Priorities (2)

When I say that I thought I was another Steinbeck, Hemingway, or Kerouac, it's not to say that I thought I was as good as them. It's to say that I thought what would work for them would work for me. If I just followed the Steinbeck plan for success... blah blah blah. Yeah. That's what won't work. That's what I was trying to get to in my last post. For so long I'd been simply floating, content to be passive and think that by soaking in life I could get what I wanted. The life around me was getting stale, though, and that's no kind of life.

So, if my last blog was too sappy, I apologize. Really. I don't want you to be the victim of excess sappiness, oh hypothetical reader.

But there is a larger point to be made. The point of priorities. I knew I was not a good writer. Or, I knew that I was better than some, but with obvious flaws, and these flaws would prevent me from doing something with any sort of talent I'd been given. When I started writing again, seriously, last year in the autumn, I was not as good as I am now. In another year, I will look back and say this fall was not such a good time. It will be a continual improvement.

Last January I decided to take a book that I had, about writing fiction, and read a chapter every week and do the exercises, and this would make me an awesome writer. Things happened. I got through to about week six (out of twelve) and then stopped. Don't worry. I quit most things. I get bored. And then hopeless. I was writing a lot at the time so I figured I didn't need it, anyway.

Then I wrote my first novel, and did a re-write, and then another, and then another, and thought it would go somewhere, and it didn't. Because, really, I'm no Steinbeck.

When a person who rents himself out as a proofreader/editor talked to me on Writer's Cafe, he told me that I was good, but not great. Maybe 85% better than anyone else on the site (which isn't saying much--the site is fun, but not great literature). 85% sounded fine, until I realized that it was a "B." And nobody gets published with a "Competent," "Satisfactory," or "Eh, Good, After a While," ranking. It has to be excellent. Now, this person was not a liar or a fraud. I've worked with him and I've enjoyed it and it has been helpful. I've taken the ranking, which was given off hand, and made it my challenge. Ten percent better. At 95%, publishers could do a hell of a lot worse.

So what do I do to get to 95%? I go to college. I avoid the bullshit as much as I can and take what valuable things I can get. As much as I hate the thought, degrees count. Nobody likes the fact that what other people think of them actually matters, but at the end of the day, it's true.

It's very true. And the college question will have to be left for another post.