There was always a mystique about writing in my family. My mother wanted to be a writer. She began her college career at Northwestern as a journalism major but due to a family crisis she was forced to leave there before her freshman year was even over. She then took some classes at Bridgewater State College, met my dad, got married and had me....all before she was 22. She became a church secretary later in her life and then a bookkeeper for a housing authority.
She began a novel when I was in junior high school. It was going to be a historical romance about the Revolutionary War on Cape Cod but this ended up being a frustrating exercise for her. First, she discovered that the ornery Cape Codders were mostly Tories and this distressed her. She was looking for Patriots, for Pete's sake. Then, her characters insisted on having minds of their own and she found this frustrating, not exciting. When a new character appeared out of nowhere it creeped her out and she never picked up her writing again. She talked about writing a lot. She read voraciously, but she never wrote anything else. My grandfather, her father, was supposedly an aspiring writer. He even sent a few stories in for publication but was never published. Recently I have seen some of the stories he sent in and let's just say I'm not surprised they weren't published.
I started writing when I was in elementary school. I wrote stories, mostly about girls and their animals or girls that ran away disguised as boys on wild adventures. Pirating, stowing away on a whaling ship and being a hero in some exotic place were my big themes. I read everything I could get my hands on, loved to draw, loved animals and had a very busy imaginary life going on in my head. As I got older teachers told me I had to choose. I had to choose between science and art, music and art and finally, writing and art. I put away my notebooks of poems that I spent my high school years amassing and concentrated on my sketchbooks.
When I was in college I had a brief fling with writing once again. I even had some pieces published. Again, my professors told me I needed to concentrate (this has been a theme in my life ;-) and so I gave up writing once again. Until I went back to graduate school about 12 years ago. There, a professor urged me to write more. And it was such a relief. For the first time in a long time I felt whole again. I love to write. I'm not sure I'm very good at it, but it's another way to filter my world, another way to pay attention to what is going on around me.
I have always kept a journal and about 6 or 7 years ago I started doing morning pages as suggested by Julia Cameron in the Artist's Way. I read Natalie Goldberg, Anne Lamott and others and I started to write again. At first I wrote about my family, my experiences as a kid, people and places I remembered. They were short pieces and more like journal entries than essays. It felt great.
While working as a full time naturalist about 6 years ago I contacted a local weekly paper and asked if they would be interested in a weekly accounting of the bird sightings in the area. The editor said yes immediately. She said she couldn't pay me and I was so excited that someone said yes that I didn't care. My articles for this wonderful little weekly got longer and longer and became a 750 word column or essay called "Weekly Nature Watch" which I illustrate with ink drawings. After the first year I was invited to do a column by another weekly paper with wider circulation. They could pay me. I negotiated with the first paper, which after all had given me a start, and soon I was writing two weekly columns, the second being called "Nature's Ways", a more general column about nature through the seasons. I began a monthly column, "Neighborhood Nature" with another weekly, all with illustrations. The best part of writing these columns is meeting my readers, who tell my their own stories and who seem to really enjoy what I write.
As time has gone on I have begun to be published by the local daily paper and a fine arts magazine. I have learned to deal with different editors, different sorts of deadlines, copy editors, design professionals and my own schedule. I've learned how to write even when I don't really feel inspired and how to create my own inspiration. I've learned to accept assignments, create assignments and to accept editing and suggestions. I'm even making a little money. Even the original paper now pays me a small honorarium and I make a little more than the average writer in the United States, who supposedly makes about $8000 a year. Not bad for someone just writing for fun!
I am writing all this here because lately I have run into several people who say they want to write but have all sorts of excuses not to do it. One woman I know says she wants to be published but she would never accept editing. She says editors are wannabe writers, why should they get to correct her writing? Wow! Being published is almost always going to involve some editing. I don't get edited a lot but when I do it always makes the piece stronger, tighter, better written. I have a copy editor at one paper who can't let more than two consecutive weeks go by without calling me on something, even a small word change. We laugh every time she calls me. Sometimes I don't agree with her but almost always her suggestions point out something that makes the piece better. And even when I don't agree with her, I usually know in my heart she's right and we make the change. Another editor I work with never checks with me but makes subtle changes that always make the piece better. He sometimes drops sentences or rearranges words I thought were fine and I have to say, it amazes me how clearly he can see the end he wants and how gracefully he pulls it all together. He has a light hand; he doesn't change a lot, but it is done inobtrusively and well. I never understood all those writers who profusely thank their editors but as I work with more editors I get it. Writing has much more of a collaborative element than a beginning writer might think. The page designers are right in there, too. They can make or break your story with placement, arrangement and presentation. I'm grateful for all they do.
Another writer I know doesn't publish because he wants to write for a well known paper right away. He's waiting tables instead. A former class mate of his writes for the local daily, is getting lots of experience under his belt and is becoming a strong and interesting writer. Which one do you think will have the better chance of getting to write for the well known paper?
I am grateful to be able to do the amount of writing I do. I have new goals for my writing this year and will be posting about some of them in the near future. My own experience shows that writing for free or for small honorariums is one way to start. It has certainly gotten my work out there and now I have a very full portfolio and resume.
Do you write? Where do you publish? What are your writing goals?
