Sometimes lately in life I want to become a writer.
(Which, I suppose, makes blog ownership oddly self-serving. My own personal little publisher, never sending back drafts with corrections or suggestions. And of course herein lies my distaste with the internet giving a voice to some people who ought not have one, like the infinity of YouTube commentators who make me fear for the future of our nation and the world. But I digress…)
Back to the subject at hand. Writing. I have been chewing on the thought a lot recently. Granted, it’s not the first time I have actually considered it as some kind of income-generating occupation, but it is somehow the first time that I am pondering what it would mean to take it semi-seriously. Perhaps because the first time it entered my head I was battling the frigid European winter, cooped up in my luke-warm apartment in Lyon, France, and the thought of professional writing was bookended in the same week by notions of acting and singing professionally, all three ideas which at the time and to this day I accredit to a lack of self-expression that comes with speaking a second language in a foreign culture. All that to say, I attributed my own partial insanity to my mild case of writer’s envy.
So, I was a bit surprised several weeks back that this thought again creeped into the front of my mind, making me do a mental double-take. I mean, things are different now, more normal. I’m back in Seattle, speaking English, living at the Neill Family Ranch, barista-ing and house sitting to pay bills and child support, etc. Which means that maybe there’s something to that whole “express yourself with written words” nonsense.
As a self-proclaimed extrovert, my natural first response was to begin bouncing this off various people, pestering friends and co-workers with questions about the feasability of being paid to write. What do I write about? Who is my audience? What is my medium (columnist, book, professional blogger, food critic, etc.)? How do I even get started? Is this just something I do on the side?
Ultimately, most of those questions are ridiculous to ask from this vantage point. Or at least ridiculous to try and have answers for. But of the various conversations I had on this subject, one of those most useful tips I received was from a coworker (and poet) at Diva. She told me that if I want to write, it shouldn’t be too much for me to try and jot down one thought I have per day. And to start with what I have, or at least what I know.
Alright, then.
Here’s what I know:
1) I generally enjoy writing, and in various forms, excepting fiction, because I’d rather not create something from scratch. But I enjoy putting words down, kind of like making a case for my thoughts. It could be a dry, detail-laden scientific report, or a play-by-play recounting of some dumb-assery in which I was involved.
2) I probably have at least one thought, if not five or six, that I want to write down each day, but I often lack the pen in hand to do it justice. That’s something, right?
3) I have an audience. You, obviously, if you’ve made it this far in my dronings on about questions of how to pass the time. But, importantly, myself. Sure, it is crucial to understand the possibility that people will read my words, and that words are impactful. But, you all are hard to satisfy, you ruthless hordes you, and no matter how pleasing the prose, there will always be a critic. Maybe sustainable writing has to not be ultimately concerned with external reactions. At least that’s what I believe for now.
I could go on, but I’ll stop for the moment. Just know that I am going to try to be more consistently writing. That may mean posting on this blog, and it may not.
Mostly it means that you should probably get my signature while you still can, before I publish some amazing, depth-filled and thought-provoking column in the New Yorker and become disgustingly famous.
dude, start writing for eHow.com.