Shaun Anthony McMichael On The 5 Things You Need To Be A Successful Author or Writer

I read widely and voraciously, especially when you factor in all the audio books I consume.

Some writers and authors have a knack for using language that can really move people. Some writers and authors have been able to influence millions with their words alone. What does it take to become an effective and successful author or writer? In this interview series, called “5 Things You Need To Be A Successful Author or Writer” we are talking to successful authors and writers who can share lessons from their experiences.

As part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Shaun Anthony McMichael. Shaun Anthony McMichael is a writer, educator, and mental health advocate based in Seattle. He has taught English as a second language and creative writing to diverse populations for over 15 years. Whistle Punk Falls is his first novel.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

My mom and stepfather moved from the High Desert of California up to the suburbs of Seattle when I was in 5th grade. They were pursuing better weather, more job prospects, and trying to outrun the dumpster fire of their relationship. We moved from rental house to rental house. I was alone a lot and uneasy about our status and stability as a family.

While books offered a refuge, the elaborate Lego sets my mom bought me offered an arena to make up my first stories (Narnia and Lord of the Rings fanfiction). Needing a respite from the chaos of her marriage and her draining professional life as a police officer, my mom would take me on long walks along the watersheds in Seattle’s soggy hinterlands. On these sojourns, I would regale her with all of my tales of knights and dragons; eventually, she bought me a desktop computer and I set to work. Writing allowed me to get lost while at the same time exhibit control. In my fictional worlds, I felt supremely useful, just as the writer John Cheever describes. I finished my first fantasy novel when I was in 9th grade.

I took detours into playing music while embarking on serious studies of history and language arts. Through this process, I realized my juvenile doggerel had been more counterfeit than creation. Unlike many high school students, I thoroughly enjoyed the readings assigned in class. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, Flannery O’Connor, Ellison’s INVISIBLE MAN, OLD MAN AND THE SEA, THE JUNGLE, CATCH 22. For extra credit senior year, I went to hear Chuck Palahniuk, the author of FIGHT CLUB, read at the University of Washington. I was entranced hearing him read. And from then on, I wanted to write literary fiction.

Can you share the most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your career?

In 2023, my best writer buddy, Psychotherapist/ Author Eli Hastings and I started Shadow Work Writers (LLC). Though we have big dreams for our organization, we’re starting with annual readings for 6–8 emerging writers. We hosted our first Shadow Work Writers event in March, 2023, during the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) in Seattle.

For our headline reader, we were blessed to have EJ Levy, author of THE CAPE DOCTOR (Little Brown). EJ sent me a copy of her book and I read it cover to cover; as with all books I stick with, I don’t so much read, as devour it — writing down observations in the margins, reacting to characters with emojis, mulling over how the mechanics are working, and even jotting down critiques (no work is perfect). Reading EJ’s THE CAPE DOCTOR was a delight; I left reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and posted my praises for the work on social media, all in preparation to host this fabulous novelist I felt so lucky to be getting to know.

The night of the event, I set each author’s books on chairs in the front row to save their seats and so they would know where to sit. The event was a hit! Over 65 guests attended, and each reader, especially EJ, stunned the audience with their powerful deliveries.

A few days later, EJ sent me this email:

“I seem to have picked up the copy of THE CAPE DOCTOR that you’d read and annotated — and I adore you for your wonderfully engaged, thoughtful, smart, restless reading of it. I wish you’d been my editor — the little “yawn”s in the margins are spot on. Love the drawings and the circles. Huge thanks. I hope our paths cross again soon. Wishing you all good, e”

The mortification and joy I felt threatened to capsize me! I still get a little sick thinking about it. I would never in my worst nightmares have wanted anyone to read my unfiltered responses to their work, especially not EJ Levy, to whom I couldn’t hold a candle to in terms of talent! But after a perfuse apology email, EJ reassured me again that she had been delighted by my reading of the work. “Any writer would be lucky as hell to have your advice on where text drags,” she wrote, which was a big confidence booster to me.

