Paying Our Dues

I got into it yesterday with my son's Little League coach. Not the regular coach, who was out of town; this was the assistant coach. I noticed he was playing all the younger kids (including my son) in the outfield every inning. The head coach's practice has been to switch the kids from infield to outfield each inning, his reasoning being that not much happens in the outfield in a league for 9 and 10-year-olds and it's only fair that they all get a chance to make some plays and learn some skills.

Apparently, not all coaches agree.

When I asked the assistant coach about it, he became irate, telling me the kids needed to "pay their dues" before they got a chance to play in the infield. He also told me it was because of parents like me that he hates coaching.

Personally, I think it's because he hates children that he hates coaching.

Because the absurdity of his "pay their dues" statement is so patent, I can only think he intensely dislikes the kids he's supposed to be nurturing.

"Paying your dues" is an expression from the business world, the working world, the professional world--the ADULT world.  It has nothing to do with children. Most of the kids in a league for 9 and 10-year-olds will never play beyond Little League; in fact, many of them won't even graduate to the league for 11 and 12-year-olds. They'll lose interest, move on to other sports, or simply be unable to keep up with the competition at the older levels. I played in recreational leagues until I was fifteen, which was pretty good--but then, I was pretty good. I had some friends who played on the high school team. I knew no one who played professionally. The odds against that are so steep--tens of millions of Little Leaguers, only a few thousand players in the majors--it's not even worth thinking about.

Little League is--or should be--about having fun, developing fundamental skills, getting kids to love and respect the game, learning teamwork, and all those things. It should not be about preparing players for professional careers. If a kid whose playing career is likely to last no more than two or three years has to "pay his dues" before getting his shot, when is he ever going to get that shot? How, for that matter, is he ever going to develop the skills he'd need in order to get it?

I wish I'd been able to say all these things to my son's coach. The situation being what it was, I did little more than sputter incoherently when he dropped his "pay their dues" bombshell on me. But I do believe it's because of people like him that so many kids find youth sports a source of anxiety and an occasion for tears, rather than a source of joy and an occasion for achievement.

But okay, this blog isn't about youth sports. It's mostly about writing. So what does this have to do with that?

I do believe writers have to pay their dues. Professional writers, that is. Many of us labor in obscurity for years before we make it big; most of us never make it big at all. And if we do make it big, it's because we worked our butts off, honed our craft, developed our abilities as self-promoters, cultivated a fan base, and so on and so forth. You think John Green came out of nowhere? You think Suzanne Collins did? You think even J. K. Rowling did? Maybe she didn't do a ton of writing before she penned her breakthrough novel, but she did a ton of living, and that's just as good, probably even better.

Rowling paid her dues.

As writers, we all need to pay our dues. We shouldn't expect overnight success. We need to be tough and prepared for disappointment, even for failure. We need to recognize that not all of us will make it to the Show.

But that's us. We're adults. We're professionals. We shouldn't let our own difficulties shape how we treat our kids.

Let's pay our dues. But let's let our kids play the game.

Fourth Time's the Charm

I read a really interesting blog post yesterday about why it's so important to write multiple novels, even if the first two or three (or four, or five, or whatever) don't get published.

Personally, I couldn't agree more.  But my reasons for believing this are a bit different.

In my case, I wrote three novels before the one that sold, Survival Colony Nine.

Now, granted, the first was written when I was sixteen, the second when I was twenty-two, and the third, after an unbelievably long hiatus during which I pursued other writing projects, when I was forty-five.  If you're interested in the full story behind that, check out my post "The Things That Take a While."

But my point is this: sometimes, maybe most of the time, the first novel doesn't take.

When that happens, you're left with three options.

1. Keep working on that same novel, revising it, sending out queries, and (in all likelihood) getting rejections, until the day you die.

2. Decide that you're a pathetic hack because your first novel didn't get published, give up, and sell car insurance until the day you die.

3. Write another novel.  And another.  And another.  Until the day you... get published!

Look, there are no guarantees.  Novel #27 might not be any more publishable than Novel #1.  I've written two novels after Survival Colony Nine (one a sequel, one something entirely different), and I have no assurance that either or both will be published.

