Portrait of the Writer as a Possessed Wordsmith

WRITING IS HARD work. It isn't particularly fun. You do it because you are driven. Writing is a passion. You would rather write than eat, or watch television, or bathe, or have sex. Well, sex may be an either/or, but the passion to write clearly gives the passion to make love a run for its money. You can learn to write in the sense that you can take classes or workshops that give you the opportunity to hone your skills. But you don't decide one day, maybe after reading a good book, that you'd like to give the writing thing a shot. You're kinda born with the writing gene.

When I was in grade school, there were no such things as computers. My aunt had a typewriter--a ponderous machine that would kill you instantly if it accidentally dropped on your head. Whenever we visited my aunt, I would be drawn to the magical instrument like a sailor to a siren. Others wanted to go out and play with my aunt's dog, or catch up on the latest gossip with friends and family we hadn't seen in months (my aunt lived a good day's drive distant). I wanted to lovingly roll a page of crisp white paper into the gleaming black monster, hit the keys, and watch my words be committed to real ink and font. Handwriting was ephemeral. This was for the ages.

Back then it didn't matter much what I wrote. I could write anything. With the help of the typewriter, whatever I wrote I was an expert on, and my prose was on a par with Hemingway, or Steinbeck, or Melville, despite the fact that I had no idea who these people were.

It may have been Fourth Grade. I'm not sure. In class we all had to write a poem. The class would vote. The winning poem got set to music and the entire class would sing it. I won. Of course I won. How could I not have won?

In high school I had a typewriter of my own. Older, I began to explore the form known as the short story. Back then there were lots of magazines that published short stories. They even paid for them. Reading was quite popular. It was not unusual to visit a park or a beach and notice lots of people sitting around with their noses in books or magazines instead of cheeseburgers. My favorites were the science fiction pulps--Analog, Galaxy, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. So I began to write science fiction stories. It wasn't very long before I actually completed a story, and mailed it off to one of the magazines, self-addressed stamped envelope included, and got back my very first rejection slip! I was in the big time now. No doubt about it.

It would be years before I published anything for real. In the meantime I accumulated an impressive collection of rejections. I could sort them by sizes, colors, magazine logo. The cream of my collection were the handful of rejections personally annotated by the Editor. This meant that my work had gotten past the "slush pile" and was good enough to warrant a decision from the Editor. My high school friends may have prided themselves in completing an assigned essay from the teacher, but I could show them a fistful of proof that my work had been seen and deemed unworthy by the literati of the outside world. So there!

Then came college. I majored in journalism. I joined the school newspaper. A tradition of student elections was that each of the candidates for class president got a bio in the paper, written by one of the newspaper staff. It wasn't very long before the candidates were actively seeking me to pen their campaign column. Whoever I wrote about usually won. That was the perception. But it was ages ago.

So where am I heading with this lengthy preamble? What's the moral of the story?

Flash forward.

With 25 years of experience in the trenches of that concrete holl known as New York City's publishing industry as an editor myself, I have seen boatloads of manuscripts from all sorts of writers: those who are driven; those who think it might be fun. It is not (fun). But it is rewarding, if you have the passion.

My neighbor for a number of years on the top floor of one of Queens' better middle-class high-rises fancied himself a writer. He was always showing me his latest scribbling, which I always tried to dismiss in the nicest way possible. He really wasn't a writer. I don't know why he persisted in trying to be one. Especially because he was a damm good photographer! His work had been exhibited in galleries. His work had been published. He clearly had the passion and talent for the image. I tried to drive this point through his stubborn, balding head, many times. His pictures were breathtaking. His words, well, best I could say is that I had to take a deep breath before reading them.

I think my neighbor suffered from the delusion that being a magazine editor in the Big Apple was glamorous. I got that same vibe from a lot of people. Well it isn't. Or wasn't. At that time being a magazine fashion model in the Big Apple was glamorous. Even working for the New York Public Library was glamorous. Magazine editing was mostly drudge work. And I think that is my point. If you have the passion, you gotta write. If you can't break into the best-seller lists, you still gotta write. You gotta make a living, too. But selling designer sneakers during the day and working on your latest novel at night doesn't hack it for those of us with the writing gene. So we get up before the sun, eat a less than nutritious breakfast, suffer an inhumane subway or bus ride into the office where we put up with an overweight publisher whose idea of passion is a quick smack on the lips from the wife, all for the joy of seeing our words under our bylines, in print.

We can't help it. We're writers.