The most important thing I learned from this experience was the sense of humor, grace, and groundedness EJ has. I really admire that about her writing and about her as a person. I hope I can achieve something close to this when I grow up.

For further proof of EJ’s awesomeness, she blurbed my debut, a collection of short stories:

“Vivid, violent, and propulsive, the stories in THE WILD FAMILIAR (Cowboy Jamboree Press) reveal characters on a knife’s edge of trouble. Battling bruised egos, bigotry, the reverb of American history, and the brutalizing norms of contemporary American culture, the characters in THE WILD FAMILIAR struggle to find sure footing in uncertain terrain. A woman flees a mass shooter (and her past) in a night-blinded campground; a hair stylist contends with an overly enamored customer; girls on a road trip discover danger where it’s least expected, in themselves; brothers, caught in a wildfire and their lifelong rivalry, face mortality and their own natures. McMichael’s stories are gripping and graceful; he can make eating a fortune cookie dramatic, and AP history seem urgent and new. Even when portraying shocking violence, as these stories often do, he wrests from terrible circumstance surprising insight and beauty. A remarkable collection.”

A blurb of that caliber is like a rocket boost to any author.

What was the biggest challenge you faced in your journey to becoming a writer? How did you overcome it? Can you share a story about that that other aspiring writers can learn from?

Besides rejection (I have received probably over 1,000 rejections in response to my queries for publication), the biggest challenge to my writing was (and is) distraction! As I mentioned, in high school (and beyond), I’ve forayed into music — bass guitar and vocals. Even as I type this, my fingers itch for a fret board and there’s nothing I love more that ripping my vocal chords singing in the shower, car, or karaoke stage. I’ve played bass in the worship band at church and I was in a dad band for a while (with other dads), but as part of my New Years’ resolution in 2022, I decided to forgo all musical endeavors to focus on writing. As I will get to later, the amount of time necessary to compose, revise, submit, and promote is all consuming, even if I didn’t have a time-intensive career (teaching public high school English language learners and English language arts). Music just needs to wait for now. My poetry collection is called JACK OF ALL…(New Meridian Arts, 2024) and to some extent, I am the textbook definition of that (master of none); but I had to move away from that if I wanted to make anything happen with writing. And that focus has been paying off. As of 2021, I had 44 publications and no books out. Now I have 117 pieces out there, including two books, one on the way and one more in the hopper.

My writing accomplishments haven’t been enough to make a living on. Which is A-okay with me, as I love teaching. Counter to the prevailing Republican narrative, my students — immigrants and refugees — are the best, most respectful, hardest working students at the public high school I work at (Evergreen High School; Highline School District). Plus, working with teenagers helps keep my writing about teens grounded; my students inspire me daily. Still, the corporate ed. industry and well-meaning administrators and colleagues nudge me about professional pathways (e.g. National Board Certification, Union Activism, Club Leadership, Coaching, etc…) — all of which would be “useful” and lead to more pay, and higher esteem among my colleagues, but would take me away from my writing. That would lead to a slow constriction of my identity which would lead to me acting out in frustration. And I figure the world is full enough of unhappy people who’ve foreclosed on their identity and are acting like jerks because of it.

Even while fending off professional distraction, the fear-of-missing-out (fomo) pervades my consciousness. As I have to be active on social media to network and promote writing (mine and others’), there’s always a million more books to read, events to attend, and discussions to take part in. But that’s fomo for you! Following my wife’s example, I set a 20 minute timer a day on Instagram. The blank page harkens! My characters call out to me like neglected children! There’s a reason one of Jonathen Franzen’s 10 commandments of writing recommends writing in a room without internet connection.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Between when I started writing literary fiction at age 17 (in 2004) and now (age 38 in 2025), I’ve been a factotum — working a variety of jobs to make ends meet and to give me something to write about. One of my most difficult gigs was early on, working as an instructional assistant in a special education classroom to a coworker who was extremely toxic. They were negative and manipulative, overriding my abilities and judgement, and undermining my strong work ethic. It was one of the lowest points in my professional life. One Friday night after a particularly trying day, I knocked off work early, biked home, polished off a pint of beer, and wrote my short story “The Loser” in about two hours. I cried during the process, probably more from being exhausted, emotional, and a little buzzed. But I took it as a good sign. As I always do after I complete a piece, I felt like it was God’s gift to humankind. I drank some more and sent it out to a couple of literary journals before passing out.

