You know, I wrote my first short story when I was in elementary school. Entitled “Willie the Great,” it told the story of a handicapped kid who learned magic and put on a show. I wrote it in my grandmother’s trailer on a visit to Missouri from Wisconsin. My talented cousin Jack was doodling on some scratch paper my grandmother had, and I needed to compete. So my first short story was composed on the back of some yellow heavy paper with a fancy letterhead on the front, and I got to read it to my grandmother, mother, and maybe an aunt or two.
I made my first submission in the eighth grade, a story about my dog written in the first person perspective, that I sent to McCall’s because 1.) my mother had a subscription and 2.) I saw they published a short story each issue. It was rejected–or ignored–but I submitted bad short stories throughout high school and college to myriad magazines. I was going to be a writer.
I did some time as a technical writer, cranked out a novel that’s not half bad, and have blogged more or less continuously for 8 years, but my ultimate output has really declined to a couple real essays or articles a year and a couple of stunted attempts at short stories–after writing fiction mostly through school, suddenly I find fiction hard. I’ve even had pretty good luck actually placing work with consumer magazines you could pick up on the news stand and in trade journals that don’t pay money. But now I’m at an age where I’m no longer eligible to be a young writer success story and am too ossified to dream myself in a Manhattan apartment mingling with other denizens of the slicks (and I’ve outgrown that dream anyway).
The realization came to me when I read this Cracked piece and the writer says:
There are some days that I write for 16 straight hours, knowing that everything I just typed will be deleted and replaced with a completely different idea, or rejected outright.
That, my friends, is a writer.
Me, I’m a dilettante, living the rest of my life and sometimes dabbling in wordcraft.
I need to determine if that’s what I want to be, or if I want to dedicate a little more time and energy to the real writer thing. Maybe apply some, I dunno, discipline to it and write for sure every day on something that’s not a 200 word or less blog piece. I’m coming to a point in my life where more time will be available. I just need to commit to using it.
