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.

A writer’s world…

I’ve read over and over recently how lonely a writer’s life is and as I get more and more into the “Story to be Named Later” I realize just how lonely it might get. I read blogs from established authors like Lili St.Crow and I get a glimpse into the busy life of a successful writer and I wonder just how well organized their life is. I sit here writing this and keep glancing at the clock, knowing I’m running out of time. Work is around the corner. Tomorrow is a day to take the little monsters to the parental unit’s house and for the first time since my new commitment to writing I’m trying to figure out how to deal with kids all day AND write. This past weekend is another example. I came home from eight hours on the job and just had no energy to write.

A book will not write itself.

So I find myself hammering out words here and there for twenty minutes, thirty minutes, anything to add to the word count. I day dream while I’m driving to and from work and lay out plots while I’m eating as if possessed by these works that are still waiting to be born. Then the inevitable happens. I get sidetracked. I see something, hear something or smell something that launches my mind into a frenzy of creative activity and a new story idea grows. A new character that seems better, faster, stronger than the one I’m currently writing about. A new genre calls my name and it’s a struggle to maintain the flow on the story I’m currently working on. Then I go back and I sit and I wonder. How do ‘real’ authors deal with these tsunami like ideas when they’re working on their ‘real’ book? Does Jim Butcher put off his latest Dresden novel because he has a great idea for a romance novel? Does Saintcrow put off her latest Strange Angels novel because she has a great idea for a western? Yet authors do jump genre and authors can write a plethora of books (Butcher comes to mind). Robert B. Parker seems to have books coming out at a pace that is startling. He has Spencer novels, a YA Spencer novel, a western, and a Jesse Stone novel all coming out around the same time. Does the man ever sleep!

And then we are back to the original driving force behind the post. How lonely it is to have all of these great ideas and few people to share them with. These ideas and worlds swimming through your head and no one to share them with or at least no one who will really see it the way you do. Hours of pounding away at a keyboard the story playing out like a movie in ones mind and no one to share the maniacal genius of it all. It’s a bit scary and a bit enticing. Still, it’s going to be a long journey until completion. I’m figuring at least 150 rejection slips before I even get close to an acceptance!