I wanna be a writer

I wanna be a writer when I grow up

Written by Dan McDonald, Panhandling Philosopher

 

I am sixty years old. I wanna be a writer when I grow up. That’s what I want to be when I graduate from work – when I retire – when I get to start my new career.

I know some young writers online who are frustrated because they aspire to be writers but they find that their writing seems stuck with a few readers, never quite playing to many new faces in the audience. I have no desire to discourage anyone. I can’t tell anyone when they should give up on their dream and when they should throw themselves into it. I can only share my own experience as one who would like to retire and be a writer. But more than I want to be a writer, I want to be a writer whose words connect to a reader’s heart, mind, and soul. But sometimes a writer cannot control that. That seems only to be a piece of magic that takes place between the moment when a writer writes his words and when a reader reads them and something in the exchange is living vibrantly in both the writer’s and reader’s soul. I cannot control the magic, but I think I can do some things to be a better writer. Maybe some of you who read my words can feel something in them might be for you. Maybe someone reading these words might help me find what I need to move my writing to the next level. This blog is written by a writer who has climbed the first leg of a mountain and is resting on a ledge wondering how to proceed upwards.

I have read many writers who say that if you want to be a good writer, you must first read a lot. I am sure that reading is one of the important ways to shape a writer’s writing style, and even a writer’s way of thinking. But I feel that there is a great difference between a good reader and a good writer. I don’t feel you can become a good writer only by reading good books. I’m not knocking reading good books. I am pretty sure that most writers have been shaped by the good books they have read and pondered. But a good writer is one who learns from what they live, observe, ponder, and then they go into their rooms and begin scribbling down prose or pounding words on a computer screen. They look for a way to pour out the blood of their souls through a piece of writing. I am sure that the best way to become a writer is to live, observe, ponder, and type.

There are times when I absolutely hate my job because I think it gets in the way of my writing. But for me, my job is one of the few places where I actually live life. It’s one of the places where I am something other than a dreamer. I am only halfway a Will Rogers sort of guy, who never met a man he couldn’t get to like. I am as often the guy who if he doesn’t find his space to which to retreat will likely blow up, get rude, and act the ass. Finding that out about myself is painful, but it is probably essential if what I want to be when I grow up is a writer. I only hope that I will know the time when it is right to leave my day job to pursue my day dream. My job grounds me. It helps me to connect to the rest of the world where I am as an old Tommy James song put it - “making a living the old hard way, taking and giving my day by day … draggin the line.”

My goal in this blog is to express some of my thoughts and conclusions about what I need to do if I am to be a writer when I grow up. I am writing part of this blog in a different font than normal because it seems when I think about what I need to learn to be a better writer I feel like a child printing in a child’s form of printing when a teacher asks them to write on a piece of paper what they want to be when they grow up, and what that hope means to them. Because when a writer writes of what he wants his writing to become he is like a child printing with a big pencil about what they want to do when they grow up. That little child lives in us whether we dream of how we will write if we are sixteen or sixty.

Today I am thinking of my last trip to New York City and making a pilgrimage to Tom’s Restaurant at 112^th and Broadway in upper Manhattan, not far from St. John’s Cathedral. Some people will make a pilgrimage there because the face of the restaurant was used often in the Seinfeld television series. But I think of Tom’s Restaurant as the place where Suzanne Vega ate breakfast on her way to working as a receptionist. She then wrote an acapella piece about the restaurant changing its name in the song to Tom’s Diner. When she first wrote it, it was only modestly successful, certainly not a memorable hit record. But a few years later, a couple of young British guys played with the song and added a dance track accompanying Suzanne Vega’s acapella singing of the song. She had the wisdom or at least the good nature to go with the flow and together they released the new dance version, which sold 3 million copies. She tells the story connected to how she originally sang the song Tom’s Diner.

            I hardly thought of Seinfeld when I made my way to this restaurant. It was crowded when I got there at the end of the morning breakfast run, but later in the morning later than breakfast and before the lunch run I captured some photographs outside and inside the restaurant where Suzanne Vega wrote her song that captured the quaint beat of human life in its varied scenes.

 

 

 

 

          For me Suzanne Vega’s Tom’s Diner is a metaphor for my pursuit of moving my writing to the next level. The song that Suzanne wrote and sang in its original form was fine. It was an expression of her life, her observation of life, and her interpretive story she conveyed in a simple song. It is a song that connected to some people. But this same song became a huge hit when the added dance track was added and people could hear a rich exchange between her quietly expressed thoughts and the emotions of the dance music moving in response to her reflective thoughts. It wasn’t necessary for Suzanne Vega to go with the jazzed up version. I don’t want to say that numbers of listeners determines the value of a song. But the song is a metaphor for me that perhaps there is so much more I can be doing with my writing. I enjoy both versions of Suzanne’s song enough that it was a sort of pilgrimage to go to the restaurant where she experienced the life she sang about in the song. But I look at my own writing and I see my blog and I know there is so much more I can do to spruce up my blog.

            I need to make better use of photography, learn to have a better blog appearance, work on my style, and especially my length of writing. I’ve reached a point where I realize that I need to go outside of myself to find ways to better present my material.

          I am the sort of guy who has no difficulty locking myself in a room and writing. I can spend hours doing that and it seems like minutes. But writing is about putting ourselves into the stream of life where our lives are all carried, where we swim, where our bodies are most exposed. I don’t much swim. But that is what I need to do if I am to write better. I have penciled in a time on my calendar to go to my first writer’s club meeting. Hopefully I will meet people I can talk to about writing styles, blog looks, use of photography and I will get the feel of people more unlike me than I have ever before met, and yet sharing this desire to write like no one I have actually before met. Maybe I will help others as I am helped. Maybe I will see a part of life that I have never before seen.

            I say this to everyone who dreams of writing. Keep at it until you find you are either a writer or the desire is no longer there. Writing is like breathing. If you are a writer you want to write. We don’t happen to award points or contracts for breathing styles, we just realize that if we are breathing we are living. That is the first thing about a writer. If you are a writer you will write like you were meant to write as you were meant to live, and if others like your writing, wow that would be so neat. But otherwise you simply want to write like a grandmother makes a quilt for a new grandchild. She wants it to be as beautiful as she can make it, and hopes someone who finds themselves in it will enjoy it and own it for their own. That is an amazing thing to do. Do what you can to perfect your writing, and reach out to others for new ideas, and above all feed your own soul with a wealth of living experiences. That is my plan moving ahead.