âIt is a piece of sage advice, a writerâs mantra, that I have made good use of through the years and that I now pass on to you: Ah, fuck âem. Use it whenever someone suggests that writing stories is not a real job. Or when you hear that print is dead. Books are obsolete. AI will replace us all. âAh, fuck âem.â Whisper it whenever youâre told: You canât say that. You canât write that. You canât sell that. Say it whenever someone tries to suggest that there are prohibitions to our art: that youâre not allowed to imagine yourself into certain worlds, or certain characters, or certain cultures. That you are barred from creating situations that you havenât actually lived. That you are barred from borrowing too much from so-called âreal life.â Say it when youâre told you are too late with your fictional premiseâitâs been done before. Or too earlyâitâs never been done before. âAh, fuck âem.â Say it with a laugh. Or a shrug. Say it kindly, in the same way you might mutter, âPoor fool,â or âOh, well,â or, like a dismissive Southern lady, âWhy, bless your heart.â Or say it patiently, ruefully as the Irish might say, âGod help us.â (âŚ) Say it as you begin your writing day, as you turn your back on all the people and voices that do not belong in your writing room: parents, siblings, spouses, criticsâonline or otherwiseâopinionated friends and neighbors, the latest big book, the hottest new writer, some Tik Tok thing, the graduate school classmate who just scored a billion dollar deal with Netflix. Ah, fuck âem. Leavingâas Faulkner saidâno room in your workshop for anything but the authorities and truths of the human heart. And after youâve had your Night of the Living Dead moment, closed the door on the groping hands and the ghoulish faces of all that keeps us from confronting, unfettered, those authorities and truthsâwithout which, Faulkner said, any story is ephemeral and doomedâlook in the figurative mirror and say it to yourself. * Say it to your doubts, your hesitations, your worries about getting a real job. Ah, fuck âem. Say it to your fears about writing the wrong thing: the wrong phrase, the wrong character, the wrong genre, the wrong subject or sentiment. The story that dies on the vine. I mean, fuck those fears. Say it to every sensible, depressing, cowardly notion that visits your swirling brain, to all the things that paralyze your freedom to write. Ah, fuck âem. Same goes for your Cinderella fantasies of winning a big literary prize, as well as your Eyor-esque certainty that your work will never see the light of day. Fuck âem both. You will fail, of course you will. Youâll make mistakes. Youâll write some lousy sentences, unnecessary scenes, stories that run out of steam and novels that are not, perhaps, your best work. * It is, my friends, the occupational hazard inherent in choosing a professionâthe storytellerâs professionâthat keeps you, despite how many years youâve labored at it, forever a novice, a debutante, a lone explorer setting out to define a new world. A profession that keeps you at the beginning, just the beginning, of your great career, because thereâs always a new story to write, a new sentence to compose, a voice, made of words alone, that has not yet been heard, that only you can discover.â
â Alice McDermottâs Writing Mantra: âAh, Fuck Em.â âš Literary Hub
