Author: Emily Dresner-Thornber (---.mediastation.com)
Date: 01-10-2001 17:25
On the day that my very first book that is all mine -- my seventh project! -- comes out, I want to put the word processor away and join the rest of the masses. I absolutely don't want to do it anymore. I'm tired. I want to go home and sleep.
But instead, I skipped out on a little work. I just edited another 2000 word essay and put it in the mail to my editor. It'll run in front of what has apparently, much to my surprise, blossomed a 150,000+ audience next week, while a piece I wrote three weeks ago will run this week. In the mean time I have to finish an argument I am having with the rest of the staff about writing guidelines and editing, because I'm going to have to edit some pieces this week that aren't mine as well. I own a copy of the NYT Manual of Style. It's getting used. I pray to God my job doesn't look too closely at my phone bill.
I have a bunch of other outstanding projects that require my attention. My schedule is now full.
When I was all flush with excitement and my first little scrap of work was being published, I stood in line to see Neil Gaiman. I asked him what to do. He said, "You have to write." I said I already did. He said, "Write more." At the time it didn't seem like too much work. Those 3000 words only took me a week and a half!
Hah. That additude is pretty funny now.
You write when you're fried.
You write when you're tired.
You write when you have something better to do.
You write when you should be sleeping.
You write on the road.
You write at home.
And when you hate it, you write some more. You write because if you don't, you will go stark raving insane.
There's a big fish at the end of this: being paid to write full time. But no one pays some hack who has a tendancy toward passive tense (*coughcough*) the big bucks to write. They only give big money to those with clean copy who can spit it up on a dime, under specs, under any conditions. The only way to be able to write full time is to get very good at writing part time and praying.
Heck, the only way to keep writing is to get very good at writing and praying.
When you write alot, you find that the issues with grammar, spelling, and volcabulary slowly start to work themselves out of your system. With the help of someone who can wield a red pen and an keen mind to read grammar books and _Elements of Style_, the bugs do go away. After the bugs go away, your own personal style emerges. But it takes work, work, work. (Here's a hint. Take your piece and stand in the middle of the room. Read it out loud. Does it sound good? If it does, it probably has decent flow. If you find yourself going "What the hell?" it needs a look at.)
Stephen King wrote in his book _On Writing_ that there are four kinds of writers. There are those who do and will always be awful -- but these are fewer than people think (and they all lurk on IRC). There are those who are passible. There are those who are good. And there are those who are James Joyce. With plenty of work and practice, the awful can become passible -- even publishable. Passible can be really good. And good, well, good generally doesn't become great unless your last name is Hemingway, but it does happen.
Writers ripen with age. Sometimes, the pay scales do, too.
It's exhausting, but if there is passion to do it, it will come. It does take that passion. It even takes an obsession.
You have to write. That's the moral of the story. You must write write write. It's like the Nike commercials.
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