The June 2002 Left Lane Article

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The Article of Truth

Writing is hard. It’s really, really hard. Sure, it seems easy to do. You just put words down on paper and you’re done. Unless, of course, you want it well done. Then you’re either a world-renowned skilled author, or you practice.

I am neither world-renowned nor skilled, and there lies my problem. I couldn’t even tell you if there lays my problem, as I sometimes forget the difference between lay and lie. What I’m trying to say is that writing is hard. It actually takes work to do it well.

Bad Writer’s Guide to an Article

I like reading authors whose style I enjoy. I even want to emulate some of them, like Douglas Adams, who wrote Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, for instance. (I’d also like to emulate Tom Clancy, with respect to the cash he’s earned for his Jack Ryan books, but that’s a different matter.)

When I read a Douglas Adams book, it’s as if he takes you around and around in a maze, where you’re wondering what wonderful, witty thing he has for you around the next bend. Sometimes you think he’s gone completely off the path, but if you stick with him, you always find yourself making it through to the otherside, delighted at the adventure.

In contrast, I seem to write myself into a maze where I lose myself, as well as my readers. Writing is really, really hard.

The reason I’m bringing Douglas Adams up is that I just read his last book, The Salmon of Doubt. (The sum of my entire works can’t even compare to that title.) I bought it while wandering around a book store in Vienna on vacation. (Iris and I always seem to be in some book store, whether on vacation or not.)

It’s not really his last book, per se, as he died in 2001, and this was just released this year (2002). Other than being another way for his publisher to make money, it is also a collection of various works from him, including the last novel he was working on, The Salmon of Doubt. This was supposed to be a Dirk Gently adventure, a character he created, but he thought that it fit more in the mold of Hitchhiker’s, his trilogy of four parts.

He never did finished this last novel. He started it some time ago, stopped for a while, and then picked it back up several years later. I think sometimes he found writing to be difficult, and yet I always found his work meticulously put together as if hardly any thought went into putting words down on paper.

It’s always saddening when someone so talented dies, specially one who inspires you. I’ll just finish this with one of my favorite quotes from him:

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

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