It Ain't That Easy
We watched a movie on Saturday night.
I couldn't tell you the name of it. The guy who used to be on Talk Soup was in it. He was a best-selling author who had two kids who were also authors.
The first kid was a 19-year-old girl who wrote two books while humping every guy she met, and while fighting with her brother and mother and father penned these books in a moments time.
We see her having champagne toasts while she is lauded by guys in tweed jackets as a true talent. She talks about the next one she's going to write.
Presumably on the car ride home.
Then, not to be out-done her 16-year-old brother sits down and in one scene he types really fast. Then his phone rings and Stephen King is on the line telling him he's great.
Umm, ok.
Here's the real world.
You commit to writing something that means something to you. You toil at it for a full year, and it encompasses all your waking moments. It's right there in the back of your mind while you're doing other things like interacting with people, while you're trying to make a living, while you're in the shower, or in the car.
You're scrambling for a notepad.
You're typing in that same frenzy, but then you go back and look at it, and get disgusted with yourself. You quit. You start over. You quit again.
Then you send it out, and you get it back.
Covered in red.
The editor is screaming at you in the margins because you mixed up 'their' and 'there'.
But for some ungodly reason you forge ahead, through the doubt, through the fear, through the voice in your head that tells you that everyone else is out drinking, or just sitting there.
You don't even once think of a champagne toast. You don't plan on making a dime. You figure out that time spent versus royalties makes you a migrant worker on the pay scale.
If you're lucky enough to make the grade the fun really starts.
You meet people at a bookstore sitting at a card table hoping someone at least picks the book up. You try and verbalize why it's the best book they'll ever read. You listen to people tell you when they write their books they're gonna' be on Oprah, and then you have to answer the one question that truly gets under your skin:
"How much money do you make with this?"
"I made $6.2 million last year," I always answer.
Yet as I watched the movie I thought about the books they were discussing back and forth. They were talking about writing the first sentence.
I always took great care in coming up with a great first sentence.
My favorite?
In one start of a book (still in the tank) where I wrote:
"Self-knowledge often only shows itself right after you've just finished f&*King something up."
And there are still plenty of things on my computer that I've half-started and nearly finished. I wrote every single sentence with one person in mind:
Me.
Yet it ain't easy, folks.
Stephen King doesn't call to say 'Nice Job.'
The reward, however, is real.
It's inside.
And the $6.2 million doesn't hurt either.
I couldn't tell you the name of it. The guy who used to be on Talk Soup was in it. He was a best-selling author who had two kids who were also authors.
The first kid was a 19-year-old girl who wrote two books while humping every guy she met, and while fighting with her brother and mother and father penned these books in a moments time.
We see her having champagne toasts while she is lauded by guys in tweed jackets as a true talent. She talks about the next one she's going to write.
Presumably on the car ride home.
Then, not to be out-done her 16-year-old brother sits down and in one scene he types really fast. Then his phone rings and Stephen King is on the line telling him he's great.
Umm, ok.
Here's the real world.
You commit to writing something that means something to you. You toil at it for a full year, and it encompasses all your waking moments. It's right there in the back of your mind while you're doing other things like interacting with people, while you're trying to make a living, while you're in the shower, or in the car.
You're scrambling for a notepad.
You're typing in that same frenzy, but then you go back and look at it, and get disgusted with yourself. You quit. You start over. You quit again.
Then you send it out, and you get it back.
Covered in red.
The editor is screaming at you in the margins because you mixed up 'their' and 'there'.
But for some ungodly reason you forge ahead, through the doubt, through the fear, through the voice in your head that tells you that everyone else is out drinking, or just sitting there.
You don't even once think of a champagne toast. You don't plan on making a dime. You figure out that time spent versus royalties makes you a migrant worker on the pay scale.
If you're lucky enough to make the grade the fun really starts.
You meet people at a bookstore sitting at a card table hoping someone at least picks the book up. You try and verbalize why it's the best book they'll ever read. You listen to people tell you when they write their books they're gonna' be on Oprah, and then you have to answer the one question that truly gets under your skin:
"How much money do you make with this?"
"I made $6.2 million last year," I always answer.
Yet as I watched the movie I thought about the books they were discussing back and forth. They were talking about writing the first sentence.
I always took great care in coming up with a great first sentence.
My favorite?
In one start of a book (still in the tank) where I wrote:
"Self-knowledge often only shows itself right after you've just finished f&*King something up."
And there are still plenty of things on my computer that I've half-started and nearly finished. I wrote every single sentence with one person in mind:
Me.
Yet it ain't easy, folks.
Stephen King doesn't call to say 'Nice Job.'
The reward, however, is real.
It's inside.
And the $6.2 million doesn't hurt either.
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