in our stories, and we sometimes come face to face with our own humanity when we realize what we’re capable of imagining, when we think about what we’d do in the situations we place our characters in. These are things that don’t show up in a story intentionally, but in unconscious, serendipitous ways, through the interlocking and intersecting of seemingly disparate elements. The best writing is in many ways a revelation to the writer as much as to the reader. If getting to that necessitates shutting out what others want from our fiction, it’s worth the effort.

I can’t tell anyone how to make money writing fiction. It’s possible no one can tell anyone how. Publishers seem as mystified as anyone as to what will pay off and what won’t. But I do know how to plumb my own heart while writing, how to answer the call of a story. That’s what has kept me doing this so long in spite of all my frustrations and failures. If all I wanted were to make money, I’d have quit—for real and for good—long ago. I don’t advise anyone to write fiction for money. I plan from now on to write fiction that draws me in a way I can’t ignore and can’t resist. Even so, I know it may break my heart. But anything worthwhile in life carries that risk.