Writing for Life
By Elizabeth
Eidlitz
Twisting the telephone cord I say, "Thanks-- but I can't come…. No, really….
Yes, I know it'll be a good party, but I've cleared Saturday to draft a short
story…. No, I don't have to, I want to."
Couldn't I work on the thing some other time and join her guests? I hear
friendly annoyance and disbelief in the hostess' voice. It's that tone in which
well-meaning people ask, "Whatever happened to your novel? Hasn't it been
published yet?"
It also suggests that there's a thin line between admirable persistence and
idiotic stubbornness.
How can I explain that social gatherings take you too far out of sight and mind
from your manuscript? As a potter, I can keep talking with my characters while
I trim three casseroles. I can write in my head watching the laundry tumble,
raking leaves, or grouting bathroom tiles.
But the muse, insisting on isolation and exclusive attention, doesn't tolerate
parties. And I honor her demands: she's all I've got. As a potter, I have
helpful resources-- clay, oxides, wheel, and kiln; as a writer I must rely
entirely on myself, mining all the raw materials as well as smoothing,
texturing, and coloring sentences. No computer reams out the psyche, examines
the soul, thinks in metaphor.
Moreover, since serious writing is not a drop-in hobby, you must write
constantly, even on Joyce Carol Oates days when "the soul is as thin as a
playing card," even when sagging self-confidence makes the choice feel more like
masochism and you wish you'd gone to the party.
A pot's flaws are instantly observable: clay slumps on the wheel, warps in the
kiln; glazes run or crawl, finished spouts drip. And it's easier to throw
another pitcher than to write a new story or to fix a faulty one.
Unless you've experienced the on-the-job training that writing and rewriting
entails---with the loneliness that comes from seeking necessary solitude,
finding it, and then saying "where is everybody?"-- it's easy to underestimate
damned hard work. Intelligent but naïve people who'd never try thoracic surgery
simply because they'd learned to bone a chicken suspect that their lifelong use
of words qualifies them to knock off a few pages of fiction and mail them to
The New Yorker for publication within a month.
These people have never heard of Absolute Write or The Writer's Market.
Their daydreams don't include a slush pile reader discovering an unsolicited
manuscript and sending it on its way to editorial superlatives. Their
imaginations have never envisioned clipping 24 pt. Helvetica Bold praises of
their work from The New York Times Book Review, sparring with Jay Leno at
midnight, balancing a champagne glass during autograph sessions, listening to
the Newbery medal clink against the Caldecott, or turning a forgiving cheek
toward friends who wish they'd been more supportive during your period of
anonymity.
Publication odds are depressing, yet when A Wrinkle in Time, which
garnered 31 rejections, eventually wins three awards, and Ordinary People
is rescued from the slush pile, it's hard to stop the ungrammatical heart from
pounding "let it be me!"
Keeping a mature perspective each time a corpse arrives in an SASE casket, its
obituary under the lid, isn't easy. Though I struggle to separate what I write
from my self, it's a challenge not to mistake the part for the whole.
Some, with gallows humor, paper bathroom walls or wastebaskets with rejection
slips. I prefer a cheering eccentricity that does triple duty: early morning
walks provide daily exercise, ecological credit for removing litter from country
roadsides, and nickels for recycling collected cans. A lucky Sunday morning
haul buys a round trip for a 14 ounce manuscript.
Cursed with attachment to an unsatisfactory lover, the committed writer must
continue to invite rejection and acknowledge the benefits of the writing life.
It sharpens your senses; lets you relive experience and gain power over things
that keep you awake at night.
Real writers, defined by Marge Piercy as "those who really write," believe that
"work is its own cure" and that "you have to like it better than being loved."
If you don't, go to every party you can find.
Elizabeth Eidlitz is
a teacher, studio potter, biweekly columnist for The Metrowest Daily News, and
freelance writer. Her work has been accepted by such publications as Williams
Alumni Review, Boston Globe, Independent School, Media & Methods, Momentum,
Positive Teens, Parents & Kids, The Middlesex Beat, Massage, Bear deLuxe, and
Police Times. She has co-edited one book (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), was a
finalist in the 2004 Tiny Lights' Personal Essay Contest, and a winner in the
2005 short story contest sponsored by the Natick Center for the Arts and the
Morse Library in Natick, MA.
