Richard Dansky

There is nothing intrinsically sacred about the act of writing. Yes, it’s a strong creative outlet. It’s a wonderful career for those of us lucky enough to be able to do it for a living. And it fuels one of my favorite hobbies, which happens to be kicking back in my hammock with a good book and a glass of lemonade.

But, it’s not holy, and it’s not mandatory. “Oh, you should write a book!” is a wonderful sentiment, but what’s implied in it is “You need to spend a lot of time doing something that you may not enjoy doing and may not do particularly well.” The folks who think that everyone should write are ignoring the fact that many people are neither suited to nor interested in writing – or perhaps in any creative endeavor – and yet will be perfectly fine and happy with that choice, and lead long and fulfilling lives as a result. Indeed, the more shrill voices in the “Everyone MUST write!” camp can, with a little squinting, be seen to be a bit…nervous about their participation in the second-least-sanitary thing you can do by yourself at a keyboard, and their motivational speaker-like manic encouragement of others to join them takes on an air of “convince me that I did the right thing”.

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My first actual publication, out where live human beings I wasn’t related to might read it, was in an academic journal called Lovecraft Studies. The thing I published was part of my undergraduate thesis, a ruthless kidnapping of old H.P.L. in which I dragged him through the thickets and swamps of critical analysis by way of Mikhail Bakhtin. It was, to put it mildly, dry reading for those not inculcated in the rituals of the Advanced English Degree. But when I got the notice that the piece had been accepted – no payment, just a couple of contributor copies, as is academia’s wont – I walked on air. Nearly literally – I was living at my cousin’s place in Boston at the time, and the stairs were steep, and when I read the letter with the acceptance mid-way up to the door I jumped and nearly went back down the hard way. But it was an indescribable moment, one of validation, and excitement, and the first faint embers of thinking that if I could publish once, I really could do it some more.

And along the way to publication, helping hands were there for me every step of the way. Professor Enda Duffy at Wesleyan, my thesis advisor, who taught me theory and turned me into someone who actually could write a serious paper with serious thought behind it. Professor Paul Lewis at Boston College, who worked with me to take it from student paper to professional-level material. And Lovecraft Studies editor S.T. Joshi, twice, who first read over the thesis-as-thesis and commented, and then accepted the paper for his journal.

For all that composition is a solitary ritual, you don’t walk alone in this business.

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The act of writing, if we can decouple it from the veritable supernova of how-to and motivational essays spattered across the blogosphere, is not necessarily fun. It involves long hours, hard work, research (if you’re honest), and the non-zero chance of doing terrible things to your posture, your eyesight, and your marriage. The truth of this leads to a dilemna: For the serious writer, the individual who actually does want to write, who has stories to tell and will, by God, get them out there, then the implicit obstacles in the composition process must be overcome. Don’t do it, and you don’t write. You become that ghastly bore who slinks around parties telling everyone about your novel-in-progress that you gave up on at page 32 because you couldn’t get that first fight scene just right, but, yeah, you’re going to finish some day, really and for sure.

On the other hand, if you’re a casual writer, if you’re scribbling because you enjoy the act, then the obstacles and hard work take on a new meaning. (and let me say that I think there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with being a casual writer, a dabbler, an occasional scribbler. You’re having fun with it? More power to you) It may be surprising to some, but there is absolutely no moral virtue to punishing yourself and those around you by slogging through the writing process if you’re not actually that interested in writing. You don’t get a merit badge, you don’t get an XBox Live Achievement, and you probably don’t become a better human being out of it. What you do stand a strong chance of becoming is a miserable bastard, chained to a project you’re not enjoying but which you are going to finish, God damnit, because God damnit you’re going to finish it. In the meantime, you’re being an unpleasant git to everyone around you because you’re forcing yourself to do something you don’t enjoy for an end goal that’s at best unclear, you’re not doing other things you might enjoy – or need to do – more, and you’re lining up your friends and loved ones for the summarily cruel experience of reading your manuscript and commenting on it in a way that will not cause irreparable rifts in your relationships.

Nobody’s judging you. Write if you want to, not because you think you should.

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The worst lesson I learned about writing, I got in high school. I entered an essay contest  sponsored by the National Objectivist Foundation or something to that effect, largely because I’d read Anthem in class and not absolutely hated it. My essay, on Odysseus and how he was a strong, self-reliant figure (not actually true, if you close-read Homer: the guy’s always getting help from hot princesses, hotter goddesses, gods with bags full of wind, and a crew that indulges his idiotic whim when rowing past the island of the sirens – but I digress), went absolutely nowhere near actual Randian philosophy, because I really hadn’t noticed or internalized much of it while reading the cockamamie book.

The essay came in roughly 249th in the country. I was a national semi-finalist, or some such; I still have the letter around somewhere. And I’d written the damn thing on an electric typewriter in the basement the night before the deadline, one draft, no revisions, because I’d told someone I was going to enter and then forgotten about it until the last minute.

The good lessons there, about working under pressure and generating something coherent under tight deadline – have stayed with me. The bad lesson – the idea that with some natural talent and a little bit of razzle-dazzle, it’s possible to skate without putting the real hard work in – took a long time to put into context. There are times when you really do need to just pound something out and let the fancy fingerwork cover for the fact that you haven’t pored over it the way maybe you would have under ideal circumstances. But it’s too easy to fall into that mode for all writing, to push everything up against the deadline as a way of getting out of a lot of the hard work of writing – iteration, editing, revision, putting in the research to get it just right – and tell yourself it’s the best you could have done under the circumstances.

When it’s the best you could have done under the circumstances, it often behooves you to take a look at how exactly those circumstances got arrived at, and who put you there. A lot of times, it’s you.

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There are only so many tropes that writing advice can hit. Your villains should be interesting. Your hero shouldn’t be an [N] Sue, where n = some value of you, except with bigger secondary sexual characteristics and a smaller waistline. Write every day. You get the idea. These things are everywhere, constantly rewritten by some very smart, very talented, very generous-of-spirit people who do write, and write well, and want you to do the same. They’re also rewritten by mean-spirited jerks, hustlers who don’t write themselves but who will gladly take your nickel in exchange for advice they’ve never put to the test, and never-was-es making their best guesses at a target they can only see through binoculars.

None of which, ultimately, matters. At a certain point, you put down the advice and pick up the pen, or reasonable facsimile thereof. If you’re going to write, you write. If you’re not going to write, that’s fine, too. If you enjoy reading writing advice, and get a kick out of looking for the pithiest way to say, “If you’re going to write a sex scene, it helps if at some point in your life you have actually been naked”, then good on you, and happy reading.

But the fact remains, there is no ultimate end here. There is no moral weight, no checklist, no Mandate of Heaven that you, yes YOU, must write or the pillars of the skies will topple. If you choose to do so, do it well, and to the level that you find rewarding – occasional limerick writer or full-time novelist, it’s your life and you make the call. If you choose not to, that’s your decision, too, and get comfortable with it. Don’t feel you’ve failed God, the universe and your sainted mother because you never finished turning your Shadowrun campaign from college into a grim, gritty urban fantasy novel indistinguishable from the last twenty you just read. You haven’t. You haven’t even failed yourself, unless actually writing that novel was something you did indeed want to do.

And if that’s the case, get off your ass and get to work – but because you want to, not because I told you to.