It was eight years ago,
around this time of year, that I put in my notice at SaskTel. I was
going to be a professional screenwriter, and I couldn't have work
interfering with my time anymore. I was going to do like Stephen
King and many other writers told me was the only way to become a
professional writer: I would devote myself to the craft, and write
like it was a full-time job. In the meantime, my generous
girlfriend, Suzi, had offered me a place to stay for free and buy me
food.
Fast forward to last
summer. I was not earning a living as a professional writer. My
wife had been working to support me for years, and wanted the freedom
to realize her dream of becoming a BodyTalk practitioner. So I took
a job as a scheduler.
 |
| Photo Credit: Jennifer Sparrowhawk, http://kindredcities.tumblr.com/ |
It was good to be
earning regular money again, but at night, my dark other would come
and whisper things to me. So much for your great experiment, he
said. You are not a professional writer, and therefore you are a
failure. You wasted years of your life for nothing.
That voice in my head
often tells me rotten things like that, so it's usually a terrible
idea to listen to him. But it's hard not to notice, because the
things he says are based in truth. I had set out on a quest to be a
working writer, and I wasn't, so... mission failed, right? There are
any number of intellectual arguments to counter this, but the voice
that says, “You are a failure” is based in deep, unconscious
emotion, and impervious to intellectual attack.
The mission isn't over.
I'm still writing. I'll be headed to a week-long writing retreat at
St. Peter's Abbey in Muenster in a couple weeks, in fact. I'm full
of short stories and working on a novel. I still love what I do, so
my dark other can take a hike. However, this is a good time for
reflection on the closing of a chapter in my personal story.
What did I get from all
that time without a regular job? Let me tell you, it was great to be
freed from drudgery. I loved to wake when I pleased and go to bed
when I wished. I was lucky that I got to taste that freedom in my
prime, when most people have to wait until they retire. But there
were also difficulties that I didn't expect. Believe it or not,
having these obstacles actually made life as a freelance writer, and
I hesitate to use this word, difficult!
It was Hard to find
Motivation
Writing full time... in
theory, it's an easy thing to do. There are any number of activities
I used to fill my time. Aside from from actual writing, there are
writing exercises which took me out my regular writing patterns and
taught me to compose in different ways. Then there was reading, for
learning the craft, for research, and for enjoyment. As a
screenwriter, I could also just watch movies. I could blog. I could
market myself.
So why is it that so
many of my hours were sacrificed to dark goddess, Facebook? Why is
it that so many quests were completed in Oblivion, Dragon Ages 1 and
2, Red Dead Redemption and Skyrim, while my own quest went
unfulfilled? Why did I spend so many hours feeling bad about writing
instead of actually writing?
Good question. It
would appear that it is way easier to work when somebody is telling
me what to do. I made lots of plans. I was my own boss. At one
point I planned my days. I stuck to it for a week, but my habits
slipped and I stopped. My dark other popped by and told me I was a
failure for being unable to follow my own plan. I felt bad, and I
wrote less.
How did I overcome this
obstacle? I didn't, exactly. I slowly, slowly got better at working
on my own, for longer periods of time. I also had to learn to stop
beating myself up if I didn't hold my discipline, because some days,
I couldn't. As hard as I tried, I couldn't wave a magic writer-wand
and become disciplined. Over a period of years, I just kept trying,
succeeding and failing.
In the end, I am not a
model of self-discipline. I still love goofing off, ignoring my
goals, and playing video games. But I also know how to write better,
I know how to write more quickly, and I can spend an afternoon doing
it without worrying if I'm doing it right.
I Hated not being
Self-Sufficient
I was lucky during this
period. My girlfriend, who would later become my wife, was my
patron. She looked after my needs, so I never had to worry about my
next meal like many of my starving-artist brethren.
But like them, I didn't
make much money. Less than a year after I quit my job at SaskTel, I
depleted the savings in my bank account. I had gone from being my
own man to being a dependant. I was no longer a self-sufficient good
citizen. I was a drain on the woman I loved. Quietly, I began to
feel terrible about myself.
While I worried about
my discipline and writing habits on a daily basis, my feelings of
financial inferiority sneaked up and inflicted a more insidious
wound. I was unmanned.
So how did I deal with
this issue? Once again, I didn't really. I guess I got tired of it
and got a job. And here I am. I'm still writing, but at least now
I'm making some money. How long will I continue at this job? That
depends on my own whims and the whims of fate. For now, I'm happy
with the compromise.
I got Dopey
When spending so much
time working with my right brain, and without the activity of a
regular job to stimulate the left, I became imprecise. I spent so
much time in my head that I stopped paying attention to the real
world. And with these things, time became less important.
