How to Auth
I once read Terry Pratchett’s description of his day as an author, which consisted mostly – if I recall aright – with moseying about the house, picking up the mail, getting lost in a good encyclopedia, breakfast, lunch and dinner – and then some frantic scribbling. Or, as Mark Twain once said: “I wanted to get a job where I didn’t have to do any work. So I became a journalist.”
There’s a certain truth to both these statements. I remember my own first experience of what “being an author” truly meant. I was in fourth grade, in a program for gifted students – which in this case meant that once a week we were pulled out and allowed to work on whatever we wanted. Since I had read all about dinosaurs the year before (and naturally there’s nothing else to explore once a third grader has torn her way through a small school library!), I decided that I would become a poet. One day, while others were working on statistic or physics problems around me, I sat at a desk with my chin on my fist, before me my new journal (inexplicably decorated with radishes on the cover – but it was a gift from my Very Proper Grandmother, so treasured nonetheless), and a not a thought in my head, our teacher came by, sat next to me, and asked me how I was doing.
Immediately, I jumped a little and attempted to begin writing anything to show that I deserved to stay in the program. She laughed and asked me if I had been daydreaming. Nervously, I admitted that I had. “That’s good, Emily!” she suddenly exclaimed. “That’s what poets do. You’re supposed to daydream.” And then as quickly as she’d come, she left.
I remember that as she left, I stared down at the blank page in front of me, and thought: “No.way. I’m supposed to daydream? This can be a job?”
Naturally, as I grew, I discovered that there’s a bit more to it than daydreaming – although certainly that’s always the first step! But like so many other positions in the arts, being an author means being somewhat bloody-minded. I’ve received rejections on post-it notes…the one-inch ones. I’ve written a lot that will stay forever under the bed. And I’ve novels which keep taunting me to come finish them. Mostly, though, to be an author I think one needs not only to write – early and often as they say – but to be confident (or foolish) enough to send out one’s work continuously until someone wants to join your daydream…and maybe comission more.
My most “recent” novel is actually a decade old manuscript that I wrote while imprisoned to a cubicle. (There’s nothing like officework to encourage literal escapes!) It’s been brushed off, plot holes paved over and new ones undoubtedly created, and I think it’s pretty swell. It involves castles, mountains, romance, adventure, abduction, mystery, Dopplegangers, the world’s most awful attempts at Italian and German, hidden passageways, possible vampires (what novel doesn’t these days?) – or just garden-variety demons, and more than its fair share of thunder and lightning. It’s also a comedy.
I do hope that you’ll pick up a copy of Nachtsturm Castle and enjoy the romp! I’d love to hear from you – questions, thoughts, daydreams, you name it! Welcome and I hope your day brings all the best!
~ Emily
