There are many things I don’t like about being a writer. For example: I don’t like how the act of writing — the sitting & the hunching — has caused my left shoulder to take up residence two or three inches above the right. Lately when I see myself in the mirror all I can think is, “Lovely dress, Igor.”

I don’t like the shifty desperation I feel when people ask, “What’s the novel about?” I have decided there is only one satisfactory answer to this hideous question, which you should feel free to use yourself: “It’s about this guy who is graduating from law school. He’s offered a job at a firm in Tennessee. The money’s fantastic and the perks are unbelievable. Everything’s going great for him, right? But then he finds out that the firm is evil … ”

I don’t like how when I do tell people what the novel’s about — “So there’s this scientist and he goes to an island run by a crazy billionaire. The island is inhabited by dangerous prehistoric creatures such as the Powerful-Toothed Giant Rat-kangaroo …” — they look confused and weirded out.

I don’t like how something that seems hilarious in the morning can have gone hollow and dead by afternoon. I don’t like that at this stage in my writing I can detect something is wrong with a passage while lacking the technical skills to make it quick and smooth and right. I don’t like the insecurity, the envy, the self-loathing. I don’t like the sense that everyone around me is putting up beautiful sculptures and the best I can manage is a dog-faced ashtray.

And yet it’s still good, isn’t it? I mean, writing. There are times when it flies. Times where all the words start winging into place. I remember once in third grade running out to recess — we always ran out to recess then, ran along the bike racks and through the teachers’ parking lot to get to the playground. It was 1978 or so, and we lived in a mill town in Wisconsin and all of us kids were pretty scruffy, me included. And so I was running in the herd and happy, and all of a sudden my stride opened up, just opened, and my legs felt like threshers, like combines, I was eating up the ground so fast, and this guy Travis, who was already kind of tough for a third-grader but nice, was running along beside me and we were both whooping “Hey Jude” as loud as we could. Really belting it. I don’t know why that song, except we both liked it. It was an inexplicable moment of complete happiness, an island of hallelujah-joy in the midst of being a little kid, and that’s how it feels for me when my writing goes well: Like everything’s opened up and I just have to run through it.

I write this to help me remember it. Because for the past year I’ve suffered more doubt and insecurity than ever before about my writing. Enough unhappiness that it’s seemed worthwhile to ask myself, “Why not just stop?” Why have what amounts to basically a glorified hobby (no one pays me to write fiction) that makes you so miserable? And guilty. And hunch-backed. Why not just be happy with the good husband and the satisfactory job in plumbing supplies, and with friends and family and trying to be a good person in the world? Why not just read the books other people write? Why not choose to be content?

It occurs to me that there are two kinds of misery you can encounter as a writer: The misery of apprenticeship — basically, the frustrations and humiliations involved in learning how to do your craft well — and the misery of why bother with it at all.

It’s the latter misery which has been on my mind. There are already so many good books — old and new — so many very talented people, so much chance of rejection, why press forward?

I can’t speak for him but I felt a sympathetic pang for Mark at The Elegant Varation when he was providing his stupendous coverage of the BEA conference. The pang was elicited by Mark’s visit to the BEA floor:

The biggest impression I left with is there are a lot of goddamn books out there. Brilliant, trenchant thoughts, I know. But as a writer myself with a book on tap, it brings home ever so clearly the struggle even the bigger houses have with getting titles noticed, being heard above the noise. Row and row I met articulate, passionate publicists eager to make the world aware of the worthy titles they’ve thrown themselves behind. I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that working in the book business is a truly terrifying way to make a living.

The next day Mark showed a picture of the BEA floor — it was a sea of books, gridded and organized but a sea nonetheless. And I thought how utterly overwhelming to stand there as a writer in the middle of that sea. How not to feel like your book wouldn’t get swallowed up?

Another disheartening bit recently appeared over at The Reading Experience, courtesy of Dan Green (who happily titled his post “Give It Up”). Dan excerpted a section of an excellent essay written by Daniel Stolar about the experience of having his first book of fiction published. In it Stolar describes visiting his local bookstore, which he had great faith would be a huge supporter of his book:

[T]here was no “The Middle of the Night” on the front tables. None in the New Fiction section or Great Summer Reads. The Local Interest section was all tourist books, photos of St. Louis doors, five different books about the Arch. I made my way to the unceremonious shelves of alphabetized fiction and literature, still, I reminded myself, home to writers I’d worshipped for years. But between Stoker and Stone, there was, predictably at this point, nothing. . .

I called the store’s main number on my cell phone. I asked for the same manager by name. She picked up on the first ring.

“Oh, hi, I thought I was calling your voice-mail,” I lied. “This is Daniel Stolar; my book just came out from Picador.”

Oh yeah, sorry, she said. She’d been in a “conference, computer, tech thing.” She asked if my book was about the Arch.

“Well, no. I mean – it’s got the Arch on the cover – it’s actually fiction, mostly set in St. Louis. I wrote you a couple of letters – remember, my parents were in local politics? I wondered if I could introduce myself.”

She said she was very busy.

“I’m right around the corner . . .” I was huddled in her magazine section. “There’s a picture of me on the front page of today’s Everyday section.”

At that point, she said, as I remember: “The truth is, I don’t even have time to think about anything else until July, after I’m finished planning for Harry Potter.”

“Huh?” I said.

“The midnight release party – we’re dividing the whole store into the four houses of Hogwarts for a trivia contest. And we’ll be serving Polyjuice Potion and Bertie Botts to everybody in line. . . .”

So why bother?

I don’t know. On the one hand, you can look up at the sky at night and the sheer amount of stars and the vastness of the universe can make you feel puny and insignificant. On the other, you can look up and feel connected to something great and mind-blowing and wonderfully complex. I have felt both ways — sometimes I feel both ways within a matter of seconds, very rapid cycling. Strangely, right now, this week, I’m feeling pretty good, and I thought I would share the love around by focusing on writers who have fallen out of fashion and then found their way back to print. This is Tingle Alley being hopeful.