A Hard Job

 

Good writing is like climbing a mountain. It takes time and hard work as well as skill.

As I’ve mentioned before, my current novel is written in the form of weekly newspaper columns. At one point I have my protagonist tell her readers, “I can imagine what you are thinking. How can it take two days to write a 1,000-word column?” My online critique partner’s response was, “I never thought that.”

Of course she hadn’t, because she’s a writer, too, but many people do. And I’m not the only writer who feels that way.

Here are a few quotes about how writers are treated by the uninitiated.

It has always seemed to me that if you have a hope of making a living as an artist – writer, musician, whatever – you absolutely must learn to tell people to leave you alone, and to mean it, and to eject them from your life if they don’t respect that. This is necessary not because your job is more important than anyone else’s – it isn’t – but because a great many people will think of you as not having a job. [Poppy Z. Brite]

 

A successful businesswoman had the temerity to ask me about my royalties, just at the time when my books were at last making reasonable earnings. When told, she was duly impressed, and remarked, “And to think that most people would have had to work so hard for that.” [Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water (1980), ch. 7]

 

A young friend of mine was asked what she did, and when she replied she was a poet, the inquirer responded, amused, “Oh, I didn’t mean your hobby.” [Madeline L’Engle, Walking on Water (1980), ch. 7]

And here is how writers respond:

Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. [George Orwell, Why I Write, 1947]

 

Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven’t been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching. [Harlan Ellison]

 

I would never encourage anyone to be a writer. It’s too hard. [Eudora Welty]

 

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. [Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947]

 

Sure, it’s simple writing for kids . . . Just as simple as bringing them up. [Ursula K. LeGuin]

 I’ll end there because I need to return to my mountain climbing.

A Weather Interlude

 

I walk for exercise, and lately the heat and humidity have forced me to take my walks in the condo’s underground parking garage. I listen to audio books while lapping the garage multiple times, but the “scenery” is pretty boring. So I was glad for several days of cooler weather recently when I could enjoy nature’s scenery.

The pink flowers seen above were shot along one of the walking paths by my condo, as were the photos that follow this paragraph. The white butterflies are common, but I was pleased to capture two of them in the same image. (I’m not sure, but I think they are cabbage butterflies.)

On Tuesday I went to the Gibson Woods Nature Preserve, where I saw butterflies, flowers, and birds. When I started along the path, the swallowtail butterflies were flitting by everywhere. Unfortunately, they refused to pose for me. By the time I located them in the viewfinder and clicked the shutter, they were gone.

Fortunately, the monarchs were more cooperative. The second picture at the top of this post was taken in Gibson Woods, as were the three below. In the first, the flower has seen better days but is still food for the bees. Hopefully you can pick out the bee in the upper left quadrant. The next photo is a different monarch, and the last was taken through a viewing window in the nature center.

I’m back to walking inside, but it was nice while it lasted.

Writing Advice from C.S. Lewis

 

C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors and, although I don’t usually read fantasy, I love the Narnia series. As a writer, I especially enjoy the insights from C.S. Lewis Letters to Children, which was compiled by Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead. The following advice is quoted from Lewis’ June 26, 1956 letter to a child named Joan. The numbering, the italics, and the rest of the text are taken directly from the book.

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1.     Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure y[ou]r. sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2.     Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3.     Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4.     In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please will you do my job for me.”

5.     Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

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All writers should take this advice to heart. Unfortunately, I fail sometimes because I’ve still got a lot to learn.

But I’m trying.