So You Wanna Be a Writer

What' s that you say?

You're gonna be the next Stephen King! Nora Roberts? Steinbeck, Hemingway and Dan Brown all rolled into one? Good for you! Welcome to the club . . . there are only about 500 gajillion of us and more coming through the door every day!

It's funny how many of us want this career. Despite the harsh reality that most of us will never see print in so much as a third-rate fanfic newsletter and that even the few (The proud!) who do make it to the professional level will rarely make a decent living at it (can we say: McEvening job, everyone?) Still, we flock to the dream by the thousands. Why? I was thinking about that today. Why is it so important to us? Oh, we could chat for hours on our "need to communicate" and the "inner muse" and our "artistic self" yearning to break free but I don't think that's really it. I think (and my thoughts + $5.00 can get you a latte at Starbucks!) that we want it so badly because of the dream.

The dream?

Ah, allow me to elucidate (I love that word!). There is a dream that comes along with being a writer. We all have one (and I don't mean the one where we are on stage accepting the Nobel Prize!) and I think it's the real reason we chew up all our free time (and sanity!) sitting alone in our tiny rooms, tapping at keyboards, creating tales of people who never were; doing things that could never happen. In our mind, we have an image of what our life will be like once we've "made it" (definition of "made it" is left to your personal standards) Being a wrtier brings with it a lifestyle that appeals to us (Reality not requiered for said lifestyle.) When I close my eyes at night and drift off to sleep, dreaming about "when I make it" . . . there's an image -a scene- that invariably plays through my mind as the fantasizing starts. I bet you have one too, though you may not have noticed it. There's a "perfect" situation that we're shooting for and I think it is the underpinning of why we write. Mine goes something like this:

It's Autumn. I'm walking up a hill with my hand in the pockets of my heavy suede jacket. I'm wearing a flannel shirt, jeans, and pretty beat up work boots. I reach the top of the hill and stop, tilting my head up to sniff the crisp air -it's just beginning to turn cold; winter is close by. I look back over my shoulder to see my log cabin home, sweet smoke wafting out of the fieldstone chimney. The Wife is sitting out on the porch, reading a book, and The Boy is wrestling in the grass with The Dog. I smile and look to the other side of the hill. Ahead there is the lake -silver hued and rippling lightly beneath the cool breeze. There are mountains behind it and trees -hardwoods all- as far as the eye can see. There is no sound but the wind, the birds, and the distant chime of my son's laugh. This is the life I have as a novelist. I'm not wealthy, I'm no Stephen King, but I can pay all the bills and still have a bit left over to do some of the fun stuff . . .

Fairly predictable I imagine but it's the underpinning of what I'm striving for. I want that life (and yes, I do know that being published doesn't make it all go that way - but it SHOULD, dammit!) Writing is me, being me: surviving on my own terms , strictly on talent and creations that come from inside me. That's a damn fine dream, even if it's not particularly realistic. It's why I keep sitting at that computer every night. So, how about the rest of you? What do you see when you think about "making it"? What images come immediately to your brain?

Don't be shy! Tell us what your perfect life as a writer is . . . I'm pretty sure everyone who visits here has one. Let's hear it folks! Drop a comment so we can all know we're not alone in our insanity. (Unless of course, I am . . . in which case you can feel free to ignore this post!)

Oh, BTW: sorry for all the "quotes" and (parentheticals) in this post. They got away from me . . .

Later!