The Passion of Writing

by Jeffrey S Savage


“. . . his head seems to bulge with the story; it is a little scary, the way it needs to get out. He feels that if it cannot escape by way of his racing hand that it will pop his eyes out in its urgency to escape and be concrete.”

“. . . after ten years of trying he has suddenly found the starter button on the vast dead bulldozer taking up so much space inside his head. It has started up. It is revving, revving. It is nothing pretty, this big machine. It was not made for taking pretty girls to proms. It is not a status symbol. It means business. It can knock things down. If he is not careful it will knock him down.”

From Stephen King’s “IT”

What do you think about when your write? The money you’ll make? The pressing deadline? How cool it would be to see your book in print? What you will do once you are: A published author? An author with multiple books out? An author with sales of over x? Your publisher’s top selling author? A nationally published author? A NYT bestseller?

Of course there is a time and place for those thoughts. If we didn’t have dreams and goals we would never write in the first place. Even if those dreams are just finishing what we start.

I tell people not to try and write what sells unless they want to sell what they write. I teach them to research the market, know the competition, learn what publishers, authors, and agents want, and all the stuff that helps you write a book which will sell. I also teach to have a marketing plan, create a web site, blog, promote, promote, and promote some more.

But those are the things that come before and after you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. The part Stephen King is describing above is the part that differentiates an adequate book from a pulse-racing, heart-wrenching novel you can’t put down even though it’s two in the morning and you have to get up at six.

I just finished reading a novel I won’t name here. The idea was great, the characters were cool, the setting was fun. But I didn’t care about it at all. Not only was I able to put it down any time I wanted. At times I felt I had to put it down, because it was so hard to get into the story. I kept wondering what the author was thinking about while he was writing it. Was he laughing at the funny parts? Crying at the sad parts? Did his stomach get all fluttery when he thought about people reading the exciting parts? Or was he thinking about how many copies he could sell?

If you’re going to be a painter, strive to create works people won’t be able to turn away from. If you sculpt, make your work so fascinating, so powerful, viewers will feel nearly compelled to reach out and ran their hands across the surface.

If you are a writer, don’t take the easy way out. If you create a character you care about so much she keeps you up at night, I will care about her too. If you taste the salt of her tears when she loses the most important thing in the world to her, I’ll taste it too.

If the obstacles between your protagonist and his goals are so impossible I can’t imagine how he will overcome them, I will keep turning pages even when my eyelids are dropping. If you give me ice-cold winds that whip my hair back from my brow, the musky-sweet scent of sagebrush after a rainstorm in the desert, and the butter and cinnamon taste of a fresh hot scone, I will lose myself in your world.

Of course there are times when the words seep slower than maple sap on a cold Massachusetts morning. There are times when you feel like everything you’ve written is worse than anything ever scribbled by the worst writer who ever placed a word on a sheet of paper. You’ll want to cheat. Just get onto the next chapter. Showing is too hard, so you’ll want to tell. You have a deadline to meet, so you’ll consider just putting in your word count, even though you know it’s not your best work. After all, the editor will take care of it.

Don’t do it.

Don’t cheat yourself and don’t cheat your readers.

Don’t be satisfied with a bloop single or a sacrifice bunt. Dig your cleats into the soft dirt at the plate. Pull your helmet down low and tight. Tighten your grip near the end of the handle where you’ll be able to take a full swing. Shut out the noise of the crowd. Stare out at the pitcher with a sneer on your lips. And when you see the seams of the fastball, swing for the bleachers with everything you have from your heels to the top of your head.

There are plenty of authors out there who are satisfied with good enough. They publish books that are forgotten almost as soon as they are read. But the authors that write with passion—the authors that feel like their stories will knock them down if they’re not careful—write books that live forever in their reader’s minds.