Scribbling toward Publication: Writing Lessons I’ve Learned Along the Way
Job #1 in a Series, It’s about You
Okay, so you want to be published. Maybe you already are. Either way, you want to be William Shakespeare: immortal. Or maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald: one of the cool kids. Or Eve Babitz, the one who wrote Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A. She wanted to impress her father.
I too have wanted to be published. I’ve been writing for an audience — not just forming letters, not just passing notes — since I was fourteen. In my teens, my scribbles were published in small ways, and as I sit here keyboarding — wait, let me correct that —I am sixty-eight years old with five books under my belt. Fifty-four years of scribbling toward publication, right? I suppose it’s no surprise that I’ve thought a lot about what it means to be published.
Logically speaking, to be one thing is not to be another. To be tall is not to be short. To be happy is not to be sad. To be James Joyce and write Ulysses is not to be Bob Woodward and write Rage and not to be Anais Nin and write Delta of Venus because James Joyce is an artist, Bob Woodward is a journalist, and Anaïs Nin is a diarist. I make these distinctions — and yes, you can ignore these distinctions, and many try with a varying degree of success — because scribbling toward publication doesn’t begin with genre, type, or style of writing. No, scribbling starts with the scribbler: you.
And because it’s about you, the place to start is to ask yourself: who is scribbling, a to be question, and not how scribbling is done, a to do question. Looked at in a different way (I love me some James and Giant Peach), start by asking yourself which is more in harmony with your nature: art or journalism or autobiography? Which are you compelled to do, getting lost in for hours, days, years, a lifetime? Answering this question puts your being in sync with your doing and opens the way for your scribbling.
Hippie-dippie mumbo jumbo to be sure, so let’s get down to specifics. Case in point, Tom Wolfe, the author of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, is an artist. It’s why he’s labelled a “New Journalist,” the new telling us that his approach to the genre of journalism is more about creative storytelling than it is about relating facts as they occurred in time and from a single point of view.
Walter Issacson, the author of Leonardo da Vinci, is a journalist. Although he has masterfully written about art, his book about da Vinci strictly adheres to journalistic conventions like third person limited point of view, thorough documentation, and clear presentation of facts and description.
And finally, Joan Didion, the author of The White Album — and here I expect a howl of argument — is an autobiographer. Yes, yes, Didion is a masterful writer, no argument there, but I contend that in almost everything she wrote — her journalism (new to be sure), novels, and screenplays — she was writing about her own direct and/or indirect experience. All the time? Maybe not, but most of the time. It’s a trick autobiographers practice to get published: take their diary and make it read like a novel, play, or feature article. It was what Anaïs Nin proudly did and what Joan Didion did even better; so well in fact, that very few noticed her sleight of hand, and if they did, even fewer cared.
Full disclosure, I’m an artist. In college I got a “C” in journalistic writing because I’m no good at painting inside the lines. My brother Steve, he’s a professional journalist because it’s his nature, but it’s not mine. I’m forever connecting this with that, shifting points of view, getting lost in the sound and syntax of language. And let’s face it, I’m bad at remembering facts. I mean, why should I when I can take a few memories and imagine them better?
Job #1 then for all scribblers is to match the sort of scribbling that syncs best with their particular nature. Do not confuse this match with wanting to grow up to be a certain writer. I may be enamored with Jack Kerouac or Dorothy Parker or James Baldwin, but you need to put that ardor in a box with all your fan letters and seal it tight. Trust me, I’ve got faves, too.
Instead, think of syncing your being and doing like tuning a radio to the classic country, adult contemporary, or urban gospel station, the one with the format you can listen to all day. The difference here is that with radio you are a passive listener, but with writing you are an active creator, a scribbler who is either publishing on the art, journalism, or autobiography frequency.
Yes, dear reader, it’s a long way from scribbling to publication, but keep in mind, this is only Job #1. And now that you’ve found your groove, become a Jeffrey Dunn follower and stay tuned for Job #2, Tuning into the Artist Frequency.
Jeffrey Dunn, Ph.D. is the author of critically acclaimed cultural fiction including Radio Free Olympia, Wildcat: An Historical Romance, and coming May 2025, Whiskey Rebel (all published by Izzard Ink)