Why be a Writer?
There are a lot of romantic ideas and a mystique about being an writer and it is very difficult to ignore the lure and power of that term, ‘writer.’ Most of us have been, at one time or another in our lives, heavily influenced by a book or two. Sometimes a book has even changed our lives completely. I started reading science fiction in junior high; it opened up my mind to amazing possibilities about the universe and our place in it. At the same time the growing U.S. space effort, fresh with the possibilities of exploring the real universe, kept me enthralled. I started doing drawings of space and space ships. I wrote down ideas and outlines of stories about people in space, some that I would draw upon decades later as the inspiration for my first novel. As a growing artist I strove to master the technical aspects of art to be able to create my visions of other cities and planets in the universe. Much later as a writer, I began to try and create the personal experiences and emotions of humans venturing into that great unknown. I discovered that the characters I had made up were a composite of me and my views about the universe. I was basically exploring myself. I think that the writer, C.S. Lewis, stated it best when he said, “We read to know we are not alone. We write to know who we are.” It has been that way for me.
This is why many of us are willing to put up with some absolutely terrible things in order to achieve the term, ‘writer.’ Why would anyone sit at a desk in summer heat and winter chill, day after day writing about a bunch of fictional people doing a bunch of fictional things and for the prospect of having almost no one, except for a sympathetic friend or relative read about it much later. Why send off letter after letter and receive rejection after rejection from publishing houses. Why consider the utterly ridiculous notion and complete folly of trying to publish your own books just to get your work in print any way you can. Why endure the lonely prospect of flogging yourself to near death trying to promote your work to anyone who might be even remotely interested in reading your words. It must be for the singular satisfaction of having done it, there is certainly not the slightest chance that it will make you any real money. The prospect is that you will spend ten times more money creating your book then you will ever get from selling any copies. And yet, a million new self published books were created last year, someone must have some hope of making it to the exalted ranks of being a ‘writer’. I really have a hard time understanding it all even though I am afflicted with the same ailment as the rest of them. The need for self-expression in humans often overrides all other needs or sense. Like the ‘Force’ in Star Wars, it is strong in some of us. The rest are just cannon fodder waiting to be shot down in our heroic efforts. But that won’t stop a single one of us from doing our very best to get there. (Below, an old Star Wars painting of mine.)
