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ICBWB
My Slant on the Writing Life
Failing to Write
People sometimes ask me, “Why do you write?”
I always sigh, look them straight in the eyes, and lie through my teeth. I tell them, “Beats the hell out of me.”
Truth is, I know why I write. I write because I have proven myself to be astonishingly incompetent at everything else that I have used my abundant energy and freedom to try my hand at.
I have failed at being gainfully employed. I have failed at being gainfully self-employed. I have failed to spend less than I earn, to buy low and sell high. I have failed at love, at marriage, at parenting, and at CPR training. I have failed at getting my act together and taking it on the road, including failing at riding a bicycle across North America
Sometimes I have succeeded in failing in ingenious combinations, as when I was eleven-years-old and precociously failed to resist the temptations of alcohol—while simultaneously failing as an altar boy. (I was fired for drinking the blessed wine.)
You name it, and chances are good that I’ve failed at it. But I’m okay with my résumé of failure—because I’m a writer now. It’s impossible to fail at writing.
Sure, I can fail at making money from my writing, and fail to win friends and influence people with my writing—but who’s going to fire me? Being a writer is the ultimate work-at-home scheme: No bosses, and no customers! In my mind and heart, the profound joy of being a writer in America is this: no one is trying to keep me from writing.
Because no one cares about writers in America.
Isn’t that the very definition of freedom: Being left alone to do what you most want? Which, if you think about it (I strongly recommend you do no such thing), is scary. Because the essential part of that freedom is being left alone to fail at doing what you most want.
American writers who complain about being unread, unloved and unsold need to reconnect with the long and honorable tradition of American writers exercising their freedom to fail. So many wonderful American writers have been failures at so many diverse pursuits of happiness before becoming writers that I feel deeply honored to count myself in their company. I urge my kvetching brother and sister writers to first, shut up. And second, to acknowledge that they stand on the shoulders of heroic—often spectacular!—failures.
A very short list: Mark Twain failed at printing and publishing, at manufacturing and inventing. Thomas Payne (an honorary American, if anyone is) was a total screw-up in three countries and on two continents, yet he became a key player in two world revolutions by inventing the essay form we now call the rant. Jack Kerouac really became a writer when he failed at being Neal Cassady. David Sedaris became a writer by failing at being a maid in Manhattan and failing at being a Santa’s elf in Macy’s.
This is why, when I meet folks who complain that no one pays attention to writers in America, I tell them that I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It’s also why, when people ask me, “How do I become a writer?” I always sigh, look them straight in the eyes, and tell them the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
“First, spend all your years, and all your energy and all your freedom in failing at everything you can imagine."
They lean forward and ask, "Yeah? Then what?"
"Then write about it.”
Other ICBWB Slants on Writing by David Boyne