During his wonderfully well-polished and well-delivered seminar last weekend, Jeffery Deaver said that he’d heard it said that being a writer is like always having homework. How apt! During my first few months in my first real job after college, I reveled in the thought that the end of the workday meant the end of work for the day. How nice that was, after sixteen years of school in which I routinely procrastinated and subsequently constantly worried about homework…to finally relax. But then, growing quickly bored and annoyed with my job (a pattern that has come to define my “career”), I decided I had to make it as a writer. Ten years later, Jeffery Deaver’s statement reminds me that it has been a full ten years since I’ve been able to fully relax–to feel like my work is done for the day at the end of the day and that I’ve earned some time off. Instead, every moment not spent working on my writing is a vaguely troubling moment in which I regret my lack of progress. Then, when I do write, I’m always in a hurry to get as much done as possible since I’m already SO far behind. So, thanks Jeff, for reminding me of that.
I would also like to thank Mr. Deaver for helping me better define my work. I’ve struggled for some time to accurately identify what it is I write. Is it literary fiction? Is it mainstream? Experimental? Is it post-post-modern, neo-deconstructionist, disestablishmentarian seriocomic realist fantasy? No. Thanks to Mr. Deaver, I now know exactly what I write. I write ham toothpaste. Or rather (protests my inner vegetarian)–I write broccoli toothpaste. When friends in my writer’s group suggested that my work seemed to belong to a new genre, I’m not sure that’s the classification I would have preferred, but perhaps it fits.
Mr. Deaver’s point, and it was a good one, is that if you want to make it as a writer and lead a writer’s life, it’s best to think of your work as a commodity. Your job as a writer is to craft books that appeal to the largest possible audience and that consistently meet people’s expectations for enjoyable, page-turning stories. Having just finished reading “The Blue Nowhere” (staying up late to get to the end), I am very impressed by Mr. Deaver’s ability to do just that. I’m also impressed by the discipline the man seems to have in regards to his work. From what I could tell, he treats his profession very…umm…professionally. In fact, I’d almost guess that he’s the kind of guy who gets to the end of a well defined workday and feels he’s done with work for the day. Imagine that? In case you’re wondering, I’m not in any way trying to cast aspersions on Mr. Deaver’s commitment to his work, nor am I being the least bit sarcastic. With sincere admiration, I can see that Jeffery Deaver has found a way to succeed in an industry with a .0001 percent success rate. This is why I hate him.
Ha ha. I am kidding of course. In no way do I feel jealous of Mr. Deaver and his 24 books, many of them bestsellers. I don’t envy his trips around the world on book tours, his movie deals, his…Motha’-fu#$@ @@#$%#%!&*&(*!@##@$!…numerous writing awards. Indeed, I wish him continued success in all his endeavors and I very much (honestly) look forward to reading the next book of his that’s sitting on my night table.
While I don’t think I’ll ever write the literary equivalent of Crest or Colgate, I do think I can learn a great deal from Jeffery Deaver’s approach. One of his most significant pieces of advice was “Promise and don’t deliver.” I’m an impatient person. When I write a conflict, I often resolve a great deal of it as quickly as the story allows. I do this in part because I’m always in such a rush when I write since I always feel so far behind. Still, regardless of the reason, this lets me and (unfortunately) my readers, put my books down. But, I can fix that.
I can also fix my workflow. The trouble with feeling like I’m always behind schedule, always a week late on a homework assignment, is that I rarely feel I have the time to take the time to do things right. In school, one of the reasons I always did my homework at the last minute was that doings so forced me to do the minimum to get a good grade rather than letting myself get carried away with any particular assignment. But writing is not just some assignment. I want to get carried away. I need to. When the odds are a hundred thousand to one that you’ll be successful as an author, you not only need to be good, you’ve got to be brilliant. Jeffery Deaver was 40 when he began to write full time. I’ve still got time to “make it.” Perhaps instead of spending 8 minutes on a book outline followed by 8 years frantically trying to write said book, I can spend closer to Deaver’s 8 months. I can chip away and make gradual, but steady progress…while I keep my readers turning pages.
My books might not turn out to be pulse-pounding thrillers. They might be thought-provoking tragi-comic literary fiction instead, but if they’re compelling and well written…
When Jeffery Deaver polled the audience about what kind of toothpaste they used, most people used a major brand. But some of us, enough of us to be counted, used Tom’s.