Beginning at the beginning
When I was eight or nine years old, I read a book by Ernest Hemingway. I can't remember which one it was, but it was probably The Old Man and the Sea because that is the Hemingway book everyone starts out with.At any rate, I was reading Hemingway in a waiting room with my mother when I was eight or nine years old. She turned and asked me whether I liked my book. I told her no. When she asked why, I replied that Hemingway wrote like a child, and I announced that I could write a book that was much better. I was joking, of course, but my mother looked at me solemnly and said, "yes, I believe that one day you will."
Heavy words for an eight year-old.
This benediction--the fate of a writer, or perhaps even a great writer--has followed me all my life, and for some reason I have always suspended belief in this fate. I certainly don't think I am destined to be a writer, much less a writer of any value or talent. I just like to write things--trivial things--from time to time. It amuses me.
Recently, however, new circumstances and new ideas have led me to reconsider this idea of writing. For one thing, I've started a career in publishing, and the combination of working with books and a subscription to Publisher's Weekly has expanded my appreciation for language. For another, my life since college has been full of joy, confusion, and sparkling wonder that inspires me to preserve it somehow. This adventure, this independence, this uncertainty of where to go next, has awakened my brain and my heart.
Of course, there is love, too. I met somebody, a real somebody, who seems to see in me things I can't see in myself--things that are beautiful and valuable and worthwhile. He encourages me to find these things and pull them out of the dusty attic of my mind. I believed I had not much to offer anyone, but when someone began to tell me I do and tell me often, I started to believe him...
A few years ago, I heard a story about John Grisham, the novelist known for his blockbuster legal thrillers. As the fable goes, Mr. Grisham worked as a lawyer while secretly aspiring to become a writer. Despite very long, demanding hours at his private law practice, he would wake up at 4am every day to write before going to work. Even if he didn't have any particular project to work on, he would practice writing.
I think a lot of people have the idea that their calling will come naturally in life, that they will figure out what they are "meant to do" and it will happen. I suppose I am one of those people. So far, my life has been charmed--I generally get what I work toward, and things work out better than I even imagined. But with writing, I realize that I need to work on it, do something, if I want it to happen.
Do I even want it to happen? I don't know. But I have to find out.
posted by Juliet @ 11:51 AM
1 Comments:
yes, you need to write. as someone who has told you this for a long time. i think you should write a collection of short stories.
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