-John Milton
"I write in order to know why I write."
-Alberto Moravia
On several occasions students, friends, and even colleagues have asked “Gerald, why do you write?” Lately, I have asked myself that very question. Writing is very time consuming, can be quite draining (physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially), and can be quite thankless. On many occasions, I will write for an hour or so and in a fit of rage, tear up my work only to start writing the same piece over again.
If the writer even thinks of publishing their work, they may get to this point when rejection letters are the norm rather than the exception. How do you keep writing when you are faced with all of these rejections? How do you keep up the morale? For me, the answer is to go back to the writing.
I quit writing for exactly 24 minutes back in 1998. When I was an undergraduate student at The University of Michigan – Flint (UM-Flint), I was desperately (and I mean desperately) trying to submit my work for publication. At that point in my life, I was a junior in college and had firmly thrown caution to the wind to purse a degree in English. While working on my degree, working as a tutor in the Writing Center, and working as the news editor at The Michigan Times (the student publication at UM-Flint), I was furiously writing short stories and a novel. I immersed myself into the works of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, and Andrew Vachss (to this day, I cannot read a Burke novel without thinking I need to stop so I can study for a test). All of these authors have taught me many lessons about writing. Unfortunately, during this time, all I received was rejection letter after rejection letter. To this day, I wonder why I didn’t give up for good.
Even though I didn’t hang up my pen and fedora (the latter I mean metaphorically since I never had one), I did give up writing for 24 minutes. I was a junior at that time and ready to get into my career of being a published writer as soon as possible. As such, I sent out query letters all over the country to present my work. There was one mystery magazine above all others that I had my heart set on to accept some of my work. Hardboiled magazine is published by Gryphon Publishing. Gary Lovisi, one of the best in the business rejected several of my pieces. Yet, he seemed to remember my name because on several rejections he would reply with “Good try,” or “Please try again”. Unfortunately, due to the busy load of work Mr. Lovisi had, there was little else. On a few occasions, he would reply with “Too wordy” or “Plays on obvious cliché”, but his rejections were quite short.
Most of my weekend nights were spent reading issue after issue of Hardboiled to learn the style. Stories from Wayne Dundee, Mickey Spillane, Andrew Vachss, and Mr. Lovisi himself created noir films in my mind. I read pieces that showed me what neo-noir was and how a true expert writes it. After reading, I would set pen to paper and write a story that told what I wanted to tell and keep a style such as the ones I read mere moments before. On a cold evening, I came home from a literature class and found a letter from another magazine. I opened it, knowing in my heart what the reply would be. My fears came true: another rejection. It was a long, rainy day and I had two ten paged essays to write in as many days and this was the right nail in my coffin. That’s it! I thought. I am done with writing! I had three notebooks filled with stories. I calmly retrieved the notebooks and threw them away. I went to my parents’ computer and deleted all of the stories I had on my floppy disk drive. I took the entire “How To” writing books that I had in my bedroom and boxed them up. I placed them in the basement with the rest of my failed ventures. Fifteen years of writing, rewriting, and using up ream after ream of paper, and for what? I looked at the folder filled with rejection letters. Why are you keeping these? I wondered. Was it a testament my own sado-masochistic tendencies?
Everything went into the trashcan that night. I looked at the nearly full trashcan and huffed at the work that I’d done. My room was a lot cleaner. It looked less cluttered and I found little items that I had spent months looking for. What was the first thing I did after I gave up my writing career? I took a pen out and wrote about the experience! This was 24 minutes after I had thrown my papers and notebooks away (I consider this my retirement). I wrote for hours and it turned into a small essay that I thought was amusing. The next morning, I went to The Michigan Times and edited a few pieces for the next issue. I even worked on a book review of a novel that I had read.
Since that night, I continued to write fiction, with the same amount of success in regards to publishing. However, I cut back on the submissions. Back in those days whatever I wrote, I would immediately finish writing and put into an envelope to send it to the next entry in the 1998 Writer’s Market. Since then, I did less submitting and more editing. I left for graduate school and learned a lot of what I was doing wrong back then. When I returned from graduate school, I continued writing. A few months after I returned from graduate school I published Pro Bono, a mystery story I had written starring a private eye named Frank Mercer, in Detective Mystery Stories. I had the story set in Flint, Michigan (my home town) and tried to capture some of the realism there.
A few weeks later, I wrote and edited another Frank Mercer short. This short was called A Hint of Cinnamon. This short was published as well. A third Frank Mercer short, which was titled The Dead Don’t Dream was published as well (this one was originally written when I was at UM-Flint). It is interesting to note that these two Frank Mercer mysteries were published in Hardboiled magazine.
As a fledgling writer (which I still see myself now), I felt that I have come a long way with my work. It has matured a lot since I wrote at The University of Michigan – Flint. However, the problem was that I was unwilling to reflect on my work. I wanted to write and be done with it. We must reflect if we ever want to grow and learn from our mistakes. Mr. Lovisi was such a gracious editor. He gave clipped responses to me, but he managed to give me important feedback that I was unwilling to accept back then.
Currently, as I write, I find myself mining my old stories, thoughts, and ideas. Of course, I have to go by memory since a lot of it has been thrown away. So when I return to the question of why do I write? My answer is clear and simple: I can’t not write. As writers, that is something that we need to ask ourselves. Can we see our lives without writing? I do not mean writing in every sense of the word. Obviously, we have to write a check, a letter here and there, or an email. What I mean is telling a story, expressing ourselves, creating a picture with words, or crafting language to entertain, inform or persuade in a detailed manner. No matter how frustrated I still get with writing, I cannot see myself without it. Can you?
No comments:
Post a Comment