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Originally published in Britain's New Statesman Magazine in 1999
Most sane people don't believe they can play basketball like Michael
Jordan or wear the Yankees' pinstripes like Babe Ruth did, or paint
like DaVinci or Pollock, or sing like Kathleen Battle or Celine Dione,
or act like Olivier or DeNiro. However, most people, sane or mad,
believe they can write, if they just had the time. The reason may be as
obvious as not having to be able to jump eight feet in the air holding
a ball to write, or being able to break glass with your voice. All you
need is a brain. And we all have brains, although we all know people
for whom such a conclusion seems questionable.
I didn't wake up one day with the epiphany of
wanting to be a writer over every other conceivable life occupation. As
a child I lived to tell stories, all made up, many designed to get me
out of trouble with my parents or various school officials, others
concocted for pure entertainment. I started writing some of them down,
moving words here and there to make it, at least in my mind, better. I
kept journals, was one little nosy bastard, ever curious about the
world around me, particularly the people inhabiting this wonderfully
crazy world of ours. I would fill one blank book after another with
mostly harmless observations.
I never
really has a serious notion of joining the ranks of those who lived by
the written word until I really started reading fiction when I was in
middle school. Then I was hooked. The power those writers held over me,
for even a brief period of time, was power I wanted to have. To keep
people's interest when they had so much else to attract them, was a
version of treading the boards on a stage except your words, your
stories, were the epicenter. For a somewhat shy, reserved person who
still wanted to enthrall people with his work, it was a perfect match.
I
started writing fiction because it was fun. I never expected to make a
dime doing it. There were (and are) many wonderful writers who were
never published. I didn't see myself as a wonderful writer (and still
don't). I saw myself as an apprentice learning a labor intensive,
solitary, often frustrating and yet time-honored craft that rarely
rewarded its disciples with anything other than the cruelest of
rejection.
Success for me was
spending over a decade in complete obscurity dutifully reading and
writing and trying to learn how to tell a story with words in such a
way that people other than my mother would enjoy it. I never perfected
anything, but I got better because I kept at it. My writing time was
ten at night until three in the morning. I did that for over ten years
while working full-time as an attorney in Washington. I was married and
had a family, and I would have had no success without the support of my
wife, Michelle.
The night-time
schedule may sound draconian but I ran down the stairs to my little
cubbyhole each night. My law clients wouldn't want to hear this, but it
was in the middle of the night creating my little fictional worlds that
I was most lucid, my most energetic. Other writers have done the same
thing for centuries. There is no perfect time to write, there is only
the perfect love of writing; meaning that when you write, life is
perfect. To a person who truly lives to tell stories, no excuse will
avail. The idea of wanting to write but being unable to find the time
would make absolutely no sense to someone who truly loves to write.
I
actually wanted to be a short story writer, and was one for five years.
You'll never get rich writing short stories, which was fine with me. My
law practice was where I earned my living. I never expected my writing
to generate any monies.
However, when
success came, it came fast. I am an overnight success, but, being
somewhat slower than others, it took me five thousand nights to get
there, but I eventually did. Going from obscurity to a very small
measure of celebrity was difficult, though I'm sure people will find
that hard to understand or believe. But as a writer, an observer, a
collector of material for my stories, I much prefer to be in the
background, watching everyone else! However, I gleefully accepted all
the money, but have done as much good with it as I could. And one has
to understand that without the years of writing behind me I could never
have written a novel like Absolute Power, which, whatever one may think of its literary quality or not, was a book that a goodly number of people enjoyed reading.
Now
as a published author, my time is hardly my own. Being very
charitable-minded, I've gotten myself on more charitable boards than I
can actually remember. Fund-raisers here, speaking engagements there, a
book due here, a screenplay or short story due there (the occasional
insightful, well-written piece for distinguished publications such as
this one, written frantically because I didn't want to miss a
deadline), and before you know it, you need more than twenty-four hours
a day. And I'm loving every minute of it because I well know what it's
like to labor at a job just for the money. I had little if any zest for
climbing out from under the covers each morning, getting dressed and
going into the office to sue people for all they had. That just wasn't
me. This, what I do now, what I'm doing in this article, stringing
words together, this is me. And I'm paid to do it. I'm the luckiest
bastard on the face of the earth.
I
understand people who look at me and think my success is unwarranted.
Every creative person in the history of the planet has gone through the
same scrutiny. I certainly don't see it as us against them. It's being
human; that's how we are. We want something other people have. Before I
was published I found myself thinking along those lines sometimes. It
was out of a sense of frustration of thinking I was as good as those
who were published, and didn't I deserve to be too, DAMMIT?
So
my response to any prejudice people may feel towards me is to encourage
everyone to write, to be creative if they feel the least urge to do so.
I conduct writing workshops for people of all ages, from high school on
up. It's fun, it makes you feel good about yourself, and you let people
understand what you went through, how hard you worked to fulfill a
dream of yours. And surprise, surprise, all of a sudden, the petty,
uninformed jealousies we all carry around to a certain degree
disappear. They understand it's not so easy, but it's not impossible
either. It's no longer us and them. It's just people having fun,
interacting, trying to so something together.
And you know, even Jordan, DaVinci, and Battle had to work at it. And so do we all, in our own small way.
© 1999 by David Baldacci
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