On my (very) early Sunday morning bike ride before church, I
took a bike trail that winds along a marshland, behind a metropolitan bus
garage, light industrial park, and a large, three-star hotel (NOT motel).
The trail dropped down below grade to ride perfectly level
with the current surface of the water – this trail is often submerged in the
spring and any time after a summer rain.
Sunrise light was still a hundred meters overhead, gently
brushing the highest ledge of the hotel when I abruptly traveled back in time
to October of 2012. My son, one of the boldest risk-takers I know, had decided
that year to prepare for and become a deer hunter. Hardly a stunning past-time.
Thirteen percent of the population of Minnesota goes deer hunting and Minnesota
is first nationally in the sales of fishing licenses per capita. However, he
wanted to hunt with a BOW.
After weeks of practicing in his back yard, the season
opened and we set off with our pop-up tent trailer. We were headed to the southeastern
“foot” of the state and I’d rented us a spot at a campground not far from where
my son had targeted our hunt on publicly owned land.
After getting lost, we scouted out the hunting site after
work on Friday and prepared ourselves. We made weary camp, and after a meal and
a campfire, we hit the sack and turned the cell phones on to wake us long,
long, long before dawn.
The next morning, we set off for the hunt! What ensued was a
fascinating tramp through the woods that ended with a trip and fall into a
stream of REALLY cold water; a short afternoon nap as the temperatures soared
into the seventies and an Indian Summer settled comfortably over the decidedly-way-more-than-redneck campers
packed into the campground, listening to the blaringly broadcast Vikings game,
and a sundown tramp through the woods again. The next morning we did the same
(without the dip in the stream), and still came up empty handed.
Different story, apparently disconnected, but same intent –
biking to the library at six thirty in the morning on a Sunday doesn’t seem
like a wise thing to do, but my intent wasn’t to check out a book. The ride
gets more intense after the level meander alongside the edges of the swamp. It
climbs a walking ramp over the interstate highway. This involves some serious
pedaling, but after a summer of biking, it was completely in my power to do it
without having a heart attack.
Once to the top, I had to carefully coast down on a spiral ramp
so I wouldn’t go careening off into the creek, the interstate, or the lawn
below.
So what does all of this have to do with writing, science
fiction, or faith?
First of all, no matter how much I want to quit writing, I
have to keep practicing. Every writer has to keep their practice up to stay
sharp. When a writer stops writing – novels, articles, stories, OpEds, or
essays – only one thing is inevitable: they get rusty. They may not produce
work that is the same caliber as what they first produced. I’m not saying a writer
can’t change direction and remake themselves. That happens and will continue to
happen. But if you stop writing, you can’t help but get worse than when you
stopped!
Inversely, you can’t help but get BETTER the more you
practice – provided you continue to grow as a writer and learn. (See my other
article for an opinion on what might happen if you just keep writing without
learning: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-slice-of-pie-if-you-want-to-write.html)
No matter how difficult the ride seems, I have to keep riding, keep practicing.
Connected to that is the observation that what is past is
important and may have a bearing on the present. My bike ride brought back the
empty-handed hunting experience with my son to remind me that writing is a
LONG-TERM commitment and more often than not, I’m going to get my story back
with a rejection. Success will neither be swift nor regular. Maybe superstar
writers only produce books and stories that are instant best sellers or purchased
by editors without hesitation, but Kristine Kathryn Rusch said, “Failure is an
option. If the manuscript doesn’t work, I redraft—in other words, I throw out
everything I did and try again. Yes, that means I write sometimes two or three
times more material than the readers will see in print. And yes, that means I
sometimes toss out more material than I publish.”
Those are incredibly encouraging words for me! How about you?
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