The Shadowland of Dreams
Many a young person tells me he wants to
be a writer. I always encourage such
people, but I also explain that there’s a big
difference between "being a writer" and
writing. In most cases these individuals
are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the
long hours alone at the typewriter.
"You’ve got to want to write," I say to
them, "not want to be a writer."
The reality is that writing is a lonely,
private and poor-paying affair. For every
writer kissed by fortune, there are
thousands more whose longing is never
requited. Even those who succeed often
know long periods of neglect and poverty.
I did.
When I left a 20-year career in the Coast
Guard to become a freelance writer, I had
no prospects at all. What I did have was a
friend with whom I’d grown up in
Henning, Tennessee. George found me my
home - a cleaned-out storage room in the
Greenwich Village apartment building
where he worked as superintendent. It
didn’t even matter that it was cold and had
no bathroom. Immediately I bought a used
manual typewriter and felt like a genuine
writer.
After a year or so, however, I still hadn’t
received a break and began to doubt
myself. It was so hard to sell a story that I
barely made enough to eat. But I knew I
wanted to write. I had dreamed about it for
years. I wasn’t going to be one of those
people who die wondering, "What if?" I
would keep putting my dream to the test -
even though it meant living with
uncertainty and fear of failure. This is the
Shadowland of hope, and anyone with a
dream must learn to live there.
Then one day I got a call that changed my
life. It wasn’t an agent or editor offering a
big contract. It was the opposite - a kind of
siren call tempting me to give up my
dream. On the phone was an old
acquaintance from the Coast Guard, now
stationed in San Francisco. He had once
lent me a few bucks and liked to egg me
about it. "When am I going to get the $15,
Alex?" he teased.
"Next time I make a sale."
"I have a better idea," he said. "We need a
new public- information assistant out here,
and we’re paying $6,000 a year. If you
want it, you can have it."
Six thousand a year! That was real money
in 1960. I could get a nice apartment, a
used car, pay off debts and maybe save a
little something. What’s more, I could
write on the side.
As the dollars were dancing in my head,
something cleared my senses. From deep
inside a bull-headed resolution welled up.
I had dreamed of being a writer - full time.
And that’s what I was going to be.
"Thanks, but no," I heard myself saying.
"I’m going to stick it out and write."
Afterward, as I paced around my little
room, I started to feel like a fool. Reaching
into my cupboard - an orange crate nailed
to the wall - I pulled out all that was there:
two cans of sardines. Plunging my hands in
my pockets, I came up with 18 cents. I took
the cans and coins and jammed them into a
crumpled paper bag. There Alex, I said to
myself. There’s everything you’ve made of
yourself so far. I’m not sure I ever felt so
low.
I wish I could say things started getting
better right away. But they didn’t. Thank
goodness I had George to help me over the
rough spots.
Through him I met other struggling artists,
like Joe Delaney, a veteran painter from
Knoxville, Tennessee. Often Joe lacked
food money, so he’d visit a neighborhood
butcher who would give him big bones
with morsels of meat, and a grocer who
would hand him some wilted vegetables.
That’s all Joe needed to make down-home
soup.
Another Village neighbor was a handsome
young singer who ran a struggling
restaurant. Rumor had it that if a customer
ordered steak, the singer would dash to a
supermarket across the street to buy one.
His name was Harry Belafonte.
People like Delaney and Belafonte became
role models for me. I learned that you had
to make sacrifices and live creatively to
keep working at your dreams. That’s what
living in the Shadowland is all about.
As I absorbed the lesson, I gradually began
to sell my articles. I was writing about
what many people were talking about then:
civil rights, black Americans and Africa.
Soon, like birds flying south, my thoughts
were drawn back to my childhood. In the
silence of my room, I heard the voices of
Grandma, Cousin Georgia, Aunt Plus, Aunt
Liz and Aunt Till as they told stories about
our family and slavery.
These were stories that black Americans
had tended to avoid before, and so I mostly
kept them to myself. But one day at lunch
with editors of Reader’s Digest, I told
these stories of my grandmother and aunts
and cousins. I said that I had a dream to
trace my family’s history to the first
African brought to these shores in chains. I
left that lunch with a contract that would
help support my research and writing for
nine years.
It was a long, slow climb out of the
shadows. Yet in 1970, 17 years after I left
the Coast Guard, Roots was published.
Instantly I had the kind of fame and success
that few writers ever experience. The
shadows had turned into dazzling
limelight.
For the first time I had money and open
doors everywhere. The phone rang all the
time with new friends and new deals. I
packed up and moved to Los Angeles,
where I could help in the making of the
Roots TV mini-series. It was a confusing,
exhilarating time, and in a sense, I was
blinded by the light of my success.
Then one day, while unpacking, I came
across a box filled with things I had owned
years before in the Village. Inside was a
brown paper bag.
I opened it, and there were two corroded
sardine cans, a nickel, a dime and three
pennies. Suddenly the past came flooding
in like a riptide. I could picture myself
once again huddled over the typewriter in
that cold, bleak, one-room apartment. And
I said to myself, The things in this bag are
part of my roots, too. I can’t ever forget
that.
I sent them out to be framed in Lucite. I
keep that clear plastic case where I can
see it every day. I can see it now above my
office desk in Knoxville, along with the
Pulitzer Prize, a portrait of nine Emmys
awarded to the TV production of Roots,
and the Spingarn medal - the NAACP’s
highest honor. I’d be hard pressed to say
which means the most to me. But only one
reminds me of the courage and persistence
it takes to stay the course in the
Shadowland.
It’s a lesson anyone with a dream should
learn.
By Alex Haley
from Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work
Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark
Victor Hansen, Maida Rogerson, Martin
Rutte
& Tim Clauss
