A writer’s credo
(Back in the mid-nineties, I taught a series of workshops for the late, lamented Writing Center in San Diego. On the back of the initial handout, I always included the following, which I labeled “Our Credo.”)
Writers write, and they write, and they go on writing, in some cases long after wisdom and even common sense have told them to quit. There are always plenty of reasons—good, compelling reasons, too—for quitting, or for not writing very much or very seriously. (Writing is trouble, make no mistake, for everyone involved, and who needs trouble?) But once in a great while lightning strikes, and occasionally it strikes early in the writer’s life. Sometimes it comes later, after years of work. And sometimes, most often, of course, it never happens at all. Strangely, it seems, it may hit people whose work you can’t abide, an event that, when it occurs, causes you to feel there’s no justice whatsoever in the world. (There isn’t, more often than not.) It may hit the man or woman who is or was your friend, the one who drank too much, or not at all, who went off with someone’s wife, or husband, or sister, after a party you attended together. The young writer who sat in the back of the class and never had anything to say about anything. The dunce, you thought. The writer who couldn’t, not in one’s wildest imaginings, make anyone’s top ten possibilities. It happens sometimes. The dark horse. It happens, lightning, or it doesn’t happen. (Naturally, it’s more fun when it does happen.) But it will never, never happen to those who don’t work hard at it and who don’t consider the act of writing as very nearly the most important thing in their lives, right up there next to breath, and food, and shelter, and love, and God.
—Raymond Carver (introduction, Best American Short Stories 1986)
Thank you for such a timely post. It’s really difficult to explain to family, friends, innocent bystanders, why I write, even after being rejected. I posted about it on my blog, but this affirms to me that I am not an oddity, I am a writer. It truly is like breathing. I must give birth to the characters being birthed in the deep womb of my gray matter and rear them and send them out into the world to entertain those searching for what they have to give. These characters are constantly being conceived even before I’ve given birth to previous ones. But I cannot stop writing, I was born this way.
Dimato Cooper
3 February 2009 at 12.07 pm
That was wonderful. And, I loved the presentation that all of you participated in. It was helpful and really encouraging.
Plus- I love that you blog AND twitter!
thanks again- you all were such great sports about the whole presentation- and then getting MOBBED by the participants!
vodkamom
3 February 2009 at 7.39 pm
Thanks, Vodkamom and Dimato!
mikalroy
4 February 2009 at 1.11 pm
As long as the writer keeps writing he has a chance of some success and writing may be a lot of trouble, but it’s the kind of necessary trouble to create something worthwhile and lasting. The lesson of Carver’s Credo is that the unpredictability of dark horses may make them front runners.
unisky
5 February 2009 at 8.37 pm
It’s hard to explain to friends and family who don’t write, that this is your priority. Especially when, for most of us, it’s not financially rewarding. But SCBWI can help us explore this passion of ours together and find other artist-like minds to express ourselves to. Thanks for that quote. Thank you SCBWI.
Carol Gordon Ekster
8 February 2009 at 9.05 pm
That is a damn fine point.
Rita Arens
24 February 2009 at 6.14 pm
I write therefore I am…did we already say this?
Sherri Otto McLeod
7 June 2009 at 7.05 pm