I Could Be Wrong, But…

American writers complain a lot. Mostly they complain about how nobody gives them money.

Sit next to an American writer on a bus, train, plane, or at a cocktail party and chances are she will complain bitterly that the National Endowment for the Arts doesn’t shower writers with money.

While I agree that more American writers need to be showered, I think hot water and soap would do the trick, not money.

Sure, there is a direct relationship between writing and money--but it’s a limited one.

Desperately poor people don’t write much because all their energy goes into getting food, shelter and television for themselves and their loved ones. Rich people don’t write much either, because all their energy goes into getting better food, better shelter and buying television stations—and hey, face it, when you have all that money, sitting still and writing is the last thing you’re going to want to do, yes?

It’s folks who have just enough food and shelter and have had their fill of television who spend their limited hours of "free" time sitting still and writing.

Beyond buying the time to sit still—and maybe read something and maybe think awhile--money has nothing to do with writing.

Yet today’s American writers have this annoying attitude that someone—often a whole lot of someones—owe them something. It seems every time I’m reading an interview of or an article about an American writer they are quoted as saying something along the lines of "being a writer in America sucks—no one pays any attention to writers."

I could be wrong, but I suspect that what these writers are really saying is that being a writer in America sucks because not enough people are buying what they have written, reading what they have written, or offering to have sex with them after buying and reading what they have written. The profound joy of being a writer in America is wasted on these dopes.

Being a writer in America rocks-- because no one here pays any attention to writers!

I believe that the scariest part--and the most thrilling part---of being free--is being left alone to do what you most want.

On planet earth there are now and always have been places of shadow and dark. In places where there’s more shadow and dark than light—places like Cuba, Guatemala, China, Iran, North Korea, most of Africa and parts of Utah—people are not left alone to do what they most want. In places of shadow and dark writers are taken very seriously. They are read--and read closely--both by Them That Got, and Them That Want.

In places of shadow and dark, should a writer manage to become widely read, she runs a high risk of becoming permanently dead. This is because in places of shadow and dark--writers are the canaries in the mine. Writers--explorers by nature, and compulsive tellers of stories--are the first to sound the alerts of poisonous fumes or incipient explosions. Consequently, writers are among the first to die.

Sometimes, in places of shadow and dark, a writer manages to become extremely widely read--to gain an international readership that includes free people in brighter places--before she can be killed discretely. Such a writer then becomes disappeared. She is thrown into prison to die slowly while her readers get distracted by their pursuit of food and shelter and television. She endures the countless hours between conjugal visits from her torturers by desperately dreaming those same readers of such limited concentration spans are working with Amnesty International and PEN to shine a bright light into that prison and free her.

Overall, America is a bright place, a kind and gentle place. When an American writer manages to become well known, it is only rarely the result of many people actually having read what the writer has written. Our writers rise to national prominence because of how many (unread) books they sell, how many dollars they get for the screen rights to their books, or how many celebrities they have sex or fist fights with.

Sure, the occasional writer will get a letter bomb from Ted Kaczynski or be shot by an anti-abortion assassin. But these are freelance literary critics. Up until the Bush II administration’s Faith Based Re-distribution of Wealth and Cementing of Church and State into One Wall, they had no chance of being sponsored by the government.

People sometimes ask me, "Why do you write?"

I always show them a serious smile, look them straight in the eyes, and lie through my teeth. I tell them, "Beats the hell out of me."

Truth is, I know exactly why I write. I write because I have proven myself to be astonishingly incompetent at everything else that I have used my abundant freedom to try my hand at.

I have failed at being gainfully employed--for small, medium and large employers. I have failed at being gainfully self-employed. I have failed to spend less than I earn. I have failed at buying low and selling high.

I have failed at love, at marriage, at parenting, and at CPR training.

Sometimes I have succeeded in failing in ingenious combinations, as when I was eleven, and precociously failed to resist the temptations of alcohol, while simultaneously failing as an altar boy. (I was fired for drinking the blessed wine.)

I have failed at making music, and at making ends meet. I have failed at riding a bicycle across the continent. I have failed at getting educated and getting aboard. You name it, chances are good that I’ve failed at it.

But I’m okay with my resume of failure--because I’m a writer now.

It’s impossible to fail at writing. Sure, I can fail at being read, or making money from my writing—but who’s going to fire me? Who’s going to stop me?

In my mind and heart, that is the profound joy of being a writer in America: no one is trying to stop me, to keep me from writing.

And I’m always writing. Even when I’m not. If writing were illegal in America I would have been convicted and injected long ago.

Say I don’t get out of bed in the morning, and instead, grab a book from the pile of books on the floor near my bed, and start reading. I’m actually working. No. Really. I’m writing, sort of, because I’m reading, which gives me stuff to think about, which maybe I’ll be motivated to write about.

Or say I’m lingering over my third uber-sized cup of coffee in my neighborhood café, watching the people rushing to their jobs, and some busy-body has the effrontery to ask, "Hey, shouldn’t you be home writing?"

I just give them a withering look, arch an eyebrow menacingly, and say, "I’m thinking." They always leave me alone. And that is all I want.

Freedom is being left alone to do what you most want. An essential part of that freedom is being left alone to fail at doing what you most want.

American writers who are complaining about being unread, unloved and totally ignored need to get in touch with the long and honorable tradition of American writers exercising their freedom to fail. Whether they appreciate it or not, today’s kvetching American writers stand on the shoulders of giants—of heroic, sometimes spectacular, failures.

So many wonderful American writers have been abysmal failures at so many diverse pursuits of happiness before becoming writers that I feel honored to count myself in their company.

Mark Twain failed at publishing, manufacturing, and entrepreneuring. Thomas Payne (an honorary American, if anyone is) was a total screw-up in three countries and on two continents, yet became a powerful internationally influential writer who revolutionized the essay and created what we now call "the rant". Jack Kerouac really only became a writer when he failed at being Neal Cassady. David Sedaris became a fine writer by failing at being a maid in Manhattan. Ethan Hawke continues to fail at acting so he can be free to fail at writing.

Consider that, in a nation of shadow and dark, if you failed at being President, you’d get shot. But in America, Richard Nixon was left free to write ponderous books that a few Republicans bought but did not read. Consider that, in any self-respecting nation of shadow and dark, just failing to win a corrupt presidential election would get you shot. But in enlightened America, Al Gore was left alive, and free to write ponderous books that a few Democrats buy but don’t read.

That’s why I get so persnickety when I meet folks who complain that no one pays attention to writers in America.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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When you're in jail for the crime of reading, thinking and writing—does it matter that people you don't know are working to free you?

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