I
am the daughter of an obsessed writer. My father, a math teacher by
vocation, a writer by avocation, brought me up believing that writing is
a fine passion and that the highlight of a writer’s life is being
published. He gave me his love of the English language, great literature
and great writers. He instructed me on the importance of realistic
dialogue, creating characters we remember, and good plot twists. I was
drawn to his typewriter before I could spell. In fact, one of our
memorable photographs is of me at about age three, kneeling on a chair
at the table where he wrote. My little hands are poised above the keys
of his sturdy, black Underwood. My expression is thoughtful and
fixed. By the side of the Underwood is a bottle of Schaefer beer.
When
I was a child, I breathed in my father's passion for his own writing and
being published. Before I was old enough to read his stories, I filled
the manila envelopes with his manuscripts (the onion skin carbon copies
ceremoniously filed away), pasted on the stamps and, holding the
precious envelope in one hand and his hand in my other, walked to the
mail box where together we slid the envelope into the slot. Then the
wait began, ever hopeful, for the news that his story had been accepted.
I’m not sure I knew what would happen when it was accepted, but
I knew it would make him, and thus me very, very, very happy.
Invariably, what happened, of course was that the manuscript was
returned. I felt his dejection as if it were my own
“Don’t
worry, Daddy,” I remember telling him. “When I grow up, I’m going
to put all your stories into a book and publish them myself.” It was a
palpable dream for me.
When
my father died, he left suitcases filled with short stories, only two of
which had been published, both in Esquire. In addition, he’d
written three novels about a private eye named Michael Oliver O’Toole,
who remained his companion during his final years in a nursing home.
Even when my father couldn’t remember who I was, he talked about
Michael Oliver O’Toole.
This
durable friendship with Michael Oliver O’Toole is one of my favorite
memories of my writing father, and I have come to the conclusion that it
is better to have a friend like Michael Oliver O’Toole than the memory
of signing a fat publishing contract.
I
wonder if Dad would agree with me.
I'm
not so sure he would. He wanted so desperately to be well-published. He
wanted fame and fortune and, I believe, felt terribly despondent for not
having had them. He was a victim of the 'publish or perish"
syndrome as surely as if he'd been a college professor.
I
am as much heir to those longing as I am the recipient of his love of
writing. The disparity between these two inheritances has made for a lot
of angst in my own obsessive drive to be “well” published.
I
did publish, often, well and once very, very well. I was thrilled that
my father was still alive when I sold my novel Petersburg to
Putnam for a lot of money. I usually don't talk about the money I have
received for my books, and surely doing so seems antithetical to a
column such as this; however, the memory of what happened because of the
sale is vital in my memory and cannot be told without reference to the
dollar amount of the sale of Petersburg. For as if by the
kindness of the Muse herself, even though my father lay lost in a fog of
dementia, I was able to make him understand. Leaning over his bed in the
nursing home, I said over and over, “Dad, I did it. I sold my book for
$250,000!”
Finally,
he turned to me, his blue eyes more vibrant than I had seen them for a
long time. He opened them wide to show delight and his mouth formed a
big O shape. “A quarter of a million dollars! OHHH!” His smile was
wonderful. For that moment, I had my father back—he’d even,
amazingly, translated $250,000 into a quarter of a million! But the
light soon vanished, the O of his mouth deflated and he turned away. He
was gone, lost behind the shroud of Alzheimer’s Disease.
I
was ecstatic though. I’d gotten through to him. He’d understood. I’d
done it! For me and for him. Fame and fortune were on the way. Nothing
was going to stop me now.
But
it did. Several months later,
I
proposed my next book to my editor, a novel set in the Middle Ages and
she said, " Don’t write this book, Emily. You don’t want to
follow up Petersburg with something like this. It will never
sell. No one wants to read a book set in the Middle Ages."
I
wrote it anyway. It was a book waiting to be born. In one way—commercially—it
turned out the editor was right. Although I had a couple of near sales,
ultimately, I couldn’t sell the novel. Were these rejections difficult
for me? Anguishingly so. Am I sorry I wrote the novel? Absolutely not. Mistress
of the Labyrinth had to be written. For me. I would be sad if I
had never written Petersburg; however, I would not be the
person I am today—a person I am very glad I uncovered!—if I had not
written Mistress of the Labyrinth. (I further explore my
experiences with Mistress of the Labyrinth in my book, The
Art of Fiction Writing, and have excerpted the relevant chapters
on my website. See the web address link at the end of the article.)
Through
the journey I am taking with Mistress of the Labyrinth, I have
come to understand that a far truer aphorism than “publish or perish”
is “write or perish”. Am I free of “publish or perish”?
Not completely, I still have days when I cannot face going into
bookstores or bear to read a highly regarded best seller. There are days
when I lament, "Why me? Why isn't my book published?"
But those days are increasingly more rare. In my heart and my gut—it
is my mind that sometimes has trouble with this—I feel that the
journey I take in being a writer is far more exciting and
valuable than the experience of being published. Which is not to say
that I believe it is unimportant to be published. When one of my
students completes a story or book, I do everything I can to help her or
him find a publisher. And I still hope that Mistress of the Labyrinth
as well as the novel I am currently writing will be published.
However, I no longer fear, as I once did, that I will give up writing
and fall into hopeless depression if this doesn’t happen.
If being
published were the main reason that we write, then very few of us would
be writing. (It is my suspicion that today writers far outnumber
readers.) Yet many writers are haunted by the feeling that the only way
to gain validation as a writer is to be published.
