In the beginning there is an author and a laptop. The job is personal, solitary, destined for universal acclaim, yet confidential. Some face the blank page with gusto. Some dread it. Add booze, or pimples, or failure to adjust, social disorders, and you have an image that has been cliche probably since a brooding Sumerian applied stylus to clay. A writer feels so alone.
Yet, one only has to attend any of the hundreds of writers' conferences, retreats, seminars, workshops, salons or night classes, which are sprouting besides the many creative writing undergraduate and graduate programs, to debunk the myth. Shakespeare and Cervantez, Hemingway and Mailer, Dickens, Joyce, Duras and Woolf retreated to their private rooms and wrote without the benefit of the innumerable how to's of today. How to start the book, how to craft a story arch and write meaningful characters, how to master the art of humor, or autobiography, or romance story telling; how to edit yourself, and, especially, how not to reach out to an agent until a professional gives your words another once over, for cash.
After toiling alone, romanticizing the sacrifice and identifying with long dead masters, a quick look up from the screen, or rather yet a quick look into the screen through the beauty of the internet, and the fantasy vanishes. You are just one in a million. With so many institutions, universities, local bookstores and published writers offering their guidance to you, so you too can publish a book and one day embrace creative writing teaching as your new day job; with easy access to self publishing, ebooks, blogging and social networking; anyone should be able to write, publish and live happily ever after. And then what? You are still one in a million.
That's where the stories of fantastic success get hold of you. What if you happen to be the lucky one, lottery winner, who wrote the right thing at the right time and everyone [the public, but most importantly Hollywood] is happy to pay for a piece of you? The successful writer of today aspires to be anything but alone.
I'll stop the second person here. I lost a job and took time off and wrote a book and for nine months kept my eyes on my navel, or my keyboard. I have tried and failed before. This time I typed "The End" and looked up with a sense of "Uhuh! I did it." But there was no one there to reply "Yes, you did! Yes, you did!" and offer me a million bucks for the movie rights.
As I entered a world I had pretended didn't exist, two paths of discovery were laid out for me. One, the road to publishing. I still know little about it and I can't say I smell a best seller. Two, the road to quality, revealing thus far how little I know about it and how hard it would be to craft anything that would sell at all.
I'll address both as I go along.
