Dri­ving cars and writ­ing. Total­ly dif­fer­ent things, right? Stephen King might be able to com­pare the process of char­ac­ter-based writ­ing to dri­ving in the fog, but there’s no way dri­ving could be a ridicu­lous­ly awe­some extend­ed metaphor for writ­ing… is there?

Well, buck­le up. Because yes, there is.

1- You learn them in the same basic pro­gres­sion

When you start out dri­ving, you con­stant­ly have to check every­thing you do like six times. You run the check­list when you sit down of check­ing rear view mir­rors, chair and every­thing else. You keep your hands exact­ly at 2 and 10 every moment. You actu­al­ly have to think about mak­ing turn­ing smooth. You check your rear view mir­ror every ten sec­onds even on a lone­ly high­way at night. (And not just because you saw The Hitch­er on USA’s Up All Night, last week when you were 14.) Every­thing is a con­scious and awk­ward act of will. You think real­ly hard about how how hard to push down on your right foot to accel­er­ate “smooth­ly.” You stop too fast because you push on the brake ped­al too hard. If you’re using a stan­dard, you prob­a­bly rev too hard when you’re try­ing to let out the clutch on a hill. You actu­al­ly count out three sec­onds to the car in front of you.

You basi­cal­ly suck. With a tremen­dous amount of effort and will, you can suck LESS, but face it. You suck. You’re think­ing about how to dri­ve. And in that split sec­ond between think­ing and doing things get clunky and jerky.

I’m a geek, so I think of this as “the video game fac­tor.” When I first start play­ing a game, I have to fig­ure out a new set of con­trols. I might run into a room filled with bad guys, and in the split sec­ond I’m look­ing for the “Duck” but­ton, they all open up with sub­ma­chine guns on my brain pan, result­ing in me watch­ing myself die in glo­ri­ous mul­ti­cam True Col­or right about when I real­ize that “Q” is the duck but­ton. But after a few hours of play­ing the game, the con­trols are sec­ond nature. I don’t even think about which but­tons I’m push­ing any­more. I just run in, lay some sup­pres­sive fire, toss a grenade and start tak­ing head shots with­out once look­ing at the key­board.

Now… dri­ving is hard­er (and writ­ing might even be hard­er than that)—driving involves legs and arms and heads instead of just a few fin­gers, and the stakes for fuck­ing up are high­er than hav­ing to go back to the last save point, but it’s the same basic idea with a longer learn­ing curve.

Pret­ty soon, you don’t think about how to dri­ve. The car becomes an exten­sion of you. (You are Worf-and-his-Batleth doing Batleth Tai Chi.) You stop think­ing about how to do some­thing, and just think about what you want the car to do. There’s no buffer time between thought and exe­cu­tion. In a cou­ple of weeks you’re eat­ing a cheese­burg­er and fries, blast­ing Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, and laugh­ing with your friends while you dri­ve the miles away with­out think­ing about it. And while some of that might be hubris that will even­tu­al­ly result in you rear-end­ing an old woman with an over­sized Huey, Dewey, and Louie sweat­shirt and a twitchy brake foot*, a lot of it is just that dri­ving is less a process and more sec­ond nature.

(*Why yes, that exam­ple WAS way too spe­cif­ic to be hypo­thet­i­cal.)

This ama­teur lev­el of one-with-your-car is fine, as long as you don’t want it to do any­thing too excit­ing or extreme. (Like not hit­ting that old woman instead of plow­ing into her with gus­to, for exam­ple.) Any­time you start to push the lim­its, sud­den­ly you become aware of that chain between your brain and the car’s per­for­mance all over again. If you take a turn too quick­ly, you’re try­ing to apply pres­sure to the brake, but not too much, and you’re think­ing about how much is too much. If you go into a skid, you have to remind your­self you want to turn into the skid, and the split sec­ond of think­ing is dis­as­trous. Sud­den­ly, you are clunky and jerky all over again. (This is why tex­ting while dri­ving is so epi­cal­ly stu­pid. You’ll be fine if noth­ing goes wrong, but the moment there’s the slight­est hic­cup, you are an arm and two pre­cious sec­onds behind the per­son who’s pay­ing atten­tion.) It can take years, even decades, before the car is real­ly (REALLY) just an exten­sion of you, and you would have to spend hours a day behind the wheel to seam­less­ly move into those extreme moments.