“If only I
were published, my husband, wife, children, I myself, the world, my high
school English teacher, college roommate, ex-boyfriends, etc. etc. would
take me seriously.”
“If only I
were published, I would quit my job and write full time.”
“If only I
were published, I would ___________.” (You fill in the blank.)
And when we are
published, as exciting as it can be, the experience rarely lives up to
our expectations. As Anne Lamott says in Bird By Bird, “I tell
you, if what you have in mind is fame and fortune, publication is going
to drive you crazy. If you’re lucky, you will get a few reviews, some
good, some bad, some indifferent. Don’t get me started on places where
one is neglected...”
To this, I
would add: When we hand over our validation as a writer to the industry
of publishing (which today is, by-in-large, hopelessly incompetent both
as judges of good writing and as business people) we hand over our
creative passion, and are in mortal danger of losing our connection to
the joy of the journey.
There are
ways, too, to share our writing short of being published. Several come
to mind. I think of Terry, a writer in one of my weekly workshops. He’d
been working on his book for several years and during that time, the
make-up of the group hadn’t changed much. All five of us had pretty
much been with Terry throughout the creation of his novel. When he read
the last chapter for what he hoped would be the last time, we listened,
wanting it to work for his sake, but knowing if it didn’t, we would
tell him that, too. I remember my heart beating faster as he read. It’s
working, so far… so far… I kept thinking. And it was! When he
finished, we spontaneously burst into applause and cheering—there were
even a few wet eyes! The ending was perfect.
Grinning,
Terry said, “This is as good as it gets, isn’t it?”
I have to
agree with him. For what agent, editor or reader is going to know all
that it took for Terry to triumph as he did? No one else, but Terry
himself, can love his characters so deeply as those of us who had shared
in their creation.
I think,
too, of my own experiences during the writing of Petersburg. My
daughter was a freshman at the University of Vermont. She was quite
unhappy the first semester, so my husband and I made the seven hour trip
to Burlington at least twice a month. During those drives, I read
chapters and chapters of the book. He gave me feedback. We talked and
argued over characters. He challenged me, as he is wont to do. Our love
for the characters as well as the characters themselves grew with the
sharing. And together we developed the plot. (I called him “The Plot
Meister”.) We cried, too, as events brought pain, sorrow, joy,
redemption and finally resolution into the character’s lives. I
remember the day I read him the last chapter of Petersburg. We
were driving down a highway banked in snow and tears were flowing so
furiously, my husband had to pull over to the side of the road.
Another
memory… It was eleven o’clock at night and the phone rang. I picked
it up and my daughter shouted at me, “How could you? I’ll never
forgive you! Never!”
“What? I
asked. “What did I do?” She was very angry and I couldn’t imagine
why.
“You
killed him! You killed _____!” (I won’t tell you who, in case you
haven’t read Petersburg yet and would like to. Don’t want to ruin
the suspense!) “How could you kill him off? I loved him. I’ll never
forgive you for that. Never!”
I smiled. My
Inner Writer and I were taking flight!
Even now,
writing this brings back the intensity of these experiences, none of
which would have been diminished if the book had not been published. And
each of which hold far deeper, more tender places in my heart than any
publication kudos.
One of the
great challenges that we face as writers is to understand in the core of
our beings that the journey of being a writer is the
biggest payoff of all. That’s when the magic happens, when unknown
corridors within open, when writing becomes the song of the soul. There
is inexpressible pleasure that comes from the unleashed imagination; the
effortless flow of words; the appearance of characters who say the
unexpected and do the unpredictable. There is inexpressible pleasure in
waking up in the morning, hungry to return to my characters and their
stories. Then there is no such thing as a “bad writing day.” Then
there is only the writing, and my doing what feels as natural as
breathing.
I have come
to believe that the “bad days” only seem more prevalent than the “good
days” when I am dry of passion. And that only happens when the
insidious brute, Publish or Perish, sneaks up on me. I hope one day soon
to be fully free of the brute, to know as surely as I breathe that every
day I write will be a good day, simply because I have written.
In closing, I am taking lines from a
cumulative poem, "Why I Write" from the Message Board of my
website, The
Fiction Writer's Journey.
~
Why
I Write…
A cumulative poem
Writing
is soul, breath, it is the way into
self and the universe.
Words
become like one-way mirrors,
our characters see their reflection,
while we see through the mirror,
in
search of the I
I do not know I am.
Giving life to imagination,
filling it with color, texture, passion.
Sipping
the wine of words with the Muse
I am emboldened, enlivened,
at one with the Universe.
Inside
there is chaos waiting to be understood ...
waiting
to be written into order.
And
there is also order waiting
to
turn into wildness and freedom through words.
Writing
is a WOW!
It
is the punch of life pulsing through minds.
To
add flames to a fire that burns inside.
To explore parts of my soul that I have not yet touched.
To
satisfy something with-in. To find a voice. To dig deep. To be.
To
revive the lilting, longing
of the impervious soul…
To
feel my pen glide across the paper
To become more human
And somehow less.
Less
afraid to be the real you,
Less willing to give into others.
More willing to grow as a person,
More able to fight your demons.
I
write because then I can be heard, and fully known
....heard
by the universe of my mind.
To
give in to the desperate longing
of my soul to reveal itself.
To
provide a voice
For silent thoughts
That scream to have a choice
I
write to remember who I am.
to
drink in the light of the moon…
to illuminate the day
and extinguish the night
to fight fright.
I
write quite simply, because my characters want me to.
They
have a tale to tell, and have chosen me to tell it.
Who
am I to ignore such generous offers of story telling?
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