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My life as a writer
By Dorothy Cummings McLean
December 5, 2008
Dorothy Cummings McLean
Soon I am going to have to tell a roomful of high school students what it means to be a writer. This is a daunting task. I know it is a daunting task because I did this last year, and most of the students stared at me unsmilingly.
Their teachers, however, loved me. They laughed at all my jokes, and I remembered that I had only ever taught writing to adults. This year I will try to adjust my tone for the teen market.
Their teachers, however, loved me. They laughed at all my jokes, and I remembered that I had only ever taught writing to adults. This year I will try to adjust my tone for the teen market.
The best way to be a writer in Canada is to have famous parents or parents who are writers. I’m not bitter about this; I imagine it is the same for all professions. Justin Trudeau comes across as a complete airhead, but he’s now a member of Parliament. And everyone knows the best way to get a lucrative summer job in a Toyota or Ford plant is to have a parent who works there.
But if you don’t have a famous or connected parent, welcome to years of toil, little money and a ton of rejection. But I’ll tell you something: write a learned article so good that it goes into an academic journal and you’ll get squat. Write and sell a puff piece on Keanu Reeves and you can make up to $500. Ah, that was a happy day!
I had a professor who told me not to pursue an academic career if I thought I could do anything else, including dig ditches. I honestly thought I couldn’t do anything else. That was foolish. One thing I have always been able to do is write. Even if I have writer’s block, I can write: I just write something other than what I’m supposed to be writing right then. For example, today I’m supposed to be writing a column for The Catholic Register. Oh, wait a minute…
In short, the first thing you need to be a writer is an inextinguishable desire to write. This desire is not manifested in sitting in cafés telling people, “I want to write.” This desire is manifested in the actual act of writing. I very rarely see my wittiest writing friend, because she is always writing — and for pay, too. A real writer always prefers to be paid.
The next thing a writer needs is a voice. This does not mean your own dulcet tones emanating from your throat. It means your persona. The entire totality of you cannot be expressed in your writing. I hope not. You would get in the way. So instead you take part of you, and let that do the writing. That part could be the Teacher, the Lover, the Wise Old Auntie, the Bold Adventuress, the Devout Catholic.
Bounce around the blogosphere to get a sense of what part of themselves bloggers draw upon to write their posts. Kathy Shaidle, one of my favourite bloggers, draws upon her Inner Shrew. I’ve met Kathy, and she is nowhere near that shrewish in daily life.
The next thing a writer needs is to be conscious of his or her surroundings. In the West we tend to overuse our sense of sight and underuse our sense of smell when we write. However, if you really want to grab readers’ imaginations, you should appeal to all of their senses. When I was in Scotland, I liked the house I stayed in because it had a crumbling, 18th-century charm. But I fell in love with the house because it had the damp, cold and slightly musty smell I remembered from the year I spent in Britain as a small child.
A writer needs writing skills. Those skills include a sense of style, spelling and a consistent use of punctuation. Knowing how to touch type is also an asset. Incidentally, my most well-thumbed book is my Pocket Oxford dictionary. I have two degrees in English Literature and I need my dictionary. So do you.
A good writer hates clichés and uses them only to turn them upside down. No writer worth her salted peanuts will ever write, “It was raining cats and dogs.” An excellent method to find variations on boring old idioms is to listen to foreign speakers of English. They have a hard time getting clichés right, so they often make a splendid fusion dish of them. I have a French-Canadian friend who announced one day that it was raining kittens and puppies. They say that to learn a second language, you should date someone who has it as their first language. But I say that to learn your own language, you should date someone who is still learning it.
Finally, a writer needs to toughen up. Every writer gets rejected some of the time. It is painful to have your hard work ignored by publisher after publisher. However, the point is to press on. If you don’t keep on trying, you cannot win the game. You could write with the laptop of men and angels, but unless you keep pressing those cruel publishers, you will never get your stuff out there, and you will never be paid.
But if you don’t have a famous or connected parent, welcome to years of toil, little money and a ton of rejection. But I’ll tell you something: write a learned article so good that it goes into an academic journal and you’ll get squat. Write and sell a puff piece on Keanu Reeves and you can make up to $500. Ah, that was a happy day!
I had a professor who told me not to pursue an academic career if I thought I could do anything else, including dig ditches. I honestly thought I couldn’t do anything else. That was foolish. One thing I have always been able to do is write. Even if I have writer’s block, I can write: I just write something other than what I’m supposed to be writing right then. For example, today I’m supposed to be writing a column for The Catholic Register. Oh, wait a minute…
In short, the first thing you need to be a writer is an inextinguishable desire to write. This desire is not manifested in sitting in cafés telling people, “I want to write.” This desire is manifested in the actual act of writing. I very rarely see my wittiest writing friend, because she is always writing — and for pay, too. A real writer always prefers to be paid.
The next thing a writer needs is a voice. This does not mean your own dulcet tones emanating from your throat. It means your persona. The entire totality of you cannot be expressed in your writing. I hope not. You would get in the way. So instead you take part of you, and let that do the writing. That part could be the Teacher, the Lover, the Wise Old Auntie, the Bold Adventuress, the Devout Catholic.
Bounce around the blogosphere to get a sense of what part of themselves bloggers draw upon to write their posts. Kathy Shaidle, one of my favourite bloggers, draws upon her Inner Shrew. I’ve met Kathy, and she is nowhere near that shrewish in daily life.
The next thing a writer needs is to be conscious of his or her surroundings. In the West we tend to overuse our sense of sight and underuse our sense of smell when we write. However, if you really want to grab readers’ imaginations, you should appeal to all of their senses. When I was in Scotland, I liked the house I stayed in because it had a crumbling, 18th-century charm. But I fell in love with the house because it had the damp, cold and slightly musty smell I remembered from the year I spent in Britain as a small child.
A writer needs writing skills. Those skills include a sense of style, spelling and a consistent use of punctuation. Knowing how to touch type is also an asset. Incidentally, my most well-thumbed book is my Pocket Oxford dictionary. I have two degrees in English Literature and I need my dictionary. So do you.
A good writer hates clichés and uses them only to turn them upside down. No writer worth her salted peanuts will ever write, “It was raining cats and dogs.” An excellent method to find variations on boring old idioms is to listen to foreign speakers of English. They have a hard time getting clichés right, so they often make a splendid fusion dish of them. I have a French-Canadian friend who announced one day that it was raining kittens and puppies. They say that to learn a second language, you should date someone who has it as their first language. But I say that to learn your own language, you should date someone who is still learning it.
Finally, a writer needs to toughen up. Every writer gets rejected some of the time. It is painful to have your hard work ignored by publisher after publisher. However, the point is to press on. If you don’t keep on trying, you cannot win the game. You could write with the laptop of men and angels, but unless you keep pressing those cruel publishers, you will never get your stuff out there, and you will never be paid.
Dorothy Cummings McLean