Fur­ther, if you want to learn to do some­thing espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing with the car, like drift­ing, you have to go back to the basics and be unco­or­di­nat­ed all over again—much like Light­ning McQueen did in Cars when he spent hours and hours slid­ing over a cliff into cac­ti try­ing to prac­tice the turn that Doc Hud­son beat him in their race.

Okay, but what does this…

Shut up. We’re get­ting there. I just… take a while to make a point some­times.

Writ­ing is the same way. Not the phys­i­cal act of writ­ing (you prob­a­bly have that pret­ty much mas­tered even if you were in spe­cial “bad hand­writ­ing” class­es like me, although I don’t know—a key­board­ing class prob­a­bly would­n’t hurt if you’re just start­ing out), but rather our rela­tion­ship with what we’re try­ing to get the lan­guage to do. At first, our efforts to make sen­tences are clunky and jerky. We con­sid­er each word we choose care­ful­ly before com­mit­ting it to ink (or pix­els). We check our adverb ratio every para­graph and wor­ry over the appro­pri­ate­ness of every use of pas­sive voice. We try to make sure we have a good ratio of com­pound and com­plex sen­tences with a pep­per­ing of sim­ple. We over­think it. It comes out stilt­ed. We think care­ful­ly about each sen­tence’s clar­i­ty. Our para­graphs come out of us in fits and starts, and we are very con­scious of how we’re using words. We think we’re clever when we’re not.

But as we get bet­ter, we just think about what we want the words to do, and we go there with­out real­ly think­ing about how. Ideas are con­veyed with­out our delib­er­ate atten­tion to every word choice. Whole sen­tences just appear before us, and some­times we are as delight­ed to read what our brain has come up with as any­one. We might con­sid­er the imper­fec­tion of a par­tic­u­lar phrase or clause—particularly on revision—and think about how to do it bet­ter, but over­all, we are con­fi­dent that lan­guage is an exten­sion of us. How­ev­er, it might take years, even decades, to real­ly get to that point.

Of course when we are stretch­ing the lim­its of our writ­ing, we will prob­a­bly go back to that delib­er­ate and con­scious word choice, espe­cial­ly if we are push­ing the bound­aries of the writ­ing we’re used to into the ter­ri­to­ry of some­thing we do less often, like our first for­ay into fic­tion or try­ing our hand at a brand new tech­nique like expres­sion­ism or sur­re­al­ism. Then we will stum­ble over every word all over again.

It can take lots of prac­tice to make a new kind of writ­ing sec­ond nature, but the ded­i­cat­ed writer is the one out there, beyond their com­fort zones, prac­tic­ing new tech­niques in their free time—not because they think they’ll ever use them in a pub­li­ca­tion, but just for the love of writing—just like Light­ning McQueen did on that pesky dirt road turn even after he’d lost. Unless you just want to write in a way that gets you from here to there, you prob­a­bly need to spend some hours prac­tic­ing.

2- Your rela­tion­ship with the rules is VERY sim­i­lar

If you’ve got a dri­ver’s licence, you are prob­a­bly a walk­ing codex of traf­fic laws.

Think about it. You have to be in order to pass the test to be able to get that licence. You know how to han­dle things when mul­ti­ple peo­ple show up simul­ta­ne­ous­ly at a four-way stop sign… not includ­ing your inno­v­a­tive solu­tion that uti­lizes a rock­et-pro­pelled grenade launch­er. You know when you can make pro­tect­ed turns. You prob­a­bly know the speed lim­it even if there’s no post­ed sign, based on how many lanes there are, what kind of build­ings are around you and whether there’s a medi­an. You know what to do when you see cer­tain kinds of vehi­cles in cer­tain posi­tions rel­a­tive to you (like an emer­gency vehi­cle behind you, or a motor­cy­cle next to you). You know to slam the brake if you see a lit­tle kid run out in front of your car, even if you are in a tem­po­ral vor­tex and the kid is a young Harold Bloom. A zil­lion rules could fall out of your head for any giv­en moment.

