On Writing

So, let me tell you about myself, just a little bit. I grew up, as people do, and I wanted to be a writer. Specifically, a fiction writer, more specifically a science fiction writer, more more specifically, one of the fascinating coterie of luminaries profiled so colorfully in Harlan Ellison's sci fi anthology "Dangerous Visions."

That wasn't to be, of course -- that book came out some years before I was born, to begin with. But I was told by the adults in my life -- maybe you were told this too -- when they asked what you wanted to do when you grew up, and when you said "writer," maybe they shook their heads.

Writer? Writing is fun stuff, kid. But nobody makes a living being a writer. You got to get a job! A real job."

Of all the bouncing bugshit lies I've been told in my life, that one tops them all. And it boggles me how long it took me to figure out what bullshit it was.

Think about it. Put novels aside for the moment, even though that's what folks picture when they say 'writer'.

Writing is everywhere. Freaking everywhere. There is more writing going on around you than you can comprehend. Newspapers, sure, and magazines. But also what I'd call "hidden writing" in even greater quantity.

Every movie you see, every song you hear, every cartoon you watched as a kid, every TV show, hell, even every commercial that you sit thru? They're all written by writers! Lots and lots of writers! Who get paid for what they do! Hear me kids, and I wish someone in my tiny-minded hometown had said this to me: Lots of people make a living as writers.It is a real job. You can do it.

But I listened. I dutifully got real jobs. I baled hay on farms, I rang up groceries, I taught classes, I unloaded trucks. And I spent a long, long, long time in offices, making copies, filing, using a computer for the most boring functions such a device can perform.

And I got close to middle-aged. And I thought what the hell am I doing?

Well, it took some hard knocks, and some upheavals. But at a fairly late age (41 if you want to know), I secretly committed myself to creating fiction.

It had to be secret. Certain people and institutions with which I was then affiliated would not have been on board.

I wrote my first short story that I intended to have published. It came back rejected. From fifteen magazines.

Ditto my second story. I tracked my rejections in an Excel sheet. I got, I am not kidding, to row 200.

At this point, the question occurred to me. "Am I a bad writer?" Kids, if you ever ask yourself that question, and you aren't honest enough to say "yes," you won't get far.

In retrospect, I wasn't "bad" but I also made all the mistakes beginning fiction writers make. Wordiness. Triviality. Unclarity. Inability to think 'how will the reader understand this?'

At one point, I got sick of hearing my own 'voice.' I started writing to be efficient. And clear. And to also dig deeper to find the things that really pissed me off, and to put them in story form.

And boing. An acceptance. And another, for the next story I wrote. (And then a bunch more rejections, but I was on to something.)

It's been ten years. I've written over 300 stories, and managed to publish about 50 of them in professional magazines and anthologies. By 'professional' I mean they have an editorial board, they accept submissions, they only take the submissions they like, and they reject most. Although I've sold to many magazines that pay the SFWA pro rate of 8 cents (now 10 cents) a word, the spec fiction world being what it is means that pay isn't everything.

I also write for a living. I wish I could say it was fiction writing -- it's not, it's basically advertising -- but what I write is certainly fictional. I am one of those behind-the-scenes people doing the 'hidden' writing. And while I'd rather be getting paid for novels or scripts, I still love it.

It beats the shit out of baling hay.

For those of you out there who believed the bullshit I mentioned earlier, believe it no more.

If it's something you want to do, you can do it. It's possible. Even if your life right now seems to make it impossible.

Donald Barthelme famously said "The purpose of fiction is the creation of a small furry creature that breaks your heart."

I've hung this saying over my computer several times in my life. Just last night I learned, to my shock, that Harlan Ellison, creator of that "Dangerous Visions" anthology that got me wanting to write, had the same quotation over his typewriter.

Small world, whee-oo.

Now get out of here, and go make your own furry creatures.