What’s it like to be a writer? No good writer loves writing.
Forget the supposed ‘glamour,’ says this author.
Writing for a living is just plain hard work.
(Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
I know 54 degrees might sound pleasant to Americans not living in Southern California right now, but on this December evening during which Santa Claus and omicron are locked in what feels like an existential game of chicken, I’m clad in a cashmere sweater, wool poncho and beanie, shivering in the garage — the unfinished, uninsulated garage for which my space heater is no match. My writing space, where I’m currently writing.
I’m in the garage because writing doesn’t belong in the house. It’s an antisocial behavior pursued by masochists and reprobates. It belongs in the garage. Or the doghouse. In fact, my dogs are resting comfortably on the couch next to my wife and daughter, bathed in the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree, watching a holiday special on the giant TV, while I freeze my butt off out here … isolated, lonely, paranoid.
Writing.
There’s nothing worse than writing. I’m pretty sure I’d rather trim my toenails with a chainsaw than get a $5 per word assignment from The New Yorker. Then, again, how would I know? The New Yorker editor David Remnick stopped answering my emails as soon as I started emailing him.
If a writer tells you they just loooove writing, you should either run or punch them in the face, because that’s not a good person there. And probably not a good writer, either. Because no good writer loves writing. It’s just too painful, too vulnerable, if it’s any good.
Most writers I know who are worth their salt are full of self-doubt and hate everything they’ve ever written. Actually, I take that back. They often think what they just wrote is the greatest thing ever until they reread it a month or a year later and immediately spiral into a shame cycle from which only binge eating, binge drinking, binge watching and furious Pelotoning) can save them. Then, a couple of years later, they’ll like it again. Writers are mostly in abusive relationships — with their writing.
It’s almost impossible to live a normal life when you are a writer. The pay is generally crappy, and the hours are crappier. In fact, writers are always writing, even when they are not writing. They do most of their writing when they are not writing. They do it when they are walking (wait, where was I going?); eating (oh, yes, sorry, honey, it’s delicious!), reading (wait, where was I?); sexing (wait, what the hell did I just say?).
If it seems like we are hard to reach when we’re with you, that’s because we are busy turning you into characters for our third-person, omniscient narrators to make use of. Or something like that, though I really don’t know what that means because I didn’t go to one of those MFA programs that make everyone’s writing read like podcaster voice, or The New Yorker (take that, David!) (Remnick, that is).
The point is, we’re sociopaths who are only fully present when we are writing. And when we are doing that, we need to be left alone. Great company, huh?
The mystery writer Michael Connelly — whose net worth is either $10 million or $250 million, depending on which website some insanely jealous writer checked — once told me that writing is fighting. Given that he’d just read the manuscript of my yet-to- be-published, great American novel when he said that, I’m still not sure how I was meant to take it. But I agree with him. Writing is definitely fighting. Mostly with yourself: for the permission to write, for the space to write, for the life of a writer, for having a life while you are a writer.
Look at me. I’m a lucky writer. I have a garage and a desk and a space heater and a lovely family and two dogs waiting for me when I come in from the cold. And, best of all, I’ve finished this piece! Which is what it’s all about, because while writing itself may be the worst, there’s nothing better than having written.