Writ­ing is like this. You prob­a­bly know a gazil­lion rules. Rules about gram­mar. Rules about spelling. Rules about punc­tu­a­tion. Rules about para­graph con­struc­tion. Rules about what makes for good fic­tion. Rules about pas­sive voice. Rules about adverbs. Rules about lex­i­con. Rules about sub­jects and objects. Rules about sta­tive verbs. Rules about how items in lists should not be their own sen­tences. Rules, rules, rules. Rules about one-word sen­tences with no verbs. Rules.

The thing is, you also know that some of these rules are real­ly, real­ly impor­tant, like dri­ving the appro­pri­ate direc­tion on the free­way, and oth­ers are pret­ty much bull­shit, like the 35 mph speed lim­it on the straight­away between one small town and anoth­er where no one dri­ves less than 50. So, while you know that using no sub­jects or tense mark­ers or spelling every word like “ghoti” will make your read­ing incom­pre­hen­si­ble, you also know that to some­times start sen­tences with con­junc­tions or that to bold­ly split infini­tives is no big deal.

Of course, you can’t just ignore the rules. You have to know the rules to know which ones aren’t impor­tant. You prob­a­bly won’t get a tick­et if you breeze through that five-minute red light at four in the morn­ing. But if you rock­et through a school zone at 150 on a Tues­day at three in the after­noon because “fuck rules, that’s why,” you will end up in coun­ty prison nurs­ing your taser wounds and wish­ing that either the toi­let was much much MUCH more pri­vate or your cell­mates had­n’t had cab­bage the night before.

You prob­a­bly can do a fine job with­out know­ing every sin­gle rule. You are prob­a­bly a fine dri­ver with­out know­ing that it is ille­gal to jump from one vehi­cle to anoth­er at 65 mph in Glen­dale, Cal­i­for­nia. (Yes, real­ly.) You are also prob­a­bly a fine writer with­out know­ing that sev­er­al style man­u­als state that tech­ni­cal­ly, any action (beyond attri­bu­tion tags) that occurs between a sin­gle sen­tence quo­ta­tion is sup­posed to hap­pen inside em dash­es. (Yeah… no.) Some rules might even be a lit­tle less obscure than these exam­ples. (You may not know that if you see an emer­gency vehi­cle with flash­ing lights on the side of the road, you are sup­posed to move a lane to the left [except in a cou­ple of states] and you may not know why some lists of adjec­tives have com­mas between them and some don’t.) But you can prob­a­bly still write pret­ty well with­out know­ing every rule.

You should know basic gram­mar, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you want to be pub­lished, but the more arcane the rule, the less it’s going to mat­ter when com­pared to your voice.

Some rules are just shit peo­ple make up like dri­ving a car bare­foot or that spec­u­la­tive fic­tion can’t ever be as sig­nif­i­cant as lit­er­ary fic­tion. They don’t even know what they’re talk­ing about, but they want the rule to be true, so they tell every­one it’s total­ly a rule, and it catch­es on like an urban leg­end.

And you prob­a­bly know someone—both a dri­ver and a writer—who fol­lows all the rules, and demands every­one around them do so as well. They prob­a­bly have a tru­ly rea­son­able-sound­ing expla­na­tion for why they insist on this (“the impor­tance of mean­ing” with writ­ing or “safe­ty” with dri­ving). And… in BOTH cas­es, their adher­ence to the rules can be so strict as to actu­al­ly achieve the oppo­site of their inten­tion. A strict, inflex­i­ble, and “prop­er” inter­pre­ta­tion of yes­ter­year gram­mar can actu­al­ly mud­dle mean­ing with many (if not most) mod­ern read­ers, and fol­low­ing every traf­fic law in every sit­u­a­tion can actu­al­ly put you in grave dan­ger if peo­ple around you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.

Also these peo­ple are absolute­ly insuf­fer­able pedants in either con­text.

3- There is a huge gulf between doing it for a liv­ing and doing it in a way that peo­ple just sit and watch

You prob­a­bly know some peo­ple who dri­ve for a liv­ing. Cab dri­vers. Bus dri­vers. Air­port shut­tle dri­vers. Pack­age deliv­ery dri­vers. Limo dri­vers. Maybe just some­one who com­mutes such an ungod­ly dis­tance as part of their job that they are basi­cal­ly includ­ing dri­ving as part of the job. These peo­ple tech­ni­cal­ly make their mon­ey dri­ving.

