So You Want to Be A Writer
Forget the palm trees and writing retreats. Michael Loyd Gray says the real secret to writing is showing up every day, treating it like a job, and firing off new submissions the moment a rejection lands. His strategy? Never let a “no” slow you down…
So, you want to be a writer, eh? And who wouldn’t after looking at a snazzy brochure for a writing conference or retreat in an exotic location shaded by palm trees and margaritas just a snap your fingers moment away. My advice? Take a vacation somewhere with palm trees and margaritas and then go home and sit at your machine – typewriter, laptop, pencil – and remind yourself that unlike football, writing isn’t really a team sport. Even Hemingway got his writing done first thing of a morning, alone and sober, before padding off to downtown Key West – or Havana – to sit under palm trees with margaritas. On the first day of the first fiction class I took, at the University of Illinois, “Sit at your machine” was written on the blackboard. It’s still the best writing advice I’ve had.
I learned a long time ago that the secret to writing is – writing. If I’m writing a novel, I get up every day early, go to my favorite café, plop down on a sofa in their backroom, tune out the people who come and go, and I write. Every day. Even Sundays, too. Even if I don’t feel 100 percent, I write. Norman Mailer once said that the mark of a professional writer was the ability to work on a bad day. Here’s the thing: professional writing isn’t a hobby or a neat title to toss around at a cocktail party. It’s a job. It can be a hard job because nobody can do your work for you. It’s up to you to stay motivated, to discipline yourself to show up for work, and work through any roadblocks that might suddenly appear in your writing. If you have a bad day at it, that’s okay because at least you showed up for work and the next day could easily be much better. Consistency breeds competence and competence can become excellence.
Becoming a good writer is a lot like developing into a good (or at least decent) guitarist. I’ve been teaching myself to play guitar for a few years now. At first, my fingers didn’t want to go where they were supposed to go. I struggled to hit the right notes and create chords. But I kept doing it. I showed up for guitar work every day and kept playing until I heard myself sounding better and realized that playing had gotten easier. That’s how it can be with writing: you keep doing it until it sounds better and is easier to do.
Once you’ve bought into writing as a job and not just something cool to tell people, it’s time to send your work out to journals and publishers. My advice? Story and novel submissions are the long game. At first, everybody gets rejected. Even Ernest Hemingway. Even F. Scott Fitzgerald before The Great Gatsby made him famous. J.K. Rowling was rejected by every major publisher she sent her book to until finally, a small publisher took a chance on her and that gamble paid off for them big time. Ernest Hemingway complained that the only place he could get published was in a German literary magazine. But he kept writing and sending out his work. Look how that worked out for him. Look at how not giving up worked for Rowling!
Here’s my simple strategy for rejection: first, don’t take it personally. If it helps, tell your dog or cat that the editor who said no is an idiot who should not be allowed out in public. Odd are, your dog or cat will agree with you and you’ll feel a little better. Remind yourself that the rejection is not failure and is instead an opportunity to find a better place to have the work appear. It’s like firing a torpedo that misses and so instead of beating yourself up, you fire another torpedo. Or two or three. Right away.
My rule of rejection is to submit a rejected story, for example, to several new journals as soon as I get the rejection. That way the rejection is rubbed away like a mere odious stain because now I have new, live torpedoes in the water! Is that a bit of a mind game? Of course it is! But it’s a lonely business, and not a team sport, and so a few mind tricks are allowed to see you through! Mind tricks work for Jedi and so why not for you. Like any other writer, I get rejected. I got a rejection from a journal yesterday. I reminded my cats that the editor must surely be an idiot. They agreed! I immediately fired off that story to other journals and now I feel good again and my hope is restored. Look – getting rejected hasn’t prevented me from publishing more than sixty short stories and winning a few awards. I’ve published nine books of fiction (novels/novellas) with a tenth, a story collection, due out in May. Whatever level we define my writing success to be, it’s all because I write consistently, never give up, and never let a rejection define me or even slow me down.
Do you want to be a real writer or just take a vacation somewhere with palm trees and margaritas and listen to other people talk about how cool it would be to be a writer? If real writer is what you want, then get to work and keep working and just maybe you hit it big and can afford your own palm trees and have someone bring you margaritas and you will have earned them.
