To Write, or Not to Write

As I have been gradually going about the business of getting some of my novels back into print on Amazon.com and Kindle, I’ve been thinking about the whole writing thing, not so much the process itself, about which volumes have been written, but about the lifestle. Unlike a lot of writers of my acquaintance, some extremely successful, who claim that writing is torture or a holy chore, I’ve always enjoyed writing, even if I’ve found some of the things that go along with the process (marketing, for example) occasionally annoying.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been a fulltime writer, which means I’ve often had to pick up various part-time jobs to help make ends meet and I’ve gone without a lot of things that many people who work at regular jobs seem to take for granted, such as health insurance and savings accounts and, most significantly, steady paychecks. (I once wrote an original novel based upon a popular television show and the publisher jerked me around about the check for a whole year. Meanwhile, for some strange reason, Visa expected their payment within the customary 30 days, to say nothing of such mundane things as rent and food.) Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on one’s point of view), I had a really low-buck lifestyle that enabled me to live in lots of different places and have lots of experiences I probably would never have had if I had a regular job. (I might write about some of those sometime. On the other hand … maybe not.) There were times in my life when I essentially lived out of a couple of motorcycle saddlebags and not much else. I’ve seen people that I went to school with attain bigtime corporate jobs, successfully run for office, achieve general officer rank in the military, and gain the sort of lifestyles that, by most any measure, would be regarded as highly successful. Me? Well, after years of struggling, working as a novelist, I’ve got a job mixing paint at Home Depot. And I’m totally okay with that.

I would never have been comfortable in any line of work where I had to wear a suit. I don’t even own one. In fact, I don’t even own a sport jacket, or a tie, or any pants that aren’t blue jeans. I would rather spend my disposable income (in the rare instances when I have any) on a new tattoo than on an expensive watch. I do not own a cell phone, or any kind of “pad” or portable music player (with ear buds or without). And while it would be nice to have a lot of money, the only thing it would buy me that I would truly find of value would be the freedom of not having to worry about not having it. (Well, and maybe a new Harley, although I’ll probably keep the one I have until one of us breaks down.)

Fifteen years ago, I got married (for the second time) and decided it would be nice to have a “normal” lifestyle for a change, along with some of the things that go with that, such as a house and health insurance and a 401K. That meant getting a job. Teaching seemed like a natural way to go, especially for a writer, and I had pursued a Master’s Degree at the ripe old age of 40 with that in mind, but while teaching seems to work well for a lot of writers, it did not work out so well for me. For one thing, I just don’t LOOK like a teacher. I am, at best, a really awkward fit for academia. I am not politically correct and I have a lot of rough edges. They looked at my publication record and thought they were getting someone in a tweed jacket with a pipe and ascot and, instead, they wound up getting a tattooed biker who looked like a bad accident between John Lennon and Richard Dreyfus (both of whom I’d occasionally been mistaken for when I was younger). And, worst of all, everything I said and did in my classrooms pretty much contradicted everything other professors said and did in their classrooms. And I did not write “lit-rah-ture.” I wrote mass market genre paperbacks. (One raises a disdainful eyebrow when one says that.) All of which did not auger well for a career in academia. I scrambled around every semester, trying to get part-time teaching jobs, often at several schools at the same time, driving back and forth to teach classes at different schools throughout the day, and what time I had left was eaten up by grading papers and preparing classes. (Writers, pay attention: if you think teaching is an easy job to help support your writing, think again. These people WORK. And if you think going through a publisher’s slush pile can be ennervating, try grading several hundred Freshman compositions every week.) Then, one day, I decided that I needed to quit at least one of the part-time teaching jobs I had and maybe pick up something that had nothing whatsoever to do with teaching or writing, maybe something I could do with my hands, just to clear the tension and the cobwebs out. Because it got to a point where I simply had no time for writing. (Or anything else resembling a life, for that matter.)

I wound up applying for a part-time job at Home Depot. I had worked in a mom-and-pop hardware store on Long Island as a kid and this was sort of like that, only bigger. I figured it would make a nice part-time gig to complement a part-time teaching job. But something funny happened. After I was there for about six weeks, the store manager told me he liked my work ethic and my attitude and anytime I wanted a full-time job, all I had to do was say the word and I could have it. And I thought, well, I’ve been teaching for about 8 years now in two different states and no one’s ever said anything like that to me before. And so I took him up on it and stopped teaching. I figured, well, now I will have time to write….

Only, strangely, I didn’t. Not because I couldn’t, or because I didn’t have the time (although a fulltime job does take up a lot of time); I just didn’t seem to feel like it. And days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, months turned into years …. I’ve written a little here and there, but I haven’t publilshed a new novel in at least a decade now. I no longer have an agent, and frankly, I’m not sure how I would go about getting one now, or even if anyone would be interested, or even if I’d want one. I am not full of angst about not writing. I am simply…not writing.

Harlan Ellison once said that you could not stop a “real” writer from writing, that if you chopped off his hands, he would type out a story with his nose. (Or, presumably, her nose.) Well, that may be true for some writers, like my friend Harlan, but apparantly it’s not true for all. Because, in my experience, there are lots of writers who don’t write. And they are “real” writers, at least in my opinion. They have produced good work. Some of them just don’t do it very often. And some, like me, seem to go through bursts of prolificity…and then just stop. I suppose there are many different reasons for that, but I can only speak for mine. The easy answer is, “I just didn’t feel like it.” Now, most writers will tell you that if you wait for inspiration to strike, you will probably never get anything done. However, that isn’t what I mean. I’m not waiting to be inspired. I still have ideas. I get them all the time. Those people who ask where writers get their ideas don’t seem to understand that writers get ideas all the time. That’s the easy part. The tough part is sitting down and actually writing them.

Now don’t get me wrong, just because I said that I enjoyed writing doesn’t mean that it’s not difficult. I enjoy working out, too, and believe me, when you do it right, it’s hard. I guess what it comes down to is that I’ve simply been … content. After years of not knowing where my next paycheck was coming from (or, perhaps more importantly, when it might arrive) I’ve been enjoying getting a steady paycheck. Like many Americans these days, I might be living paycheck to paycheck (and without my wife’s help and support, I might well be back to living out of those motorcycle saddlebags), but it’s nice to know that paycheck will be there. It’s also nice to have medical insurance, and dental and vision insurance, and a 401K that should allow me to pay off our house when I retire in a few years. And it’s nice to have people to work with. Now, I’m not a big people person, mind you. I tend to be rather solitary, and my wife Deb is really all the company I need, but having a good bunch of folks to work with can be nice. I’ve never really had any of that before.

A lot of people seem to think that being a fulltime writer can be a great lifestyle. Well, it can be, I suppose, if you become really successful, like J.K. Rowling or Steven King or that guy who wrote Game of Thrones, but most of the time, as George R.R. Martin himself once said, “It can be precarious.” He knows; he’s been there. He’s paid the dues. There can be some pretty cool things about a writer’s lifestyle. You can work in your pajamas, if you like. You can work when you want, where you want. Set your own hours. You don’t have a boss breathing down your neck. You don’t have to punch a clock. You don’t have to be polite to people if you don’t feel like it. (And believe me, there have been times when I really haven’t felt like being polite.) But you spend long hours being and working by yourself; you usually don’t have any idea when (or if) you might get paid; you often cannot afford such things as insurance or a mortgage or a payment on a new car; you often cannot afford to take your significant person out to eat at a nice restaurant; and, perhaps most annoying, people think your life is glamorous. It’s really nice having a job. All of you who have one should be thankful.

But I’m starting to feel like writing once again. Could mean trouble….