Guest post by Joan Heartwell, author of 'Hamster Island'
I probably don’t take writing as
seriously as some people do. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about how good my
writing is. Since I write for a living (as well as for pleasure), working for
private and corporate clients, I have to be sure my writing is as good as I can
get it and that each assignment is completed by the deadline set for it. Rather, I mean that I don’t think of writing
as some incredible blessing bestowed only on the chosen few.
Tom Clancy died recently and the radio
station I listen to did a little piece about him. I have to admit I never read
any of his books, but I did see the film version of The Hunt for Red October and I do know that the initial manuscript
for the book was published by Annapolis’ Naval Institute Press, which had never
published a novel before, after all the major publishers turned it down. With a
little help from President Ronald Reagan, who hosted Clancy in the White House,
the book became a hit and thereafter Clancy was published by traditional
publishers. The radio station played a clip of an interview in which Clancy,
talking on the subject of writing, said, “You learn to write the same way you
learn to play golf. You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A
lot of people think something mystical
happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t
divinely inspired; it’s hard work.”
Clancy was an insurance agent before he
was a full-time writer. He wrote The Hunt
for Red October while he was still working at his nine-to-five. His rather
pedestrian attitude about writing belies the fact that he was a great
storyteller. He had the knack. He learned the craft. When all else failed and
he couldn’t get attention from the big boys in the industry, he had the
chutzpah to go to the naval academy and get them to publish his book. I don’t
know how he got on Reagan’s guest list, but I bet there’s an impressive story
behind that too.
The point is Clancy had talent,
discipline, balls, and luck. Whether we’ve read him or not, we all know his
name. If he had only had talent and discipline, we might not know who he was.
He didn’t want to be put on a pedestal because, as he knew, no muse had found
him on GoogleMaps and showed up to plant a kiss on his ear. No muse has been to
my house either, or at least not that I know of. I have some talent, a lot of
discipline, I’m working on chutzpah, and as for luck, I do everything I can to
attract it. I’ve had some small successes to date, and I hope to have more in
the future. And in the meantime, I keep on writing. Day after day. Without any
regrets.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joan Heartwell makes her living as a pen
for hire, writing, editing and ghostwriting for a variety of private and
corporate clients. She has had four novels published under another name and has
a fifth one due out later in 2014.
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