"The only difficulty is its necessity for solitude. Writing is not compatible with anything — its utter self-absorption is generally destructive to family life and friendships — and yet I find it joyous. All creativity is uplifting; I finish a book in a mood approaching rapture.... Growing up, needing privacy in a large family — I was the third of seven children — I became a fugitive, finding solace in libraries and in long hikes and in solitude, as well as in many menial jobs — anything to escape the conflicting demands and the scrutiny of my family. From childhood, I had always written stories in a secret way, offloading my thoughts on paper.... When someone confides to me that they think they might have an ambition to write, I suggest they leave home — go away, get a job. Never enter a 'writing program.'... Writing is neither dreary nor a job. I see it as a process of life...."
Says Paul Theroux, in "Paul Theroux on Necessary Solitude, Risks and the Joy of Writing/After 60 years and almost as many books, the novelist and travel writer, 83, will stop when he falls out of his chair" (NYT).
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This seems to be the most consistent advice I see from successful writers. If you want to write then write daily.
Yep. Not a lot more to be said other than you need to have experience in what you're writing about.
I have to remove myself from my family, my (then) work, my daily surroundings. I need a natural place that is inspiring to me, which is to say, it might not be to others, but a place that speaks to me, moves me. Certain places can spark my creative juices and I find I get more quality writing in those times than most anything I can do in my home office.
I am absolutely ADD or ADHD, whatever the current label is. I've never been able to focus on one thing, unless I remove the surrounding world. And perhaps the worst thing that ever happened to me was the internet. But still....even at age 70, I have high hopes of getting that one book written. Some day. But my 'some days' are getting fewer so I am, as they say, "on the clock".
Yes, I write something every day. But I also waste time commenting on blogs and X. You may have noticed.
Every writer is different, of course.
I find I do my best writing in Mcdonalds, Wendy's, hotel lobbies and the like. (4 books, 300+ published articles and columns.)
If solitude works for Theroux, great. Not best for me.
I find Theroux somewhat of an asshole. Still, I've really enjoyed some of his travel books. Tried a couple of his novels, couldn't get through them.
John Henry
Yes his travel books are really immersive the novels not so much
Keep wasting you time here, Temujin. Your posts are usually among the best.
Theroux is one of the greats. So great he appears in my profile.
My academic writings were all short-form: encyclopedia entries, mostly. My masters thesis could be turned into a book (and my mistakes corrected) with more time and research, but that wouldn't be as fun as farting around.
Another article about, "I" experience life THIS way, so all others must as well.
To write, I need to concentrate on that one thing for a long time, it's immersive. Any interruption is devastating to the process.
The Therouxes are a scribbling clan, with Paul being only the most prolific and well known.
I realized that I was no writer when I realized that real writers can't not write.
Theroux's ethnographic travel book, "Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads," is a good companion to Satya Ungar-Sargon's "Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America's Working Men and Women," in which he documents the devastation caused by the offshoring of America's most labor-intensive low-skilled forms of factory work, above all to African-Americans living in small towns and rural areas.
I didn't see the article that way JAORE, but then I could only fudge NYT for a little over half of it.
Temujin:
I find I get more quality writing in those times than most anything I can do in my home office.
I have a leather business notebook I carry. Jots and diagrams and sometimes highly abbreviated rhetoric goes there to be merged later at home.
With me it isn't ADHD but that I want to do so much and so varied and, like you, I'm fully aware I'm finite.
I have high hopes of getting that one book written. Some day. But my 'some days' are getting fewer so I am, as they say, "on the clock".
Would be interested in learning about the book topic and how you approach it, on or off blog. I like comparing my own with others' methods of development.
It likely matters what it is you are writing. Creative art like poetry, fiction, and drama for example is different from technical writing (eg law, philosophy, or engineering) or journalism/punditry/forensic which has sub groupings like sports, obituaries, or economics to name a few. I read some of Hemingway's journalism from when he was covering diplomatic conferences from the 1920's for the KC Star and found that it just didn't have "it" like the Nick Adams Stories or The Sun Also Rises which he wrote at about the same time. For that kind of work writers seem to really need a muse of some sort.
I've heard that Trollope upon completion of one five hundred page novel would turn his attention, without interruption of any kind, to the beginning of his next five hundred page novel. I don't even think writing was his full time job at the time. Has anyone here ever known anyone who has read the complete works of Trollope?.....P.G. Wodehouse could really churn them out, but he had the decency to find the process a bit difficult, and it was his full time job. I think I might have read his collected works. None of his novels are especially long. ....Lenin was also prolific. He wrote sixty books of more than six hundred pages, besides all the incidental stuff. I've never actually read anything by Lenin, but they used to make people study that stuff in school.....I like writers like Jane Austen. You can get through her collected works in a week or two, and they're not frilly with extraneous details.
I wanted to be a newspaper reporter since I was five and reading comic books in 1960. If I couldn't be Superman, I at least could be Clark Kent.
