DEFINING A WRITER
Writers and writing instructors are often asked, "What is the single most important trait an aspiring individual must have to become a successful writer?" The standard response is: "In order to learn to write, one must write." Though I don't particularly like that answer, it does have merit. To explain:
All too often I hear someone say, "Someday I'm going to write a book." I even had a neighbor once tell me that he's been watching me and he's thinking about writing a book in order to "make some money." When I murmured that writing a book is hard work, he said, "Oh, I know. When I go to work at six in the morning I see lights on in your office. They're on at midnight, too." I might've told him "That's because I'm trying to make some money, too." But I didn't.
My neighbor is the kind of guy writers and editors and writing instructors envision when they say in order to learn to write, one must write. My neighbor hasn't written a lick since he told me he planned to write a book and make some money. Nor will he. Ever. He won't because he's not writing. He must write, write, write in order to perfect his craft. The advice that one must write is good. But it's not the best advice. In fact, I think it's wasted; they might as well pee in the ocean.
In my view, the single most important attribute for a writer is not for him or her to write -- as important as that is, it's no guarantee one will become a writer. Nope. The only guarantee one will become a writer is when that person cannot not write.
Get the distinction? The first implies that one must discipline himself to write. The other implies that one cannot be stopped from doing so.
I know a person I think of as a kindred soul, an excellent writer who crafts a column for a magazine in Alaska. One of his recent columns bemoaned the necessity of "fidgeting" in front of a computer screen instead of taking his dogs for a romp on the beach. As a working writer, he says he almost has "to make appointments with myself to get out and hike, fish, camp or boat." He said, "I sweat and agonize, struggle with boredom, pray for the phone to ring, check my e-mail ... anything to escape the pain of actually hammering a mob of unruly syllables into some semblance of order."
My friend was, of course, suffering from a temporary case of storytelling morbids. The reason I know is because he was writing a column about how hard it is to write and I've done that a time or two in my long ago past, when inspiration was hard to conjure.
Let me hasten to add that a difference exists between crafting a feature and doing a regular column. Features are fun to write. They're the kind of writing that grabs your fancy, imbues the writer with adrenalin, inhibits boredom, suppresses weariness, and only allows two catnaps before the first draft of the story that's been bubbling within your cranium is complete. Features are the kind of writing you want to do.
A column is something you have to do. There are rigid deadlines for columns. And there are certain guidelines and constraints within each publication, to which the writer must adhere.
Your column will only fit in the one publication that brought you on staff. On the other hand, a feature might play in several markets. If it's turned down because you failed to adhere precisely to editorial sideboards, chances are good a competing publication will pick it up. Miss the mark with a column and it goes into the dustbin. Miss too many marks and writer goes into that publication's dustbin.
When one first begins a column, there's the same exhilaration one regularly finds in feature writing. Lord, you have so many ideas you're positive you'll never run out! Maybe you'll stack up a few columns ahead. You submit them early. But a year, two years, five years, and boredom begins. Each month you put off writing a little later and a little later. Then it's deadline hell!
I know that's true because I wrote five newspaper columns monthly for almost 22 years.. For seven of those years I scripted and delivered a daily radio show. Deadlines? Oh, my! I also wrote feature stories for magazines, as well as for newspaper supplement pages. Then I began doing books, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Books made the fun of features pale by comparison.
Newspapers, radio, magazines, books; it became too much. I stopped doing magazine and newspaper features unless the publications came to me for stories. Then I stopped doing radio. Then I halted my newspaper column to concentrate exclusively on fiction and nonfiction books.
As I write this, three years have passed since I crafted my last Wild Trails and Tall Tales column, and it's been five years since pulling the plug on Trails To Outdoor Adventure radio.
I miss them.
More to the point, perhaps, my readers and listeners miss them, too. Hardly a week goes by that I'm not told by some stranger or acquaintance, "Boy, I sure miss you on the radio." Or, "I wish you were still doing your column in the Tribune."
That's the message I e-mailed my Alaska friend when sensing he was wearying of crafting his regular, boring, drop-dead-every-month column. I said he should consider very carefully before deciding to give it up.
That's what I meant when I wrote earlier in this blog column that the best way to learn to write is by reaching a point where one cannot not write. I learned by the doing that I have what I feel are important messages to pass along to my readers and listeners. They're my windows to the world. They provided opportunities to influence posterity in ways I'm finding unavailable through books alone.
My columns and radio programs generated a plethora of new friends all over America. I still get letters from them. Of course I yet love them, and flatter myself to believe they'll again like my columns and programs a little, too.
Do you still wonder why I began this weblog?
Roland Cheek wrote a syndicated outdoors column (Wild Trails and Tall Tales) for 21 years. The column was carried in 17 daily and weekly newspapers in two states. In addition, he scripted and broadcast a daily radio show (Trails to Outdoor Adventure) that aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. He's also written upwards of 200 magazine articles and 12 fiction and nonfiction books. For more on Roland, visit:
www.rolandcheek.com
