> I must suppose that I am a writer. Somewhere along the line of > self-torment that is me I just said 'I'm writing.' If I could be LIKE > anybody, without actually BEING anybody, I would like to be a something > balanced precariously between Salinger and Milne > (Winnie-the-Pooh-Style). I don't want to be famous or anything, all I > want is to say as best I can, as concise as I can, exactly what I am > trying to say. I want to say TRUE things, ... > I live for anecdotes. ... > Isn't there some sort of Test that will tell me I'm a writer and should > die if I don't, or some single criteria or something? A writer I love (though someone I don't want to *be* or to emulate) once said to me in a letter, when we were not discussing "whether to be a writer," but "earning a living as a writer," in the manner he did in his early days. He said something I've nearly tattooed on my forehead: Write what sells, or fail to. All the rest is gossip. One can debate the merits or demerits of trying to write what SELLS, or of being so glib; I don't propose such a debate, and do not intend to participate in one if it should emerge, but the brutality of the sentiment has always remained with me. Do you mind if I offer uncoated remarks that might or might not offend and might or might not be brutal? Live for anecdotes -- but write them down. Write down everything you can. Keep a notebook, a journal, something you can come back to every day, so that you develop a sense of consistency. If privacy concerns you, lock it away. Come back to it every day. Even if all you do is write nonsense, come back to it. It is your friend. Drop the vaguely irritating Other Voice You Use to Describe Your Life, because it's not your voice, and neither is Beckett's your voice. (Including those of his characters.) You *have* your own voice, even if you don't know it yet. That's what a notebook is for -- develop that voice there, make your mistakes there, say there the things you would never say in public. Eventually, when you are working on something, you may have an audience in mind. It might be the old English teacher. It might be this list. (Ugh -- too inbred, but mostly encouraging of you in your efforts.) It might be an old friend. You'll find that out. Write for that audience. Or write to thumb your nose at it. But above all else, keep at it. Perhaps you will fail. Perhaps you will be happy. Perhaps you will succeed. But try, and try as YOU, and only then can you know. There is no test. The test is what I just described, and it is lifelong. Think of Frank McCourt, whether you loved or hated Angela's Ashes, a man who kicked around and was a wonderful English teacher until his retirement, when he managed to write a book even he thought would be dismissed as "charming and lyrical" and then dismissed to the discount tables in the bookstores. Sixty-something years of life, and there was his voice, all along. And his subject. And may we all leave him alone long enough that he can get more work done. Oh -- and re-read Scottie's last message, "writers' encampment," which was wise and generous. And perhaps like old Hemingway you might keep a rabbit's foot or a horse chestnut in your pocket for good luck. As he claims he used to tell himself in Paris, in those young days: " 'Do not worry.' [He would tell himself on bad days.] 'You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline." He had plenty more to say about this, too -- it's in A Moveable Feast, a book I invariably find on my desk or in my pocket or (miracle of miracles) at work. I must have ten copies of it by now, and nearly all are dark with fingerprints. Read. Write. Make the effort. It's nearly all you can reasonably do. Hell, look at my return address. Is there anything that's NOT a rough draft, as we make our ways along? So, it's rough. Rough is better than vapor, which is better than a vacuum. I'm sure there's some local gentle maxim I can end with, but I'm damned if I know what it is. --tim