In recent weeks I have talked about the work of a copywriter, what a freelance writer should charge for the work they do or how some offer such ridiculous prices that they do not allow real competition within this market.
This week I want to change the tone of the last articles a bit and to do so I have decided to share a few pearls of wisdom that Dennis Lehane left us in a recent interview about how he went from being a middle class worker to living off what he writes .
Dennis Lehane is the author of some of the best crime novels of recent times, among his works are titles such as Shutter Island , Mystic Rive r or the recent World Gone by . But Lehane's literary work does not stop there, several seasons of The Wire and Boardwalk Empire have come from his pen , two of the series that have received the most good reviews in recent years.
Here are his 10 tips for making a living as a writer:
Read anything that falls into your hands
(My family) We were normal people. Lower-middle-class working people. In my house there were not many books. We had an encyclopedia – I was always glad that my father did not see the seller arrive that day – but little else. We also had a Bible. I read the Bible cover to cover, it is a wonderful piece of narrative fiction. Then a nun told my mother that I liked to read, my mother took me to the library. Without libraries I would not be what I am now.
Write out of necessity
We were really poor. We lived on my father's salary, I didn't have a job, I was 25 years old and I didn't have money to go out there, I was completely broke, so one day I decided to write to hang out.
There is nothing wrong with having a big ego
When I meet someone with a titanic ego I know immediately that I want to work with him. They know what they are doing, they are not insecure, they do not go home feeling sorry for themselves and sharing their problems with others. People with little ego tend to be very bad at their jobs.
The Wire, written by Dennis Lehane
We knew we were doing something special with The Wire , even though no one was watching the show. HBO didn't seem to care about the series either. They used to tell us: we know that nobody watches the series, and we will cancel it the moment we have something better. If we haven't canceled it yet, it's because we don't have anything better. With The Wire, we were certain that they were going to cancel us after each season, with the fourth we were completely sure, that's why it was the best of all.
Listen to the dialogues
In the place where I grew up we all knew how to highlight. We had a special ability to find the exact word at all times. I went to live in Miami for a season and I felt that I was losing that particular voice from Boston. When I came back I asked a friend, “How are you doing?” To which he told me: “Now I'm fine, although I was recently stabbed, I don't know what you've heard out there, but being stabbed takes away your desire to fight.” ” I don't know what you heard” – as if I had the impression that a stabbing is like receiving a hot stone massage. And then that way of understanding the concept: “it takes away your desire to fight” , did not say: “your intestines burn” or “I prayed to God for my life.”
The approval of others is not so important
My father fell asleep at the premiere of all my film adaptations. He fell asleep with Mystic River , woke up at the end and said, your mother says it's too dark . He fell asleep with Gone baby gone , and he told me: your mother says that you have used the word that begins with J too many times . The same thing happened with Shutter Island , then he said to me: your mother couldn't tell me what happened in the movie . My father has never read one of my books, everyone says it is very sad. What my father would answer to these things would be something like this: “Your brother works in a prison and you won't see me there either.”
Write a scene that breaks your heart
Dave is, to me, the true hero of Mystic Rive r (a man haunted by the memory of mistreatment). I have worked with victims of abuse, and the possibility of becoming a pedophile after being abused increases ridiculously. Dave fights against that to the end. He's attracted to children, although he tries to fight that urge. But I, as a writer, had to do justice to the scene where he fights against that urge. To this day it is the hardest scene I have ever written, I worked on it for 16 hours, at the end I turned off the computer and left the office for a week.
If Clint Eastwood calls you answer
I fired my agent in Hollywood because I refused to sell the rights to Mystic River . But Clint overcame all my defenses. One of the stupidest things about Hollywood is that they call you and put you on hold, you get a call and a voice says: “I'm calling on so-and-so, do you want to take the call?” And they put you on hold … as if you had called. Clint just calls you in person.
Ignore the critics because… What do they know?
I was very happy with the Scorcese adaptation of Shutter island , it is my least realistic book, it is a mixture of great authors and books; the Bronte sisters, Mary Shelley, Patrick McGrath, the B movies of the 50s … Scorcese understood the essence very well, he caught it the first time and went gonzo . I knew that this movie was going to annoy a lot of people. The New York Times critic nearly had a heart attack, he made real nonsense about the adaptation. But if you know why you do things, you can ignore people's reactions.
Do not settle
It's strange. It's a very strange feeling. I still don't feel comfortable when I go to classy places. I always have the feeling that I'm going to load up a drink or something… I'll give you an example: A guy skipped a STOP and cut me off, he was driving a Range Rover and I thought: typical rich, the idiot of the Range Rover. Worst of all, I was driving my Range Rover.
Dennis Lehane is an ordinary guy who tells things in a simple, easy-to-understand way, he makes his professional ghost writing and without magic formulas, without carambola. Just work hard and believe in what you do.
