The fiction class I teach in Westchester started a few weeks ago and in my search for new books at the library, I discovered that the craft books for short story writing are arranged next to books on the art of fishing. I thought this was sort of appropriate.

My grandfather loves to fish and one time I asked if I could tag along and he said, “Well, if you want to sit around and do nothing for hours and hours in the hopes of catching a fish and getting a few minutes of excitement, you’re welcome to come along. However, I don’t think it will be much fun for you.”

I feel that writing is kind of like that description. You plug away and do the work and most days you might not feel that you accomplished much, but sometimes it’s writing the fifty pages that just don’t work to get to those two awesome pages which lead you into the real start of a story you wouldn’t be completely ashamed to admit came out of your thoughts.

What strikes me about each writing class I teach is that people don’t really understand the commitment it takes to write something worthwhile. No one would ever decide to run the NY Marathon and not work out for months and months. Yet, people feel that they can just pick up a pen and the words will pour forth. All you need is to attend a great workshop/seminar/conference and Voila!

I once overheard someone say, “I could have gotten into Harvard.” This kind of statement always gets under my skin because someone who could utter something like that just has no idea the amount of hard work it takes to accomplish something like that at the age of eighteen. Someone who could actually say something like, “I could have gotten into Harvard,” would never say that because she knows that it was that stupid B-minus in Biology class which pushed her right out of contention. All that childhood sacrifice and summers spent memorizing those stupid 604 vocabulary words for the SAT and weekends cleaning up mouse pee and praying for your Westinghouse project results go right out the window (and, most likely, into a lesser Ivy like Brown or Cornell–if you’re lucky).

So yes, I’ve heard there are some writers who whistle while they work. I think that’s great. But most of the time, it’s awful hair-pulling frustrating work, but you know that if you get up to boil a cup of tea, you might just open up that US Weekly your sister left behind when she stayed over for the weekend and you’ll never get that blob of an idea into any shape at all. So you stay seated. You keep fishing. 

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