I was thinking about that point as I worked on an essay about the relationship between cumulative workplace stresses and post traumatic stress disorder for a friend. I was midparagraph when I thought – I mustn’t forget to go through [another friend]’s paper on obesity and jot the odd editorial comment as promised. It would mean I could put off the mountain of paperwork involved in arranging tertiary education for young adults in this country. I should also have been giving some attention to the three [snail mail] letters I needed to write at the end of last year, [before Dec 15th, actually.] Plus, I have a number of arrangements with various social and medical support organizations that I really should be getting written up….
That’s when I decided to write this column.
Despite appearances, it isn’t about procrastination. It’s about writing.
Writers write. I’ve always written, but my dream dream, the really big one I’ve always had from the time I was four, was to be on the stage. I even did some amateur leads as a youngster. The trouble is I’m not much of a self-starter. I’m always doing things, nonstop in fact, but rarely ever because I wake up and say, “I’m going to do THIS today.” I’m more like the Buddhist pebble that doesn’t move, and yet is carried across the country by the water rushing around it. [Read more.]
I wrote what and when we were told to write at school. Compositions, they were called initially. Then they were Creative Writing. Various teachers in various years took various pieces and submitted them to school magazines and local, small-town goings-on. Only one teacher, in my senior year, said, “I’m casting the senior play, and I want you for this role.” Fate took the lead; I said no. Another teacher recommended a writing course at college, just part-time, a time-filler. The tutor on that first course, said, “Pssst. XYZ Publishers are looking for new authors, 95000 words. I’ve given them your name. Can you get a manuscript to them before February?” Yes, of course I could, and so it began.
I formed and followed a sound rationalization from that point on. I’d get a significant publishing history behind me and then I could write exactly what I wanted to write. No more guidelines. No more formulas. No more OTT submissions. And sound it is. You can make money from the ephemera at the edges of the acceptable literary world. Sometimes you can even give up your day job, but that’s only so you can write what has been requested. It’s a living as long as you keep writing dimestore novellas to specification. I was still just writing what and when I was told to.
But one day, one fine day, boy oh boy, one day, there’d be time and money enough to do the research and weave the threads of the Great Work-of-Art Novel into reality. One day I’d have the freedom to write the trilogy that I’ve kept in my head: meticulously researched, beautifully crafted, and artfully literary; a good yarn with a soul-deep resonance for the as yet unmet masses. One day.
I spoke to an agent about the project, prematurely I must admit. It was still only forty-five chapters of synopsis, with a one hundred page opening. I suddenly realized I was on the spot, but the spot was more than a little bit shaky. See, as I had to sheepishly explain to her, there was easily two years in research and writing to get up a decent first draft of the first book. Not good.
She had an idea. What if I cut the anthropological detail; what if all the myth cycles and local dialects and seasonal nuances were just sort of smudged over? Just write the story without the depth I had imagined. Maybe even as one book? Three hundred thousand words, not a million.
Luckily, I was having a break from the world at the time and doing something I thought I’d never do - I was reviewing some novels. One had enormous potential. It was really well written, it was a huge apocalyptic tale, but the author had been lazy or rushed or something. He’d brushed over important details. He’d made excuses for his characters and used low plot devices to save himself the effort of actually knowing his story. In my view he’d taken all the potential of his great and glorious story and pissed them against a wall – for reasons of his own. Maybe he’d been advised to cut it down? Seeing that wasted potential, seeing more and more brilliance being written online, much of it being totally ignored, seeing myself still tumbling down the riverbed under the impetus of some blind goddesses, recognizing the ‘there but by the grace of God go I’ in the novel I’d reviewed, all made me realize the awful truth about writing. Writers write.
Yes, we all know that. This was more profound still.
Writers write what they write.
I don’t care what they write. I say that all the time, I know. I don’t believe genre or category fiction is a poor cousin cast outside the wall’ed city of literature. Storytelling is the fundamental art; whether it’s done through poetry, epic or haiku; or poetic prose, with well turned phrases and cryptic insider nods to classic references; or in graphic ink slashes or calm and beautiful watercolours; or in simplistic Dick and Dora text that speaks to the less literary focused readers. I just don’t care. The art is in getting the art right.
What I think matters is that I deceived myself. I told myself that if I spent thirty years writing the sort of stories that are published through the pulp mills and magazines, then the day would come when I’d suddenly stop doing that and become a different kind of writer all together. Okay, maybe I never thought I’d still be whistling with my hands in my pockets and going wherever the wind or the spirit took me all this time later, but I’m not sure it matters. You learn to do what you practice doing.
Writers write what they write.
If you have a vision of where you want to be and what you want from your writing, you really need to be able to critically evaluate what it is you write. If you are not writing what you love – however sound your reasoning is – you had better also critically evaluate what all your practice is going to teach you. I know I am not alone in my misapprehension. Most of you will know someone who speaks of their work as if they are Nureyev crossing the stage on point, when clearly they are Chuck Norris walking nonchalantly away from the Big Bang.
Also, I find a dichotomy in the writing world. I meet those who are infinitely self assured, convinced of their aptitude and brilliance and able to ignore any suggestion to the contrary, and I meet those who have no confidence in what they put forward, and no amount of praise will fill the anxious pit in their stomachs. Simple relativism tells us a large percentage of both groups will be wrong. Are you critically aware of what it is you write? Do you hold yourself to a standard?
There is an enormous freedom in writing and marketing on the WWW. I don’t think it is working particularly well for most writers for reasons I have discussed before on this blog. Do you want to make money? Do you want most to be read? Do you want to make it specifically to the New York lists? There are regional bestsellers that no one in NY has ever even heard of. Do you want to be famous? Develop a cult following, maybe?
There isn’t a right or wrong choice, but my warning is to step out confidently - knowing that the road you choose to walk on will take you to the end of that road. It will not take you somewhere else. One day never comes, or at least, one road never turns out to be another road several blocks away.
The good news is the lovely editors at 1889 Labs – who I can highly recommend as discerning souls of great taste and ability – suggested another course for my magnificent octopus [nod to Baldric]. Serial. And why not? Well then. Maybe. If I start writing again.
Writers write, or they’re hobbyists.
Writers write what they write.
Smart writers write what they love.
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