Tech­ni­cal­ly.

Are they stunt dri­vers? No. Are they race car dri­vers? No. Are peo­ple lin­ing up just to watch them oper­ate their machin­ery? No. Would peo­ple pay just to watch them dri­ve? No. Dri­ving is the means by which they get you to what you are real­ly pay­ing for—your piz­za or pack­age or your trans­porta­tion or some oth­er thing that needs a dri­ver. These peo­ple might be con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als, high­ly skilled, and even quite awe­some dri­vers, but you’re prob­a­bly nev­er going to drop real mon­ey just to watch them get the 20 Line from BART to Dia­blo Val­ley Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege before 4:30. The dri­vers you pay to see are the ones that push the lim­its. They do things with cars that you almost can’t believe.

Though I have to admit, I would total­ly pay $100 to see the local ice cream truck catch air off a car loader set up like a ramp—straight up Crazy Taxi style!

The same is true of legions of pro­fes­sion­al writ­ers. There are tech writ­ers, pol­i­cy writ­ers, sci­ence writ­ers, con­tent writ­ers, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tors, legal writ­ers, trav­el writ­ers, ana­lysts, grant and devel­op­ment writ­ers, and jour­nal­ists. These peo­ple are often high­ly com­pe­tent wordsmiths—wonderful, adept, and pro­fes­sion­al at their par­tic­u­lar skill sets. They are mak­ing mon­ey with writ­ing, and the writer has pro­vid­ed an invalu­able ser­vice with skill.

FULL STOP. (Seri­ous­ly, they are amaz­ing.)

And yet… it isn’t the writ­ing itself that is the prod­uct being exchanged. It is the news, the grant pro­pos­al, the con­tent, the analy­sis or some­thing like that.

Now, I’m not point­ing out this con­trast to be an ass­hole. I’m abso­fuck­ing­lute­ly not say­ing, “those peo­ple aren’t ‘real’ writ­ers.” They are awe­some and real. But cre­ative gets funky, and a lot of tech writ­ers, jour­nal­ists, blender instruc­tion man­u­al writ­ers and more have the same five chap­ters of their nov­el sit­ting in a draw­er that they’ll nev­er fin­ish. There’s so much pow­er in the words “I’m a pro­fes­sion­al writer,” that they set­tle. But it would make about as much sense for a cab dri­ver dream­ing of one day being in the Indy 500 or in Nascar to let them­selves set­tle. Or for a limo dri­ver to give up on their dreams of advanced dri­ving because they are mak­ing mon­ey oper­at­ing a vehi­cle.

Can oth­er kinds of writ­ing help some­one become an author? Absolute­ly, they can. In fact, writ­ers of every type of writ­ing I men­tioned have tak­en their skills to fic­tion, and it has informed their work. Mid­night in the Gar­den of Good and Evil is so charm­ing pre­cise­ly because it was writ­ten by a trav­el writer who took that style into fic­tion. But a writer is not an author just because of their skill, any­more than a piz­za deliv­ery dri­ver should be doing stunt dri­ving for Hol­ly­wood because they know a short­cut that will get that extra-large with olives and mush­rooms past an acci­dent on Main Street in 29 and a half min­utes.

Mmm­mm. Piz­za…

4- There are dif­fer­ent kinds and styles that are valid

There are mus­cle cars and tur­bocharged cars, and each delights in think­ing the oth­er isn’t legit. There is street rac­ing and track rac­ing. There is off-road­ing and kart­ing. There are for­mu­la races and stock car races. Each has its own set of con­ven­tions and reg­u­la­tions, and many who think (open­ly or secret­ly) that they are the best and the only real kind of dri­ving.

