Writing Your Masterpiece: Make the Time
Most of the writers I know – at least if they’re honest – will confess to having a major project they would love to “find the time” to write. It might be a screenplay, stage drama, musical, novel or (in my case) a serious work of literary criticism. The intention is to write this masterpiece sometime before dying, yet the months and years keep zipping by with little or no progress on it.
It makes me wonder. I mean, if it’s so important, why isn’t anything being done about writing it?
In reality, the answer is obvious. It’s also logical, pragmatic…and sad.
Some writers don’t tackle the big project due to fear. They worry they might invest months of valuable time only to find out that it wasn’t such a great idea or, far worse, it was a great idea, but they didn’t have the talent to bring it off.
Other writers have the confidence that they could complete the project, but they wonder if in the long run it might fail to equate financially to the lesser projects they are now involved in.
Still others have such high regard for the project, they feel they would not do it justice unless they had months of undivided time to give to it. And, since such a breadth of open time has not presented itself, by necessity the project has to wait (until retirement? until the kids are out of college? until the family can live on one income?).
THE 25 YEAR PREGNANCY
I know all about this postponement game.
I’ve made my living for 30 years as a writer. I’ve always stayed busy. In fact, with more than 50 books and 3,000 articles and short stories to my credit, there’s probably more than one hack who’d gladly trade places with me. It’s been a good run so far.
But there’s another side to me. Not to be a snob about it, but I’m a doctor of English. A real one, not one of those honorary pseudo-scholars. I wrote a real dissertation, and currently I’m a real full professor at a real university. To the average person reading this publication that may not mean diddly-squat. That’s not the point. It means something to me. I earned it, I respect it, and ever since completing the Ph.D. I’ve carried a desire to contribute something to the world of literary criticism.
I left my salaried job in 1982 and turned to freelance writing full time. With a wife and two kids to support, I had to hustle. I did. I wrote columns, interviews, comedy sketches, devotions, reviews, mystery stories, romance novels, and songs. Nobody in my family missed any meals, I racked up a lot of bylines, and I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing.
However, along the way, I sustained a dream that one day I’d like to prepare a fully documented, completely annotated edition of Jack London’s classic novel Martin Eden.
That was the book that had long ago convinced me I wanted to spend my life as a writer, and it also led me to doing my doctoral dissertation on the life and writings of Jack London. The problem was, you didn’t just sit down and knock out something like that. So, I said, “Yeah, one day I’ll get to it. One day, for sure.”
I found that I enjoyed teaching aspects of that novel at writers’ conferences or when I was a guest professor at various colleges. I’d also occasionally re-read sections of it and made marginal notes to myself about scenes, characters, dialogue, foreshadowing, flashbacks, and historical elements. However, to annotate it exhaustively would take many months. And I felt I didn’t have that amount of time to devote to something that would not be financially rewarding, even if I could find a publisher. So, I carried that baby for a quarter of a century, dreaming of its birth but never taking it to the delivery room.
Then one day life stopped. I walked out of a building on March 1, 2004, stepped into a mud puddle during a rainstorm, slipped, fell, and cracked my left pelvic socket. Instantly, I was crippled. The physicians told me I’d be as good as new…in about five months. Meanwhile, I’d be bedridden for three weeks, in a wheelchair for two months, on crutches for another month, and then on a cane for several additional weeks.
Were they kidding? Man, I’d fought in Vietnam for 12 months and had never broken a bone or sustained a serious wound. And now—what?—a guy with six combat medals had been flattened by a mud puddle? The irony, the outrageousness, the incredibility of it all exceeded my ability to express my utter frustration. I actually screamed.
I WASN’T IRREPLACEABLE
It was the middle of the spring semester and by then I was a full time college professor. To my amazement, the dean actually found someone to come in and sub for me for the three weeks until I could get to campus in a wheelchair. I had an equal?
Just as humbling, my editors said they could use my “evergreen” columns on file to buy me a few months off and then they could use “guest columnists” on a rotation until I was well enough to write again. My loyal readers wouldn’t rise up in revolt?
Yikes. What does one do when one is laid flat on the back for 24/7 and is not needed by the world?
Well, for me, one option was, write a masterpiece.
All I could do was lie propped on a pillow, holding a book on my chest. Okay, I made that book Martin Eden. I flipped on a tape recorder and started dictating notes about each scene, each chapter, each character. I had my wife bring me my files. I propped them one at a time on my chest, and I dictated notes from them, too. As the tapes filled, I had them transcribed. I then propped the transcriptions on my chest, and I read into the tape recorder what editing changes were needed.
The crazy thing was, despite my constant pain from the cracked bone, I couldn’t remember being so happy in years. My life’s dream was finally becoming a reality.
Yeah, I walked again. And, yes, I finished the annotated edition of Martin Eden and had three university presses vie for publishing rights. It went through only one print run of 1,000 copies, and the majority of them wound up being purchased by libraries, but the book was 603 pages and beautiful and was hailed by literary journals as “the definitive scholarly analysis of Jack London’s autobiographical novel.” I knew then, I could die a contented soul (although I plan to put that off for a few decades). Even tonight, as I glance across my office to the shelves and see that book’s two-inch spine and my name and Jack’s there together, I nod and smile. Write on, Bro’.
NOW IT’S YOUR TURN
Is there a lesson in all this? Probably several.
First, writing a personal masterpiece is never really about the money. It’s about self-fulfillment. So, if you steal time away from other “filler” jobs in order to write your dream project and it never ends up making you a fortune (maybe never even gets published, heaven forbid), you’ll still know you had the moxie to create it. You’ll sleep with a smile on your face. You won’t spend the rest of your days wondering, “What if…?” All in all, that’s pretty valuable. (And, gees, who knows that it might not become a best-seller.)
Second, you might be surprised by what new career options your masterpiece might open for you. Shortly after my annotated edition of Martin Eden started getting reviewed in literary quarterlies, I was invited to lecture about Jack London at Oxford University. I accepted. My wife went along. She also went along when five other similar invitations came my way. Traveling around the world on someone else’s nickel can be fun.
Third, you’ll realize sooner or later that it all comes down to priorities. Yes, there is enough time to write your masterpiece. The world won’t grind to a halt if you go on sabbatical, or you step off three committees for a year, or you give up the bowling and golf leagues for two seasons. I pray that it won’t take a crippling accident to teach you that lesson!
And fourth, you need to realize now that when they go to write your obituary, they won’t be listing small stuff. Your gardening column in the Villeville Gazette and your cover story for that financial investment magazine won’t be blips on anyone’s radar screen. However, your one big project--oh, yeah, that will prove to the world that if was good you were born. You contributed. You left something substantial behind.
You left a masterpiece.
Keep Writing,
About The Author:
Dennis E. Hensley, Ph.D. is the author of eight books on professional writing, including
How to Write What You Love and Make a Living at It  ,
Writing for Profit,
Teach Yourself Grammar and Style in 24 Hours,
Write On Target, and
The Freelance Writer’s Handbook.
Visit him at Dennis E. Hensley
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