I've been writing all my life, as often as I could, and I don't need solitude in every situation. I'm a published writer, most of which has been in journalism, and other than a junior high classroom, the newspaper office is pretty damned noisy with the possibility of interruptions. At my college newspaper and at my own weekly at age 25, serving as the editor of both, copyediting can be made more difficult by noise. But it has to be done. I am 40 pages away from editing a 500 page autobiography and the author dictated it before it appeared in a Word file. Every page is a horror story of run-on sentences, frequent changes in tenses, and personal phrases such as "Believe me,..." and "...throughout the years". I gave him a very good price as he is a friend, but Lord Jesus of Nazareth, give strength.
My main or best advice I can give to a rookie writer is:
1. Write EVERY DAY; at least 30-60 mnutes.
2. Don't worry about editing until you've got a substantial amount written out. It will slow you down. If you want to write fiction, it's my thought that you should just keep going, and have a story outline to follow.
3. If you are not a vivacious reader, become one. Read everything you can get your hands on in the area of your concern. Nothing teaches you better than someone's written words -- with some exclusions, of course.
4. Don't expect to make a comfortable living.
Good luck. -30-
Same here. Technical writing or analysis I do best in a spartan room, but I must have some sort of music playing, classical or 'new age', interesting enough to keep some part of my consciousness occupied but not something I want to actually listen to. Bangin' out letters on a typewriter is a whole different story.
Typewriter enthusiasts have these things called "Type-Ins" where they get together with a bunch of typewriters set up. It's a bit odd. . . .I mean, if you're typing, it means you're concentrating on that and not interacting with anyone so what's the point of doing it in a group? But most of the time people are standing around talking about them.
Then there's Enid Blyton, the prolific Brit children's book author. She said her subconscious would essentially compose entire books in her head and then she'd just sit down and sit at a typewriter and basically just take dictation on what was in there.
I'm re-reading Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor (how much I've forgotten about it!) and marveling at the sheer inventiveness on display.
As to the likes of Lenin (and Stalin), every decent university library used to have their collected works in English translation--dozens and scores of volumes printed in Moscow and available at highly-subsidized prices.
I read letters and sabbatical from his works,
Oligonicella said: "Would be interested in learning about the book topic and how you approach it, on or off blog. I like comparing my own with others' methods of development."
You don't want to come anywhere near my approach to writing. I'm 70. I thought about being a writer since I was in my teens. Went to college majoring in so many things a university counselor had a meeting with me once to tell me to just freakin' declare English my major, because while I was taking courses and declaring majors in various things from psychology to linguistics to communications (whatever that was), I was also taking writing and literature courses all along for fun. Because that's what I liked. And, as it turned out, if I wanted to graduate, that was my path. And when you one day find you have an English degree, you end up having to work hard for a living. Which I did. And so...writing was something I always did a bit on the side, but never fully put my head into it.
I suspect like so many people I have years of notes, ideas, half short stories, numerous starting pages to other stories, and ideas upon ideas that have followed the path of technology. From legal pads to micro-cassettes, to audio recorders, to my iPhone and my MacBook Pro. All filled with ideas for novels, short stories, a few catchy phrases, some one-liners, a lot of notes, paragraphs to insert into stories when completed.
I won't talk about my current story- or any others- because I'd have to kill you if I told you. And we don't want that. Actually, I refuse to talk about the story because it's very much a living thing and if I start declaring this and that about the story, it'll influence how it evolves, grows, and changes from even my own outline- which is more of a suggestion to follow than what might actually happen. I can tell you that I am almost constantly thinking about it, though. Always reworking it in my head, even rewriting the starting point in my head, and eventually on the computer (I am on version 10 of this story currently).
Over the years I've read at least 9 books on writing by various authors, and countless articles. And these days I regularly listen to the "Writers on Writing" podcast while walking, or just sitting at my desk. I highly recommend it, if for nothing else, to hear as many different approaches to writing as you can imagine. I've learned from every one of these sources. And the main thing I've learned is that there is no one way to do it. We are all unique individuals and we will all have to learn our own approach, what works best for each of us.
But...if there is one thing that sticks out, it is this: You (we) have to treat writing like a job. It has to have a routine to it. You have to have a regular time that you work on it, each day. You have to show up to do it regularly, every day. In my working days, I'd get up at a certain time, have my coffee, and get to work. Writing has to be like that as well. And I have failed to make it like that since I retired in 2021- which was the time I thought I'd be ready to do it.
Instead, after working like a maniac for so many years...I found that I liked moving slowly, off schedule, and at my own leisure, as a retired guy. But I'm working on getting my mind right and getting back to a productive regular routine- this time writing.
But I know me and I know that my greatest muse is nature. The natural world. And it would behoove me to go off every once in a while by myself to just hole up in the mountains, or oceanside- but not here in Florida where I live. I love where I live but it is not inspirational. Somewhere different. Last autumn I spent a bit of time along the Oregon coast. That worked for me.
So...that's the bad and the ugly. The good is yet to come.
I believe that sometimes the id writes better than the frontal lobes do and sometimes it needs their rigid constraint. What works for you, works for you.