A few days later, two editors emailed back informing me that I had spelled the title wrong; I had dubbed my brilliant short story “The Looser”. The piece was riddled with other typos as well. One of the editors’ chastisements felt like an excoriation on my bare skin. I apologized profusely (noticing a theme here?) and both editors told me to not worry about it, just to never do it again.

Lesson learned. After finishing a piece, I now take a week or two away from it. I then re-read it, polish it, fuss with it; and then send it to a friend. They don’t have to be a famous writer or even on equal footing as you; just someone who will lovingly tell you the truth and spot glaring issues. After receiving their feedback, I revise, integrating as much of their thoughts as makes sense for my thematic concerns. Then and only then do I send it out. Sure, I could use Grammarly to expedite this process, but I find it subpar; no match for a caring human’s eye.

By the way, that story, “The Loser” has just been published on Blood + Honey Magazine’s website!

In your opinion, were you a “natural born writer” or did you develop that aptitude later on? Can you explain what you mean?

While I’m a sucker for writing about writers (e.g. MAO II; ERASURE; THE WONDER BOYS; Phillip Roth’s GHOST WRITER), I always feel a little self-conscious — way dumber than the wunderkinds in those books. In ninth grade, no one except my mother would have seen anything remarkable about me. I was an average Joe, boy-next-door. While I took a writing aptitude test upon entry into high school, I was gen. ed. tracked. The test determined you would not be a good fit for our honors English program, said the gate keeper. But I kept up my fantasy fanfiction anyway. I even shoved it into the faces of my freshman and sophomore English teachers, who were intrigued, but based on their feedback, it slowly dawned on me that I was not doing anything special with the genre outside a paint-by-the-numbers fantasy epic. So, I set them down, studied some more, read some, and switched genres. Still, it would take me another decade and a half to write short stories interesting enough to float a collection and another fifteen years before really hitting a stride with my novel’s form.

In terms of talent, I fall squarely with Malcolm Gladwell’s literature review in his work, OUTLIERS: it’s not experts that practice a lot; it’s a lot of practice that makes the experts. Studies suggest a person needs to put in about 10,000 hours before they achieve proficiency enough to draw a crowd. While that may seem daunting, it’s also somewhat democratic. Nurture over nature can win out. And with writing, no one is going to nurture it if you don’t first. I’m not saying everyone is going to grow into Ocean Vuong or Marget Atwood. But everyone has inherent worth, and every piece of writing has infinite potential.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

This article is part of my Whistle Punk Stop tour, publicizing my debut novel Whistle Punk Falls (Alternative Press Books; August 11th, 2025). The book is a felix culpa (or happy fall) featuring a pair of mothers and sons repairing broken bonds in the face of economic and psychological collapse. At its heart is Malachi “Loud” McCrowley, an 18-year-old half-Native (Makah tribe), homeless teen haunted by the mysterious logging death of his white father and guided — perhaps malevolently — by the voices of Kurt Cobain and other misunderstood souls of the Pacific Northwest. The story is narrated by his best friend Jeremy Sweet, a shy guitar aficionado whose own coming-of-age is entwined with his attempt to save Loud from self-destruction. As Aberdeen’s foundations tremble under the weight of the Great Recession, the novel asks a provocative and timely question: What does it truly mean to love someone? Ultimately, the boys’ moms need to help set them straight on answering this. And who better than a mom to do so? The book is dedicated to my mother.

I’m putting together a second collection of short stories; are you listening, agents? The title will be ‘Till Death Do Us… and will center around satirical tales around marriage and devotion. I am a happily married man and earnest do-gooder, but part of how I stay that way is using writing as an outlet expiating feelings of discontentment and angst that pass through me (and everyone) occasionally.

