If You're a Writer You Might Not Want to Read This

Unless You're Ready

This cover makes me feel weird. But I can’t stop looking at it. I think it’s because I can’t stop thinking about the sharpening process.

Chuck Palahniuk, whose books have sold millions of copies all around the world, tells a story in his book Consider This about when he was 34 years old and working full-time at Freightliner Trucks. He worked on the assembly line, where his fellow line-workers pranked each other by squeezing axel grease as filling into donuts. Then they’d hide somewhere and wait until some unsuspecting chump took a big bite of pastry and grease.

When his first book came out, he went on a little book tour through the region. He writes,

After my first book tour I’d given up any dream of escaping that factory. Two people had attended my event at the Barnes & Noble in downtown Seattle. In San Francisco, where I was driven two hours to a Barnes & Noble in Livermore, no one attended my reading. For that I’d squandered my annual week’s vacation, and then it was back to Portland and Freightliner Trucks.

I always love a good look-at-me-way-back-when story from a famous writer. Like John Irving when he was still a wrestling coach or Hemingway when he was writing for newspapers or Stephen King shoving those rejection notes on the spike in his wall. J.K. Rowling scribbling on napkins in diners while on food stamps.

But those stories hit different now that I’m 48, so this isn’t a post encouraging you to keep writing because if you persevere you’ll end up like

Chuck Palahniuk

and write something like Fight Club and become a millionaire and win awards.

This is more the kind of post telling you that if you keep writing you’ll probably join the rest of us writers and, after your first book comes out (if you’re so lucky), you’ll head back to whatever your equivalent is of Freightliner Trucks, and, unlike Chuck, that’s probably where you’ll have to keep working.

Me, too.

For most of the rest of our lives.

That’s how it goes for most of us.

I know. Maybe you don’t want to keep reading. But the news does get better. For the most part.

---

“Living life as an artist is a practice.
You are either engaging in the practice
or you’re not.

It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it.
It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.”
You are either living as a monk or you’re not.

We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output.

The real work of the artist
is a way of being in the world.”

- Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

---

I’ve told this story before.

When my first book, The Day the Angels Fell, came out, my friend

Seth Haines

sent me a text message congratulating me, and then he said something peculiar, something I’ll never forget.

“This book will not do for you what you want this book to do for you.”

Well.

This is just another way to convey the advice Chuck Palahniuk’s friend Tom gives to any writer who will listen:

“Tom would tell you that if you’re writing ‘in order to’ achieve anything else, then you should not be writing. So if you’re writing in order to buy that big house, or win your father’s respect, or convince Zelda Sayre to marry you, forget it. There are easier, faster ways to achieve your real goal.”

I wasn’t all that happy with Seth after he told me the book wouldn’t do for me what I wanted it to do for me. Just as I wasn’t happy with him when he said that neither of us would ever sell as many copies of anything as J.K. Rowling has.

I had secret hopes of being that successful, perhaps, someday, of having my own look-at-me-way-back-when story.

But, like I said, I’m 48 now. I care about writing in a completely different way than I did when I was 35.

---

“If you start from the position that there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, and creativity is just free play with no rules, it’s easier to submerge yourself joyfully in the process of making things. We’re not playing to win, we’re playing to play. And ultimately, playing is fun. Perfectionism gets in the way of fun. A more skillful goal might be to find comfort in the process. To make and put out successive works with ease.”

- Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

---

The last two novels I’ve started writing have been stories I’m intrigued by, perhaps even loved, but there’s also been something about them that has me looking outward while I write, something self-conscious, something about them that’s been outside the bullseye of what I truly love creating simply for the fun of it.

So, a few weeks ago I set aside the novel I’ve been working on, all 60,000 words of it, and started fresh on something new. This goes against all of my best advice I’ve ever given other writers, specifically that you should always finish what you start.

But I’m 48 now. Nearly 50. I don’t have time to write for other people.

This has been so freeing for me. After all,

Maile Silva

and I have a busy life now that we have our bookstore (Chuck, want to come give a reading at Nooks?). I don’t have the energy to write if it feels like just another responsibility.

I’m writing my own stuff late at night again, when the kids are sleeping and the house is quiet. Ever since I started this story I’m currently working on, I just keep thinking, God, this is so much fun. I mean it. I can’t wait to get back into the story each night, even when my eyes are heavy and Maile’s already asleep beside me. And it feels like me again! Finally.

The last time I felt this way about a story was when I was writing The Day the Angels Fell for my own kids.

---

I don’t know.

What am I trying to say?

Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll learn the lesson earlier than I did, before you’re 48.

Maybe you’ll learn that the best thing that could happen for you isn’t to write a bestseller, but to discover what you truly love to write, the kind of stories you can’t help but get down on paper.

Maybe, before you turn 48, you’ll experience what it means to get caught up writing a story you care about, even if you kind of secretly think that no one else will ever give a damn about it. Because the thing is, if you’re writing for the fun of it, if all you’re looking for is to live a creative life, then the book can do for you what you want the book to do for you. (Screw you, Seth.)

Anyway, your version of Freightliner Trucks isn’t so bad, is it? Just stay away from the donuts.