August 4, 2006
Haven't seen either of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies? Don't want me to tell you any thing about them? Go away. Otherwise...

Just a reminder. In the first Pirates movie, "The Curse of the Black Pearl," Captain Jack Sparrow, played by Johnnie Depp, has a compass he keeps checking. It is commented upon that the compass is broken. At one point Will, played by Orlando Bloom, comments that the compass doesn't point north and Mr. Gibbs replies that, "We not interested in heading north, now, are we?"

So where does it point? I assumed in the first movie it pointed to The Black Pearl, Sparrow's beloved ship, or perhaps to Isla de Muerta, the Isle of the Dead (the island which can only be found by people who have already been there, I believe is how it's described).

In the 2nd movie, "Dead Man's Chest," we discover that the compass actually points to whatever the holder's greatest heart's desire is. Which causes some problems for Sparrow, because it doesn't seem to be pointing anywhere. He gives it to Elizabeth at one point knowing it should point to Will, who she is trying to find, and it does, but when the compass starts spinning on her... well, go see the movie, okay?

Wouldn't that compass be terrific? Or would it? I suspect our ability to understand our own heart's desires are, well, suspect. Sometimes we THINK we know what we want, but maybe we really don't.

We as writers think we know what we want, right? Or do we?

I wanted to make a living as a writer and now I do, and in some ways that's enough, although, of course, enough is never really enough, is it? I want more money, or to make all my income from writing fiction, and...

A constantly receding horizon, isn't it? Human nature, I think.

I also think about the price of pursuing your heart's desire. I'm glad I'm making a living as a writer. Too bad I didn't get a journalism degree 20 years ago and do it. Or the technical writing degree I considered, but for some reason was so stupid didn't think there were jobs in it. Was the nearly 20 years I spent writing before going fulltime wasted? No. Of course not. But the route I took was sure circuitous and I can see how pursuit of one goal--fiction--prevented me from achieving another goal--making a living as a writer--even though I doubt anybody could have told me that. Maybe if I'd made the acquaintance of a professional freelance writer a dozen years earlier...

What's the price? I'm watching Joe Konrath hit 500 bookstores in a zigzagging book tour this summer. If I were given the Faustian option--if you do 500 bookstores in 4 weeks, you can make a living as a novelist--would I take it?

My bargain was simpler: give up TV, a social life, spare time. Like Ahab, pursue your white whale to your own possible destruction. Arrange your life around your writing, jump whenever the phone rang at work hoping it was an agent or editor calling, have your mind constantly on the writing and not necessarily on what you were doing...

I didn't let it destroy my marriage or harm my kids, but I was probably balanced on a cliff the whole time, whether I knew it or not. And people definitely do destroy their lives, their marriages, etc., in pursuit of writing dreams... or any obsessions, whether it's work or some art, or...

I've said it before in this blog: there's more to life than writing.

Yet...

I'm a writer. It's who I am and what I am, in many ways. Each page I write is an adventure, and my compass, at least from a career perspective, found its true north, although it's ultimate true north is with Leanne and my children.

Still... as Cap'n Jack says, "Bring me that horizon."

Best,
Mark Terry