Finished “On Writing.” Finally came to the conclusion that Stephen King is a congenial enough guy, but also a bit of a bully. Dispensing homey, kitchen wisdom that seduces with its lack of syllables and art— “cat got your tongue?” “wouldn’t shake a stick at–” The language is so friendly you might be tempted to think he’s your friend. But what he’s really doing, the subtext, is drawing a careful line in the sand, a circle around real writers, the ones who get it, or have it, and keeping everybody else outside.
What I have been doing: chewing compulsively through writer blogs— writers talking to each other, talking about writing, talking about their books, writers giving helpful advice. Most of them make me want to quit. Stephen King writes a nearly perfect book about writing and after reading it I’m ready to hang it up for good. Everything he says makes him seem so much smarter than I could ever hope to be, intimidatingly smart, his homey, small town dialect notwithstanding. And then he writes, if you aren’t enjoying yourself, don’t write.
My chest caves in with despair and lack of air. Some writers enjoy doing this. (Why? Because they were well-liked as children? Because they aren’t perfectionists? Because they have such huge egos they actually believe perfection can be attained, or has been attained, by them? Because they have practiced long enough? Because they have Aspberger’s?) However it happened, writing is so much fun for them that when they aren’t writing they share helpful tips, starting with, writing should be fun.
I am blessed to have a peaceful marriage, to a person that I really, truly, love. Steady, daily love, the good stuff, a person I am glad to see every morning after more than thirty years. I don’t have the same juju with writing, which turns out to be the great, unrequited love of my life. Every day has felt stolen, wrestled, cajoled, torn, cobbled. Every day I ask myself, should I have been a therapist? A teacher? A lawyer? I keep trying to change, but in the end, that’s the writer I turned out to be. Stephen King writes because he can’t not write, because he enjoys writing too much to stop. I fight to write, every day, against relentless doubts and fears. I write like somebody leaning into strong headwinds, trying to make it home without a coat or a compass. I write lost, and frostbitten, and terrified— when I am not hiding under my covers, taking a nap, planning alternate careers. I am not brimming with stories. I am a slow drip. I answer no to every “You are a writer if…” question on every internet quiz I have ever taken.
But still. There are all these years. I’m still here. Could we count those years for something?
I want to say, to myself, to all those other writers who might be out there, tormented and tongue-tied, not having fun, dreams buried under too many obligations and distractions and negative self talk: don’t give up. You’re still here.
I spend too much of my time, so much of my time, editing myself, the gold standard I am seeking always punishingly out of reach.
I was reading my notes about Two Roads, a story I ultimately abandoned, and found myself surprisingly interested. I gave up on the idea because I told myself it was no good. I discover, years later, that I actually like it. The lesson seems to be that I shouldn’t quit. There’s no best story. The best story is the one you finish.
Ralph Fletcher says it doesn’t matter how pretty your words are if you have nothing to say. People only read for insight. To learn something. To be changed. He followed that assertion with example after example of the most delicious prose, most of it written by eight year olds. The paragraphs were like trays of canapés: the boy who wrote about the roofers who killed his cat; the boy who wrote about the executioner who had to chase Lady Jane Gray around the chopping block, because with his first whack he failed to make contact with her neck; a naturalist who wrote the most beautiful passage I have ever read about sky, beginning with the startling observation that sky doesn’t live overhead, it starts under our feet, at the edge of solid ground. What made the paragraphs beautiful wasn’t their words, but their ideas— what the writer was trying to say.
That’s why you have to practice. To figure out what you don’t know, and what you do know, and what you are curious about. As soon as you start writing you realize you have plenty to say, and also plenty of things you notice, and plenty that you wonder. Unless you start writing, you will never know any of it. It burbles, deep and hidden, like the molten core of the earth.