Some kinds of dri­ving deal with the raw pow­er of the machine. Some focus on the tech­ni­cal skill and pre­ci­sion of the dri­ver. Some have hard cap lim­its on hard­ware. Oth­ers allow for every inno­va­tion tech­nol­o­gy can pro­vide. Some do endurance runs around cir­cu­lar tracks. Some take off cross-coun­try. Oth­ers do Tokyo Drift, and their “race” nev­er real­ly leaves an inter­sec­tion-sized area. Some kinds of per­for­mance dri­ving hap­pen right on the street in the mid­dle of traf­fic “on the streets.” Oth­ers are daz­zling spec­ta­cles of paparazzi and bor­der on show busi­ness around a hand­ful of dri­vers who are quite famous. And despite many groups try­ing to dele­git­imize the oth­ers, all have nich­es and fans and audi­ences and require skill.

Writ­ing is shock­ing­ly sim­i­lar. Obvi­ous­ly, there are dif­fer­ent genres—including the “lit­er­ary genre” try­ing its best to declare itself the best and only “real” kind of writ­ing. There are small press­es where the writer wears the hat of pub­li­cist and some­times has to even put their own books on con­sign­ment at local book­stores. There are major press­es where a book release might involve radio adver­tis­ing spots and pub­lic tran­sit bill­boards, where a hand­ful of writ­ers are quite famous. There are blog­gers, short sto­ry writ­ers, nov­el­ists, poets and play­wrights. Some write with an almost anachro­nis­tic eye on the past, lim­it­ing their grudg­ing inter­face with tech­nol­o­gy only to sub­mis­sion time and only as much as a giv­en agent demands. Oth­ers push the lim­its of tech­nol­o­gy, incor­po­rat­ing mul­ti­me­dia and mixed media and pub­lish­ing in myr­i­ad ways that weren’t even avail­able a decade ago. There’s cre­ative non-fic­tion and high fan­ta­sy. There are peo­ple head­ing out to lit­er­ary read­ings to lis­ten to the way the lan­guage of their words rolls off a writer’s tongue in an atmos­phere filled with the beat­ing pulse of oth­er writ­ers and read­ers. There are peo­ple who try to lim­it them­selves to the pre­ci­sion of what they can do with care­ful word choice and obses­sive revi­sion. There are beat poets in your local cof­fee shop rant­i­ng about sex and drugs and crit­i­cal race the­o­ry from some­thing they just jot­ted down on a nap­kin in the five min­utes before the mic opened up, and peo­ple whose lit­er­ary man­u­script won’t see an agent until it’s under­gone twen­ty revi­sions.

And of course, you have elit­ists in every group.

Good writ­ers don’t lim­it them­selves to a sin­gle type of writ­ing, either—even if they feel most com­fort­able there or do most of their “pub­lished” work in that type. Like good ol’ Light­ning McQueen, who worked that dirt track turn over and over until he mas­tered it, a good writer will take on a dif­fer­ent kind of writ­ing just because it’s writ­ing and to have a dif­fer­ent kind of tool in their tool­box.

5- A lot of hob­by­ists fan­cy them­selves awe­some and don’t real­ly get what’s hold­ing them back

You prob­a­bly have a cou­ple of friends who are quite the dare­dev­ils behind the wheel. They catch air com­ing out of their fuck­ing apart­ment com­plex. They hit fourth gear cross­ing a park­ing lot. If the turn sign says 45 mph, you know they won’t take it going less than 70, and if they decel­er­ate at all when tak­ing an inter­sec­tion cor­ner, they must have seen a tod­dler try­ing to cross… alone. When they let loose on the free­way, you actu­al­ly see the world around you aging more quick­ly due to observ­able rel­a­tiv­i­ty. They dri­ve behind emer­gency vehi­cles and com­plain about how slow they’re going. Usu­al­ly, you have to have your fin­ger­nails sur­gi­cal­ly removed from the “Oh Shit” bar after a ten-minute hop down to pick up din­ner from the Pho place.

And the thing is, they’re usu­al­ly pret­ty good dri­vers. Great, even. If they weren’t, they’d have got­ten in about twen­ty gag­illion acci­dents long ago or end­ed up as the “real­ly-ham­mer-it-home” clip of Red Asphalt 25. But hav­ing a lead foot and an observ­able hatred for the lives of pedes­tri­ans does­n’t make you Ayr­ton Sen­na or Mario Andret­ti. Being good, even REALLY good, still is miles from the Indy 500, and while these peo­ple might enter­tain pleas­ant dreams that they are tak­ing cor­ners in the Mona­co GP, they would have years of train­ing before even their lev­el of skill was ready for any pro­fes­sion­al circuit—no mat­ter how mirac­u­lous it is that they don’t have a kill score.

