After leaving the law firm, I became a full-time fiction writer in April of this year. Although I'd been writing seriously for some time, the transition to writing as my day job was disconcerting. There were certainly great things about it -- like not having to set an alarm, or ride the subway in the dog days of summer, or, you know, work. Perhaps most important, I get to spend my time thinking about what I want to think about, a rare luxury for which I am grateful.
On the other hand, the simple fact of the matter is that writing fiction, particularly writing novels, is a rather tedious process. It's amazing to me how many stories have fiction writers as their main characters, given how writers actually spend their days. Not only is the daily life of a writer lacking in drama, it is generally lacking in other people. It's mostly solitary work, just you and the page.
The biggest adjustment I had to writing full time was trying to figure out what a good day's work looked like. At first, it was very hard for me to feel like I could stop writing, like I'd done a respectable amount for the day. I eventually set as my daily goal the writing of three pages. At the time, this felt lame -- a mere three pages! That's what I accomplished when given an entire day? But I quickly came to realize that writing three pages of a novel, day in and day out, can be a daunting task. Moments of pure inspiration are few and far between; much of the work of writing a novel is slow and methodical. John Gregory Dunne, in a wonderful essay about the writing of his novel The Red White and Blue called "Laying Pipe," calls novel-writing "manual labor of the mind." Inevitably, there are times when you face the blank page and that page remains stubbornly blank.
I've often joked that if someone took the trouble to fully explain to young aspiring writers what the writer's life actually consisted of, there would quickly be no more books. I don't really mean it, or at least I only sort of do. But there is a world of difference between wanting to be a "Writer" and wanting to write. Wanting to be a writer will inevitably lead to disappointment -- the romance of the "Writer" is almost entirely a myth. Writing, however, is its own reward. It can be a lonely daily grind, sure, but there is also the rush of inspiration, when a connection suddenly reveals itself, or when a character enters the scene and promptly starts stealing the show. There is also the quiet satisfaction of watching the pages build, the stack on the desk, as you bring a new story into the world.
Comments