Up & Down

February 28, 2008

I'm back today to having one of those days where I think writing fiction must be insane. I'm not entirely sure why. Some of it has to do with this ridiculous back-and-forthing going on on the BookEnds blog about sending in manuscripts electronically versus hardcopy. One of the responders was taking some heat because he had a very business-like approach to it and I essentially defended him, noting that there should probably be some give-and-take on this issue, where perhaps the writer's needs and preferences need to be taken into consideration. Apparently someone didn't like that and sort of went on the attack. Not too much, but enough for me to sigh and go, "Oh brother."

Another reason might be a phone conversation I had with my agent yesterday that was simultaneously inspiring and frustrating, but which, like so much of the publishing industry, evaporated into "let's see what happens."

And Nathan Bransford's blog asked why people write and I was skimming through the 130+ responses and noted that there seemed to be an awful lot of free-floating obsessive-compulsive disorders out there with the predominant response being, "I have to write. I just have to."

I understand. I really do. I've been writing almost every day for 20+ years, long before there was any reason to suspect I could make a living at it. It's like breathing.

But now that I make a living at it, I'm not entirely sure the "I have to write, I just have to" response is entirely accurate, healthy or, gulp, sane.

I don't know how silly this sounds, but do you remember the TV show "Busom Buddies"? It starred Tom Hanks (yes, him) and Peter Scolari (I think that's the name). Hanks was an artist and Scolari was a writer and they moved to New York City to make it big as a painter and writer, ended up dressing in drag and living in a hotel for women, and got jobs at an ad agency as a copywriter and graphic artist.

Anyway, the show was only on for 2 seasons. In the second season they leave the ad agency and open up their own ad agency. By the end of the second season, there's an episode where they comment that they started this whole thing to be a novelist and a painter... but it had been months since either of them had written or painted something.

Which may be my longwinded and oddly zig-zagging way of saying, priorities change, life changes, needs change, compulsions change. Maybe for the better.

I still write fiction. I still want to get published. I'd be delighted for this to work out the way my dreams have wished they would.

But...

At the end of the day, there's my wife, my sons, my life. There's paying the bills and walking the dog and family and music and reading and watching TV and traveling. There's lifting weights, biking, running, karate, guitar, kayaking, walking. There's my sister's condo on Higgins Lake, Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, Mackinaw Island, the beach at Luddington State Park, Disney World, the coast of Maine, Washington, D.C., the keys, Hawaii, Austin and a whole lot of the rest of the world.

There's an awful lot of life to be lived that seems to be independent of that "gotta write" thing.

If you've ever read Stephen King's "On Writing" you probably remember what he said about his big Godzilla-sized desk, and how it was in the center of the room, and how his entire life was about supporting that desk; and how eventually he started to change and the desk was about supporting the life, which was more important.

Cheers,

Mark Terry