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Here’s my top ten list:
10. You used formatting for your Foreign Language Requirement
Seriously, so much of your first impression is all about the formatting of your document. Once you’ve approached the very stern lady in the Dean’s Office, your Thesis held in front of you, only to have her say, “Hmm. Looks like your margin is 1.4” instead of the required 1.5, you’ll have to wait until next semester to graduate,” you have a very good grasp of the importance of formatting.
9. Your Saturday critique class ate steel Wheaties for breakfast
Once you’ve faced an audience of your peers with your pesky little writing week after week, only to have them rip it to shreds right before your very eyes, you can handle any amount of criticism. You crave it. You enjoy it. You beg your agent and your editor to use their red pens. Your words are malleable, they are putty – not little gold nuggets. If four eyes on a work are good, twenty are better. However, you also know when to stand up for your voice and how to reject changes that you would be uncomfortable with. And you don’t pull the “I’m not changing it” gun out very often.”
8. Your Formalist professor made you learn every device, theme, term and strategy known in the English language
And then some in French as well. That old saw about knowing the rules before you can break them? You know ALL the rules. Even the little, sneaky English Professor rules no one else knows. And if you forget them for some reason you have shelves of books you can look them up in.
7. You once waited three months for your Committee chair to get back with you on a piece you submitted for review
. . . only to have to wade into his office and find it in the pile of work he ignores. Even better, you learned to call his wife if you wanted something read. Three months for a reply on a query letter? That’s nothing. Six months for a rejection on a partial? Please, that’s a nearly light speed response compared to the glacial pace you’ve been working at.
6. You believe in critique partners
And drinking buddies. Just because they are the same thing doesn’t mean anything bad, does it?
5. The head of the department liked to read
And made sure you liked to write by asking for two or three twenty-page papers a week, for five years running. Produce multiple pages a day? Heck yeah. Type 92 wpm so you have time to sleep a little? Certainly. When people say they aim to write one, little, measely page per day you kinda laugh to yourself. You can write 7000 words in a sitting. They may not all be good words, but that brings us to the next point.
4. The process of producing work is very clear to you
. . . and you’ve admitted it’s not all sunshine, roses and magic fairies that come in the night.
Write, read, revise. Pretty simple really. Endless permutations, but follow those three steps and you’ll produce.
3. You’ve been around publishing and understand it’s really more akin to gambling in Las Vegas
There are no fairy god-mothers and no lucky breaks. You make your own luck. You’ve been on the staff of the literary magazine and you’ve been hanging out with real, live published people for a while. Sometimes they disappear for months at a time because they are, duh, writing. And you’ve read some real dreck floating around out there so you have sympathy for editors and agents. They are real people too, and even if they like your stuff that doesn’t mean they can get it in print. But you have developed a taste for gambling, so it’s all good.
2. You can write, using your own voice and your own plot ideas, for a specific audience
Reading your stuff out loud in a room full of strangers, or worse peers, and having them go, “huh?” makes you very aware of clarity and expectations. The audience is king. Self-expression is fine, but that’s what locking journals are for.
1. Can you say DEADLINE?
If you can’t turn your work in when you are told to, you wash out. It’s like the Marines, only with words.
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