Arts or Crafts

A few weeks ago an editor asked me to write ersatz source materials. Newspaper clippings, pages from tour books, maps, letters, etc. These were to be clues for an internet puzzle. Very important they be firmly anchored in sense of place, the setting of the movie was vital.

The IM exchange went something like.
ME: Where is the setting?
SHE: I thought you read the books.
ME: I was eight.
SHE: Northwest of London.
ME: Iceland?
SHE: Not that far. Get a copy of the Dark and Google the locale.

Eight days -- and a series of cries for help here and elsewhere -- and I delivered. Weeks later the site, scheduled to go live a month before The Seeker opened worldwide, is not fully operational. No explanation, but from the looks of things two-thirds of what I wrote will never see the light of day. When I told this story to an acquaintance who teaches literature, he replied: "Well, if you ever started taking your writing seriously, things like that wouldn't happen." I opened my mouth and then shut it again because I realized there was nothing I could say.

Ever hear of folks who wanted to be writers ever since they could remember? The ones who never imagined themselves not writing? They usually speak -- often at length -- in terms of passion or muse or callings and don't really expect you to understand. And you know what? I don't.

When I was a child I loved stories. I loved to tell stories and I loved to listen to stories and I loved to make up stories. I was a storyteller. When I was ten or twelve I was told that I should study and learn to write those stories I loved to tell. By the time I was in high school I was being guided toward literature classes and told to harness and home my artistic talent. I took a creative writing class that required each rewrite be critiqued -- and made clear that every story required at least three rewrites.

Somewhere in college I heard my first bit of heresy. Or read it, rather, in an article by Isaac Asimov, a prolific writer of both science fiction and fact. His career began in the so-called golden age of pulp fiction and extended over fifty years. He told the story of his surprise many years before when he attended his first-ever writing workshop and the person conducting the program pronounced "All writing is rewriting." Everyone else there then compounded Asimov's confusion by nodding knowingly in agreement.
As Asimov told the tale, he went to his friend Robert Heilein, another giant of the golden age, and asked him: "Do you ever rewrite?"
Heinlein replied: "Why? What do you do?"
Asimov said; "I write the story, go through it to correct any misspelled words and then send it off."
Heinlein snapped: "Why don't you just spell the words right the first time?"
Asimov's belief, one shared by Heinlein, Bradbury and several others of their literary generation, was that rewriting killed.

Heinlein had published his rules for professional writers. There have been some variations over the years, but the core gist is
1. Write
2. Finish what you start.
3. Mail what you write to a professional market.
4. Never rewrite except to specific editorial instruction.
5. If a story comes back, mail it to another market.

I shared this story with my lit professor and he tut-tutted. Those were not serious writers, he explained. Serious writing required patience and honing and study and rewriting.
Through college and more than a decade after I focused on being a serious writer. I'd listen to my muse, summon my artistic passion, and write. Then rewrite. Then rewrite. Then rewrite; polishing my every word and comma. I sent out about one, maybe three, stories a year.

Then I had the good fortune to be invited to the Oregon Coast Professional Writers' Workshop. I studied under Gardner Dozois, Keith DeCandido, Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch and others. I would have to say Kris taught me the most about craft, but Dean taught me all about attitude. (Dean Wesley Smith has written over eighty novels, but you won't find that many with his name on them. Dean is a ghost writer, the fingers that do the actual typing for several celebrities turned author. And he will die before telling you who.) Dean's version of Heinlein's rules is even more basic.
Write.
Mail.
Repeat.
It's an attitude I try to live by.

Because once I embraced that simple concept, I was free. Free to stop worrying about correct, how polished, how literary my writing was and to get back to what I loved to do: tell stories.

I do not think I will ever, as my professorial acquaintance put it, take my art seriously. I take my craftsmanship seriously -- a well-told story is a well-crafted story -- but I no longer believe there is some mystic muse in the process. I appreciate the fact that the bit of advertisement you can not get out of your head is there because a craftsman wrought together the right combination of words to take root in your mind. He's a writer, with as much right to call himself a writer, without qualification, as Toni Morrison or John Updike. And while many would argue that an insurance ad with a story of a family surviving a flood is less significant than Song of Solomon, the chances are you'll remember what happened when the river broke through its levee long after you've forgotten why Milkman was afraid of the Days.

It has been a decade since I last thought of myself as an artist. I put together stories the way a woodworker carves a chair -- selecting the right pieces of wood, shaping them to fit together just so. Once the last piece is in place, there's no going back. It's done. All that's left is waiting for the right buyer to buy it.

So what are you as a writer? An artist wrestling with the gods? A craftsman working to construct the perfect tale? Has writing been your driving compulsion since you discovered the written word? Or is it something you do because it's fun? Do you rewrite, polishing each turn of phrase to razor sharpness? Or do you trust your voice and eye enough to tell you story once and move on?

When you write, who are you?