How did you picture the life of a writer when you first dreamt of becoming one? Did you romanticize your dream? Or were you pragmatic and realistic about it? Compare your dream to the reality.
By Dietrich
The writing bug first bit me in my early teens. Armed with a cheap ballpoint, a notebook, and the high of my English teacher’s praise, I was ready to riff on Hemingway and Salinger. I didn't exactly picture myself in a Paris café or a Cuban villa, but I figured the prose would just flow out of me. As it turned out, I ended up stuck in a swamp of stubborn idioms and clunky phrases. Writing wasn’t the cakewalk I’d imagined. I tried to turn words into tall tales, but they just wouldn’t fit into anything worth reading. Even at that pimple-age,I knew I was in trouble.
To my credit, I didn’t hold my breath expecting a publisher to send a limo for my shoebox of longhand pages. I didn’t anticipate fan mail stacking up like a snowdrift while The New York Times wept with joy. I was either too pure for all that, perhaps a bit naive, or just savvy enough to know that my “masterpiece” wasn't quite ready for the Big Five.
Over time, I lost interest in those handwritten pages. They ended up exactly where they belonged: in a heap under my bed, eventually vanishing altogether. I have no idea what happened to them—likely disappeared on some merciful cleaning day. But if they ever turn up posthumously, I just hope there’s no Wi-Fi in the afterlife to see the reviews. I’d die (twice) from the embarrassment.
When the notion to write finally collided with reality many years later, I traded the daydream for the real work of finding my chops. I found that writing a novel is less about being struck by lightning and more about sitting in a chair until my butt aches. I learned the glamorous art of editing the same paragraph seventeen times, and I realized when my brilliant twists weren’t working, and I learned to recognize when my “brilliant” twists weren't working or when my dialogue sounded like an 80s soap opera.
Early on, I had a talk with myself to brace for the polite rejections and soul-crushing reviews. I looked in the mirror and reminded myself that not everybody likes Salinger or Hemingway either. I was just grateful that I got to do what I loved without having to worry about keeping the lights on. Still am.
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