When I think of a hack, I think of a guy or gal who sits down at their computer every morning and bangs out two-thousand words of prose toward a novel that they have already sold in order to pay the bills, to deliver the goods, to plug the gap they tore long ago in the hole of literature and filled with their own face.



They've got all the discipline, and literature's got all the problems. How do we get these guys together, hacks and problems and literature?

Here's a pretty good essay by Stephen Donaldson (a fantasy bloke who many would consider a transcendent "hack") about the kind of single-minded drive it takes to break into fiction and why it is worth it:

"Cinderella vs. The Publishing Business"

Sure, some people get lucky. And some people are born talented. But what about people who simply have something to say and who have to create the tools to say it every day from the broken machine of yesterday's failures?

This guy Donaldson: thirteen years of constant effort. Thirteen years of constant rejection! How long have you been sitting down every day and fighting to matter to people?

Consider what he says at the end of the essay about why people read. It is entirely possible to build the connective tissue that is going to stick your pen in your reader's hearts by scritch-scratching at time. You build it with scars.

Comment!

Posted by miracle on Wed, 21 May 2008 03:58:49 -0400 -- permanent link