With my 2019 novel
published and my 2020 novel not even a glimmer on the horizon, I
thought I might take this fallow time to write a post or two about my
experiences as a writer.
Over the past four
years I’ve come across a good number of articles written by writers
concerning their struggles as a writer. In these articles, they often
discuss their experiences dealing with things like writer’s block,
criticism, and self-doubts about their talent and stories, plus the
usual struggles of getting agents, making sales, or the business of
self-publishing. This is not going to be one of those articles, since
it seems that I have avoided much of that drama in my writing life.
I owe that, I believe, to my set of character flaws.
So let’s have a
look at them to see how they make writing easy and fun for me.
Perhaps the over
arching character flaw of mine is that I don’t take writing all
that seriously. I’ve written stories, or parts of stories, off and
on my entire life, but rarely with any serious intent. I simply enjoy
the process. I enjoy playing with words. So when I’m writing, I’m
having fun. I hope my stories reflect that. Moreover, I will
cheerfully admit that I’ve nothing profound, or otherwise, to say
about the human condition. I’m not on a mission. I write light,
hopefully entertaining stories, and that’s it.
I don’t have a
great deal of fortitude. Many years ago, when I was young and
foolish, I wrote some stories that I submitted to magazines and a
book publisher, collecting a small collection of rejections slips
that I still have for my efforts. I gave that up rather quickly. And so, decades
later, when I started writing my first three self published novels, I
never even considered trying to sell them to publishers. I wrote them
simply as a personal challenge and, as I’ve said, for the fun of
playing with words. I had collected all the rejections slips I cared
to collect. Self publishing was the easy route, making it my
preferred route because...
I am lazy. I write
imaginary world stories so I can just make things up and thus avoid
the tedious research necessary to place stories in history and the
known world. It also means that when it comes to publishing, I don’t
bother with anything that resembles work, which for me, is everything
other than writing, making the cover, and uploading my books after my
volunteer proof and beta readers have found most of my many mistakes.
And with that, I’m content because...
I must have been
standing behind the door when ambition was being handed out since I
lack ambition. I have no desire for fame or fortune, or to do the
work they require. And I also don’t need, or even want, great
success. Fame and wealth seem to be very toxic. And since I’ve
successfully avoided both my whole life, I not about to blow it now
as a writer. So I’m quite content with my modest success. And
yet...
...I have a big ego.
Or maybe it’s little one. I’m not sure. All I know is that
satisfaction for me is largely internal. I’m a shy person. I don’t
need acclaim. I’m a writer, and I don’t need a price on my books
to consider myself a professional grade writer. “Professional”
writers are free to consider me a “hobbyist” but I don’t see a
difference. I mean, it’s not like most professional writers actually
make a “professional” level income from their freelance writing.
And most of the professional indie authors are making pocket change
from the sales of their books, if they’re making any money at all.
Writing is simply writing. Money is neither here nor there. This
attitude saves me a whole boatload of grief. So is it a lack of ego
that allows me the joy of writing without a monetary reward, or is a
vast ego that allows me to serenely look down on those scrambling for
coins, shake my head and smile? Who knows?
Another character
flaw is that I’m not a perfectionist. Good enough is, indeed, good
enough, for me. While I try to make every book the best book I can
write, I don’t get (too) discouraged by the fact that I can’t go
back and read more than a couple pages of any of my books without
coming across something that I’d like to change. Something that
makes me wonder what in the hell I was thinking when I though that it
was good enough. However, achieving perfection is a true life
illustration of the fact that, in theory, you can never actually
arrive anywhere, since every journey can be divided into halves. Get
halfway there, and there’s another halfway point that must be
reached before arriving, and so on and on; the remaining halves just
keep getting ever smaller and smaller, and smaller but never
disappear. Getting close to perfection is like that. You never
actually arrive, but the closer you get to it, the more time and
effort it takes to achieve any tiny incremental improvement. Being
able to sigh, shrug, and say, “good enough” when those efforts no
longer make any sense, makes life, and writing easier. That, and the
knowledge that no matter how close you come to “perfection,”
perfection is always subjective. Some people will like it and others
won’t, and that can’t be helped. And that being the case, I can
be...
Selfish. I write
only to please me. You, my dear reader are merely along for the ride,
though your company is very welcome. I only write the stories that I
enjoy, trusting that other people, but far from everyone, will enjoy
them as well. As the creator of the story, I have to live with the
story and its many variations, in my head for months on end. So what
my readers might want (And who knows what that is?) doesn’t figure
into my calculations. It’s all about me and what I enjoy. I know
that whatever I write is never going to please everyone, so I don’t
even try to please everyone. I’d like to think, however, that by
making the best possible story for me, I make a far better story for
the readers who share my taste in stories.
Which brings me
around to my last flaw. I may be a bit of a snob. I consider writing
art. I paint as well as write and both involve bringing something
into the world that did not exist in it before. I’m a creator. And
I think the highest ideal of creation is to make something as
original, and as personal, as one can make it. I don’t claim any
great originality, but they are all very personal creations. They are
mine, and all mine. And I think there is great value in that. It is
art in its purest form.
Commercial art is
something different. It is art in a harness. It is not lesser art,
but it is a creation process that is compromised in order to appeal to the
broadest audience possible. People know what they like, and like what
they know, so if one wants to appeal to the most people possible, one
gives them what they know and like – a minor variation of a
familiar product. In order to sell a lot of books, the books are
engineered to fit a very specific and well researched market niches.
They have covers that look like every other cover in the specific
genre, they have blurbs that have been fined tuned and filled with
key words known to appeal to the target readers, and are written to
include all the tropes that the readers expect find it them. They are
designed to be just original enough that the reader knows they’ve
read new book. (Though I gather that just changing a book’s title,
cover, and author can sometimes accomplishes the same thing.) These
books are so similar that their authors need to publish a book every
two or three months just to be remembered by their readers. And then,
when that particular sub-genre falls out of fashion, as it will,
every book in that sub-genre will seem old and as out of date as a
month old newspaper. It is disposable art.
I won’t compromise
my vision for increased sales. I don’t chase fashion. I don’t
chase readers. My books will likely never in fashion, but then, they
will never be out of fashion either. (Always just unfashionable.) I
choose this approach because I think it will produces books that can
and will be read decades from now. As I said earlier, my books are
just light entertainment. I make no claim for any greatness. But they
are as original as I can make them within the long stream of
adventure stories, and I think that counts.
This has gotten to
be a very long post. But then, I’m not known for brevity in my
writing. So to draw it to its conclusion, certain characteristics of
mine, ones that can be seen as flaws, combine to make writing for me
fun, while allowing me to avoid a great deal of angst that other
writers without these flaws may have to endure.
