Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/s_m1093.zip/MUSE

Text File | 1993-10-08 | 5KB | 93 lines

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 The Muse░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░Why Do I Write?░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░by Steve Myrick
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         The assignment comes in the form of a question: Why do I
    write?  Good question.  Far more difficult to answer than I
    first imagined.  After considerable thought, two answers evolve.
    One is right up there on the surface, and many readers of this
    fine electronic publication won't like it much.  The other is a
    little deeper, and I hope it will repair some of the damage.
    Let us deal with the first thing first.  Money.

         I write for money.  For me, that is the whole idea.  This
    is my bread and butter.  I am not fanatical about filling my
    wallet, and I am certainly not in this game to get rich.  But I
    have managed to carve out a comfortable living by putting words
    together on a page.  It is not always the most interesting kind
    of writing, but sometimes it is.  It is not always the best
    paying assignment, but sometimes it is.  This is how I support
    my family.  And I need this job.  I don't know how to do
    anything else.

         Before you condemn me to eternal writer's block, let me
    assure you that my byline has never, and will never appear in
    the National Enquirer.  You will not see my work on Hard Copy,
    or any of the endless Hard Copy copycats.  I am confident that
    those who read my work in Sailing Magazine, or Vermont Life, and
    those who see my work on WBZ-TV in Boston would judge it worthy
    of some standard.  When I say I write for money, I do not mean
    selling out.  I speak to many writers who toil happily away
    writing stories and novels and poems that never get published.
    I envy them their talent and their creative drive.  I read and
    admire their work.  I often wish I could do what they do, but I
    can not.  It would not put checks in may bank account,
    especially considering the dubious talent I would bring to such
    a venture.  I can not imagine doing what I do just for fun.  It
    is too difficult.  You have no idea how desperately I wish these
    sentences would roll out effortlessly, but they do not.  I have
    a recurring vision of words being squeezed out like hamburger
    from an old fashioned meat grinder.  It pops into my head about
    once every, oh, 3.7 seconds as I sit staring at my computer
    screen.  That is the kind of effort it takes for me to grind out
    a sentence.  It does not help much that the two hours I blocked
    out last night for writing evaporated when a cop was shot.  Nor
    does it help that the two hours I blocked out tonight
    disappeared while I worked on the story of a double homicide.
    That is not to say I do not enjoy the process.  The agony of the
    moment somehow emerges through some perverse brain filter as
    general satisfaction at a job well done.  I have had some very
    enjoyable assignments, some simple ones, and some which I
    probably would have done for free.  But I have never had an
    assignment where I felt like I did not earn my fee.  So it is
    the money thing.  That is what makes me write.

         Yet it is not quite that simple, which brings us (rather
    neatly if I may be so presumptuous) to the second thing.  I hope
    it earns back a few friends I lost with the rhetoric above.  The
    words that you are reading are coming out with every bit as much
    momentary agony as any other assignment.  But by prior mutual,
    and quite happily arranged agreement, I will not be getting a
    fat check for these paragraphs.  Sort of punches a little hole
    in the money thing.  I was never strong on logic.  As near as I
    can figure, I have flipped the whole equation for this
    assignment.  I am paying a debt by giving away my work.  The
    publisher and editor of this electronic magazine provides me
    with endless hours of amusement, advice, stimulation, and
    encouragement.  She does not charge a fee when I sign on to the
    Pen & Brush bulletin board, so I will gladly donate a few pages
    of prose to the cause.  The larger truth is, I get a kick out of
    it all.  Maybe it is an ego thing.  Athletes live for the rare
    thrill of a winning shot at the buzzer.  Scientists celebrate
    when the natural puzzle fits together to reveal some paradigm
    shift in knowledge.  I like to pick up a magazine and see my
    work layed out on a page.  For me, there is no feeling in the
    world that compares.  It means I accomplished something
    difficult, something many try, but few succeed.  And it is all
    there on record for everyone to see.  Some even enjoy it.

         The other day I walked into a newsstand with my three year
    old daughter, picked up a national magazine and thumbed to page
    53, where my byline appeared over an article about sailing
    environmentalists.  I stooped over and showed my daughter the
    sixteen point type, and she recognized a few of the letters.  A
    killer smile spread over her face when I explained to her that I
    wrote those words and took those photographs.  Maybe that is why
    I write.  Maybe I would do it for free, and I am just flat lucky
    that people pay me for it.


    Steve Myrick                        First Electronic Rights
    1054 Lowell Road                    815 words
    Groton, MA  01450                   Copyright:  (c) Steve Myrick 1993