Sans Fig Leaf

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"The Secret of Success"

8 August, 2002

Shortly after Ray died, I received a phone call from someone I hadn't seen or talked to in over a year. He called, he said, to offer condolences. But very quickly he turned the conversation to an unresolved grudge he held against a mutual friend, involving a song that the caller had composed, and some things the mutual friend had said about it.

Soon he was explaining to me the tribulations of a person who has the burning desire to be a published songwriter, but lacks to proper education and tools to make the dream a reality. He was a reasonably successful business man in his fifties who owned his own home, was healthy, and didn't have a passel of children and grandchildren he was supporting. Yet he was whining like an angst-flled teen-ager about how unfair life had been to him. The angst went on for many minutes. I think the only reason I let him go on so long was because I had had a striking epiphany early in his rant, and from then on was only half-listening to him.

"A burning desire to be a published songwriter," he said. Not a burning desire to make music, nor a burning desire to write songs. No, he wanted to have been (past tense) published.

As he grumbled about all the disadvantages that stood between him and this goal -- he never got to go to college, he wasn't in band in school, et cetera -- I thought of Ray. Because of several deaths and serious illnesses in his family, Ray had had to leave school before finishing. He did go back for various certifications, but he worked full time from about the age of 15.

His spelling and punctuation were atrocious when I first met him. But he wrote. He had notebooks full of the stories he felt compelled to write down, but that he was usually afraid to show people. I eventually coaxed him into letting me read some. I asked him if he wanted me to comment on the spelling and punctuation. He said, "Please!"

So I showed him all the books I had on style, spelling, and grammar. I went over specific problem areas with him. We talked about it. He practiced. He read. He asked questions. He kept writing.

Eventually he sold his first story. He kept writing. He wrote a couple stories for the fanzine I publish, but most of his work was stuff he hoped to sell. And some of it did sell. In fact, more stories than I realized.

When his mother and I were going through his things after he died, we found a small package wrapped in Christmas paper and tagged from him to me. Inside was an autographed copy of a book--an anthology with three of his stories included. He had sold them the year before and received copies of the book (I eventually discovered) several months before he died. But he didn't tell me because he wanted it to be a surprise on Christmas morning.

It took a supreme effort not to laugh out loud at the caller who was complaining about how impossible it was for him to get his music published. Ray had had very similar obstacles, but he hadn't let them stop him.

I am convinced that the crucial difference is that Ray wrote (present tense). Being published was nice, but it was always secondary. He didn't want "to be" a writer. He just wrote.

I often meet aspiring authors at conventions and fannish events. They talk whistfully about how, someday, they want to become a writer. Or they babble on at great length about all these ideas they have for stories, but never get around to actually writing. And I remember that epiphany.

When I sit down to write something, I never know for certain how it will end. I just have this idea--it might be a thorny situation some character is in, it may be an argument two characters are having, or it might be a topic for an essay--but the words are bubbling up inside me, the pressure is building, and I have to write them down. Not because I want the "become a writer someday."

No, I'm writing it down because I want to know how it ends, and I won't know what the ending is until I reach it.

And that's the secret. Pass it on.