A Writing Life

The difficulty, of course, is balancing the needs and wants and art of the writing, with the cravings of the marketplace.  I had this idea to write about women and horses, specifically this woman and her horse;  as I drove to Indy yesterday, the idea rattled around in my head and felt like a good one.  But then, as I sat in the waiting room while Dick had his knee tinkered with, there in Oprah magazine was a little blurb about an upcoming book on...yes...women and horses.  Or, apparently, one woman, somehow abused I think, if I read the opaque prose correctly, and one horse, also abused.  Sigh.  If I decide to write a book about women and horses now?  Guess what, kids: it will get cast into the wide void, ignored or sneered at because there is suddenly a glut of books about women and horses.  Thanks a lot, Oprah.

So now what?  Write what you know, they say.  Maybe life in the Midwest at the turn of the century isn't such a bad idea.  There's a lot of material here.  A lot of really weird material.  Stuff you just can't make up. 

If I were a careerist kind of writer, I would take this idea of writing about the Midwest and run with it, writing essays that make fun of the Midwest, poking at the mores and habits, revealing the really bad food (I'll admit: biscuits and gravy is something I just can't do.  Nope.  Can't do it.); I would make jokes at the expense of the conservative religious right, the underemployed, the overweight, the corn, the soy, the one stoplight towns, all that.  If I were a careerist kind of writer, I would do this because I know that the big publishers are on the east coast and the west coast, and both coasts peer at the Midwest with a mix of scorn, disbelief, fear (yes, fear), and derision.  If I were a careerist kind of writer, I would play right into that, and write a snide book that would get attention from the east coast and the west coast, one that liberal smartypants reviewers would love. 

I could do that.

I try to imagine myself as a careerist kind of writer.... if I promoted myself, hit the conference scene and shmoozed with abandon; if I wrote something hot and trendy, got a big deal agent...oh, my, yes: then I could have a different kind of life.  A life on one of the coasts, maybe teaching at a smart little school, probably with a lighter teaching load, definitely a bigger salary.  A place where I could wear black and no one would ask "Honey, you goin' to a funeral?" (Serious.  That happened.)  A place where the biggest church in town would be Unitarian.  (Sigh.  I wish.)  A place where biscuits and gravy would never be on any menu.

Yup.  Well.  Guess what.  I can't do it.  Writing is a way of life.  Not a career.  I don't view the words I put on the page as some kind of currency which I will exchange for a "better" way of life.  No.  Writing is a habit of thinking, a means of expression, a frank and honest and honorable transaction between writer and reader.  I'm not impressed with the current trends in writing -- glittery language, pseudo-academic explorations of past trauma(s), excrutiating revelations of the self and/or the body, treacly stories about person and dearly departed pet; opaque exercises in formalism.  Writers writing to other writers.  No thanks.   

I'd rather write for readers.  Real people who are interested in stories.  Who want to find out something.  Who want to peer into another's life.  Who want to go on a little journey on the page.  And if writing that way means I can't break through to the big show, that I can't get the big advance, the big agent, the hot shot teaching job, well so be it.  In thirty or forty or fifty years I will be dead, and all of that won't matter.  What will matter is what I leave behind: the words on the page.  Write what you believe in.  Write what you care about.  Write what matters to you, not the marketplace, not the current fashion or trend.  The only trend I care about is shoes.  Right.  Shoes. 

So.  Here we are.  What do you think of this, then: a book of stories about life in the Midwest at the turn of the 21st century.  These would be true stories, nonfiction, but I'm not going to call them essays.  They're stories.  Stories about living in the country.  Living in town.  Teaching.  Dogs.  Horses (dammit).  Food.  Politics.  Grocery shopping.  The slant would be: I've been in Indiana for 14 years, and I'm still a kind of foreigner here: the food and the language and the politics and the religion and the land and the sports are still really weird. But, surprisingly enough, sometimes even against my own will, I'm starting to like it -- who knew -- and here's why.

So.  Would you read this book?  Think about it. I might just write it...