The Writing Game
Jon Tveite (jontv@ksu.edu)
Tue, 24 Mar 1998 10:08:36 -0600 (CST)
A few scattershot ideas:
If you want to make a living at it, you will have to (1) be really good,
like a Toni Morrison, Don DeLillo, or, hmmm, J.D. Salinger, or, (2) find a
profitable market you are comfortable writing for. If you want to write
"good literary fiction," one way to pay the rent is to get yourself an MFA
(Masters of Fine Arts) and become a teacher of writing.
The academic fiction career requires an interesting combination of the two
strategies, actually: you need a certain amount of skill, but in order to
get a decent job (not easy to do) you have to play the game just right:
networking with the right people, winning the right contests, publishing
in the right journals, etc. Teaching will take time away from your
writing, of course, and reading thousands of pages by clumsy
student-writers can leave a person somewhat jaded (refer to Buddy Glass's
testimony in SEYMOUR: AN INTRODUCTION, for example), but it's not a bad
life, if you can swing it.
The alternative is to stay free-lance, which can be done if you're willing
to hustle, shuck, and jive. You've got to be able to keep dozens of balls
in the air at the same time, become an expert at what kind of writing
sells where, and live with the fact that you seldom know where your next
meal is coming from. And, like it or not, you will probably have to find
a "day job" to support yourself, which will, again, take time away from
your writing.
I don't think there's any way to know if you're "good enough" to be a
"real" writer. Getting published and/or paid is not a fair test, because
most of what gets published is mediocre and anyone who really wants to can
see their name in print, somewhere, and the writing that makes the *most*
money is generally lousy, by literary standards (Danielle Steele, Dean
Koontz, etc.). You might be able to get a decent opinion from someone
who's written and/or read a lot of the kind of writing you want to do, but
don't let anyone else make the decision for you: you're the only one who
can sense what you're capable of. So my best advice is to develop both
your writing and critical reading skills as much as possible: that way you
know that if you can respect your *own* writing, other people will
probably respect it, too.
The main thing is that you have to write because you love the process
itself. Make sure you're not romanticizing authorship: it's just hard
work -- nothing romantic about it. Don't do it for ulterior motives, like
love, money, respect, or the chance to show all those assholes you hated
in high school how much smarter you are than they are. Do it because you
love writing. Do it because your favorite book hasn't been written yet,
and nobody else seems as qualified to write it. Do it because it makes
you happy, whether any reads it or not. Or don't do it.
Jon