You might love to dri­ve. You might speed down the 1 with the top down and your hair whip­ping around like a Via­gra com­mer­cial. (Erec­tile dys­func­tion does­n’t have to slow YOU down.) You might road-trip when fly­ing is con­sid­er­ably faster, just because you like get­ting out on the open road. You might pay close atten­tion to things like sound sys­tem and chair com­fort when car shop­ping because you’re going to be in your car way more than the next guy. But this does­n’t mean that you are Lewis Hamil­ton.

You prob­a­bly have friends who are the same way about writ­ing. They are fab­u­lous at it—stringing words togeth­er almost effort­less­ly and reach­ing mean­ing that you felt you mud­dled with twice as many words. They tear through a para­graph like they are bend­ing the laws of time and space, and wind up get­ting from lan­guage to mean­ing in a way that makes you wish for a lin­guis­tic “Oh shit” bar. You prob­a­bly have friends who love to write. They fire off an opus because it’s Mon­day, write pages upon pages every day, and write with such abun­dance that you con­tem­plate how to bot­tle their lin­guis­tic fecun­di­ty and sell it in vials at the mega-book­stores next to the Mole­sk­ine jour­nals.

Lov­ing writ­ing, being real­ly good at writ­ing… they don’t make some­one an author. Many peo­ple are hap­py writ­ing at this lev­el, but many more are frus­trat­ed and con­fused when these abil­i­ties don’t trans­late into suc­cess… or even an obscure book deal. Writ­ing, espe­cial­ly cre­ative writ­ing, pro­fes­sion­al­ly takes more than love and more than skill. Both help, of course, and you won’t go far if you don’t much like writ­ing. But push­ing your­self to take the step from hob­by­ist to some­thing more takes an unswerv­ing ded­i­ca­tion and an unflag­ging effort. It takes more than writ­ing a lot or writ­ing well. It takes being will­ing to focus every skill you’ve learned like a laser on the kind of writ­ing that isn’t just for you, but will go out into the world. It takes learn­ing uncom­fort­able parts of the process, like revi­sion. It takes actu­al­ly fin­ish­ing that man­u­script. It often takes sac­ri­fic­ing a lot of oth­er things you might also enjoy doing. It takes being will­ing to learn the busi­ness of writ­ing. It takes treat­ing writ­ing as more than a hob­by.

A lot more.

And now we come to what is actu­al­ly one of the major DIFFERENCES between dri­ving and writ­ing: your friend who real­ly loves dri­ving and has a lead foot prob­a­bly isn’t going to be rac­ing on a pro-cir­cuit next sea­son unless they real­ly ded­i­cate them­selves to it and make some major changes in their lives. What’s more impor­tant, your friend prob­a­bly knows this. They aren’t telling them­selves sto­ries that they are a cou­ple of half-heart­ed deci­sions away from The Long Beach Grand Prix, and it would be theirs if they real­ly want­ed it. For some rea­son, with writ­ing, peo­ple who are impres­sive hob­by­ists real­ly think they are on the cusp of being major writ­ers with­out ever real­ly giv­ing it a but­t­load of work.

A hob­by­ist-going-sud­den­ly-suc­cess­ful writer is actu­al­ly about as like­ly as your friend dri­ving Nascar. Which is even less like­ly than the plot of Days of Thun­der. Which is more like­ly than the plot of Her­bie: Ful­ly Loaded, but far less like­ly than the plot of Can­non­ball Run.

Not a con­vo­lut­ed metaphor at all, ol’ chum.

Of course, there are sev­er­al ways that dri­ving isn’t a thing like writ­ing. Don’t even get me start­ed on how quick­ly this metaphor breaks down if you start talk­ing about how main­tain­ing peak per­for­mance involves some­one real­ly get­ting under your hood reg­u­lar­ly… uh…. with some flu­ids…. and… um…. uh…

Nev­er mind. Piz­za­’s here. Got­ta go tip a dri­ver.