write right Wright

Did you know that Orville Wright, the younger of the two Wright Brothers, lived quite a number of years longer than Wilbur?  I did not know this.  I know very little about those brothers, other than they were the first to fly, and now that Orville lived far longer than Wilbur.  Perhaps if they were novelists as well as inventors and pilots, well, anyways.  But I bring up Wilbur and Orville because of their tenacity, their doggedness, their self-belief.  They knew they could fly and darn-it, they figured out a way to do it!

Writing a novel is similar, perhaps just as difficult.  I have no idea if the Wright brothers would agree, maybe they would.  Neither graduated high school; Wilbur got his front teeth knocked out by a hockey stick, his recovery preventing him from attending Yale.  Instead he cared for his ailing mother, read a lot, then opened a bike repair and sales shop with Orville, who had dropped out in his junior year of high school.  Many writers go to college, get degrees, many don't.  If I was that age again, I have no idea if I would focus on literature; I wasn't an ideal college student, but I always wanted to be a writer.  I didn't want to work that hard on it when I was in my late teens and early twenties, but I did always want to write a book.

It took a long time for me to gain the discipline, a LONG time.  Being a mother does that, well, it did it to me.  But it wasn't just being a mum, or the homeschooling my family was involved in (although that certainly whetted my appetite, plus all the Shakespeare plays the kids and I read out loud); I can't say what really forced my hand, except for NaNoWriMo and Thea.  Thea told me about NaNo, and I started writing, and well, here I am.  But over time I found that writing, lots and lots of writing, is what works for me.  The Wright brothers spent ages sorting out plans for flying, they never gave up.  Writers are like Wilbur and Orville; no matter how much it hurts (maybe not as much as getting a hockey stick in the face), no matter how much it pains, we don't give up.  We keep writing.

That's the key; to keep writing.  I'm blessed by more ideas than I have sense, but it's not just fiction; blog posts, a few scattered record reviews, letters (I love to write letters!), emails, a smattering of book reviews; when we lived in Britain, I wrote loads of journal entries, still pop an occasional one in the indie publishing journal I keep.  The Wright brothers continued their attempts, and over a hundred years later, here they are, in this entry!  It's the nose to the grindstone sort of mentality, that never give up, never give in, never say never attitude, never say die.  Never say I can't write this novel, I can't finish this manuscript, because YOU CAN!  It just takes tenacity, guts, desire.  Lots of folks at the turn of the century wanted to be the first in the air, but Wilbur and Orville did it.  Why?  Because they never gave up.

And because Wilbur got socked in the teeth by a hockey stick.

Fate plays a role; I'm an indie writer because of a goiter, for goodness sake!  But not just due to Bob's former thyroid; because I wrote my socks off, then wrote some more.  No matter your goals, no matter how you choose to publish (or if), no matter what you write, it's that you do write, are writing, or are ready to go to sleep soon, then will write tomorrow.  That's probably what Wilbur and Orville told each other, that one of these days we are gonna get off the ground.  We're gonna get in that contraption, move this lever, fiddle with that one, and then lift off!  Sort of like adding another paragraph, or chapter, or the next novel in a series; but we all have to start somewhere.  One word after another, until suddenly you find yourself flying.

Believe me, it will happen.  I'm down to the last revision for the next novel in the publication queue, like those brothers, walking to the Flyer on an icy and breezy December day in 1903, the seventeenth.  On 17 December, Orville flew first, then Wilbur, another for each.  I'm not the first to publish a novel by any stretch of the imagination, but I am a novelist, they way they were pilots, many many to follow them, as many writers will follow me.  It just takes chutzpah, cajones, guts.  It takes words, one after another.  It takes desire, the will and need to tell a story.  Keep writing, don't stop writing.  And editing and plotting and revising and polishing and flying.  Writing is like flying, opening new worlds, landscapes, frontiers.  Just watch out for those hockey sticks.