Looking out my backdoor: Why I'm not a real writer

Several years ago I attended a prestigious writers’ conference in Seattle. It was time. I was committed. I paid a bundle.

The conference offered a chance to mingle with real writers, to talk with agents and editors, to attend numerous workshops; an immersion in the literary world.

Already, I knew I was not a real writer. I did not set a schedule to write daily, come fire or flood or dark of night. When my babies were babies I did not lock myself in the bathroom with my portable typewriter at 3 in the morning to write undisturbed by night terrors or pounding of tiny fists by little creatures who seemed to think the best time for intimate conversation was when mommy perched on the throne. Real writers do such things.

I wrapped myself in the fantasy that I was ready, ready to commit hours of each day, sitting at my computer, composing fiction peopled with characters I already glimpsed and loved. (By then my babies were independent people.)

Oh, I wrote poems. See how far that will get you in the world of real writers. But I had ideas, notions, for short stories, perhaps even a novel or two. So I sailed across the waters of Puget Sound to the conference rooms of a imposing high-rise hotel to rub shoulders with my kind of nobility.

Real writers.

How often have you heard somebody exclaim, “I should have been born a hundred years ago.” All my life I’d wanted only one thing, to write fiction. However, all my same life I made decisions which took me different directions.

Of course, olden-days are a fantasy too. Earlier times meant submitting manuscripts to enough publishers until finally an assistant set one of my manuscripts on an editor’s desk with, “Take a look at this. It’s good.”

The conference soon disabused me of that dream. Times they were a changing. Book publishing as historically known soon would be a thing of the past, taking place alongside other dinosaurs. E-books had arrived. Self-publishing an option chosen by many. By most?

I attended workshop after workshop after workshop. I talked with agents. I talked with editors. At the end of the conference I rode the Washington State Ferry back home, settling my mind into acceptance.

A real writer in our brave new world must also be one’s own publicist, promoter, designer, formatter, stylist, typist, copywriter attorney and financier.

Writing that novel can easily take second place to the business of getting that book out in front of enough eyeballs and page turners to enable one to take time off to write a second novel while juggling the on-going financial and promotional aspects of keeping that first book moving up, up, ever up in sales. Made me breathless.

If one has buckets of money, one can hand all the business aspects over to those who know what they are doing. If one is a pauper, it still costs buckets of money to do what one doesn’t know and to do that poorly.

Comes down to choice. On my ferry ride home from that Seattle conference, I made a wise choice for my own sanity. I am not a real writer. I simply write.

I write when my muse whispers in my ear. I write poetry. I write because I must. I just wrote this poem. And if you see any irony between my piece on cognitive dissonance, that mental pretzel we create when our actions and words don’t line up with how we like to think of ourselves, and what I wrote above, so do I. So do I.

Cognitive Dissonance

Doesn’t matter what side

Of any fence you find yourself

Either side is chaos.

Either side is convinced

Their view is righteous, ethical.

Reasonable, logical, the One.

Think about it.

Take away the fence.

You have a field,

An entire field

In which to play.

Sondra Ashton

——

Sondra Ashton grew up in Harlem but spent most of her adult life out of state. She returned to see the Hi-Line with a perspective of delight. After several years back in Harlem, Ashton is seeking new experiences in Etzatlan, Mexico. Once a Montanan, always. Read Ashton’s essays and other work at http://montanatumbleweed.blogspot.com/. Email [email protected].