I was once stuck at a friend’s business function at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since we were limited to one small room and boring small talk, in desperation, she and I began to read every single card in the few glass cases available to us.
If there are a zillion writers, I’m sure there are a zillion answers to the question. I write because I get to play with the Universe. Create a universe. And it’s based on things I’ve experienced and seen and read and watched in other people. Because as far as I write against the grain, there are still inherent moments that come from the place of me.
I’ve read books that were so elegantly crafted with a sense of place, I assumed the authors had traveled to those exotic locales. And then I’d read an interview where they’d say, “Nope, just did a lot of research.”
I’m on Twitter and I keep seeing author bios that proudly state they’re aspiring writers.
Aspiring. What does that even mean?
The New Oxford American Dictionary defines aspiring as “directing one’s hopes or ambitions toward becoming a specified type of person: an aspiring artist.”
And this is why I have a problem with that word. If you write, you’re a writer. If you mean you’re not a writer until you’re a published writer, well, that’s something else entirely.
Are you serious about spending the time and energy and doing the work? Are you writing? Are you crafting stories? You’re a writer. And until you own that word, why should anyone believe you?
Aspiring sounds hopeful to some. Not to me. If you write and want to be taken seriously as a writer, knock that word off your bio. It takes courage but writing is not for the weak. Writers need to have thick skins and you might as well get in practice from the start.
You are a writer.
It’s something you work at, honing your craft, learning more every day. This doesn’t change whether you’ve written one book or a hundred.
You are a writer.
It had been a while since I wrote by hand instead of using my computer and I wanted to feel the difference. Because it is different.
As a writing exercise, I created a villain. He was big and strong and evil. Bullets couldn’t touch him, bombs made him sneeze, and even a building falling on him made him lightly brush off the debris as he climbed out of the rubble.
Author Dorothy L. Sayers couldn’t stand brandy—but her main character, Lord Peter Wimsey, liked it, and people kept offering it to her, assuming that she liked it as well. It was a compliment of sorts (although probably a bit exasperating for her) that people assumed such a fine detail must be true for the author as well.
Here’s the put-up-or-shut-up line. The advice I’ve been telling everyone now since I started this blog over two years ago:
Write anyway.
If you don’t feel inspired, if you look at the number of books already out there and feel overwhelmed, if there’s something more interesting (distracting) to do, write anyway.
So, if you’ll excuse me, my book needs to have some words put on the page and I’m going to do that today.
The holidays tend to push everything out of the way. It happened to me. That’s okay. But the holidays are done, it’s a new year, and everything is bright and shiny.
So get to work!
What—it’s too cold out? Gloomy? Or you live where the sun is hot and you feel too sluggish?
I understand. I’m in the same situation. So this is what I did.
It’s been an interesting year. I published my novel Magical Ties and my short story “In the Smoke” appeared in the anthology Smoke: Tales Between Dark and Light. Also, I copyedited a wonderful cookbook by Roberta Roberti, World Party: Vegetarian Appetizers, Hors d’oeuvres and Party Plates, and maintained my blog for the second year.
And yet, it feels like I did nothing. I know it’s not productive to look at other people, but to read that so-and-so wrote two novels in a year and a screenplay and trains beagles on the side…okay, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea. It seems like I should be doing more.
Why are we so hard on ourselves? Writing a novel is a long, grueling race, sometimes like running through molasses. And there’s no guarantee of any kind of success. Yet we write on.
The only thing to do is write.
Book two is percolating, leaving me multiple scenarios running through my mind and handwritten scraps of paper floating from surface to surface in the living room while a Word doc has scenes waiting to be placed in the right order. It’s filling me to the brim and very soon I’ll be sitting down and putting it all into a more coherent mess. I find that I miss the people and I’m looking forward to what happens to them in the new year.
I guess if the point of this year was to continue me into the next, pen and keyboard ready, that’s a better year than I thought.
I love Lucifer.
The TV show, that is. But I have friends who refuse to watch because they don’t want to attract the real deal to them. They believe in the Devil.
Another writer I know writes horror. Recently, she came across someone who told her not to get involved in things like that. That it could be dangerous.
What to do, what to do.
First off, I’m not going to stop writing something because it might make someone else uncomfortable. And if they really believe that people can draw evil, or the devil, or some other malevolent entity toward them by saying their name (shades of Voldemort!), well, that’s their deal.
Not mine.
Do people believe that mystery writers draw murderers to them? And if I suddenly write about unicorns, will one turn up in my backyard? I admit that would be cool, but if the virginity thing is a problem it wouldn’t stay near me. Pity.
What do we do about well-meaning people who tell us to stop writing for reasons that strike us as ridiculous?
It could mean they’re sincerely worried. I’ll listen politely, although it won’t change my mind. But it could also be a bit of ego (“I know better than you, dear”) with control issues.
So here are my rules.
Writing comes from our soul. Even the dark and twisty stuff are our toys to play with on paper or computer screen (and maybe, if we’re lucky, on the TV or movie screen later), but it’s our stuff. It’s fun, it’s serious, it’s cathartic, it’s whatever we want it to be. Writing about demons who are serial killers doesn’t mean I have one in my closet. My cat likes to snooze in there and he has no intentions of sharing.
Write.
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