Writing and Parenting (1)

One of the most difficult problems for a writer (painter, muscian, etc.) with children to overcome is how to find time to do our writing. Our children take up a tremendous amount of our time. How do we satisfy our need to be an artist and our need to be a parent? Parenting is immediate. It is now. There is no I'll get to it later. Unfornately, our writing can be put off until later, and that's what usually happens.

 It's an age-old delimma, in some ways more perplexing for women than for men, and in some ways more perplexing for men than for women. And, really, the problem confronts anyone who runs their own business, maybe even anyone who works and has a family. The demand for shelter and nurture comes first. It is paramount. The ideal solution is when writing, shelter, and nurture all merge into one. Is it possible for that to happen?

Family life is a constant mix, an ever changing matrix, because as our children grow older, and/or  new ones come along, our needs and relationships change. And oftentimes, with more than one child, different networks form. We might have to take care of an infant, an adolescent, and a teenager all at the same time. Besides being exhausting, it's time consuming.

Writing a novel, poetry, whatever, takes a commitment, and usually a commitment over a long period of time. Ideally, a person who wants to be a writer knows so at a very young age (I was about thirteen or fourteen when I knew it) and commits herself to writing then and there and gets published at a fairly young age, makes a lot of money, finds a wonderful spouse/partner, and her writing pays the bills, and she lives happily ever after. Of course, it usually doesn't happen that way. If it has, I don't know about it. (As I think about it, John Updike might have done it, or some version of it.)

So these two aspects of our lives--writing and parenting--are, at least on the surface, antagonistic to one another.

'Making It' When You're Younger vs. 'Making It' When You're Older

Does anyone doubt that succeeding at almost anything is better if you do so when you're younger (say, between eighteen and thirty)? Doing so in pop music, sports, even acting, seems relatively easy for those professions compared to doing so as a writer. How many writers make it when they are teenagers? I can think of only one: Arthur Rimbaud, who quit writing poetry around age eighteen.

Why is making it in music, sports, even acting, relatively easy for the younger person?

Musical ability is innate. If you have talent, it usually manifests early in life. I do not think musical talent develops much with age. If you are not born with it, you will never get it.

Sports is based heavily on physical ability, and most of us peak in our late teens to very early thirties. Then we're done. Most professional athletes 'retire' in their thirties.

Acting is a talent that can be mastered, I think. It can grow with practice. One can make it at any almost any age. But making it in acting has a lot of intagibles. It helps greatly to be beautiful or handsome. Youth and beauty are a powerful combination. For most people, like athletes, actors tend to peak at an early age. Many actors in their thirties are beginning to decline. But there are many people trying to make it in acting, so what allows a few to make it and most others to not? Is it connections? No doubt they help. Talent certainly has to be a part of it, too. It's a mix of benefits that helps a person make it in acting. Sometimes it's just plain dumb luck.

Why is making it as a writer at a young age so difficult? What are the obstacles? The first thought that comes to mind is life experience. What do older people know that younger ones do not? It's very difficult to be precise, but I think part of it is balance. Older people have seen the good and the bad within everything. Younger people are still trying to figure out the good from the bad; they see the good and the bad in very definite ways. Something is good or bad, period. Older people see that all things are both good and bad; there is a downside and an upside to everything. It takes time to realize it.

Downtime

The downtime between finishing a project and starting a new one seems interminable, even if it's only a few days or weeks. The anxiety of not knowing what I'm going to work on next is high and distressing. The fear that I can't write anymore is the most distressing part. So I feel compelled to get to work on something--anything--to erase that fear.

Why is writing so important to me? Is it bound up with my identity, my self-worth--sense of failure if I don't write? Is the very act of writing thrilling, satisfying, fulfilling? Is the thought of the finished product what drives me? Is it the thought of fame and/or fortune? Is it some psychological search for meaning, a kind of internal/external journey toward self-discovery? Is it the execution and fulfillment of a plan that gives meaning to writing? Is it the expression of myself and my beliefs through my characters that make writing so valuable? Is it the illusion of living a different life for a while that gives writing its appeal? Is it the sense of discovery that mesmerizes me?

