Or, Why Writing Is Hard!
If someone is trying to solve a murder mystery, or even write one, they need to provide the suspect with three things. The suspect has to have means, motive, and opportunity.
When you’re writing, your work has to have a story to tell (means), it has to be told in a palatable way (motive), and it has to be made available to people to be read (opportunity).
And sadly, all three of these tasks fall, to a certain extent, under the heading of writer. If you’re not a writer and are just reading this out of interest, do feel free to read on. Though I’m not always able to provide interest, I’ll do my best.
Now see …
These three aspects of your chosen vocation should all be separate tasks in themselves. There should be three of you and you should work as a team. The first one of you should be thinking up stories to tell. And you think they who get this job get off easy with that I bet, but no.
They can’t just think up a story and hand it off and then go lay about at the beach while the second one takes on all the work of telling it. They must constantly be thinking up new stories. Big stories, small stories, story lines for sub plots, interesting anecdotes that inform peripheral character’s actions and choice of tie or shoes, reasons for why the restaurant that the heroine is dining at has run out of brioche, and that sort of thing.
So if you’re wanting to be the inspiration person, you get very little rest. Be careful what you ask for is my advice on this one.
But then …
You might want to be the story teller. This is the task most people think of when they think of a writer. But it is both more, and less wonderful than people imagine it to be.
In point of fact, anyone who has penned a grocery list is a writer. The romantic grocery list writers list off Chateaubriand & Parfait Aux Duo and add cut flowers to their lists. The adventure writers itemize steak tar tar and blowfish and discount TV dinners gone past their sell by dates … well, you get the gist.
But to tell a real story in written words takes skill that is honed and practised over great lengths of time, you need at least a week or two of writing before you can hope to be successful. What? Yes, that’s right, a week or two. You see it usually takes that long to realize that you are writing, and that is success.
If you’re wanting to be the story teller, remember the hardest part is that if the story fails, you will shoulder the blame. But also remember that fail or succeed, you told the story. And if that is what you wanted to be doing, then this is your choice of occupation all right.
And of course …
Opportunity is one of the harder things to grasp. It is not so much that you are taking an opportunity or even making an opportunity, but rather, you are giving an opportunity away to others. You are finding ways to present what the inspirationalist thought up and what the story teller wrote up.
No, you aren’t being a publisher, but you might well end up being one. More likely you won’t reach the depths of that personal pit of despair until you have finished an exhaustive and exhausting search for an actual publisher to do the job for you. But, it is all part of making the work available to readers.
And so …
We have come to the difficult part of our article here, which do you choose of the three options put on display here for you?
You may be sitting there, champing at the bit, anxious to tell me which it is you think you’d love, but I wasn’t kidding when I said this was the difficult part, the difficulty is mine.
I have the task of informing you that you do not get to choose. If you wish to be a writer, you’ve already chosen …
All Three.
Sorry.
