Paying the Price is such an ugly term. Harsh, blunt, and yet general because it could mean a bunch of things. So for a moment here, I’m going to start off a new writing discussion topic with this nasty saying. Paying the Price.
A story first. Way back in the early days of my writing, I lived in a wonderful little college town called Moscow, Idaho. Great town, but a long, long ways from anything, so to get any kind of professional help for my writing, I had to travel some good distances.
Was I rich during those days? Oh, heavens, no. I lived with my second wife in a very small basement apartment under a bookstore I owned. (Roof was so low in that basement, I couldn’t stand up straight in most of it.) The bookstore was lucky to break even, so I also worked as a bartender and a bus driver to make ends meet while my wife worked at a local nursing home and went to school. I had already finished my last attempt at that final semester of law school and was never going back. Law was not my passion.
So with no money, somehow my wife and I managed to get me to Clarion, a six week long writing workshop in Lansing, MI in the hot summer of 1982. We dug up the over $2,000 fee plus the cost of travel and other costs, and she watched the bookstore and worked her nursing job while I was gone. We both felt it was worth it to my writing, so we paid the price.
Of course, that six weeks changed my life. I met Algis Budrys, Scott Card, Chip Deleney, and Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm. It turned out that in Eugene, Oregon, Damon and Kate ran a workshop every month in their living room for anyone invited, and after attending Clarion, I was invited, along with my friend and fellow writer, Nina Kiriki Hoffman. We were hungry for more learning, so once a month, without missing, even in snow storms, we drove the eight plus hour drive to Eugene, Oregon, went to the workshop for six hours, then drove the eight hours back to Idaho that same night because most of the time we didn’t have the money for a hotel room. We barely had enough money for sharing the gas.
We made that drive every month from the fall of 1982 to the spring of 1984. We didn’t miss a month and only wrecked one car one icy night. Nina and I paid the price to learn. No one forced us. We did it because we put writing first.
So, with that story being sort of obvious about this starting topic, I want to go on into what Paying the Price really means in writing. It’s going to take more than one article here, so stay tuned.
To start off with, it means focus.
For me, those early years of writing got me more and more focused on just writing fiction and nothing else. It didn’t matter what it took, what I needed to do, I was just like a first year law student. Nothing but writing really mattered. Period.
My wonderful and very supportive second wife and I split up, mostly because I had sort of left the planet and she rightfully wanted me to spend more time with her. We’re still friends and I still credit her with being fantastically supportive of my writing, but at that point I didn’t know how to balance a life and writing. And I didn’t know how to get her on board the trip. So I paid a nasty price there.
Instead of working in the law, or as an Architect, or as a golf professional, I took bartending jobs because they didn’t tax my brain so I could write. I lived in basically a slum apartment, about one tenth the size of my current office, because that allowed me to only work three or four nights a week and still have money to travel to conventions and pay the rent. And I got free food at work. I still love olives to this day. (Now understand, I was in my middle-late thirties during this time, a failure in everyone’s eyes.)
I would go home from bartending at 3 in the morning and write until I couldn’t keep my eyes open, then write the next afternoon until I had to go to work. I got fired from one job because my attitude sucked so bad. As the boss said, “You never seemed to really be here.” Yup, he was right.
I hung around with other writers and made new friends with them because by and large, they understood. I let old friends go who didn’t understand or who wanted to hold me back and didn’t celebrate when I made a sale. In other words, my life now is very, very different than it was before I started down this writing road because I changed it to this. I paid the price in friendships as well as not seeing movies, not keeping up on current trends, not owning a nice car.
Am I done paying the price? Oh, heaven’s no. If the money dries up, I might work something part time to make it through a tight spot, but if I really had to, I’d move back into a small apartment as long as I could still write. It’s still that important to me.
So here we all are, in tight economic times. Everyone has money issues. Everyone, in one form or another. And yet when Kris and I announced a couple new professional level workshops in July, 27 professional writers signed up almost over night, some saying they would make the money work somehow.
And we announced a couple of open workshops for writers of all levels (see below a few posts) and a bunch of people signed up at once for those. I have a hunch those people are well on the road as well.
I just looked down that list of names on the professional list and it’s not surprising to me that on that list is a bunch of published novelists, and a bunch who have sold stories and are on the verge of selling first novels. Every name on that list, without exception, has paid a price to get down the road in publishing to where they are, and the chance to keep learning this summer won’t be stopped for many of them because of a few bucks. Many of the names on my list will be on bestseller lists in the very near future, not because of anything Kris and I can teach, but because they have the right attitude, they are hungry for knowledge, and somehow, even in hard economic times, they will find a way to keep learning. And keep writing.
Okay, one more story. Many of you know I used to be a golf professional, and a pretty decent player. For my own reasons, I dropped out of chasing the main tour back in the early 1970’s and when the seniors tour started, I thought it would be fun to try for that. However, it turned out, I really wasn’t willing to pay the price.
Now, in my mind, I had always been a good golfer, but to get to that next level, I was going to have to give golf the focus I had given my writing, and day after day I just didn’t do that. I talked a good game and practiced some, but not enough. I didn’t go after the top help as I had done in writing, and when problems started to come up in my golf game, I didn’t work hard enough to fix them. A good friend of mine turned to me one day and said, “You really don’t want this. You aren’t willing to pay the price.”
Made me angry, let me tell you, because deep down inside, I knew he was right. I knew how to pay the price to become an national level writer, but I didn’t want to do that with my golf game. I wanted it to be handed to me, I wanted to have the fun, but not do the work. I was talented, wasn’t I? I could hit the ball a long ways, couldn’t I? Then why didn’t it just happen?
Nope. Doesn’t happen that way at a national level, not in golf, not in writing. We all have to pay the price. Nothing on a national level is ever handed to you.
I was willing to pay whatever price was needed for my writing and still am. I was not willing to do that for my golf game, even though I had been a talented golfer since I was ten.
If you find yourself always making the decision toward writing, always giving the writing more and more time, getting up early or staying up late or missing family time because of writing, then maybe you have the drive. If not, then maybe there is another place in the world, another activity that has your passion and love. Only you can really check in and find that place, that love.
I love the game of golf, I love playing golf, but my passion and all my desire is toward my writing.
The next issue of this little series will be about keeping your family on board this trip to becoming a professional selling fiction writer. It’s not easy, and frighteningly enough, they will also have to pay a price for your writing.
And other installments this month will talk about how to know your passion is what you think it is and how to deal with some of the issues that a passion toward writing will cause you.
Stay tuned, it’s going to be fun.
Cheers, Dean
