Words
by Jasmine Cresswell

Accused of lying to the American people by denying his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, President Clinton defended himself on national TV. He hadn't lied, he insisted. His answers had been strictly accurate. It all depended on what you meant by the word is.
Most Americans reacted to this presidential defense with incredulity. Many with laughter. Some with an intense desire to find themselves alone with Clinton on a dark night, with a strong rope, in the vicinity of a tall tree.

As for me .... Well, I felt a great deal of sympathy for the guy. I knew exactly where he was coming from. After more than twenty years as a professional writer, the most important thing I've learned is that words are tricky little devils that can only rarely be counted on to say precisely what you need them to say. If you've passed page one of chapter one of your first attempt at writing a novel, I'm sure you know what I mean. You've already realized that there's a thousand-foot valley between the story inside your head and the story you manage to pin down in words. And that gap is the trough of despair we all fall into during the course of a typical working day. 

After years of writing, this problem hasn't gotten better for me. On the contrary, the disconnect between the story-inside-my-head and the story-on-the-page seems to be getting bigger, not smaller. These days, I can stare at my computer for many agonizing moments debating the subtle distinctions in tone and meaning conveyed by the following two sentences.

A man came into the room.
The man came into the room.

A man or The man? Assuming I manage to wrestle my way through this difficult decision, I immediately encounter the next problem. Perhaps it would be better if the man entered the room instead of coming into it. Came in is more relaxed and colloquial. On the other hand, entered is one word instead of two and therefore stronger.

Now there's a word-choice dilemma that can keep my fingers paralyzed over the computer keyboard for at least ten minutes. After all, I'm an experienced writer, known in the business for producing manuscripts that require very little editing. It's important that I should get this sentence just right, otherwise my editor and publisher are going to conclude that I'm losing it. 

Of course, I know the horrible truth. There's no real possibility that I'm losing it, because I've never had it. However, I've managed to keep my lack of talent secret from the publishing world through almost sixty published novels, and I sure as heck don't want to get caught out now. Maybe I should just start this chapter over. Clearly I wouldn't be having this much of a problem with a simple sentence unless the book sucked. In fact, maybe I should start the whole book over again. How come I never noticed until now that the plot is boring and the characters are flat ...

And therein lies the second lesson that I've learned: nothing defeats a writer more swiftly and more effectively than his/her own psyche. We writers are strange creatures, archetypes of the dual personality. Part of us is so arrogant that we believe people will pay money to buy the products of our imagination. But another part of us is so agonizingly insecure that we are sick with anxiety every time we expose a page of our fiction to the inspection of others.

Which leads directly to my third lesson. Namely that the writing life imposes a set of almost universal patterns on the people who pursue it, and success -- as measured in terms of money and sales -- has little effect on the day-to-day experiences of the working writer. We suffer from the same fears and experience the same rare moments of blinding joy whether we are neophytes or veterans of the best-seller lists. Whatever stage we have reached in terms of perfecting our craft, we always see new hurdles to overcome. Experience gives us the courage to tackle new and more challenging story forms, but it never gives us a free ride to the next level. Even more disconcerting is the fact that once we start to explore a new and more difficult form of fiction, we usually can't turn back. Any attempt to stay safely within the boundaries where we've already been successful tends to produce stories that are technically competent but lack the magic spark that only seems to occur when a writer is actively engaged in the struggle to reach a new level of creative power.

Despite the universality of daily writing experience, am I really suggesting that there is no difference between the struggles of the new or unpublished writer and someone who has been earning a living as a published author for a number of years? No, of course not. The on-going struggle to perfect our craft may be the same, but the rewards are different. The unpublished writer enjoys the luxury of untrammeled creative freedom, something lost to those of us who have established an audience for our work. Reader expectations can be limiting. Reviewers' expectations can be painful. I live in dread of bad reviews. A cutting review can haunt me for days, and undermine my confidence for weeks. I recognize, however, that there is no review so painful as a rejection letter from an editor. The pain of my bad reviews is also alleviated somewhat by the healthy checks deposited in my bank, and the fact that each book I write sells a few more copies than the last. 

The final truth I've learned over the past two decades is that we writers must strive not to get caught up in the power of our own metaphors. We talk often in this business about climbing the ladder of success. We describe winning a contest as getting a foot on the first rung of the publishing ladder. We say that our first sale to a major publishing house establishes us firmly on our career ladder. As for me, after twenty-plus years, I'm still panting and clambering to reach the rung labeled USA TODAY Top Fifty Bestselling author. And when I'm there, what would I do next? Why, start panting and clambering to reach the Holy Grail status of New York Times Bestselling author, of course.

Like Jack's beanstalk, this publishing ladder reaches endlessly skyward, offering a climb to dizzying heights. Unlike Jack's beanstalk, the publishing success ladder never gets to a destination, not even a promised land guarded by a giant. There's always another rung to climb, another few feet to scale.

We need to change the metaphor. As I look back on my years as a published author, I realize the profound truth that the writing life is a journey, not a destination, much less a ladder to be scaled. Unless you are convinced that you want to spend your days alone with a computer, attempting to close that thousand-foot gap between the story in your head and the words on your screen, then I recommend a different choice of career. 

The man entered the room. 
A man stumbled into the room, his pants tangled around his ankles.

By George, I think I've got it!

Jasmine Cresswell spends her summers in Evergreen, attempting to get men and women into the room, and onto the pages of her books. Her next release is THE REFUGE, set in Colorado, and coming from Mira Books in October 2000.



 

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