But that's not stopping me from beginning the next novel.

To me, in the end, it's less about "honing one's craft" than it is about being who I am.  The craft-honing is important, of course; it's quite likely that the reason Novel #4 is being published when Novels #1-#3 weren't is that my writing got better through practice and experience.

But if you think about writing only in terms of craft-honing, I think you're still missing the point, still focusing on the unknown future (publication) and not the moment (the act of writing, the fact of being a writer).  If you're really desperate to get published, anyone can do it through a variety of self- or vanity-publishing options, so that can't be the point either.

The point is that even if Survival Colony Nine hadn't sold, I would have kept writing.  Even if it ends up being the only novel of mine that sells, I'll keep writing.  Because that's what being a writer is all about.

Writing.

Until the day you die.

The Part-Time Full-Time Writer

I'm a full-time writer.  But I write part-time.

Huh?

Let me explain.

I've got a full-time job which, for the most part, pays the bills.  (My advance for my debut YA novel should come in handy when it arrives, but it's not going to keep me afloat forever.)  I seriously envy those writers whose fame and/or life circumstances and/or willpower and/or ability to give up creature comforts enable them to forego the "pay-the-bills" job.  Those people are awesome.

But they're not me.

When my daughter was a baby, I had a part-time job that enabled me to stay home with her two out of five weekdays.  I'm so glad I had that opportunity.  She's not a baby anymore, but we're still very close, and I'm convinced those early daddy days are what cemented our relationship.

Now, though, I teach full-time.  I have summers off and all that, but during the school year, I'm on campus most of the week.  And my circumstances don't enable me to change that--or at least, not without changing the living conditions of three additional people whose needs and desires I don't feel it's my right to ignore.

So I write part-time.  But I'm a full-time writer.

This means two things to me:

First, when I have the time to write, I write as if it's the only thing in my life.  I concentrate on the writing, logging as much solid, uninterrupted time at the keyboard as I possibly can.  I find music and television (not to mention Facebook, Twitter, and other social media) distracting when I write, so I resist the impulse to have noise in the background and multiple windows open on the computer.  When I'm writing, I write.

But more importantly, when I say I'm a full-time writer, I mean that writing is one of the things--though not the only thing--that defines me as a person, full-time.  It's the same, actually, as being a father: though I'm not with my kids every moment of the day (for which, I assure you, they're profoundly grateful), there's never a moment of any day that I don't think of myself as a dad.  Same with being a husband.  Like most married people, my wife and I are only together part-time, thanks to jobs and family and friends and so forth.  But I'm never not a husband.  It's who I am.

I'm also never not a fan of fantasy literature and film, never not a social activist and environmentalist, never not a teacher, never not a lover of language and bad jokes and frogs and gorillas.  I may never see another frog or gorilla in my life--though the former are pretty numerous at the pond near my home--but I've always loved them, and I love them every moment of my life to this day.

Writing can't be a full-time job for everyone.  But that doesn't mean you can't be a full-time writer.

A Writer's Life

A couple major summertime writing projects are underway, to wit:

1. I've started to query agents about my novel, so it'll be interesting to see whether it piques anyone's interest. To be truthful, I'm very conflicted about whether to seek an agent at all or simply send the manuscript out to publishers; I can see pros and cons to doing it either way. But for the moment I'm going to see what luck I have with agents; I figure any feedback I receive from them will give me some idea of how marketable the book may be.

2. I'm beginning to write a Young Adult fantasy/sci-fi novel (a trilogy, actually, but I think I'll write one novel at a time!). Way back when, I had a certain affinity for the Young Adult voice; not only did I like to read it, but I had some success writing it. Hard to say whether I've still got it. But I've recruited my twelve-year-old daughter to be my first reader; if she likes it, chances are it's pretty good. This is, obviously, a long-term project, but with one novel in the bag, I figured now is a good time to start something new.

I used to think of myself as a teacher who writes; I guess I felt the need to define myself according to the occupation by which I made a steady income. But I think that's wrong; most writers don't make a living from writing alone, but they think of themselves as writers nonetheless. So now, I think of myself as a writer who teaches. It might not seem like much, but it's made a world of difference for me.