I've been bugging Rebecca for clues lately, and I've pretty much exhausted Steve with the same request. I've got shelves full of writers' memoirs and instruction, titles all variations of So-and-so On Writing. I eat this stuff up. Obviously, I'm hoping to find myself in there somewhere.
Being the junior (i.e., least wizened) member of this blog helps make clear why I might want to relax a bit. There's an ingredient of good writing that comes no other way except by knocking around; and the more of it you do, the better.
Berry sums it up well in this good quote:
"Not so long ago it was generally thought that in order to be a writer a person needed extraordinary knowledge or experience. This, of course, frequently led to some willful absurdity in the life of a young writer. But it also suggested a connection--even a responsible connection--between art and experience and art and the world. What we have too frequently now...is the notion that what distinguishes a writer from a nonwriter is, first and last, a gift and a love of language. Writers, that is, are not distinguished by their knowledge or character or vision or inspiration or the stories they have to tell; they are distinguished by their specialties. This is a difference not of degree but of kind. And the resulting absurdities are greater than before, and more dangerous. The power of such notions among the college-bred is suggested by a statement of Mr. John W. Dean III: 'I would like to be a writer. Maybe I will write a book. I love to play with words and twist phrases. I always play Scrabble.'"
5 comments:
Matt. You are a writer. You are right now.
Read here: Pithy self-depreciating reply expressing gratitude and mild embarassment of own motive for posting, followed by sigh of relief.
I sent this to Matt, thinking it was too corny to post for a large audience. But he asked me to post it here...
Strangely, last night I was out for a walk and was thinking along these lines; not exactly, but close enough. I was thinking about what a writer “is”, about the world of writing and its various hierarchies and cliques that often seem to take on an importance for some of us but are incomprehensible to the world at large.
I had been working on the final sections of a hunting guidebook I’ve been contracted to do on a “write for hire” basis, had just completed a lengthy article assignment for the Rocky Mt. Elk Foundation’s Bugle magazine and had my usual list of publications I was writing and editing for my “day job.”
I felt edgy and slightly depressed, and I suspected it was because of what I had been writing. Weirdly, I enjoyed the projects. But I just had this nagging thought that these kinds of projects were all I ever was and ever will be capable of doing.
I really was not sure why exactly that bothered me. This type of work has served me well for the 14 years since I’ve graduated from college. I make a good living. My free-lance income won’t make me wealthy, but it’s respectable. I can live the life I always wanted, with plenty of hunting and fishing and travel and no debts.
And yet there’s that nagging self-doubt about what I’m doing, that somehow having “M. Miller, Professional Hack” on my tombstone is my destiny…and that there is something wrong with that. In the long run, I doubt it matters much.
What I write doesn’t count for much, reaches a decidedly tiny audience, but at the end of the day, I still toil and take notes and write and revise and pace around just like real writers.
At one point during this walk last evening, I realized with clarity that what sent me off on this pathetic self-pitying path was reading a good book by a young writer. So that was it: Jealousy.
It is usually enough to have a good life and interesting work, but beyond logic and common sense, sometimes the doubts set in.
First to Matt Mullenix: I second Heidi; OF COURSE you are a (good) writer!
And to Matt Miller: this is more or less where I have found myself. After years of critically well- received books that I am proud of, with income bolstered by (honest) "hackwork", I find myself no longer able to make enough (any?)money using option B.
I have spent the last 6 months or so trying to make $$ with little effect. So screw it; I'm going to write another novel because I enjoy and am not ashamed of doing so. And hope the money eventually comes to send me back to Asia to do the other thing I think I do best: non - fiction travel/ nature writing.
If I am going to make no money I at least shouldn't bore and depress myself writing proposals and other nonsense (gun pieces etc) that don't even get me the courtesy of a reply.
Some advertiser asked me for a gun endorsement the other day(I had owned one of "his" products, custom- made, in better days). When he asked what I did and I told him he said"I never heard of you".
Yup. "All is vanity".
To Steve and Heidi: Thank you both.
My reply to Matt Miller's thoughful note included the following comment:
"There's a young fellow named Jebediah Purdy who my mom reads and keeps trying to press on me. I refuse, not because I'm sure I'll hate him (on the contrary I bet he's great), but because I know he's younger than I am and probably twice the writer. I don't want to GIVE HIM THE SATISFACTION!
I like my literary heroes older, and preferably, dead."
(Not that I wish Steve any ill!)
Post a Comment