electric mist

BIC

In the comments section on the previous post, Lori Armstrong made the excellent point of how accomplishing anything as a writer really depends upon the writer putting Butt In Chair and working. There are tons of ways to procrastinate, and there are loads of ways to freak out about what your career will or won't be (yep, done that) and really, the only thing a writer can control is the practice they give to the act of writing.

My youngest son (bear with me) is having a really painful time right now coming to grips with the fact that he can't earn a couple of paychecks and then run out and buy the really cool motorcycle he's drooling over. I know that feeling. I want to have that instant gratification too, quite often. I want to hand in something and the world screech to a halt, startled by their joy at what I've written. (I don't have big dreams, no?) The world really doesn't work that way, and it's lucky for most of us that it doesn't. I'm glad a guy who wants to be a doctor can't just decide that as a senior in high school and run out and pick up a scapel. I'm really relieved that girl who wants to be an air traffic controller can't say, "Oooh, planes are cool!" when they're a junior in college and, after an all-night kegger, go get that job.

Some people get big headlines for having sold something, like the recent debacle involving Kaavya Viswanathan and the alleged plagiarism case buiding against her now. She got a $500,000 advance, and there are up to (and possibly more, I'm not sure) 29 passages in her book which are very very similar to that of Megan F. McCafferty's works. Instant gratification, like a sugar high, or a cocaine high, can have a price. You really can't say, "Oops, I read these when I was younger and accidentally worked 29 nearly identical passages into my own work and it is a complete mystery to me how that happened." Well, you can, but that's not only egotistical idiocy, it's a little disingenuous to proclaim yourself smart enough to get into Harvard and yet, too naive to realize that you've plagiarized when you have such identical passages. Using the "I'm a genius, I can't help but absorb so much it's hard to remember where it came from" excuse is pretty much bunk.

Accidentaly mimicry can happen. There are too many stories out there where two people came up with similar books or movies at about the same time and when they were published, one looked to be a copy of the other (depending on which came out first, usually). But, if true (and since she's apologized for it already and not denied it, I'm not sure how it could be anything other than true), the effort of copying here is pure greed. Wanting that instant gratification, wanting that acclaim, wanting that money, wanting that attention... is not what writing and work (anyone's work) is really about. If you're a genuine person -- in the sense that you care about being authentic -- then you care about what you do. Whether you're a nurse or a doctor, a contractor or a ditch digger, you try to do your best at what you do. You hope that one day, what you do will matter, will shine, and that somehow, people will notice (for we, most of us, are creatures of society and we want to be accepted, or even acclaimed, at least once or twice for our own accomplishments, I think). But if you co-opt the work of someone else and pretend it's yours, you're not only saying you have no respect for that person and the effort they put into their craft, you're saying you have no respect for the rest of us, to whom you are lying.

For me, the satisfaction is in the work. I like creating a world, building a place where people can go in their imaginations and feel like they have fully experienced that place, those characters, as if they were real. I like entertaining and keeping people glued to the story, seeing them have a moment of escape, a moment away from their lives as they enter that world. I like the hard work it takes to do these things, to build these worlds. I like that I have to push myself to continuously improve, to find better ways to express something, to find nuances to help build the characters into fully dimensional people. It's not easy. It is, occasionally, rapturous, when something goes really really well. I worked for a week on a small section of the book because I knew it wasn't quite working. It would have been easier to let a slighter effort pass because I had other stuff to do, and this was such a small section. But I knew it was important and I knew why: it set up mutliple character issues, emotions and a foundation for building of trust later in the story, and a sense of outrage when one character thinks the other has betrayed her. It's really a tiny moment, and I'm not even sure the reader will sense it when reading it. Yet, after wrestling with it for a few days, when it finally worked, when it finally just sang, I was elated. That, folks, is what's satisfying as a writer: to set a goal and then to know you've accomplished it.

Butt. In. Chair.

There is a second, equally important component to the BIC rule that many of us fail to disucss, partly because it's scary when you realize how much you're putting on the line with the choices you make... but the thing that will help keep your BIC is committment to the choice you make when you pick which story to tell. There is no one single story which is going to be all things to all people. There are stories which are serious, stories which are frivolous, stories which will wrench your heart out, stories which will make you laugh until you have to pee, and none of them could work if the author started doubting herself half-way through and worried that maybe the dark mystery would get more readers if she had some funny quips in there or maybe the humorous mystery would be better if it somehow touched on really deep, dark, important secrets (when none were originally set up).

There is nothing wrong with writing what you enjoy. Or what touches your heart. Or what captivates your curiositiy. It's perfectly Okay for other people to think that the only acceptable fiction is the kind which gets snooty awards. Whatever works for them, is fine. But if you put your butt in that chair and you start writing and you start second guessing yourself, trying to make your story all things to all people, something equally funny and sad, equally poignant and pithy, you're probably going to create mush (unless you're a stunning and amazing writer, and then we'll just cook you and eat you, so shut up). Most of us are going to learn, one book at a time. Hopefully, the first one the public sees will be so well polished, no one will see the growing pains that went into creating it. And believe me -- those growing pains are there, for every writer who really cares about their craft.

So, Butt In Chair. And No Fear.

Posted by toni at April 25, 2006 12:27 AM