I could probably answer 'yes' to all those questions. Writing is living a dream, and dreaming is one of the most satisfying things a person can do. And, if that is so, then getting published is really secondary to the pleasure of writing.

What I like about young writers.

I like their optimism, their 'knowing' that they can do this.
I like their openness to experience and to expressing their experience in words.
I like their sense of wonder, because adult-life situations are new to them.
I like their naivety, their freshness, their sense of investigation.
I like their soul-searching.
I like their bravery.
I like their openness to fantasy and all the different genre's of literature.
I like it that they know where they're going and that they don't know where they're going: it's all discovery for them.
I like it that most of their lives are still in front of them; they can experiment, fail, and start over.
I like it that they can get better at writing.
I like it that they don't know what they are going to do with their futures: writing is only one option.
I like it that they have a lot of living to do.
I like it that they are not a finished product.
I like it that they are open to friendship and form close bonds with their friends.
I like it that they want to share.

Young Writers

I'm very interested in the young writers I see on Webook. I hope I can help them in some way.

By young writers I mean teenagers. They are inspired and full of ideas, but their ideas are pretty basic--boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl fight, other people get involved, there are jealousies. It's all about relationships. At least, that's what I gather from the young writers I've been reading. And it's refreshing. It's really what life is about for most of us. Their characters just don't have the burden of working and raising a family and going to war and things like that. Their characters are involved in pure animal relationships. Maybe we older writers could learn something from these younger writers. Maybe D.H. Lawrence was a teenager at heart.

The History of My Writing (2).

I wrote my first novel when I was nineteen. I had been reading a lot of Ernest Hemingway during my first two years of college and my style of writing was similar to his--a lot of short sentences, a lot of dialogue--and was based on those college years. I still have the novel, but I've not looked at it in over thirty years. I'm almost afraid to. I did no more novel writing until after I graduated from college and, if memory serves me correctly, not until after I served two-years active duty in the navy. I spent the next two years working and completing my naval service as an active reservist. During those two years I wrote at least two or three novels. I still have them, but I've done nothing with them. I moved to Rhode Island for a year and wrote another novel, about WWII, and tried to get it published after completing the third draft. A literary agent looked at it and said the writing wasn't professional enough. That was my first rejection letter. Instead of polishing it, I wrote another novel as a knee-jerk reaction to being rejected. I had married and worked part-time and wrote part-time, but the need for money became overwhelming and I began working full-time. My writing from that point on, for the next thirty years, was sparse and varied. I did polish one of the novels, The Temple of Eden, which became the basis for much of the fiction I've written during the past ten years.

Literary agents, synopsis, queries, and sample chapters.

Why do agents ask for a synopsis (a short paragraph, or no more than one page), a query letter (no more than one page), and sample chapters? I know they want to get a good feel for your novel before looking at it. But still, why don't they look at all three, instead of just looking at the synopsis and saying 'no.' Or just looking at the query letter and saying 'no.' In other words, why don't they look at the sample chapters to see if the writing works for them. I'm submitting one of my novels through Webook to literary agents. I'm paying a small fee to have my queries tracked. Of the six agents who've looked at my submission, three looked at the short synopsis and said no, two looked at the short synopsis and query letter and said no, one looked at short synopsis, bio, and query letter and said no, and one looked at short synopsis, query, and sample chapters and said no. There are another seven agents who've yet to look at my submission.

What I deduce from this is that the short synopsis is critical. If the agent doesn't like it, she'll go no further. Then, if she does look at the query, it has to be even better than the synopsis. So, I need to make my short synopsis sizzle, and the query letter heat the sizzle to a higher temperature, or agents won't even bother with the sample chapters. And, finally, the first page or two of the sample chapters needs to sizzle. (I won't try to define 'sizzle' at this point. But it needs to be addressed.)

Granted, this is a small sample. But small samples are usually representative of the whole. (I submitted only to agents who wanted all three: short synopsis, query letter, and sample chapters. Many agents only want to see a query letter, and some request a query letter and short synopsis only. I felt that my chances were better if I could submit to agents who wanted sample chapters. Apparently, not so.)

Oh, and one other observation: the agents are so busy, they'll look at your submission when they get around to it.