Thursday, October 11, 2007

A portrait of the artist as a young snot.

My math teacher Mr. Norman once told me: "I'm not the only teacher who doesn't like you! You should hear what they say about you in the teacher's lounge!" To which I said something snotty about the teachers living sad, meaningless lives if they were spending time talking about some kid. Despite my reputation for being a teacher's pet (I think it was the tortoise shell glasses), I was really not popular among the staff.

A few teachers did encourage me, though. One in particular was Mrs. Gwinn, my sixth and eighth grade English teacher. She said I could become a professional writer and that it would be--in her words--very easy. "You should read the garbage they put on bookshelves," she said to me in the hall one day. "You could get published like that!" She snapped her fingers and nodded knowingly. I accepted her word as gospel.

If I could go back in time, I would pop up into that hallway at that precise moment and tell my younger self that while, yes, there is garbage on those shelves, most of those writers still had to slave and sweat over their work. Most of them toil away in anonymity forever, or their one published book is relegated to the bargain bin before disappearing entirely. It's not "easy," and you have to be prepared to either work your butt off, or accept the possibility you might never be as rich and famous as Stephen King. Or both. You have to love it despite whatever material rewards you do or don't get.

Not that it would have made any difference. My younger self would have told me to shut up because she knows everything and doesn't need to learn anything, so there. And then I would have given my younger self the winning lottery numbers for ten years hence, so I could just buy my own publishing house.