The Mistakes That Make Us
We write to taste life twice.
— Anais Nin
Accidents, mistakes and gaffes move us forward.
In 1946, Raytheon engineer Perry Spencer tested a military grade magnetron in the lab after lunch, and realized that the chocolate snack in his pocket had melted while trying to improve the power level of the magnetron tubes used in radar sets. Spencer had accidentally invented the “radar range,” or as we like to call it, the microwave oven.
Like Spencer’s melted candy bar, some of the best writing can be accidental, the result of playing around or distraction, like an arrow completely missing the target (and the hay bale), soaring into the field behind the archery range.
Serendipity should be our default mode as writers. Just ask the three princes from the island of Serendip (Sri Lanka), who were also always stumbling, assbackwards, into memorable new adventures.
Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, was originally called Where the Wild Horses Are, but Sendak couldn’t draw horses, only things. So there you go.
Samuel Richardson owned a printing press. To test its capabilities, he wrote sample letters for an etiquette manual, including letters to help servant girls deal with lecherous employers. He eventually developed his pamphlet into something called Pamela, a bestseller that is now considered the first modern English novel.
Atlanta resident Margaret “Peggy” Mitchell twisted her ankle. She couldn’t leave the house. She asked her husband to go to the library to pick up more books for her. Exasperated at having to haul the heavy hardback books home, Mitchell’s husband joked, “for God’s sake, Peggy, can’t you write a book instead of reading them?” Her response to him: Gone With The Wind.
John Fowles had another novel in the works on the day he absentmindedly spotted the enigmatic woman in the dark cape staring out to sea from the quay in Dorset. His literary detour became the greater known French Lieutenant’s Woman. I don’t know what happened to the book he abandoned.
Attention-deficit disorder could be my competitive advantage as a writer.
A small San Francisco publisher asked me to write a series of six writing-about-writing blogs for their website, to boost the content level and increase search optimization.
If six eggs make a delicious and filling Denver omelet and six showgirls make for a memorable weekend, then six blogs is critical mass for something.
The word “book” flashed into my brain like a garish neon sign outside Caesar’s Palace. I heard the Universe give a hearty chuckle, and my muse gave me her usual “You’re such a dweeb” look.
So here we go, Damen und Herren, a book about writing, looking into the mirror and hoping some accidents happen.
My 2017-eclipse-inspired writing guide Myriad covered 48 writing topics, most of them standard fare: feature writing, travel writing, poetry fiction, self publishing.
This mirror book will be an illogical omnibus representing a plate of reheated leftovers (in a microwave), the deleted scenes from a feature movie and a gaggle of red-haired stepchildren.
Entrepreneurs talk about launching a new company as the dual act of both building an airplane and flying an airplane and how it’s hard to do both at once. This book pulls it off. I think.
This essay originally appeared in Schreibspiegel: Writing About Writing (2018)
