A Writer’s Real Worth Is Inside

How did I become a writer? That can be answered in one line—the back of my seat to the seat of the chair. Why did I become a writer? That’s a little more complex. I became a writer because I was a writer, because wherever I looked there was a story I had to tell. Sometimes, I think it started in the womb, but that’s a bit too far back for me to remember. I began to tell stories by the time I was three, and I suppose it drove my poor mother crazy. Her recourse was to teach me to read, and by the time I was five, I was reading quite fluently.

I had two brothers and a sister. My sister was the oldest, and she informed me that my stories were lies. I responded that they were stories. It didn’t matter that things had not happened; the point was that they could have happened.

When I started school at age six, I encountered my first and most daunting difficulty: I was and am left-handed. My teacher, as with all teachers then, insisted that I write with my right hand, and since I was not at an age where protest by a six-year-old mattered, I attempted to do as she said. The result was my handwriting, which, at best, would be marked deplorable. To this day, almost eighty years later, I still write with my right hand—if I use my left, it does mirror writing—and reading back what I have written is very difficult.

I must say at this point that one day, many years later, I encountered Norman Corwin, who gave form and meaning to radio drama, sitting on a bench in Central Park, with a large pad on his lap and a pencil in his hand. He was writing.

“Norman,” I said, “you are doing what I always dreamed of.”

“Which is what?” he asked me.

“Sitting in the shade on a spring day and writing with a pencil on a yellow pad.”

Ah well, such were my dreams.

At that time, not when I met Corwin in the park, but when I was a six-year-old, engaged in the very difficult business of growing up, we were poor. My father, with six mouths to feed, when he was working and not laid off, brought home between thirty and forty dollars a week. Then my mother passed away when I was eight years old, and my sister took over. And then the Great Depression came. It was very difficult, and it is almost impossible today to comprehend what “poor” meant in the thirties.

At eleven, I got my first after-school job, delivering the Bronx Home News; and between then and the time I was married, in 1937, I always managed to find some kind of job: delivery boy, library page, road work, cement work, factory worker. Perhaps because of these jobs, I came to the conclusion that I had only one way out—I had to be a writer who was paid for his work.

I began the process at age twelve. I read magazines in the New York Public Library, and I wrote stories and sent them to various magazines. I wrote in pencil on notebook pages, but of course, even the most charitable of editors could not read them. I wrote about everything; all was grist for my mill, and at long last, I received a note from an editor: “Listen, kid, get a typewriter.”

I was fifteen by then and earning five dollars a week. Good money, considering the times, but never enough. We had too many hungry mouths. Nevertheless, the future called, and I went to the typewriter shop and asked what a used Underwood Upright cost.

“Twelve dollars, kid.”

Out of the question—way beyond my horizon. Twelve dollars—we could live on that for a week, and often enough we lived on less.

I knew about my handwriting. I knew that I would never sit in the park and write on a yellow pad—still a dream today.

“Do you rent them?” I asked.

“Fifty cents a month.”

I had exactly fifty-five cents in my pocket, and I plunged, signed all the papers, and lugged that big Underwood home. I couldn’t wait to sit down in front of it and try that beautiful, wonderful machine that translated my dreams into proper words that anyone could read; and here I must say something about the Underwood Upright. Not only was it the most wonderful endurable machine on earth, but like the Deacon’s One Horse Shay, it ran nearly forever. When I married in 1937, I bought a new Underwood out of our wedding money. In 1981, I retired it—because typewriter shops could no longer cannibalize parts. Meanwhile, I had turned out at least eighty books, at least one hundred short stories and newspaper columns beyond numbering.

But, to get back to my story. How did I find time for school, after-school jobs, and the Underwood? The answer is that I have no idea, but I did, and the stories poured out. For the next two years, I sold nothing, but I kept on writing, and then, at age seventeen, I sold my first story to Amazing Story Magazine, for thirty-seven dollars. By God, I was a writer!

No, it’s not as simple as that. I had to learn how to write, to punctuate, to understand the shape of a story. I had to learn an art—one of the most difficult arts known to man; and I had to learn it well enough to consider it a profession—and not have to haul bricks and cement to stay alive.

I came to understand that art and creation is not simply another profession, but a reason for being alive on this earth. I had to listen to people and learn all the subtleties of language, the cadence and rhythm that distinguishes one from another. This is a process I am still engaged with, and that will be for the rest of my life.

Today, I am eighty-five years old, and I still write. A day without writing, for me, is a day lost, tossed away.

So if I were asked the question, “What must I do to be a successful writer?” I would answer that you must want it more than you want anything else. Whether you write for a magazine or a newspaper or as a novelist or playwright.

Most writers do not make much money, and in this world where money is the measure of everything, or I should say almost anything, you must find another measure. There are writers who make millions, and there are other writers who earn a mere pittance, but that is no measure of worth. The real worth is inside of you and can only be measured by your understanding of the human condition. Learn to think clearly, understand your medium and understand people.

I might add one thing to this. Read the writers you admire most, unravel the net of words that they spin, and let them be your teachers. You can learn a great deal about the mechanism of writing in school, but the real picture lies in your understanding of the human heart. No school can teach you that. Only your own ears and eyes.

Howard Fast