ABOUT MICHAEL LOYD GRAY
My stories have appeared in Prairie Schooner, New Square, Narrative Northeast, La Piccioletta Barca, Porchlight: a Journal of Southern Literature, Libre, The Brussels Review, Amsterdam Review, Main Street Rag, Subnivean, 34th Parallel, Alligator Juniper, The Milk House, The Pasticheur, Aura Review, Arkansas Review, Aura Literary Arts Review, Blue Crystal Literary Magazine, Austur, Flash Fiction Magazine, Rivanna Review, Literally Stories, The Writing Disorder, Sagging Meniscus—The Exacting Clam, I-70 Review, Litro Magazine, Socjeta Literary Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, FictionWeek, New Plains Journal. Westchester Review, Flashpoint!, Black River Syllabary, Verdad, Palooka, Hektoen International, Potomac Review, Home Planet News, SORTES, The Zodiac Review, Literary Heist, Evening Street Press & Review, Two Thirds North, JONAH Magazine, Press Pause, El Portal, Shark Reef, Cholla Needles, The Waiting Room, Burningword Literary Journal, Your Impossible Voice, Litbop, Flare Journal, Fictional Café, The Mantelpiece, Deep Wild Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, WINK, Bone Parade, OpenDoor Magazine, Brief Wilderness, Timada’s Diary, A Plate of Pandemic, Deep Overstock, SamFiftyFour, Otherwise Magazine, Taj Mahal Review, The Vincent Brothers Review, Commuter Lit, Sensitive Skin, BlazeVox, The RavensPerch, Micromance, Empyrean Literary Magazine, and Johnny America.
I’m a member of the Society of Midland Authors and author of eight published books of fiction and fifty published stories. My novella Busted Flat, winner of a Literary Titan Gold Award and finalist for an Eric Hoffer Award, was released in October 20224. My novella Donovan’s Revolution, winner of a 2025 International Impact Award for Contemporary Fiction, a Literary Titan Gold Award, and a 2025 Book Excellence Award for Historical Fiction, was released in June 2024. Released in February 2025 — Night Hawks, a novella.
Scheduled for a March 2026 release, The Writer in Residence, a novel. Scheduled for a May 2026 release, The Space Between Now and Then, a collection of stories. In 2027, Regal House will bring out my novel Emperor of the Mundane.
My novel The Armageddon Two-Step, winner of a Book Excellence Award, was released in December 2019. My novel Well Deserved won the 2008 Sol Books Prose Series Prize and my novel Not Famous Anymore garnered a support grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation in 2009. My novel Exile on Kalamazoo Street was released in 2013. My novel The Canary, which reveals the final days of Amelia Earhart, was released in 2011. King Biscuit, my Young Adult novel, was released in 2012. I am the winner of the 2005 Alligator Juniper Fiction Prize and 2005 The Writers Place Award for Fiction.
I earned a MFA in English in 1996 from Western Michigan University, where I was a Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society scholar (3.93 GPA). I was also a fiction editor for Third Coast, the WMU literary magazine. At WMU, I studied with MacArthur Fellow Stuart Dybek, Writer in Residence at Northwestern University, and John Smolens, former head of the MFA program at Northern Michigan University. I earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois, where I studied with Flannery O’Connor Award winner Daniel Curley. For ten years, I was a staff writer for newspapers in Arizona and Illinois.
CONNECT WITH MICHAEL LOYD GRAY
Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/MichaelLoydGray
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MichaelLoydGray/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diffident150/
THE WRITER IN RESIDENCE
What happens when a disgraced literary genius meets the one woman determined to save him—from himself?
Once celebrated as one of the most brilliant voices in contemporary fiction, Will Henager has become a cautionary tale whispered through literary circles. Missed deadlines, spectacular public meltdowns, and a drinking habit that could sink a ship have left his career in ruins.
Enter Iris Irene O’Hara—a sharp, idealistic graduate student and aspiring poet with a plan. If she can rehabilitate Will’s reputation during his final, last-chance writing residency, she might just open the door to the literary world she’s desperate to join. There’s only one problem. Will Henager is brilliant, stubborn, infuriating, and almost impossible to manage.
As Iris attempts to guide him back to the page, their uneasy partnership turns into something neither of them expected—equal parts battle of wits, creative collision, and slow-burn romance.
But resurrecting a writer’s career is one thing.
Trusting a broken man with your heart is another.
