Writing is perhaps one of the most misunderstood professions in America. When you say, “I’m a writer,” it conjures a number of images in the listener’s head — and most of those images are just poppycock.
I’ve been immersed lately in the last revisions of a short story headed for release on Amazon. Tyrker’s Tale has been great fun to write, but I find myself begrudging the time it has taken to revise it. It’s not that the story needs any more or less revision than any other piece of writing, it’s just that I am so very eager to launch this Amazon experiment.
Such a process runs counter to the image many people have about writers. The idea of a writer who sits in a lonely garret typing away at his novel, drinking bourbon and chain-smoking cigarettes (or cigars) a la Ernest Hemingway is pretty far from most writers’ reality. Or the image television has created with writers like Richard Castle, who have all the time in the world to follow a cop/muse and rarely sit down to actually write that bestseller that eventually but magically appears in readers’ hands. We like to think people like Patricia Cornwell and Robert Parker live those sorts of fantasy lives. But when I sat down to write a book, I found that it just wasn’t like that.
The five myths about writers that I think abound in popular culture are:
1. Writers are born, not made. Sometimes when I want to increase the impressiveness of my meager writing credentials, I’ll say, “I come from a family of journalists.” Both my father and his brother were successful newspaper editors, and various other members of my family of origin have been involved in one way or another with newspapers and magazines. Does that make me a better writer? Not really. It is true that anyone who was raised by my father knows a bit about grammar, but other than that, I’ve had to learn my craft just like anyone else.
2. Everything happens in a writer’s head. The typing is just a formality. This one is so untrue that I cringe when I think of it. Novels do not pop out of writers’ skulls fully formed. Writer Diana Gabaldon says, “I … don’t write in a straight line; I write in lots of little pieces and then glue them together like a jigsaw puzzle.” This is similar to my writing process, in which I have a map of the scenes in a book, but I don’t write them in a particular order.
3. Writers are inspired to write by some kind of spiritual or supernatural force that other people can’t understand. If this was the way writing worked, I think we’d have far fewer books in our world. My inspiration is certainly neither supernatural nor spiritual. It is more likely to come from a look on a friend’s face, something I read in the newspaper, or a song I can’t get out of my head. And more often than not, the inspiration for a story is manufactured from hours of writing without inspiration. This is also known as the “butt in chair” theory, perhaps first espoused by children’s book author Jane Yolen. (No inspiration? Write anyway.)
4. Writing a really great book will make you rich and famous. Just like with any other art form (or sport, or hobby), a very small percentage of writers are financially successful. It doesn’t mean their books aren’t great. Often it means that the market for that particular type of book is saturated, or the writer doesn’t have access to good editors, or s/he doesn’t understand what it takes to market a book. Like owning a small business, writing requires many different talents to get from concept to million-dollar paycheck, and often writers are expected to be good at everything — but many writers concentrate only on writing. And that path to the land of the rich and famous is mainly paved with luck.
5. Published writers are somehow better than unpublished writers, their worth being conveyed by some mysterious process of the publishing establishment. This one is closely aligned with “You can’t call yourself a writer if you’re not published in traditional book form.” Like number four on this list, a very small percentage of artists of any type are professionally successful in their art. Yet we still call someone who plays minor league baseball a baseball player. Someone who makes pots is still a potter, even if she doesn’t ever earn a dime for doing it. Yet for some reason, many people hold writers to a higher standard.
Do any of my readers know why these myths persist? I don’t, but I’m interested in your view. Leave a comment below, and I’ll be sure to respond.
