by: Rebecca Brock
If you’re reading this, I’m going to go ahead and make an ass of you and me and guess that you’re a writer.
Or you’d like to be a writer.
Ever ask yourself why?
It’s an honest question. Why do you want to be a writer? What makes you want to sit down by yourself and spend hours staring at a computer screen or a blank notebook page? Why do you feel the need to create characters and build worlds in your mind? Why do you write?
My own personal answer? I have no clue.
I’ve thought about this a lot, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer. When I was in grade school, I’d write stories and read them out loud in class (at the time I thought my fellow students liked the stories; now I realize they probably liked not having to do any school work). Because I grew up suckling at the creative teat of the likes of Stephen King (and there’s a mental image for you), my stories were bloody and gross and scary—just the kind of thing that would land me in a mental institution for “observation” nowadays. Back then, they were just stories.
But as the years have passed, I’ve realized that being a writer and actually writing are two entirely separate things. In the heady days of the 1980s, when I was a teenager, writing meant either pounding stories out on a typewriter (I had an electric one that I still miss to this day) or writing them by hand. And then you had to track down a copy of the Writer’s Market to find potential publishers or magazines. And then you had to make Xerox copies of your story, bundle it up in an envelope (and for Pete’s sake, don’t forget the SASE!), and mail it out at the post office. You had to really commit to being a writer and not just put in the time and energy to write, but the money and patience to send your stuff out. You could call yourself a writer and know that you did the work to deserve the title.
Now it’s a whole different game. There are so many outlets for short fiction that it’s almost impossible not to be “published”—whether it’s online, in a ‘zine, or print-on-demand. Everybody and anybody can be a writer. And there are a whole lot of people out there who like to advertise the fact that they’re writers, even if their grammar and writing skills beg to differ. There’s a certain romance to it, I suppose. Movies and TV have sold us on the notion of the solitary writer sitting alone in his room, puffing on cigarettes as he feverishly pounds out story after story on an old Smith-Corona, knocking back shots of whiskey as he struggles with writer’s block, finishing the novel and having his one and only draft instantly accepted for publication by a huge New York publisher. Money, fame, and hot chicks follow in short order…because writers, after all, are so damn sexy.
Heck, who wouldn’t want to be a writer? It’s an easy job, after all. You just sit around waiting for inspiration, and then when your own personal muse takes a dump on your head, you trot down to your local Starbucks, set up your laptop, and clickety-clack your way to a bestseller and fame and fortune. Because everyone knows that writing is a sure way to being a millionaire and a household name. You get to sleep late every day, put a few hours in at the keyboard, and spend the rest of your time swimming in money in your own personal vault as the royalty checks roll in.
Yep. That’s exactly what it’s like to be a writer.
What the rest of the world doesn’t realize is that only a very, very few people are just writers. Most writers have day jobs, and those day jobs sometimes don’t allow for much time or energy for writing. So it’s a challenge to make yourself sit in front of a blinking cursor and force your tired mind—which wants nothing more than to sit in front of a TV and stare at “CSI” reruns—to come up with something useful and creative. And it’s a challenge to submit your stories to reputable publishers and accept their decisions of yea or nea. And it’s a struggle to not lose your patience when you read blogs or forum posts of people who fancy themselves writers because they’ve published a few badly written stories online and believe they’re already stars in the writing world.
That, my friends, is what it’s like to be a writer. It’s fighting to keep yourself motivated to put words on a page. It’s resisting the urge to quit altogether and spend your free time doing something more fun. It’s being alone with only your thoughts for company, and sometimes finding that the joy you used to feel when writing has faded, but bulling your way through anyway because you can’t stop writing even if you really, really wanted to.
You’re a writer if you write. Pure and simple. It’s not a matter of being published. It’s not a matter of being celebrated or applauded or even acknowledged by your peers. If you’re willing to do the work, if you’re willing to put words to paper and spend a considerable chunk of your life alone, then you’re a writer. Some days it’s worth it. Some days it’s not. You just have to keep writing and hope that this particular day will be one of those times when the words and images flow, and everything comes together, and you can get up from your computer and feel as if you’ve accomplished something pretty damn great.
That’s why you write.
Although I wouldn’t say no to a nice royalty check every now and then.
