Along for the Ride

I've wanted to be a writer ever since my dreams of being a veterinarian were crushed by the harsh reality of animal surgery (it had never occurred to me at that age that the vet doesn't just check the outside of the animal).  As a bold first step into this new and intimidating world of self-expression and keyboards, I sought out some pros to help me get on my feet: two teachers at my school, both published authors, and both with very different tactics and motives.  I interviewed them thinking it would be beneficial later when applying to colleges, and left with a greater passion for the subject thanks to these two: let's call them Bill and Bob.

First up was Bill, an elementary school teacher (one of my own way back when) who writes action-packed children's novels.  He's excellent: he speaks a child's language while also including the adults in the adventures.  I asked him how he did it: how do you become successful in a competitive, opinionated industry like publishing?  He told me his strategy was write now, think later.  Bill's a stream of consciousness writer: as he explained to me, the biggest obstacle he faces is putting down the words; once that hurtle is jumped, he can pare it down and add flare through astute edits.  I, a professed over-thinker and lover of thesaurus.com, could not imagine simply sitting down and writing my story in its premature form: it has to be a masterpiece right off the bat (an unrealistic goal, I know, but one I've had difficulty getting around).  He admits that some days he writes "garbage" for the sake of writing anything at all, just so long as he gets it out there, and (perhaps subconsciously) I've come to do the same on occasion: I never publish my "garbage," or even edit it--the majority of times I delete it before I even read it over (baby steps, people, remember my obsession with perfection?)--but sometimes my thoughts run so rampant that the only way to clearly see what I want to say is to clear the crap down first.  Perhaps I'll never be a stream of consciousness writer, but my methods are much more realistic now, mostly due to Bill.

Next I spoke with Bob, a junior high teacher who writes short stories with subtle morals.  Bill and Bob could not be more different: before even bringing up a word document, Bob must stew for hours about an idea, map it out like connect the dots, and then, when he is finally prepared to realize it on paper, he takes a moment to compose himself before writing each word, weighing the pros and cons of a word versus its synonym.  Remind you of anyone? [thumb pointing at me]  He admits this pursuit of the perfect word can have detrimental effects on his writing, namely stemming the flow of his ideas, but it's become a necessity for him: he has to see potential in it in order to continue working on it.  While his stories are short, he likes to pack a punch in each, to the extent that, he told me, laughing, he's occasionally prone to hitting his readers over the head with his "subtle" themes, his favorite of which, he later told me, is dismantling the timeless struggle between "good" and "bad" by making the two seem like a package deal instead of pure elements. Perhaps the greatest advice I got, both in my interviews and since, is what Bob suggested to conquer writer's block: a book; a movie; somebody else's story to stimulate my imagination and free me from my mental overdrive.  Sometimes it's nice to let another do the thinking, and just go along for the ride.