Over the past few years, I have heard many a war story from other professional writers about their interactions with the non-writing and the want-to-be-writing crowds. They get asked everything from "Where do you get your ideas" to "Will you write my idea into a book" to "Were you really born in a cabbage patch?" The questions run the gamut from people who want details on how the industry works to those searching for the secret golden key to Stephen King fame. I’ve also heard plenty of war stories about fans who are so obsessive about a work that they ask the authors what they were thinking when Character X did Y thing when they should have done Z.
Good stories, these war stories, and excellent learning opportunities for wee baby writers on how to deal with such things. It’s especially amusing to hear the war stories knowing I asked some of those questions myself when I started. But the biggest surprise to me now is that some of those questions are being directed to me as if I’ve tapped into the Mystical Force of All-Knowing Writerdom.
Maybe it’s because people know I have a day job, but the most frequently asked question I get is "Where do you find the time to write?" Some of the people who ask this question are just asking to be polite (hey, we’re talking to a writer, let’s ask the writer a writerly-type question). Others ask this because they’re genuinely amazed that I’m writing and working at the same time. Then there’s the "I wish I had time to write like you" crowd.
Usually, I give the serious answer, telling people where all that time comes from. But there are days when I just want to shake someone and say "If you’re really a writer, you don’t find time. It’s there. You just have to see it for what it is and stop making excuses."
So for all those who want to be published authors, here’s a piece of advice:
If you are a writer, you write. You keep a notepad with you, or your iPad / tablet / laptop if you’re a technogeek, and you write. You write in your head. You write in your speech-recognition digital voice recorder, you write on your ‘puter / notepad. You sound out ideas and phrases while you’re driving to the day job. You jot down notes during work meetings that have nothing to do with your job but you’re required to attend. You scribble down ideas on napkins during lunch or smoke breaks.
If you’re a writer, you write.
Writing is not about finding time or making time. If you really really want to be in this business, it happens because even when you’re singing in the shower, you’re making up lyrics for that folk filk in your next novel. It happens because you’re so busy writing that you don’t even realize that time must be found or made or whatever. You simply write, because that’s who and what you are.
Then you too can be amazed at all these people who go on and on about never having the time to complete a short story or a novel, but who miraculously have plenty of time to visit the mall or play videos or hang out with their beer buddies 5 times a week.
Of course, it helps to have an understanding partner who’s willing to do the dishes for you because you’re in the middle of destroying the universe or creating a magical cult. But even if we didn’t have said support system, we would still be publishing and writing because that’s who we are. Writers.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a cat to wax before making my next temporal withdrawal from the First Interdimensional Bank of Collateralized Authors.