At SaskTel, I carried a
calendar and cellphone with me everywhere I went. I always knew the
date and time. As a writer, days began to melt together. I lost
track of the date and the day of the week. Hours would drift past
without me noticing. I forgot appointments and promises. I would
forget what I was doing. Math got more difficult.
It seems funny to me
that I should go from this state into being a scheduler, but life is
odd. Time and the real-world have come back to me. And with my
scheduling job limiting my life, time has become more important. My
days seem packed with activity, even my days off. And somehow, I
seem smarter.
Marketing was Harder
than I Thought it Would Be
It will be fine, I told
myself, I can do it. Marketing will come naturally. But when it
actually came showing my creations to the world, for years I
discovered that I couldn't actually manage it.
For a start, my
self-esteem was in the sewer. How could I, an undisciplined,
financially insolvent failure produce anything worth reading? I was
inexperienced. Even if I had something worth showing, how was I
supposed to interrupt the lives of total strangers and ask them to
read my work? If my writing was bad, they would surely resent the
time I wasted.
Coupled with this was
the fear of rejection. When I first started writing, I thought I was
good at taking criticism. But I wasn't. I would be devastated for
days, weeks, months after I heard it. If I put my work into the
world and heard criticism or even silence, I took it very personally.
This was a difficult
one to overcome. But, unlike many of my problems, I think I've
actually fixed this issue. The only way to break through this wall
of fear was to actually do it. I did it cautiously at first, with
short stories and screenplay competitions. I would submit my work
one piece at a time and wait expectantly for the results. If my work
did well, I felt great and did it again. If my work was rejected, I
would be devastated and wouldn't submit again for months. But
eventually I got used to the fear of rejection. It became easier to
ask. I began to submit more frequently and it became easy. I've had
two stories published in the last year, and I see no reason why there
will not be more.
When I Wrote More, I
Failed More
Part of practising
writing is to become better. And this happened. I can say that I am
a better writer than I was eight years ago. However, what surprised
me is that by increasing my writing volume, I also increased my
output of failures.
After abandoning a
screenplay project because I could see it was going nowhere, in 2009
I started laying the groundwork of my Necromantic States of America
project. I spent a year worldbuilding. Then I started writing my
fourth screenplay. The process was painful. I put everything I had
into it, and I told myself that THIS WAS THE ONE. I would sell this
one. I would break out with this one. It took me two years to
complete.
I submitted it to
screenplay competitions and waited. The results slowly trickled in,
and I began to see what I had long suspected: my inner critic had
been correct. I had written something which, at the very best,
nobody understood, at the worst, was bad.
I was heartbroken. My
previous screenplays had finished well in the competitions. How
could I have written something bad, something into which I had poured
so much love? My dark other told me that I had wasted my life. “I'm
thirty-six!” I told my wife through tears one night. “I can't
afford another fucking three-year learning experience!” In the
months that followed, I couldn't write at all. I considered going
back to school for a career, and abandoning writing.
I didn't abandon
writing, obviously. It was just as it was, a fucking three-year
learning experience. And one of the things I learned is something I
should have already known: they can't all be winners. Continuing to
write increases my chances of success, but inevitably, I will write
stinkers. And that's okay. That screenplay is still written, and
one day, maybe I'll come back to it and improve it. Or not!
Being a Writer is
Bullshit
As I mentioned before,
I had ideas about what exactly it means to be a writer. A quote I
heard in Throw Momma from the Train stuck with me, “A writer
writes. Always.” I took that literally. I heard many writers,
including Stephen King, say that you should write like it's a
full-time job. Ray Bradbury told me to sell lots of short stories
and make it big that way. Katherine Atwell Herbert told me, in her
soul-crushing book, The Perfect Screenplay, to move to Los Angeles;
it is the only way to be successful as a screenwriter. Writers
worked in coffee shops. They drank tea and listened to CBC, and wore
sweaters. All you had to do is try really hard, and you could be
one.
I couldn't and didn't
do these things. Yet my dark other used them as an excuse to skewer
me. “You're not a writer,” it said. “You're a fraud. Look at
all the time you've been given and you squander it. You'll never be
a writer at this rate.” My preconceptions about being a writer
became a way for my subconscious to torture me.
Sometime last spring, I
came to a shocking conclusion: being a writer is bullshit. I found
that I could just BE. If that being included writing, I was happy.
Once freed from the preconceptions of being a writer, I could do
other things like hanging out with my kid, like playing video games,
like housework, or like getting a paying job, all without guilt. Why
does it matter if I'm A Writer if I enjoy my life? I still write.
---
This post was
difficult. I had to revisit a lot of old shame and fear. But I
think it was necessary to mark that time in my life and see its good
and evils. Thank you for reading this far. Be sure that I'm doing
okay, I'm feeling good, and that just because I'm getting a paycheque
doesn't mean I've given up my dream.