As for novels, I’m concurrently drafting a domestic thriller. I’ve got a smalltown murder mystery gestating. And, for my passion project? A half-century old spy rivalry plays out its deadly final chapter on a forever cruise for the elderly. This latter project will take up the better part of a decade. To write it I also need to go on a cruise, which I need to start packing for! Bon voyage!

Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience, what are the “5 Things You Need To Be A Successful Author or Writer”? Please share a story or example for each.

1 . Write.

My mantra is ERGO SCRIBO SUM (Latin for ‘I am, therefore I write’). If I am working on my writing for less than 5 hours a week, then it’s a bad week. During the school year, there are a lot of bad weeks. Ideally, I would prefer to be writing 5 hours a day. But this isn’t possible yet based on where I’m at professionally. And no, it’s not even possible during summers due to family obligations and numbers 2–5, which I will talk about shortly. Still, the best in the biz all say it. You want to be a writer, you got to write! To get back to the fomo thing, there’s so much fun to be had in this world. Or at least this privileged corner of it. Case in point, I went to a week-long writer’s workshop recently. Each day we were supposed to produce a new piece. And it was funny to see people going on guided nature walks and meditation sessions. The people doing these fluffy extras were the same ones showing up to the next day’s workshop with a bunch of excuses and half-baked pieces. I was up really late last night. I just couldn’t think of anything. I’m sorry it’s so rough, but… Meanwhile, when not in the workshops, I sequestered myself in the blankest, quietest room I could find and faced the terror of the blank page, pacing the room, chewing my fingernails to nubs, and doing the work and afterward feeling exhausted and alone but gratified. And what do you know? I’ve published 3 out of 4 short pieces I wrote during that retreat.

William Faulkner said that he only wrote when he was inspired, but that he was inspired every day. How I interpret this, is that something came to his mind every time he put himself before the keys. Though I have my fair share of bad writing days, there will always be one beautiful sentence, an interesting line of dialogue, or a motivation uncovered or an idea revealed. But you won’t discover it unless you blunder ahead.

2 . Read

I read widely and voraciously, especially when you factor in all the audio books I consume. My Creative Writing college profs all steered me right on this one. A writer must balance their output with input. Reading diversely exposes you to new lexicons and forms; it keeps you sharp and flexible. Reading outside your ethnicity, nationality, region, gender, and genre expands your consciousness and keeps your empathic mental muscles in shape too.

This is particularly important if you plan on having any characters outside your intersectional zone. And who wants to write (or read) only about people who are just like them? For instance, my focal character, the whistle punk in Whistle Punk Falls, is half Native American (Makah). Once I decided this aspect of his ethnicity, I became well-versed in Native American literature over a ten-year period. Whereas previously, I’d only read Sherman Alexie and Joy Harjo, I started reading mainstay Native American writers like Louise Erdrich but also new paragons like Tommy Orange and Natalie Diaz. My reviews on the following works by indigenous peoples can be found online: M. Scott Momaday’s HOUSE MADE OF DAWN; Dennis E. Staples’s THIS TOWN SLEEPS; Sasha taqʷšəblu Lapointe’s RED PAINT and ROSE QUARTZ; and Oscar Hokeah’s CALLING FOR A BLANKET DANCE. In addition, Joshua L. Reid’s THE SEA IS MY COUNTRY; THE MARITIME WORLD OF THE MAKAHS provided vital cultural knowledge and background for my Whistle Punk, his mom, and his uncle. These readings along with other experiences and relationships gave me the confidence but also the respect and understanding necessary to write about my characters in a way that editors have found compelling. Now, of course, comes the biggest test — to see what readers think!

3 . Share

With my earlier qualifiers about editing and proofreading your work still in play, the third way of being a successful writer is to be your biggest fan.

As a self-effacing, introverted brooder — which I have to be to write as I do — this advice can seem dissonant. But if you don’t share your work, no one else will.

