"If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy."
- Dorothy Parker
Not to make light of the serious physical and mental damage done to human beings who serve actual time in solitary, but the above title does accurately reflect the life of a writer. Writing is generally, but not always, a very solitary affair.
Let me share another "Parkerism" that describes the challenge of writing:
"I hate writing, I love having written."
Parker is saying that the act of writing—i.e., sitting alone in a room trying to fill a blank page/screen with intelligible and interesting content—isn't much fun, but once it's over, once your "masterpiece" has made it on to paper (or pixels), you receive your reward.
And the prize is (wait for it)…you don't have to write anymore!
At least not until the next deadline, or until a siren call from your muse interrupts the other, more important things you're doing, like: staring out the window, doing the dishes, storing away your summer clothes to make way for… ah, you get it.
Any task is easier than having to sit down and start writing something new.
I've written before about what motivated me to sit down and face the music…er, the blank page—a health condition that allowed me to do little else. But still, even with that issue in the rear view mirror thanks to a successful lung transplant, I continue to write. Considering how painful I've painted this endeavor, one might ask why.
The answer could be sheer momentum. Once one achieves some limited success in this work (i.e., people actually read what you write), it becomes a bit intoxicating. Like a marathon finisher awash in endorphins, it's the love of "having written" Parker described that keeps you coming back.
And so here I sit, staring at the screen.
The past year has been busy, and not much writing got done. In between medical procedures, USGA rating/playing golf courses, and designing and moving into a new house, there hasn't been much free time.
This blog was one outlet I tried to keep up with, though even here entries have been infrequent—less than one a month. The one writing/editing outlet I have been faithful to is AirWays, the Second Wind Lung Transplant Association newsletter.
AirWays is a 12 page, four color publication that comes out every few months, devoted to information regarding lung health and transplantation. I, along with my co-editor, Bonnie Parsons, put each issue together, often writing much of the content ourselves. We also edit submissions received from medical professionals and personal stories from Second Wind members. It's a rewarding, but still demanding (deadlines!) task.
(If you're interested in a sample, you can click on this link from the Second Wind website: Newsletters)
Now, as the year ends and with winter upon us, things have settled down. Thus, I've used up all of my procrastination rationalizations, and can no longer avoid staring at this blank screen again.
(Speaking of procrastinating, I ran across a wonderful old Spanish proverb:
"Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.")
And so I'm biting the bullet, taking the bull by the horns, knocking on wood, (insert favorite cliché here) and working on a new, or rather newish, novel. I'm reworking something I'd written years ago, because revising sounded so much easier than starting afresh.
I was wrong.
The original manuscript was three short stories cobbled together that involved overlapping characters. Looking at it with fresh eyes, I now see it's bloated, and the plot so full of holes that if it were a boat I'd be swimming back to shore. I'm doing the hard work of plugging those holes, and trimming away lots of superfluous sub-plots and dialogue.
Despite all the whining, when working at my desk I realize how fortunate I am that I don't have to do this for a living. Because of changes in the marketplace, authors today, with very few exceptions (King, Patterson and the like) spend more time marketing their work than they do creating it.
Even traditional publishers like Random House leave most of the hard work of getting a book in front of readers' eyes to the person who wrote it. One's expected to have a widespread social media presence, buy advertisements out of one's own pocket, and spend much time hawking your wares at book fairs, libraries, bookstores or any other venue you've managed to beg your way into.
In short, the life of an author, even a published one, is not as glamorous as you might imagine, especially considering how much time we voluntarily choose to spend in "Solitary Confinement".