Write, If You Must.
Imagine you were living in the 1930’s, last century. The Depression. You wanted to start a business. You were a writer and all you could do to write and make a living was start a newspaper.
That is exactly what my dad and uncle did in 1936. They started a newspaper in a very small Canadian prairie town. They were in their early twenties.
Here is an excerpt from one of my dad’s journal entries from 1946 when he was, much later running a different newspaper, the Kamsack Times in Saskatchewan, Canada. Take note of the lines in bold:
Progress of The Times is very satisfactory, slowed only by my inability to do any more work than I do. The paper is decidedly popular, and our subscription list hovers around 600 now — not counting free copies and single copy sales.
Advertising appears to be averaging $100 or more to the issue, with one as high as $210 or so, and on at $230. Were I a salesman, and had I more time, the total would undoubtedly be greater.
This excerpt describes beautifully how tuned in to himself my dad must have been, knowing that if he could have done more work, the business would have been better. He admited he was not a salesman. He knew that.
He was a writer.
I think starting a business during the DEPRESSION (which is still runing today I might add), is enough of an accomplishment without having to pressure yourself beyond what you are capable of or even interested in doing.
That is a problem with us humans these days. We are all obsessed with making a contribution or producing more and more, which in itself is not bad. Forcing ourselves to work so hard at stuff we don’t really care about so that we burn out, is.
There are so many people who are working too hard to keep a certain level of accepted living standards, many in my own family. They put up with awful jobs, stress, abuse on the job, intimidation, just because the paycheck is good.
Let me tell you something about this. It doesn’t work for long. You will get sick. The more you do what you dislike, the faster you will get ill.
It happened to both my parents.
There is no sense in waiting to do what you want to do. If you want to write, write. My dad did only minimum writing about the things he loved because he was busy trying to live up to other people’s standards and needs.
Owning and running a newspaper business took all his energy and did not really allow enough time for what he would have rather done. Even so, he was still able to do a small amount of poetry and descriptive prose.
Near the end of his run as a newspaper owner/editor, he was losing money because he was helping a close friend to run another business in the same building. They were actually business partners. The other business was failing.
My dad could see this and in order to save what money he could from the business, he sold it and moved us to the big city where he took a job writing for the newspaper there.
This was probably the worst thing he could have done for himself and his creativity. Thinking back now, it wouldn’t have really mattered to me and my brother. We would have adapted to whatever came our way. I’m pretty sure of that.
This move eventually made him sick. It was the stress of not feeling that he was able to write the way he wanted and having his articles being chopped and changed to fit the newspaper. In the city he had no time for his own writing.
After years of being an editor, he couldn’t take being edited.
Don’t forget, editing is mostly a subjective thing, just like almost everything else in life. It doesn’t really matter.
But, you need to keep writing what YOU want at the same time. You can’t give up on that.
My dad did do some writing on his own after his forced retirement from being ill. He freelanced a bit, writing in depth history pieces for magazines and short personal columns for his old newspaper.
He was still using a old typewriter to do his writing.
He likely wouldn’t have been able to make the transition to using computers to write.
But he kept trying to write. He had to.
He was a writer.