There’s this line from Steinbeck in East of Eden, where he writes that true invention only comes “from the lonely mind of the man”. Even as a young twenty-year-old, I smelled some b.s. There’s this myth of the lonely creative genius inventing in isolation and then revealing it for all the world to genuflect before. My experience couldn’t be further from this myth. I’ve been lost in the swamps of my tangled notions. My early drafts have been James’ baggy monsters. I’ve had to take each piece into the workshop and have others point out the strengths and weaknesses for these to become clear to me.

So much good has come from submitting my writing to friends for critique. It’s actually how I got to know my wife! In undergraduate, we were always paired in the same critique groups as we were writing at a similar echelon. During the summer before our senior year, she and I workshopped stories for fun and I thought, hey, this is kind of like arguing; maybe we could date! Seventeen years later, we’re still together. She’s still my fiercest critic and best friend.

Of course, sharing about your writing for me involves social media. But if that’s not your thing, no worries! Talk about and mention your writing often. Writerly folks think they’ll jinx themselves if they talk about a project before its completion; or they’re stuck in imposter syndrome (e.g. I’m a really writerly enough to say I’m a writer?). In my opinion, these prohibitions all hamstring writers form networking opportunities. Here’s an example:

I went along as arm candy for my wife’s annual New Years bash at Amazon, where she works. We sat down at a table with a group of total strangers; and when it came time for introductions, I said I was working on a novel. A woman told me her good friend was married to a novelist and she gave me his contact. This is how I met Novelist Thomas Kohnstamm which set off a 5 year long-chain reaction of goodness that led to my novel not only getting published, but becoming a better book and me getting more plugged in with a network of writers. So grumpy writerly types, blab! Schmooze! And be merry!

4 . Submit

After you’ve polished and had a friend or two read your piece, it’s time for the hardest, soul-sucking part of it all: submitting. I’ve been submitting short fiction and poetry to small literary magazines since undergraduate school in Creative Writing (around 2008). Since, I’ve had over 115 pieces published in magazines all over the world. Though challenging, submitting to literary journals is a tried-and-true way to get your work read by editors and distributed to other writers and readers. You can find literary journals by using data bases like Duotrope (which costs $5 a month) or ChillSubs (which is free but less comprehensive). You can also just type in the name of your state or closest big city followed by “literary review” or “literary journal” and you’ll get hits.

The reason getting into literary journals matters is not only to build up your publishing CV. But it’s also a way to meet editors willing to publish your work. For example, in September, 2022, an editor at Isele Magazine, Tracy Haught published my short story “Heart Weeds”. Tracy and I stayed in touch on social media and when Tracy updated her LinkedIn page that she had started at Alternative Press, I sent her over the manuscript for WHISTLE PUNK FALLS and the rest is history. Had I not been diligently submitting my work out there, I never would have met her.

There are quicker ways to get your writing “out there”. These include querying literary agents who can represent your work and pitch it to one of the big three (Simon-Schuster-Penguin Random House; Hachette; and Harper Collins). But I’ve queried around 200 agents — all working for the same firms in the same eight blocks in Manhattan — and they only want to talk to people who are already famous, with throngs of fans waiting to buy their books. So, if you’re John Cena and you’re shopping around your collection of absurdist poetry, you’ll have no problem getting an agent to pitch that for you. But if you’re Joe Schmo from Idaho querying about his memoir, good luck.

The other option is to self-publish. But, self-publishing well is the most expensive and time consuming of all other options — a lonely, onerous journey where you go it alone. With each of the small presses I’ve been published in, there’s a community that comes with it — mostly the editor (s) but also the other authors published by your small press and the readers and fans that the press has already established. Self-pubbing, there’s none of that. Then there’s the money. I estimate it would take 7–10k to self-publish well. And no matter how much you spend on design, PR, and social media, you will encounter the stigma that comes with self-publishing. Furthermore, agents, presses, and others will see you as a “self-publisher” meaning they will be even less likely to touch you. Of course if career trajectory and sales aren’t important to you and you just want your work up on Amazon, then a quick 1–2K could probably make that happen in a few months.

5 . Invest

While we’re on the subject of money, the 5th way to be a great writer is to invest. While of course this includes time, I’m mostly talking about money here.

