“What are you prepared to do?” Officer Malone (Sean Connery), in that beautiful brogue, asks Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner)  in The Untouchables. “Anything within the law,” responds Ness. “And then what are you prepared to do?” replies Malone.

This is the kind of conversation I imagine author Larry Brown having with an aspiring or struggling writer.

I struggle with that question everyday. I imagine a lot of writers do–published or not–even as they make their way to the desk, the chair, the legal pad, or keyboard from the kitchen, the nursery, the classroom, the factory, or the fire station. We all want to think we’ve been touched by the writer fairy’s wand. “Bing!” Now talent swells out of our imagination onto that pristine and intimidating page, ready for the literary critic to give it the big blue ribbon of approval, or better yet, the National Book Award!

Way back when I was in my mid-twenties, when I was first thinking I wanted to be a writer, a wise friend said, “If you want to be a writer, don’t you think you ought to write something?” Later, after I’d written something, I asked Lee Smith if she thought I had what it took. I didn’t want to waste my time if I didn’t have it. Also, I wanted her to say, “Darnell, you are so talented. Of course you do! You’ll be a famous fabulous writer!” What she said was, “I can’t answer that question for you, Darnell. Only you can answer it.” Thirty years later, I can’t tell you how many students, and other aspiring writers I’ve met, have asked that same question of me. Now, a much more mature woman and writer/teacher, my answer is, of course, the same as Lee’s. (Almost all my best lines are stolen from Lee Smith.)

In the Gary Hawkins documentary The Rough South of Larry Brown, Brown says of a writer’s ability, “You’re not born with it. Nobody’s born with it. It’s something you develop….I compare it to a brick layer who goes to study with a journeyman to learn to lay those courses….If you could have seen all the early stuff I wrote…the first hundred short stories I wrote…you would have to say that I had no talent.  You wouldn’t have any other choice. It was that bad….” But Brown goes on to say (and prove), “If you’re willing to hurt enough, you can have it.”

Hawkins then scans a long, hand-written record of Brown’s early submissions and rejections. At one point Brown begins to abbreviate a long title because he gets tired of writing it out so many times. This is not just a record of rejected effort; it is a record of how Brown learned his craft and forged his talent—pun intended.

In a 1992 interview with Dorie LaRue published in Chattahoochee Review, she asks Brown about the five unpublished novels he’s written, and if he would return to them later. Brown responded:

“Nah. They’re up in my attic, tucked away….Yeah, just learning experiences….Of course in your earlier years, you don’t have any objectivity about your work and you send everything off in hopes of getting it published.” (Watson 47-48).

Even if you do get published early in your career, you may be embarassed by those early publications later on.

Whether the work is sound or not, a writer has to embrace the three Rs: reading, revision, and rejection. It’s all part of it. Yeah, it’s paying your dues, but more importantly, that’s how you learn to be good, maybe even great.

Later, when Brown did have a mature understanding of his intentions as a writer, his story “Kubuku Rides (This Is It)” was described as “boringly monotonous” in a rejection letter from The New Yorker.  But Brown was steadfast in his vision of the story and continued to send that story out unchanged. It was later published by Greensboro Review and chosen by Margaret Atwood for inclusion in 1989 Best American Stories (Watson 44).

 One writing group I know of actually gives the “Bulldog Award” for the most rejections accrued. They say it encourages them to write more, risk more, and thereby learn more.

In those early years, you would have to say Brown was a dog with a bone, determined to do what it took. So, I ask you  again, without that beautiful brogue, unfortuantely: What then are you prepared to do?

 Works cited:

DePalma, Brian. Dir. The Untouchables. Paramount, 1987. Film.

Hawkins, Gary. Dir. The Rough South of Larry Brown. Downhome Entertainment and Blue Moon Film Productions, 2008. DVD.

Watson, Jay. , ed. Conversations with Larry Brown. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2007. Print.

Exercise: What journeymen are you apprenticing yourself to? How’s your list from last week’s exercise coming?  Keep adding a few names.

Exercise: Start a list of your submissions, rejections, and acceptances.

Exercise: Research a few new venues for your work. Go to a large library, a university library for example, and read through several issues of a literary journal such as Greensboro Review or Chattahoochee Review or The Pinch. Check out some good, peer-reviewed online journals, such as Blackbird,  Nantahala Review, and the new online journal of Appalachian writing, Still. Start building a list of places that feel right for your work based on your reading. For a good source of journal titles, look in the back of all the Best American Stories collections and Best New Stories from the South collections.  And while you’re at it, read some of the stories inside. You may find new folks to apprentice yourself to.

Strong suggestion: Subscribe to a few literary journals every year. If you want to publish your work there, then put your money where your hope is. These journals need subscriptions to stay in business!