Deciding where to live

How much time would you put into decid­ing where you might go and live for two, maybe three years? I sus­pect you would agree it would take—should take—much thought, plan­ning, dis­cus­sion, as well as research. Time well spent. Now, put the ques­tion like this: How much time would you put into decid­ing what you might write for two, maybe three years? It is much the same question.

An old men­tor of mine—Edward Elis­cu—once told me, “The more you think about what you’re going to write, the less you’ll have to write.”

There are many fac­tors inher­ent in choos­ing what you intend to write. They can be commercial—what is pop­u­lar. It could be based on what worked before. It may be your spouse say­ing, “You real­ly should write that sto­ry.” It could be some­thing you heard, read, or saw—I once drove past an his­tor­i­cal mark­er on a road, and instant­ly decid­ed to base a sto­ry on what I read there (The Fight­ing Ground)—or it could be(and usu­al­ly is) a com­bi­na­tion of any and all of these things.

I do urge writ­ers to write what they like to read—because their crit­i­cal appa­ra­tus will be the sharper.

I urge writ­ers not to write in imi­ta­tion of some com­mer­cial suc­cess, or what you have been told is the next big thing. “Imi­ta­tion is the sin­cer­est form of flat­tery,” Oscar Wilde once said, but let me sug­gest that imi­ta­tion will also lead you to the flat­test prose.

Actu­al­ly, I think the most pow­er­ful rea­son for embark­ing on a major writ­ing project should be because you feel deeply that you want to write it. That said it is dif­fi­cult to sort that out, as it is always hard—often painful—to be hon­est with any of your own motivations.

More than any­thing else, I believe, your emo­tions dri­ve your writ­ing. Writ­ing well is always hard. With­out a pow­er­ful emo­tion­al com­mit­ment to what you are writ­ing, it will be vast­ly hard­er. And dull.