Emerging
May 22, 2000
7:49 a.m.
This weekend was the great Science Fiction Writers of America book signing event, so Lisa and Brigid and I hopped into the car and headed up to Indianapolis, where we sat down with Linda Dunn, the collaborative pair that makes up Joceyln Fox, and of course, Lisa Silverthorne. It was a fine time, though oddly different from other signings I've done in the past. I arrived a bit early, and spent time in the science section, wherein I found a copy of Erwin Schrodinger's What is Life, and had to pick it up. Nothing is more pitiful than I am when I'm in front of either the science or computer section of a bookstore. That evening we stopped at a theatre and saw Dinosaurs, which I thought was a fine movie with pretty incredible computer effects. I'm not sure they can really take this technology much further without actually putting you into the movie itself, though I'm sure they can make the tools a bit cleaner and easier to use somewhere down the line. Brigid enjoyed herself immensely. She had bought a pair of books from the bookstore earlier in the day, and I think we were all up until midnight or so reading. Lisa bought a copy of a book titled The Forest for the Trees -- an editor's advice to writers by Betsy Lerner. I had decided some time ago, I guess, without really realizing I had decided it, to give up on books about writing. But I picked it up to just kind of browse it, and suddenly found myself turning through page by page for the next hour or so. It's not a how-to book. Not even really a book about writing at all so much as a book about people and the business they find themselves in written by an involved observer. I'm still in the early stages of it, but I'm really enjoying it right now. It's talking to me, kind of. It's asking me what part of my effort is fun, and what part isn't. It's defining what makes people write, identifying flaws in logic without being particularly preachy of put-offish. What kind of writer are you? it's asking, and I'm finding myself trying to figure that out in relation to the scheme she presents. I love writing, you see. I enjoy pretty much every part of it at some level, even the silly marketing games up to a point (though I'll admit I'm getting a bit past this love at present). Betsy Lerner starts her book off with a discussion of what she calls the Ambivalent Writer. She goes on to describe several more types or categories of writers, but she starts with this one, in which she describes a good deal of the thought I've had recently, and in which she discusses possible causes for it. Mostly she talks about fear in some form or another. Oh, she doesn't always call it fear. But I think it all boils down to fear in some form or another. Anyway, the topic fits where I'm at really well, right now. I find my time in front of the keyboard is still as enjoyable as ever, but I've recently been surprised to find myself ambivalent to my place in the spectrum right now. So I'm thinking through things. What am I afraid of? Why am I afraid of it? Well? If you ask me, I think I'm just whining. [grin] I've actually been emerging from this situation for the past couple weeks and just didn't really know it. I know what's been wrong. Lisa Silverthorne and I have been in lock-step through much of our "careers." And between reading this book and talking to her this weekend really helped me cement it. I've crawled through the process of learning far enough to see the vast wasteland of garbage that a writer truly has to be able to deal with insofar as the business end of the industry goes. I've gotten far enough to realize how far, and how little, I've really come. I've seen the ugly truth. I've seen that there is a great deal of pain and suffering still yet to be entertained. But mostly, I've seen that I'm good enough to make it. I think it is this that scares me most of all. I've worked this hard to answer the ultimate question all new writers have: am I good enough? And the answer is yes. Note, I'm not asking if I'm the next Hemingway or Bradbury or anyone else. I'm not asking for Micheal Jordan -- just Bill Wennington. You can make it, my friends. I know you can. Be it talent, or be it craft developed through sweat. It doesn't matter. You can make it. But when you make it, be prepared. This stage of your career will probably be different for you than it is for me because you have different desires than I do. You write for a different reason or for a different reward that I do. You look at the page differently, and you meet the public differently. You talk to and about other writers differently. But in the end, it all boils down to the work, and in how you can place the context of the work and the business into your own life. I think it was John Lennon who once said that life was what happens while you're planning to do something else. I like that. And it applies here, directly. You cannot know how your career will go in this profession. All you can do is plan, and work toward creating it. The challenge is accepting it as if unfolds. The challenge is finding the power inside yourself to keep going through it all, to keep your vision intact, to not let the detritus of life move you away from your goals and your dreams. But then, that's the glory of it all, too.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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1,500 words this morning |
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