The Writer's Life in the New Year: Getting Off to an Eager Beginning at this Wretched Profession

I think writing tends to deny you a full life. Writing is incompatible with everything. It’s incompatible with having children, with having a job. You can’t do anything. Paul Theroux

Genius did not need to be rootless, disenfranchised, or alienated. A writer could have a family, a job, and even live in a suburb. John Cheever

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These are some quotes from famous writers who ought to know what's what with the writer's life. Is it surprising they disagree?

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My take on things has always been that if you don't like what your doing in life, do something else. Looking back on it, I didn't manage to live up to that own credo and either, apparently, did Paul Theroux or most of the other successful writers I checked on. And they were the famous ones, the rich ones, the rare writers who succeeded at this wretched profession. Hard to imagine how the unsuccessful writers look at this.

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I suspect in the end, we all do pretty much what we want to do and we have no one to blame but ourselves if we're unhappy. The martyrs among us should get little sympathy. I mean, really. Put down the pen/laptop, get out of the house, and get a less miserable job.

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As for myself, I'm a writer who has had sub-famous, sub-rich success; my novels have been published and my short stories have won prizes, yet I remain in the dim and wild outback of the literary limelight. Do I hate it? Am I miserable? I write because I love sitting alone in my comfortable room stringing words together and then weaving them into prose that sounds lovely and fine to my ear.

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But maybe that's the problem with these folks--success itself. It puts terrible pressure on them because you're only as good as your last book. The successful writer lives in a pressure cooker, exists within range of the heavy guns of the critics, while unknowns like me have the freedom to explore and make mistakes. We have no constraints and so, of course, more freedom.

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In the end, of course, who am I kidding? I'd love to be a rich and famous scribbler. Let's hear it for the romance of being a profound and wise weaver of words trapped by his/her fame in the endless winter of my discontent.

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