The Secret

I have a secret.

It's a secret about great writers, and mediocre writers, and terrible-but-popular writers. It's the secret that divides the Wannabes from the Ares. Are you ready?

Here it comes.

You can write anywhere. You don’t need a silent garrett or a clean office. You don’t need perfect lighting or complete silence. You can write on the bus while a homeless man is sniffing your hair. You can write in the middle of class while the professor is trying to lecture, like I am right now. You can write while kids run past you screaming, clutching half the fur from the dog’s tail and covered in sticky Cheerio mush. For most of us, there is no pre-dawn place of perfect peace. There is no solid 120 minutes in the day when nobody wants anything from us, and nobody thinks their bleeding knee is more important than your protagonist’s defining moment. If we wait for someone to give us permission, to say, "Yes, you have the talent! Go write!" or, “Here, have an apartment with rent and utilities paid, and have perfect silence and lack of distraction,” if we keep thinking that some holy, sainted professor or publisher is going to descend upon us and anoint us with the Magical Water of Supreme Destiny… well, then we’ll spend our whole lives waiting, and doing very little actual writing.

Here is where I make the case for selfishness. When you’re a writer, or an artist, or any person with a passion that is not directly lucrative, at a certain point you have to face down the mind-trolls and say, “Yes, there are dishes, and yes, my professor is glaring at me, and yes, ok, there are more traditionally productive things I could be doing right now, but you know what? I need to work in this right now.” In 100 years, nobody’s going to care whether you did your dishes. Nobody’s going to write on your tombstone “Gee, she was awfully productive and made no trouble.”

Don’t be the “aspiring” writer who never got anything quite started because conditions were never perfect.

Don’t wait for life to give you permission.

Don’t ask.

Instead, be the half-crazed madman getting by on three hours of sleep. Be the guy with callouses on his fingers and a word per minute rate that would make a court reporter blush. Be the girl scribbling on coffee filters and book margins and the walls. Be a force.

Or don’t, but don’t be surprised when magical wish-granting pixies fail to appear.