Quit your day job!
Thursday, March 10, 2005 at 10:11PM Do most readers of my blog read the comments left by other readers? I don’t know the answer to that question and I don’t really expect to find one. But I do wonder just how deep readers dig into these little nooks and crannies of my blog.
If you don’t read the comments, you’re missing out. Some are quite thought provoking. Others are humorous. Many are amazingly thoughtful.
I know most of those who’ve left comments. Even those using silly pseudonyms I’ve easily identified because their fictitious names carry some meaning between the authors of those comments and me.
It means a lot to me that these readers take some time out of their days to not only read what I have to say but also to leave their own thoughts. In most cases I try to respond in kind, either with a public comment or personal email.
At the end of “Stepping into my shoes,” you’ll find this comment – Okay, perhaps I am a sappy toddler mommy myself, but the last paragraph got me choked up. Quit your day job!
The author of the above comment is Shahna, and I’m sure she didn’t expect me to bring her comment to the front page. But it was such a wonderful comment that I felt compelled to answer it not just for her, but for all of those out there who’ve supported me along the way in my writing endeavors.
I don’t think that I could not write. There’s something in me that drives me to do it. Words that I could never speak seem to come out of my fingers when I’m sitting at a keyboard. Why this is, I do not know. But the words are in me, just clawing to get out.
It was not easy for me to share these words with others. As anyone who really knows me knows, I am, by nature, acutely shy.
My short-lived career as a newspaper reporter helped me to gain some confidence in my writing abilities. But the kind of writing that you do for newspapers is not at all like writing a novel or a web journal. As a journalist you’re taught to step away from your subjective thoughts and beliefs and to remain as objective as you can be. Certainly this is not always possible but still it is a writing that is, generally speaking, lacking in personality. There are literally thousands of newspaper reporters out there but probably only a handful that have been able to achieve a true individuality. Mike Royko was one of those. There was a stamp on his writings that said, “This is Mike Royko.” He was in many ways the essence of Chicago and he was the journalist that I aspired to be but never could be. But then nobody could be like Mike. If you want to read a great tribute to Royko, click here.
I gave up journalism not only because I could not make a living wage from it, but also because I think, deep down inside, I knew that I wanted to try other forms of writing. I wanted the kind of writing freedom that you don’t get from journalism. What I wanted, I guess, was to see the real me.
That led to writing Lost in the Ivy and ultimately to this web journal. But writing for myself is a different world than writing for public consumption. If I was beginning to see the real me in my writings, would I be able to open up the doors to that person that have been shut all these years to others? For me, this was not an easy thing to do. But it was made easier by the support and encouragement that I’ve gotten from others. I note this in the first sentence of the Acknowledgements in my book – This book could not have been written if I didn’t believe in myself, and I couldn’t believe in myself if I didn’t have friends and family who believed in me. I truly meant those words when I wrote them, and even more so today.
Shahna and all of the others who’ve encouraged me along the way know that I have a day job. I do dream about leaving it some day, but it’s no more than a dream. In many ways, my writings are an escape from that day job.
In the mail last week I received my first payment as a novelist – a $1.00 advance due me under my publishing contract. This was more of a symbolic payment than anything else, but there will have to be a lot more of those dollars if I’m ever going to leave my day job.
Certainly it’s a pleasant thought – leaving that day job. And how cool is it that others out there are thinking that same thought on my behalf. It might not be enough to make a down payment on that gingerbread mansion in Key West, but it's enough to make my dreams of it all the more vivid.
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