And, it doesn't help that it is actually a very difficult thing to do. I can't tell you the number of times I have started writing my great American novel. Or the number of times people have told me about their "nearly finished" (conceptually or otherwise) great American novel.
There was a time in my life where this was all I thought of. I dreamed about the characters in my book. I imagined my life as a successful writer with the perfect balance of solitary, discipline, and happiness.
However, I have since come to grips with the fact that I am just not the great American novel writing type, at least not now. Perhaps not ever. I have accepted the limitations of my situation, and my writing ability. I have accepted my humanity.
Listening to NPR interview two writers, women of color from different countries, it made me feel just a pang of jealousy to hear their struggles with discipline, and then the description of the wonderful feeling of success at a novel's completion. I want to feel like that! But another section of the interview made me take note: the NPR broadcaster asked if the women could see themselves in another profession. The first writer said she was virtually unemployable in any other field. Being a good writer, or perhaps a truly good anything, means being so dedicated to your craft, so specialized in your abilities, that you are fit for pretty much one vocation. As a girl who likes choices, I understand why I could not take the financially indefensible plunge of becoming a writer. I am suited for other professions, and I want to be. But hopefully, one day, I will be so in love and fulfilled by what I do, that I can't imagine myself doing anything else, and I will take that virtually indefensible stance of making myself very good in the field I love.
2 comments:
I really enjoyed this post. My sentiment exactly.
Hmm...I don't want to believe this. As an MBA & MPA, I think I'm pretty employable in a lot of jobs--and I plan to be a writer. A lot of writers actually have day jobs. It sounds like I might be in a bit of denial ("I can work in corporate America AND write the next great American novel!") but I think you really can do it. I personally am not interested in writing the next Great American nove. I want to write books that make people think, that incite conversation, and that improve peoples' lives--and books that sell. I am a B-School student after all. :-)
You can read my writing at my blog at http://www.kaneisha.com. It's not the next Great American Novel, but it's interesting stuff.
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