For many years, I paid $5 a month to use Duotrope’s services — access to a database of journals and a weekly newsletter with journals and agents open to submissions. This was a worthwhile investment as it made me aware of hundreds of markets around the world and helped me place scores of my pieces. When I told a friend and fellow writer this, they scoffed, “so, it’s like, pay-to-play?” Well, I’ve got bad news. It’s all pay to play. How successful you become as a writer depends some on talent, some on luck, a lot on effort, but also a lot on how much dough you’re willing to throw into it.

There’s the expensive way, the inexpensive way, and the middle way; as the Buddha has advised, I have chosen the latter. Sure, you can spend 50K (or more) on an MFA (a terminal degree). The upside is getting connections and, depending on where you get in, access to world class writers. The inexpensive way can be self-publishing; though, the risk there, in addition to what I’ve already stated, is that you will be writing in a vacuum. There may be serious issues with your writing and you’ll never find out because real writers aren’t going to be reading you and real readers probably won’t be either.

My “middle way” of investing in my writing started when I was about three years in to shopping around my novel, upon my wife’s suggestion, I decided to hire a contract editor. It seemed like I was striking out with my manuscript with every agent and small press I submitted to. I had already had a few friends read and critique it and they liked it. But My gut told me something was wrong and while I had a few hunches about what the problems were, I couldn’t “see the forest from the trees”, as novelist Thomas Kohnstamm observed. After I interviewed him on his second book, Lake City, I read the acknowledgement section at the back of the book (always read these) and I noticed all the editors he’d worked with. He recommended his contract editor Jim Thomsen — a consummate professional, who offered developmental (big picture) and line editing services for very reasonable rates. He was very responsive, fast, and his edits led to the work being what it is today. Though I was hesitant to spend the money (I’m on a teacher’s salary here!), it taught me a lot and upped my writing game big time. Had I not followed my wife’s suggestion and invested in a professional editor, I never would have known the manuscript’s issues. Sure, I could have self-published that 4th draft back in 2020 (110,000 words — WAY too long); but no one would have read it, the twists and turns wouldn’t have evolved, and the storytelling wouldn’t have been as well-crafted.

What is the one habit you believe contributed the most to you becoming a great writer? (i.e. perseverance, discipline, play, craft study). Can you share a story or example?

When I’m creating scenes in my fiction, I tend to write the dialogue first. This advice comes from one of my mentors, Ann Teplick, who described how she always wanted to hear her characters talking. This always leads to me having a bit more dialogue than most writers, but I think it keeps the thrust of my scenes character-driven and propulsive. The exposition, the setting description, the gestures, etc… I layer all that on later.

Which literature do you draw inspiration from? Why?

As I write mostly realism, I ingest a lot of non-fiction, especially anti-racist works. I just finished Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste. However, I’m usually happiest when reading a good contemporary novel. I just finished The Blueberry Pickers by Amanda Peters and am off to read Michael Chin’s Territories. In my opinion, Colson Whitehead is the greatest novelist currently writing in English; I read everything he writes. However, to heighten one’s prose, one must read poetry, as the adage goes. I recently finished a deep dive into my friend Rick Barot’s work. I’m currently reading Rivka Clifton’s MUZZLE. But I also branch out into memoir. I finished Jesmyn Ward’s 2013 memoir, THE MEN WE REAPED — a beautifully crafted memento on lost loves and childhood in the context of race and class in America.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I will borrow the vision of my mentor, Richard Gold, founder of The Pongo Poetry Project and creator of the Pongo Poetry Method for facilitating heartfelt poetry with youth leading difficult lives. I was involved with Pongo between 2007 and 2021 and did just about everything from volunteering to program managing projects, to book publishing to trainings. I would like a writing project in every school, correctional facility, and mental health treatment center on the globe so that young writers could have their voices heard and their stories told.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Instagram is best (samcmichael); but I’m also on Twitter (I refuse to call it X) @McmichaelShaun; Blue Sky (shaunmcmichael.bsky.social); LinkedIn (@ Shaun McMichael). And here’s my website (shaunanthonymcmichael.com). Hope to see you around!

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspiring!