Don’t Try Writing Until 30…at Least
I riffled the pages in my hand and held the book close to my face. A soft breeze blew the scent of paper and ink into my nostrils. Outside a summer thunderstorm was brewing. The air was sticky. There was no reason I was drawn to this particular book. The cover was black. The title was hot pink. It looked like every other paperback on the shelves in 1990. I had heard of the author, but never read him. I was fourteen.
Several hours later, in the frozen recesses of my basement bedroom, I finished the book. It was the first time I had read a novel in a single sitting. The story was oaky, but the subject matter made my innards tingle. It was a feeling I wanted more of.
The next morning, I begged my mother to return to the bookstore. “Matt, I just bought you a book…”
“I finished it last night.” I showed her the fanned out pages and wrinkled spine. Not one to deny a sudden interest in anything but MTV, she took me back to the bookstore. I read another novel in a single sitting. My mind was a sparking inferno, my heart raced, I had an idea…
28 Years Later
I had moved in to the guest-room of our massive house after my wife of twenty years had confessed to an affair with a kid who was younger than our marriage. She told me it was a phase. It wasn’t. She told me that she still loved me, she didn’t.
So I moved a few of my most prized possessions in with me and put myself right back in that basement bedroom of my childhood. I barley fit in the twin bed. It was always frigid. It was lonely. I was empty. And I lay in bed at night, waiting for the world to end, just like my mother had taught me.
During the year I lived there, I cleaned out a lot of my life. In those boxes, so many things that seemed precious proved worthless; especially all the notebooks.
I had dozens. Most were half-full or less. I had always saved them, because I was a writer and someday those ideas would be necessary. I moved to a small one-bedroom townhouse the following September. I only brought one of them with me: the first one.
Back In My Bedroom
I couldn’t convince my mother to buy me a third novel in three days. I had to buy it myself, which meant that I would have to mow the lawn. It was a fair trade, but that would require waiting. The thunderstorms from the previous day had turned our suburban New Jersey yard into a suburban swamp.
At the grocery store, I convinced my mother to buy me a notebook. It was black and spiral-bound and I’m sure that she was convinced I had been possessed when I asked for it. That was her prerogative. I knew that I had something in me itching to get out — demon or otherwise — it was coming out via Bic Round Stick ballpoint pen.
I scratched away for hours, crafting the best story I could imagine. Then I worked on it for several days. I filled half the notebook. By then the ground had dried and I mowed enough to afford another novel. I savored this one a little longer, hoping to make it last until the grass grew again. To distract myself from reading, I would write.
Living Alone
I sat in my townhome that first night and cried. No, scratch that, I sobbed. My marriage was over. My kids were living with her. I was living alone, for the first time in my life. I have never felt lower.
I looked at the stack of boxes and decided to unpack one; hoping that it would ease or mask my pain. In it, I found that notebook. I read the story. It was atrocious. It was contrived. It was so utterly fake that I laughed at it’s shityness. I had no business writing it when I did.
I Had the Greatest English Teacher
Ms. Ruth is the most patient woman I have ever known. In High School, she worked with me no matter how much guff I gave her.
“Why do you think the author chose a raven instead of an owl?” She would ask.
“Probably because that’s the last bird he saw.” I was incredulous. In my mind, authors weren’t choosing trivial things like birds or the color of objects, they were just telling stories. I could tell stories. Hell, my drunk cousin could tell them better than anyone I knew and he couldn’t even find a shirt that matched his bluejeans.
Every time I was assigned a new book, I would whine, “Why can’t we read something good?” Then one day she handed me Ernest Hemingway. _The Old Man and the Sea_was short. It had a cool cover. I could knock it out in an hour or two.
That night, I read it twice. I got to the last page and started over! How did he do that! How did this man take a story about some old codger fishing and captivate a full-of-piss-and-vinegar seventeen-year-old brat and make me FEEL something? I read it twice because it pissed me off. How could someone take such a simple story and draw me into it. I wanted to know.
The next day in class, Ms. Ruth knew something had snapped. When we started discussing the book, the class waited for my snide commentary. It didn’t come. I was lost for words.
Why You Shouldn’t Try to Write Until You’re Older
“In Order to write about life first you must live it.” -Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea moves people because it was written by someone who was hurt. Who knew pain. Who felt regret. Who knew what it meant to quit. And what it meant to look hunger in the face. That story was not written by some snot-nosed brat who called themselves a writer. It was written by someone who got the shit kicked out of him in more ways than were worth counting.
Other great works are the same. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Poe, King, and all the greats lived enough first to write next. “Where is Dickens?” I can hear someone saying. Dickens was a hack! Sure he worked in a factory and his dad went to debtors’ prison, but the guy never did anything but write in a pub. Screw Dickens. Sorry Ms. Ruth.
The pain of life is a prerequisite for worthwhile art. If you’ve never bled on the street or wept in a heap over your dead friend…if you’ve never looked at your bank account and had to decide between dinner or hot water…if you haven’t been stranded in a strange city with no gas, or bus money, you don’t understand life enough to write about it.
The Character Are Always Us
When I look at those first pages of my writing, I’m horrified. They are terrible, trite, and predictable. They are everything that life is not. The characters are stale and lifeless. They are everything that people are not.
I was 14 then. I hadn’t lived. I had no scars. I knew no pain or regret. I was everything that I am not. The character are always us. There is no other way to know them. And you have no business writing about a character you don’t know.
