
How do you answer the question, "How are you coming with your writing?" I've been getting that a lot recently. I guess I could say, "I've written three novels, had some compliments on my writing, been encouraged by interest from publishers, but nobody has offered to publish them." But what they really want to know, I've found, is when they can look for something of mine on the front table at Barnes & Noble. And I think the chances of that are somewhere north of "slim to none."
When folks find out that I'm writing, the common feeling seems to be that "If you write it, they will publish." So, if the novel is finished, when is it coming out? Most of you reading this are also writers, and you know that this perception is far from accurate. When I first started out trying to find a publisher for The Tender Scar: Life After The Death Of A Spouse, I had the idea that you just stood on the street corner and waved your manuscript, waiting to flag down a publisher as you would a taxi. I've since had quite an education--almost a postgraduate degree by now--in the process, and it's not that simple.
My answer to the "How are you coming along?" question has evolved into this: "I've finished three novels, started on the fourth, and am working on another non-fiction book." Then I load up to answer the inevitable question that follows. "No, I don't have a contract yet." I've stopped explaining that I'm not writing for the thrill of seeing my words in print. I don't write because I'm anxious for an economic windfall. I write because I feel called to do it. Just as baseball players--the ones struggling in the minors for peanuts, not the fat cats drawing obscene money in the big leagues--just as baseball players will tell you that they play because they love the game, I'll tell you that I write because it's a part of me. It's changed me over the past three years, changed me for the better. And maybe that's all it's meant to do.
So I write.