I can’t count the times someone has said to
me, “I wish I could do what you do,” meaning writing.
I’ll ask, “Did you try?”
“Oh, I did, but I'm not good at it.”
(Which is, of course, not the point.)
Or, “But nothing ever came of it.”
(What, exactly, does this mean?)
I say, if you want to write, write. What does it
matter how good it is, or whether anything will come of it? If it wants out, let
it. Don’t stop it. Go for a walk. Carry a notebook with you, or just a folded
piece of paper, and a pen. Stop in some park. Sit at a picnic table. Write down
whatever it is that wants out.
That’s how you start.
And if you are afraid that someone will read
what you wrote, hide it. That’s what Kate Hamilton, the main character in my
just published novel, Diary of a Naive, did.
Some deep-rooted fear from way back made her think that her husband, or
her children, or whoever, would laugh at her, or think her crazy if they knew
that she wrote things down, or even aspired to being a writer. Feeling
memories are very powerful.
Let me say it again. Feeling memories are
very powerful. And feeling memories have a lot to do with what you think you
shouldn’t be doing or are not good enough to do or will never be good enough
to do, and what, instead, you should be doing. But until you search for
the reasons of your feeling memories and don’t stop until you find them and
shoot them dead, they will create havoc with everything you really, really want
to do. Should is a powerful word. Ban it from your life and replace it
with want. Hard to do at first, but after awhile, you’ll get the hang
of it.
So. Go for it.
Getting things out on a piece of paper does just
that—it gets it out onto a piece of paper, where you can look at it and
examine it and think about it and smile over something stunning you wrote
(inadvertently, accidentally stunning, you think, but maybe not), or just hug it to your
heart with tears in your eyes, because you love them so much—these feeble,
seemingly dumb, no good words (you thought) that you dared write anyway.
So, go for it. Because one day, you will be
eighty, and you will wake up one morning, and you will think, ‘I wish I . . .
.’ Don’t let that happen. Now means now. Hours turn into days, and days turn
into weeks, and weeks turn into months, and months turn into years, and the next
thing you know, you are, in fact, eighty.
The best definition, I think, of what wanting to
be a writer means was penned by Annie Dillard in Holy The Firm. She said,
"You must go at your life with a broadax. . . ." True. Point is--how?
There's the job, and the husband, and the wife, and
the children, and the parents, and the rest of the family, and who knows what
other obligations lurk forever in some hidden corner and suddenly jump out and
pounce on you.
If you want to write, find the time. There
is a wonderful passage in the movie Girl with a Pearl Earring. Vermeer
has asked Griet to help him mix paints. She tells him that she is too busy and
too much is expected of her already. He
says a very simple thing, “Find the time.” She does.
If you want something bad enough, you find
the time. You get rid of the subscriptions to mags you never read anyway. You
stop hanging out with folks to whom you have no emotional connection whatsoever.
When the family asks you to do things they can well do themselves, you learn to
say a simple little word: No. It took me years to learn it, but I did.
When I was two years old, I knew exactly
what I wanted. And no one was going to tell me otherwise. And if I didn’t get
it, I threw a temper tantrum. I didn’t always get my way, but most of the
time, I did. Learn to be two again.
Which brings me to, “But nothing ever
came of it.” Whatever that means. I suppose it means, ‘Unless I become a
celebrated writer with twenty best sellers under my belt, making ten million a
year,’ I don’t want it.
Up to you.
But think of it this way: Isak Dinesen,
the very Karen Blixen of Out of Africa fame, was quite ill when she said
this to a friend, because she was determined to write her stories one way or
another: “. . . if you only work a little at a time, every day a
little, . . . suddenly the work will find itself."
Surprise, surprise. It might take you
weeks, or months, or years. But one day, it is done. Whatever it is you have
always wanted to do—write, or paint, or sculpt, or weave—do it, and once
you’ve done it, you just never know. No one might ever be interested in
whatever it is you have done. But you
will be a better person for having done it. And then again, someone might come
along and say, Oh, nice, I want this. Or, I want to publish this. Or, I want to buy this.
Or, I want one just like it--will you make me one--I will pay you.
You just never know.
So. Go for it.
I will be rooting for you all the while,
Ursula
P.S.
And just in case all should fail, take it with a good dose of humor. You are
not alone. See cartoon below.
