Are we ready to write
Let us assume that we have examined all our most pressing excuses for not writing and are finally prepared to face them down, ignore them, and get on.
We are prepared to hear, ‘Oh, I don’t see why you are wasting your time. Millions of books are published every year. What makes you think yours will have any chance?’ and blithely we can dismiss this and other discouragement because we are happy to undertake the pilgrimage. We have decided it is what we want to do, so that is that. Well done.
There is one more species of question to ask which only we can answer. Are we ready to write the story of our life? Is it interesting enough, thus far, to keep us busy and thinking and occupied for the next five years? Will it engage an average reader? Simply put, have we lived enough, done enough, do we have enough years under our belts or not?
This is not a trivial question. John Mortimer, whom I truly admire, lived a very long life, and wrote three main volumes of autobiography, because, I assume, stuff kept happening to him. Only problem now is, that if we hope to read all about him, it is best to read these volumes in sequence, though I suppose it is fine to read about his admission to the bar in one volume, and the problems encountered in being very old, in the next volume we retrieve, being read, haphazardly out of sequence.
And no-one wants to embark on a life-changing project feeling unsure about whether our work will be worth reading. If that kind of uncertainty is nipping our heels, the best thing to do is put aside the ambition – for now – and go and do some more interesting things. After a while, we can revisit our ambition and see how we feel about it. I have done that. The idea of writing has been with me for about thirty years. And I was lucky to spot a natural pause in my life that I could put to good use in starting to take writing seriously.
If the answer to questions such as these is, “Yes, I’ve certainly had an interesting life, and I laugh in the face of your skepticism!” then we are ready to write.
Please share:
October 9, 2017 @ 12:40 pm
Well I do know the answer to that question for sure and I’m afraid it is a resounding NO – i can’t imagine anyone ever wanting to waste their time reading about me. Fortunately I have found an outlet for my need to write through my attempts at fiction. Fascinating post though. Thanks.
October 9, 2017 @ 2:22 pm
Oh, LOLOL! Diane, you do make me giggle. Thank you. I’m sure that’s not true. You may not directly feature in any of your novels – not a runaway, a running wife, a scared hostage… – but I’m sure your life has been extremely interesting! Thanks for reading, and for your lovely comment. 😀 ♥
October 9, 2017 @ 12:46 pm
I wonder why writing first and what writing second, and where fiction is more real than reality, Do we write just to freeze our memoirs or what we think we choose of the train of thoughts involved. Memory is selective, And art is imitation of life. Art is not telling as much as an invitation to let us speculate, to think or believe, it is suspension of disbelieve, which is the work of a master. A writer does not necessarily the one that lived the story, the story is not his own, it is the work of those in the functional life of those involved. Are we ready to write? it is a question of what fictional world we assume to be worth of being read. It is the writer’s approach to something that was aching, now either distanced or focused upon .
October 9, 2017 @ 2:26 pm
Absolutely agree, Wadjih, thanks for your comments. This series of posts is about how to write memoir, and now I am moving into writing fiction, stories about people who come alive to me as I write about them. I cannot tell them what to do, either. They tell me. To make writing look easy, that takes time and effort too, so that reading is effortless and that helps the reader to suspend disbelief. (When a thing looks easy, it has taken lots of work!)