Inspiration Part II:

I just finished reading Stephen King’s book On Writing and I have to say it was pretty good. I noticed as I read it that many of the little sayings you hear from other established authors were repeated. It seems the mantra of the writing world is, “Write, write, and then write some more.” What I found really fascinating was the idea that a writer should, “Read, read and then read some more.” In most books on the art of writing you rarely see this spoken about. Yet, as I surf through author blogs many of them are avid readers as well. They soak up the art form from every angle they can. This idea really struck home for me because I love to read. I tackle book after book and while I may not hit the 70 or 80 books a year that Mr. King does I come pretty close. The logic is so clear that I can’t believe it doesn’t come up more often. How can one pursue the art form if one doesn’t know what the art form is supposed to look like? My boss is a perfect example of this. Her memo’s and emails are horrific. They’re bossy, rude, and lack personality. There is a use of words so far above her regular vocabulary often times the memo/email doesn’t even make sense. Sometimes it’s a struggle just to get through one of them and get any sort of meaning and not be insulted. She doesn’t read. She hates it. It shows. So now I have an excuse for all of my reading (and the money I spend on both new and used books…I’m doing research!)

What I found even more interesting was that I don’t even really like Stephen King’s books but I know he is a sort of god of writing. I mean look at his success. He started out writing for adult magazines and now he’s created some of the most influential books of our time. I’m sure some of his work is even required reading at a few colleges. So as I read On Writing I knew of books like Carrie and The Green Mile but I’ve never read them. In fact the only books of his that I’ve read are The Stand (which was awesome), and The Gunslinger which was not as good as I had hope it would be from the title. I still found myself, however, being inspired by his words. I saw how his tenacity, his knowledge had led him to where he is now. I found similarities between him and me. We both started writing young. He started with original ideas and I did not. He had the support of his mom and shared his work. I did not. I was so absorbed with being cool that I rarely if ever shared any of what I worked on. I had an English teacher that supported me and I just threw away the two notebooks from that class. Both had poorly written Star Trek stuff in them. His success, however, gives me hope that at 36 perhaps I still have a shot. If I stick with what I’m passionate about and keep pushing forward in the face of self-doubt that perhaps I’ll succeed where in the past I’ve failed. I feel empowered to keep pushing forward with my work even when I think it’s not that good.

It’s just like Playing the Lottery

I’ve been on a steady high from this far off light at the end of the tunnel. I have this feeling of accomplishment simply because I’ve made my mind up to pursue a certain path whether it helps me or not. Is it stubborn optimism or simply an uneducated fool of a choice? I don’t really have an answer to that but if I were to hazard a guess, it’s probably somewhere in the middle I suppose. It is, however, refreshing to be able to put aside the petty crap of every day life because of this dedicated belief that something better is going to happen.

My dedication however isn’t really one based on faith of a denial of reality. I think it’s more a belief in myself and the dogged determination to stay the course. I’ve told most people my plans. Told them these grandiose ideas that will take place over time and it’s an easy thing to do. The telling of an idea is so much easier, and sometimes more rewarding, than the actual ‘doing’ of the idea. Dr. Covey, of “7 Habits for Highly Effective People” fame, asserts that the speaking aloud of goals makes them somehow more real and easier to obtain. To that I say bulls**t. It’s easy to say it, it’s easy to commit to it, but it’s a whole other issue when one must get to the doing of it! I can sit down and say I only have five more classes of junior college left before I can finally move on to a real college and start doing real classes that actually matter to me and not Math051. The easy part is in the saying of it, the hard part comes when I have to climb down into the dirty, grimy, and muddy trenches. It’s much harder when I have to slug it out with that stupid classic of a story in Lit class or stumble through yet another 2+2=4 math problem that I could probably do in my sleep. I’ll post again when I reach week 10 of 17 and all I wanna do is hang the whole damn thing up and walk away!

But it’s like playing the lottery…or perhaps more accurately betting on your #1 baseball team (Go Padres!) or football team (Go Chargers!). You do the prep work, you research the hell out of the match-ups, the trends and then you take your educated guess and put it out there to see if you researched right, if you guessed correctly. Writing seems to be like that. You write, you write some more and then you write just a bit more for good measure. You educated yourself on the process, on how to bring life and dept to a character. You learn how to chisel a plot from nothingness and you find that right topic for that perfect moment. You study. You write. You succeed!?

I’m reading Stephen King’s book On Writing and he talks about his book Carrie. It’s interesting because he wrote it and he put it out there. Someone grabbed it. He made a few hundred dollars on it originally. It sold to paperback and he made nearly $200,000 on it. In 1974ish when this took place that was a lot of money. Heck that’s a good chunk of money now. So how did it work for him? I mean why Carrie. He’d written stuff before this. He wrote articles for men’s magazines and he’d studied the craft. He got educated and he was working as a teacher. Had he done just the right amount of research? Perhaps he didn’t get bogged down in the research and remembered to keep writing. I really don’t know, I mean he’s Stephen-Freaking-King so maybe it was just his time, his ultimate destiny. After reading this chapter though it really got me to thinking about how much of a crap shoot it is. You work and you work and maybe there’s something there, maybe even when you think its crap and you still sit down and you still keep pounding it out. Perhaps someone does read it and does think it’s good and WHAMO!!! You are sitting next to Stephen King,Dan Brown, and Robert B. Parker on an author’s panel at some convention in some small hick town in the hind end of nowhere.

So is it a crap shoot or a lottery? Maybe, maybe not. For authors like Stephanie Meyers it’s probably a crap shoot or lottery (although I do believe she majored in English) and for others like Mr. King maybe it’s more of an educated guess. For an author like Robert B. Parker perhaps it's sheer numbers. (He's published over 50 novels for heaven's sake) I’m hoping for educated guess because I’m just not that good with the whole lottery thing.