On Being a Writer

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In these past couple years, I’ve been staring at a crossroads.

I am a writer. I spent half my adult life waiting to arrive at a juncture where I could make such a claim, and back it up with facts.

Sure, I’ve always written. Always told stories. Even before I was good with words, I would sit with a pad of paper and draw out elaborate scenes like a comic book, animating the adventure in my head page by page, one storyboard image at a time.

In school, I found writing came easily. Likely because as a boy I spent so much time reading. During summer vacations, plowing through a pile of novels was one of my favorite activities. Language came naturally to me, even though I had almost no formal training in grammar. I could “hear” how the words should sound, and would simply allow them to flow. No overthinking — unlike every other area of my life. In fact, as I grew better at my craft, not much thinking at all. When I sit down to write, it’s almost like falling into a trance. I couldn’t tell you what the next sentence is going to say, but my fingers find the keys and the words come spilling out.

They usually sound exactly how I want them to sound. If they don’t, well, I learned long ago that writing involves a great deal of re-writing. Eventually, though, the flow state does its work, and the thing is done.

Although I was told, repeatedly, that I had a gift, I didn’t know how to use it professionally. I was out of college for seven years before I got my first paid writing gig, and it was beer money, at best. A few hundred bucks a month if I was industrious. Meanwhile I worked job after job that was not writing, but where possible, I always tried to find something adjacent. Consulting, PR, organizational communications, always trying to nudge my way closer to the craft.

I wound up with some good experiences that way. I did ghostwriting for some interesting folks for a while, both in the corporate and non-profit world. I was on one of the first social media teams in high-level PR, back when it was still being called “new media” and few people really knew how it worked.

But like so many with brains like mine, my high aptitude to learn and do well at almost any job tapered off as I got bored. I would learn quickly, impress everyone for a while, plateau, and begin to decline. Once the challenge, the fun, the art of the thing was no longer there, I would lose interest, and eventually burn out.

I never lasted more than three years in a job before starting my own operation.

I have a very focused set of skills, and I’m terrible at staying focused on almost anything else. I feel as though I failed my way into writing as much as I have ever succeeded at it. If I was good at something else, I might very well not be here typing this.

So now I am nearly 47 years old. I have more white hair than brown, and I have two grandchildren. The greatest run of professional success I have ever had was in running my own publication. It was the first time I got up every morning excited to go to work. I was in my zone. I was finally doing what I was best at, and doing it all day, every day.

When I lost my faith, and had to lay down my pen in defense of the Catholic Church, it was a devastating blow. I had everything going for me in this business I had created, and I was good at what I did. My wife didn’t have to work, for the first time in our marriage. The bills got paid on time.

Now, after several years of trying to get a new publication off the ground, and not hitting the numbers I need for viability, I have a decision to make. Do I try to find a way to start a new career at my age, when I know full well the discrimination men face at mid-life if they are not working at a senior-level position? I am older than many CEOs and Vice Presidents. Why would they hire me for entry level work in something new, when they can grab some 25 year old kid who will do what he’s told and not question orders, and do it for half the price?

Or do I forge on, hoping I can build TSF, or Black Sheep, or some other project into something with a large enough audience that I can do my job and provide well for my family again?

I know what my heart is telling me. I wish my bank account agreed.

I came across a thing this afternoon written by Henry Miller, about his path to writing. It was posted at the always-excellent Substack, Poetic Outlaws. Here’s an excerpt:

I think I should also confess that I was driven to write because it proved to be the only outlet open to me, the only task worthy of my powers. I had honestly tried all the other roads to freedom.

I was a self-willed failure in the so-called world of reality, not a failure because of lack of ability.

Writing was not an “escape,” a means of evading the everyday reality: on the contrary, it meant a still deeper plunge into the brackish pool—a plunge to the source where the waters were constantly being renewed, where there was perpetual movement and stir.

Looking back upon my career, I see myself as a person capable of undertaking almost any task, any vocation. It was the monotony and sterility of the other outlets which drove me to desperation.

I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: the world of art is the only such realm.

I entered it without any apparent talent, a thorough novice, incapable, awkward, tongue-tied, almost paralyzed by fear and apprehensiveness. I had to lay one brick on another, set millions of words to paper before writing one real, authentic word dragged up from my own guts.

The facility of speech which I possessed was a handicap; I had all the vices of the educated man. I had to learn to think, feel and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink.

I don’t know how to explain to people who do not have within them the burning desire to create something with meaning that when I build widgets, or sell them, or spend my days entering data or reviewing documents or whatever fresh hells await in the corporate offices of our world, I die a little bit each day.