{"id":1300,"date":"2009-01-15T06:44:13","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T12:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1300"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:36:02","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:36:02","slug":"writing-is-a-lonely-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=1300","title":{"rendered":"Writing Is A Lonely Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having tasted some modest success as a columnist last year for The Huntsville Times<\/em>, my goals for 2009 are to sniff out some more freelance writing opportunities and to become a better practitioner of the craft.<\/p>\n

To that end, I plan to continue to write at least one column-quality post per week here (along with whatever other mundane slices of life that strike my fancy), read good quality fiction and nonfiction works and “go back to school” by reading books on<\/em> writing, most of them the main texts from various writers’ workshops for which I currently have neither the time nor the money.<\/p>\n

But thanks to Amazon, I was able to reinvest my last two paychecks from THT<\/em> into the latter and pick up about a dozen or so of the better ones. I’m currently working my way through the first: Steven King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

This one came highly recommended and now I can see why. In the first part of the book, King traces his evolution as a writer from his childhood, filled with B-grade horror movies and ill-fated, haywire science projects with older brother Dave, through his early years as a struggling novelist and schoolteacher, married with two young children and living from paycheck to paycheck, to his shooting star success which was nearly undone by his struggles with alcoholism and drug addictions. In the second half, King deals with the nuts and bolts of writing, but in his hands, even Sophomore English, similes and subordinate clauses begin to take on new luster and wonder.<\/p>\n

And who would have thought that America’s Master of the Macabre could be so uproariously funny? Oh, but he is. Many an evening this past week has been spent<\/strike> passed recently with me sitting on the couch, wheezing and laughing, reading selected passages aloud to Eyegal, who is sitting on the other end (her own book in hand, of course), with Amazing Gracie the Wonderdog stretched out between us with some part of her body touching both of us (yes, she is horribly spoiled and sheds like a banshee, but she is our only daughter, and we love her).<\/p>\n

A few passages caught my eye and are worth sharing. First this:<\/p>\n

\n

Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky; two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Isn’t this a problem for all of us? “Oh, I would write something if I could find a story to tell.” That was my case. It wasn’t until I realized that stories are occurring all around us–heck, our lives are<\/em> stories–that I began to write more earnestly and regularly. The stories and ideas will come–if we can still ourselves long enough and open our eyes to see them as they parade before us.<\/p>\n

And then this on the novel that launched King’s success, Carrie<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

I couldn’t see myself wasting two weeks, maybe even a month, creating a novella I didn’t like and wouldn’t be able to sell. So I threw it away.<\/p>\n

The next night, when I came home from school, Tabby (his wife) had the pages. She’d spied them while emptying my wastebasket, had shaken the cigarette ashes off the crumpled balls of paper, smoothed them out, and sat down to read them. She wanted me to go on with it, she said. She wanted to know the rest of the story. I told her I didn’t know jack-s**t about high school girls. She said she’d help me with that part. She had her chin tilted down and was smiling in that severely cute way of hers. “I think you’ve got something here, ” she said. “I really think you do.”<\/p>\n

I never got to like Carrie White and I never trusted Sue Snell’s motives in sending her boyfriend to the prom with her, but I did<\/em> have something there. Like a whole career. Tabby somehow knew it, and by the time I had pile up fifty single-spaced pages, I knew it too.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Check your own wastebasket lately? And finally this:<\/p>\n

\n

My wife made a crucial difference in those two years I spent teaching Hampden (and washing sheets at New Franklin Laundry during the summer vacation). If she had suggested that the time I spent writing stories on the front porch of our rental house on Pond Street or in the laundry room of our rented trailer on Klatt Road in Herman was wasted time, I think a lot of the heart would have gone out of me. Tabby never voiced a single doubt, however. Her support was a constant, one of the few good things I could take as a given. And whenever I see a first novel dedicated to a wife (or a husband), I smile and think, There’s someone who knows<\/em>. Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Writing is<\/em> a lonely job. Which leads me to ask: How many great books remain unwritten because we don’t have the eyes to see? How many worthwhile ideas and thoughts lay crumpled and cast away in the wastebasket of our lives? How many of us, if we only had someone who believed<\/em>, would find our voice and sound our songs for all the world to hear?\n<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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