For Your Sake and the Day's

I'm a little bleary this morning—I was making rather merry yesterday—but it's Christmas, and even for arid agnostics there's something to the holiday worth stopping and noting. The street is unusually empty of traffic; it's a Sabbath hush that we don't usually get around here, even on the Sabbath. No idea where people are—church, maybe, or opening presents, or sleeping late.

Like people who do holiday newsletters often say, it's been a busy year, lots of changes and tumult. I lost a good friend. Two others got very sick, but recovered. The sorrow for the one, as hard as it is, makes me all the more grateful for the others. No special wisdom there, just life, I suppose. Professionally I feel nervously optimistic—I remember the Obama higher-up who was asked how he felt on the eve of the election and replied, "Cautiously nauseous." That's about it, I think. But I've finally decided to see what might happen if I actually try to succeed on as a writer on my own terms. I don't mean making the world reward me for anything I feel like doing—you have to offer some sort of value. But I do mean trying to do things that only I could do, rather than trying to be the ultimate professional chameleon who specializes in being a generalist. I've said before that I heard Scott Turow on the radio once talking about the lawyers who figured they'd write books like him and get rich too. They'd ask him the classic wannabe question, "What's the first thing I should do, write the book, or get an agent and then write the book? The first thing you should do, he told them, is take twenty years and learn how to write.

That's about how long I've been at this myself. I've been experimenting with fiction for a few of the recent years. Trying to make money with fiction is a grisly business, but they say Michelangelo stole bodies to learn anatomy from, and look how he turned out. There's a Ray Bradbuy story in which a group of boys all want to be spacemen, but only one is chosen to go to the space academy. They all loved rockets, the story said, but the one just loved rockets more. I used to think rockets were pretty cool myself, but at a young age I started loving literature more. Not literature in the abstract, but certain books, and certain passages in those books, parts of them that seemed realer, almost, than anything I had actually experienced myself. You read Huck Finn's description of dawn on the river, and you look up from the book, the scene glowing in your mind, and you say to yourself, "Yes—that's just how it would be."

I wanted to be a musician once, a long time ago. But after a few years of working in Top 40 bands, I saw that I would never be good enough to succeed on my own terms. But today, thirty years later, I've gotten a little better. I'll sit down at a piano and play a tune, and people ask me to play something else. Writing comes more easily to me than music—in large part, I think, because with writing you can get up when you're stuck and pace around and think the problem out. That doesn't work well in piano playing. And also, I think, I'm one of the people who just love writing more. A modest man, I assure you, with much to be modest about. I'll never be Mark Twain. But this coming year is the one in which I'm going to find out if I can at least, at long last, be me. If I work hard and give my very best, can I make a living? I guess I'm about to find out!

I'd like to thank the people who stop by occasionally and read these jottings, especially the ones I've never met. I wonder what you're like, and hope things are good for you. I don't know if you celebrate Christmas where you are. I don't myself, technically, but I like the idea—hope, benevolence, charity, all that fun stuff. Good luck, and be happy. Happy holidays and season' greetings, for those who like to keep it ecumenical. And a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, OK? Peace out, man!