Confessions of a Mad Librarian

Some men choose writing as a career because the life appeals to them, because they have the skill, because they enjoy the status, much in the way that one might choose to become a lawyer or an engineer or an accountant. These writers become, at the lowest level, commercial hacks, and at the higher levels, the accomplished literary craftsmen, the "master story tellers." Typically, they are prolific and have long careers. Such writers form the backbone of science fiction, indeed of fiction in general. Others come to writing through a burning urge to create, because the words, when they come at all, come bubbling up from the nether reaches, impelling them towards the typewriter. At the lower levels, these are the passionate amateurs, the part-time writers stealing time from their workday jobs to court the muse, and at the higher levels, these are the literary artists. Typically, whether prolific or not, they are dedicated to writing all of their lives, though they may suffer from years-long writing blocks. Such writers form the heart of fiction.

But a few men, like Walter M. Miller, Jr., are, perhaps, not really writers at all, but men with a book or two throbbing inside their souls aching to burst forth. Some event or events in their lives, some convergence of inputs, has created within them an insight, a system of imagery, a constellation of feelings, a single story, which moves to the center of their souls and, at least for a time, causes their lives to become structured around it, moves them towards setting it down as words on paper. In preparation for this task, they may write other things, honing their skills until the magic moment arrives; after the great work is done, they frequently are spent as writers or go on producing ghosts of their one mighty tale. On the lower levels, these are the patrons of vanity publishers. On the higher levels, they are the producers of lonely pinnacles of literature like A Canticle for Leibowitz. The singer is the song.