Do you really want to be a writer?

You sure?

Wouldn’t life be easier if you were, say, uhmm, a mortician?

Writers are certifiably nuts.

You have to be because, otherwise, for the time and energy and creative juice that you spend and exert for the little money and few rewards that you receive … well, it’s bloody masochistic.

Sure, some writers make it big. A lot more don’t.

Somewhere along the line I read that only two percent of the world’s writers were self-supporting as in … they didn’t have a day job.

I think writers, artists, and others of their ilk, can’t help themselves.

They ARE smart people. They just can’t stop even when their office is wallpapered in rejection slips and the writing, pun intended, is ON THE WALL.

They’re compulsive and their minds are like rat-ta-tat machine guns that just won’t stop, even when they sleep. My dreams wear me out.

I was recently laid off from my ‘day job’, which is probably a blessing in disguise, but occasionally my throat tightens and I ponder … how in the hell are we going to pay the bills?

My day job, although there were definitely some high points, some creative achievements that I will always cherish, tended to lull me into … bureaucratic complacency. You show up, you get paid. You count the years until you get PERS. Before getting the job, I didn’t even know what in the hell PERS was but I quickly realized it’s the Holy Grail among government workers.

While doing that job, I couldn’t have written a creative sentence if you’d held a gun to my head.

My spark was gone. I was dumbed down.

I was, for all intents and purposes, creatively dead.

There’s nothing like a good case of unemployment and overdrafts and creditors knocking at your door to SPARK that creativity; light that fire, baby!

Whatever your situation, if you’re going to write I would give you this advice to hang your head and heart and writing hand on. And, although I’m not on any best seller list, I have thirty-plus years of writing experience so I know a little of what I speak about:

1. Listen to, and learn, from constructive criticism. (This has to come from people who know what in the hell they’re talking about). Only YOU can determine who that is. No, it’s not the mail carrier.
2. Fiercely ignore the bulls-t that is dolled out by people who would be hard-pressed to write See Spot run! Smile, tell, them thank-you and then immediately forget whatever it was they said. It’s okay to laugh at them, but just not in their faces.
3. Research, stick to it, don’t despair, broaden your horizons, go where you thought you would never go, write and write and write. Try something new. So you get rejected. So what? It isn’t going to kill you. At least you tried. Some people never even try.
4. Read. Read anything and everything. It gives you ideas and shows you how the professionals operate.
5. Pay attention to what’s going on around you, to what people are saying and doing. Sometimes the commonplace is the most remarkable and hilarious. Write about it.
6. Make sure you submit clean copy. You could have the most unique, cleverest idea in the world, but if your article is cluttered with typos and grammatical mistakes it won’t pass muster and you’ll just look foolish.

I love it when people say to me, well, Cindi, now you can write that novel (now that you’re unemployed). I have written that novel, three times over. I’ve just never gotten any of them published.

If you write it, they will come? Not necessarily.

But, remember, writers are compulsive, neurotic masochists who just keep on writing, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

A friend of mine, who is a very good writer but (foolishly?) spends her time lawyering, said when she used to work at a newspaper, people would come up to her and say, “Hey, I’ve got this great idea.” They would tell her and then command HER to write about THEIR idea.

She said, hell, if I were going to write about something it would be my OWN idea!

Make it your own.

Keep on pecking at that keyboard.

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