Why Choose to Be a Writer
There are mornings when I wake up with a head full of the kinds of questions many people face every day. Just how am I going to pay
the bills? When will I ever own a car? Will I ever have a retirement account? Then bigger questions emerge. Will I ever achieve the kind
of publishing success that might make paying the bills and buying the car and even having a retirement account possible? But then I
really wake up and of course see immediately I have not been asking the questions about how to live my life but the kinds of questions
others ask me about my life and the direction I have chosen.
If I had wanted the above securities, surely I would have made some other choices years ago. And of course, having security and
wanting to be a writer are mutually exclusive concepts to begin with. Knowing that meant that I knew I was not and never would be like
the majority of people with whom I worked, lived, consumed, studied, taught, etc. My ideas about being a writer were worlds apart from
what most of my friends and family's were and therefore shaped a very different set of desires in me.
Wanting security is a huge problem for anyone who wants to be creative. Living in a capitalistic system may provide some options that
would not be available in a different type of economic system, but for the most part whenever commerce and art try to co-exist it is a
horrible marriage, not even one of convenience. There can be no luxury to create. That feeling is anathema to creativity. One writes in
opposition to something. It is difficult to oppose the forces that give you everything and by that I do mean things, the fact that you are
encouraged at every moment to want things means you must live constantly in opposition. If comfort and security and the absence of
anxiety are your idea of the good life then the writer's life is not for you. If struggle as a way of life holds not the slightest interest to you
and you really want to make enough money to hang out in the Hamptons and buy a vintage automobile and keep a full wine cellar, the
writer's life is not going to provide this either and what these goals have to do with writing in the first place puzzles me.
Maybe justifying one's own circumstances is the oldest trick in the book for learning to cope with what others may determine is failure.
Maybe having realized that the world is only interested in me when I pay my taxes and put the recycled newspapers and bottles and
cans in the right bins has been a kind of liberation. That lack of acknowledgement by others has meant that I could fashion this
"lifestyle," which has also given to me a set of benefits, and I am not referring to just some abstract concepts such as freedom or
independence, though of course it has given me that as well, but the fact of my own adherence to a set of goals, to pushing myself to do
things for which I received no support and no encouragement, to align myself with those things (i.e., books and the people who wrote
them) that mean the most to me, and finally, to have also allowed myself to question and analyze why this need, desire, etc. will not go
away have all provided me with the kind of life I find the most satisfying. It is not the choice most of the people I teach or who are my
friends are interested in. This is not a reflection on them or their choices. We all find ourselves in whatever set of circumstances life
presents us with and make decisions about how to proceed based on a raft of specific necessities that occur as we grow up and
experience life.
Learning the value of solitude at a young age and then learning the comfort of it at a later age have meant that the kind of time a writer
needs to spend alone has not been a problem for me like it is for many people. In fact, a prolonged period of isolation, what I refer to as
time in a cave, would be a welcome opportunity to me. Right now the events in my life dictate other considerations, but life generally
ebbs and flows, what is of paramount importance at one moment, slips into decline the next.
Living alone and jealously guarding that has also meant that I am more aware or have more time to be aware of both how to deal with
my writer needs as well as the needs of my students. By following the progress of my own process, I am able to gauge how to instruct
the requirements of the process itself. It is important to me above all else to when talking to my students, that I know how not only I have
solved certain problems but how others have as well. This isn't something one can learn by rote; the amount of time it takes to
synthesize the varieties of teaching and writing experiences means that lots of time has to be spent alone thinking about these
concepts on a regular basis.
The symbiotic nature of teaching cannot be ignored. It provides those of us who take to it and enjoy it with an abundance of
opportunities that those who resent it miss out on. But the most important aspect of teaching for me has always been that by having to
explain to someone how to do something, I learn to do it better than I would have otherwise.
Having said all of the above, I want to return my attention to the idea of commerce and art. It is a topic one cannot escape in this culture.
It haunts too many people who are truly creative and imaginative and want to participate in the cultural exchange of ideas but also want
to be compensated for that activity. Compensation comes from having accepted a contract. When we set out to write a novel, most of us
do it on our own, we sit alone, we write, we slave away, we learn, grow and in the end may have a manuscript to show for it. The key
element here is that no one asked us to do this, no one made any kind of agreement with us that we would then be compensated for
our efforts. Yes, some people are, for all kinds of reasons that have more to do with economics than they have to do with the writing
process. And some of those people make lots of money, have their pictures all over the newspapers and magazines, are invited to talk
and to give their opinions about everything, but just like the comments I made above, these are two separate spheres of reality and one
really has nothing to do with the other. In fact, the influence of high public visibility on a writer can be of detrimental value to the writer,
can intrude all too much on what a writer needs in order to write, and in time, the public persona can become more important to the
writer than the writing does. This is the trap and allure of celebrity, the real vice of our age. Needing this form of acceptance is contrary to
everything a writer does in her training and observation of her own special creative process.
If you are lucky enough to see into your own future and can say with some assuredness that being a writer, a good writer, a writer that
you will respect and enjoy reading is a serious goal of yours, then you also have to ask yourself, and not just once, how are you going to
make that kind of life possible? What kinds of choices are you willing to make every day in order for that to happen? There are no
shortcuts to learning to write; it takes years to learn to trust your technique enough to really enjoy using it. You cannot postpone it, ignore
it, oppose it once you have begun the process because it will haunt you and harass you until you either retire it or choose to pursue its
path. Choosing anything means you have chosen not to do something else. Choosing to read a book means you have chosen not to sit
in front of the television or talk on the telephone. Choosing to write means, to me, that I have chosen to make this my way of life and to
organize everything around it and around its demands. I freely made that choice. Yes, it has meant not doing other things.
The last thing to be said about choosing to live as a writer is to realize that the one thing they never teach you but which is just as
important as reading all the books is to know yourself. Knowing yourself, whether you like yourself makes no difference, but knowing
who you are and where you have come from and what has influenced you, those are key. Having this information will help you especially
if you are a very honest person. So, my friends, or friend, what can be said must be said every day, that we choose to be a writer
because it gives us something that can't be bought and that can't be given to us in any other way. It is one thing that we freely choose to
do.