Many moons ago, when I was a graduate student aching to be a writer, and "James Dain" was a far twinkle in my eyes, I took a writing course from author Mark Harris.
Harris was an author much respected by critics, but underappreciated by the general public. His novel with the most popular success was Bang the Drum Slowly, called by the New York Times one of the finest baseball novels ever. It follows a season of the fictional New York Mammoths, seen through the eyes of its star pitcher Henry Wiggen, who befriends a teammate dying of Hodgkin's Disease.
That's Harris on the park bench, pretty much as I remember him, with his shaggy Einstein-esque hair and coke-bottle glasses. Harris' class was a laid-back affair, with students submitting stories which Harris would gently critique.
My biggest takeaway from the course, however, was Harris' advice on writing. It was this: "Pay Yourself First."
"Pay Yourself First" was a slogan from a then-current Pittsburgh National Bank commercial, but which Harris insisted was an important part of a real writer's ethos. It meant: get up in the morning and work on your writing before you do anything else. Before breakfast, before bills, before phone calls, emails, Facebook, Twitter/X and all the other stuff that takes over a writer's creative time like weeds taking over a garden.
A friend asked me how I wrote four novels in six years. That's how.
