I probably
could never have been a doctor, and if, somehow, I had made it into that
position, I most likely would have done a lousy job of it. Although I have a
rational, logical mind, it doesn’t wrap itself around the details of science
particularly well, and spending every day with complaining sick people is not
my idea of a good time.
If I’d gone
into that line of work, I would have been the doctor who threw it up at the age
of 40 and bought a vineyard.
On the
other hand, I most likely would have made a good lawyer had I pursued that
career. My logical mind applies itself to legal problems far more readily than
it does to medical problems, and the courtroom holds far more instinctive
appeal for me than the operating room.
Actually,
knowing how journalism turned out, there’s a part of me that wishes from time
to time that I had gone into law.
Oh No, You Can’t
One of the
most pernicious mantras of our time — one that will be spoken at many a
commencement ceremony over the next several weeks — is, “You can be anything
you want to be.” Horse hockey. Not one person in a hundred will ever acquire
the political skills or the desire to get elected dog catcher, never mind
President of the United States.
A more
accurate appraisal would be, “If you find a pursuit that your intellect,
temperament and talent suit you for; and if you work at that pursuit for a
considerable length of time, until you sharpen your skills to the point where
they become intuitive, you can, with a bit of luck, be successful in that endeavor.”
The trick
is knowing yourself somewhat realistically. Don’t we all remember kids in high
school who thought they were going to be professional ball players when they
could barely play catch? Or who wanted to be movie stars when they had no expressive
ability whatsoever?
So You Want to Write a Book
Amazon has
now made it possible for anyone who has written a book to put it out in front
of the world. This has allowed a few people who have written good books to
self-publish them. It has allowed far more people who have written terrible
books to embarrass themselves in front of a worldwide audience. I’ve published
two mystery novels this way myself and am not entirely sure which class I
belong in.
I do know
that writing a mystery isn’t easy. Almost anyone who succeeds at it will have
read hundreds of mysteries to absorb how it’s done; will have been developing
his or her writing skills over the years; and will have developed the writer’s
mentality that sees the world, always, as material to be mined for fiction.
Without the
mentality, and without the intuitive understanding of writing that comes from
having done it a lot, almost no one is going to come up with anything passable,
no matter how many creative writing classes they take. My old managing editor
Ward Bushee used to say, “You can’t teach judgment. A person either has it or
they don’t, and the best you can do is help develop it a bit in someone who
already has it.”
The same
could be said of writing.
