Getting by with a Little Help from My Friends

There's a lingering romantic notion of the tortured writer slaving away in a stifling little hotel room, cigarette smoke swirling about his head to the accompaniment of clacking typewriter keys. The image of the manic creative individual, single handedly driving his vision into reality on 20# bond.

Yeah, right. Vision, I bite my thumb at thee!

Reality check, people: a person who writes alone and isolated has stacked the deck against themselves from the word go. First off, a writer's view of their own words is skewed. This is obvious from trying to proof anything you write within 10 days or so of finishing. You won't catch as much as you should, trust me. Second off, publishing as an industry is a social hive: if you don't have an "in" or a "contact", you're not getting past the guards at the gates without a full frontal assault. It's doable, but you'll take casualties.

The point I'm making is this: the rugged individual has the toughest time making it in this business. If, however, you have a modicum of social ability and are willing to listen and learn, you will find that you gain friends, and from friends, entre'.

The thing is, of course, you can't go in with the goal of finding a "friend" to use to pry the gates open. Some folks don't get that, sadly. Instead, they'll try to find someone they can sweet talk and manipulate and gain the good graces of and then ruthlessly exploit that person to get some piece of tripe pushed through to an editor or agent. The end result being, of course, harm to the poor sod who got snookered by a con person.

Those people are out there, trust me. Damn my eyes, but I can see them when they pop up, which probably says horrible things about my own dark and dismal past.

What brings all this up? Well, recently a writer friend forwarded a snippet of one of my stories to a well known editor without my request. What I got was a note telling me to "Hold up on submitting to the mags" and simply telling me what had been done. Frankly, I was stunned beyond words.

And grateful. And Humbled.

When someone you respect, who has plenty of other things to do, believes in you and your work enough to become an advocate without request, it's both invigorating and frightening. I have author friends who have offered to be my advocate before, but I have hesitated to lean upon them because I felt such requests to be an intrusion, a liberty taken with a friendship. However, I relish their praise and support. Having someone successful praise your efforts is one of the greatest feelings of exploring your creativity.

At a point like this, you realize that there are two responsibilities in play. The first is to the people who believe in you and back you, often at personal risk to their own reputations. On the strength of a relationship and mutual respect, they take a risk for those they believe to be worthy. How can the recipient not feel a responsibility to put their best efforts forward and provide their mentors the best possible praise through their work?

The other responsibility falls to those who follow. When someone helps you climb over a wall, does it make sense to just jump off and run like hell when so many others are waiting to get over as well?

With the examples of those who have guided me so firmly in my mind, how could I not do the same when the time comes?

Art in various forms

There are two forms of art that I participate in. One is writing, of course. The other is model sailplanes.

I've flown R/C models since I was 16. I originally started with glow-powered models, but when I moved to Fort Wayne in the 1990's with my wife and kids, I stumbled across competition sailplane flying. I can still fly glow or electric, but my heart is in dancing on the wind with a glider.

Gliders allow me to touch a bit of what artist's must feel. By their very nature and the edicts of aerodynamics, gliders are inherently graceful in line and motion. The smoother and more curvey a model is, the better it will work (within bounds of a host of other factors, mind, such as airfoil). There are huge number of fiddly bits to be played with in search of that magic combination that will lead the pilot to "wood" (i.e. trophies) at the end of the day.

What brings this up? Well, yesterday I went over to my brother-in-law Will's place to do an assessment survey on the damaged and distressed models hiding in his garage. Will flies gliders like me, but there's a reason I call him "Moose". Will and finesse have yet to truly meet and they might not hit it off when they do.

Anyway, as we sorted through the pile of damaged bits and pieces that need to be fixed (i.e. that I would be fixing), it dawned on me that I wasn't looking at things just to get them fixed enough, I wanted to fix them right. To me, just getting the parts airworthy again wasn't enough. I wanted the planes to be in better shape after I was done than before they went in (which, admittedly, is a pretty modest goal considering the care Will usually give his gear).

Anyway, it brought to my mind the whole difference between art and craft. Craft is what anyone can learn given proper instruction and serious study. Art is something more. To me, the models are, in and of themselves, art and my repairs should add to that, smoothing and polishing and renewing. When I build a new model, I tend to great finickiness, from the time I start the design to the time I let the model go for its trip up the winch line.

When I write, I seek not to simply capture a story. Rather, I work to convey the feelings and emotions that I perceive the characters experiencing. Yes, it's a hubris for me to call my writing art, but even if no one else thinks that of my words my efforts in prose remain art to me, my own efforts to reach beyond craft to express something more.