To loosely paraphrase Bruce Lee "There is no better writer, there is only your best now."
Temujin:
You don't want to come anywhere near my approach to writing. I'm 70. I thought about being a writer since I was in my teens.
Said I was interested in it, not that I wanted to adopt it. :) Way too late anyway as while I have a few of those scatters of yours, I've corralled most everything into a cohesive mess constrained on my computer by development techniques. That started about 25 years ago for my main writing focus but I've written IT and earlier science papers since about age 20 (now 75).
I won't talk about my current story- or any others- because I'd have to kill you if I told you.
Cute but I understand. It's only been within the last 1-2 years that I've spoken much about what I write because it's safely almost finished or it's a lark like Red Brick Road.
But...if there is one thing that sticks out, it is this: You (we) have to treat writing like a job. It has to have a routine to it. You have to have a regular time that you work on it, each day. You have to show up to do it regularly, every day. In my working days, I'd get up at a certain time, have my coffee, and get to work. Writing has to be like that as well. And I have failed to make it like that since I retired in 2021- which was the time I thought I'd be ready to do it.
No we do not and have not as I also paint, sculpt and design LED displays and controls. If that works for you I respect that and admire the effort and know others who do it as well. I also know others who shotgun it like I do. I think the dwelling is more important for me as even as I paint or sculpt (much lesser a degree on the LED stuff) I also think about the next story. Series almost finished now.
Sincerely, good luck and perseverance.
Marcus,
Agree in theory about writing every day. In practice I find it hard. Not because of time, just self discipline
Agree that the first goal has to be words on the screen. As many as possible. DO NOT get bogged down in elegance. That is for 2nd,3rd and 4th drafts then final editing.
Re editing: my goal when I submit is for my editor to have nothing to do. I seldom get there but I'm u as usually close.
Re publishing I have published a book with CRC Press I have published 4 with Amazon. I will never publish with a trad publisher again. CRC was great, Amazon is miles better.
If anyone wants to discuss writing or publishing
drop me an email john@changeover.com
John Henry
I just finished writing something rather long, 257 pages, MicroSoft Word tells me. I write as a hobby. I had a novel published 20 years ago and it sold tens of copies. But in the intervening time, I've written five more novel-length stories and dozens of shorter pieces.
I do it because it's fun, not because it's a trial, and it's better because it's only for me. It's gotten to the point where the only reading I do is my own stuff. Then I polish it over and over.
I used to write longhand when I worked overnights at a convenience store, taking an hour in the wee hours to write when my nightly work was done. Then the major writing of the week would happen at a bar. That's how I learned to think about what I wanted to write before writing. When I got the chance, the words came a lot easier. On this latest book, I stopped listening to podcasts during my commute and wrote in my head on the way to and from work.
As you might expect, I'm single and childless. But if all one's characters are in some way oneself, I've lived many lives in my writing. To me, it answers the questions I have about life.
But the last thing it is is a struggle.
Thanks, John Henry.
I have a self-published book on Amazon about my descent into decadence after I found that the last three women closer to my age were not compatible with me -- especially in the bedroom. Not all women, of course, but I found that these three, one of whom I tried a second relationship with, were either done with sex (except on what they termed "special occasions", or used it in the beginning to gain my interest, or wanted to wait until we were married. I have said this here before, but women closer to my age wanted me to virtually jump through hoops for their XX-year-old poontang. So encouraged by a friend, I began to get involved with young women, 21-30 at first, now 28-34, with the exception of my former GF from China who was 52 when I met her but looked more like 38. (She is leaving America, where she had gotten a green card - without any assistance from me - to return to China to care for her elderly father - an honorable thing to do) I detail in the book, describing every woman, whore, drug addict, and other "labels" and my mis-adventures with them as I descended into a lifestyle my older daughter really frowned upon and my younger daughter never mentioned or brought up. I used fake names, and the semi-autobiographical book is made up of short chapters with each girl's name atop it, and what happened. So you meet my then almost 21 year old FWB I rescued from a trap house pimp, at a friend's request, thinking she would stay for the night. She stayed for three months the first time and has lived with me on and off for 7 and a half years now. And many others. The book does not have my name on it or identifying locations. I do not let my friends know about it nor the women -- heh -- but market it as a man who was a Beta male all his life, transformed into a somewhat alpha, and had a great sex life. As long as it works, I keep at it. But the book had to end somewhere and it seems to be selling well enough.
More on my memoirs, without the sex angle, in a future post.
Writing is easy. It's the editing, revising, re-arranging and keeping an eye on what you wanted to say in the first place, that's tricky.
I remember two things about grade school: Interuptions by the person in charge of us, demanding that I explain what was so interesting outside the window and, in 7th grade; a joyful "relationship" with Jill, who sat next to me at the back of the room.
Jill was changing in form but not yet function. I was changing, too but neither of us fully grasped what was happening. It was 1955.
We whispered one taunt after another, delighting in in teasing each other without mercy. Quiet giggles sometimes erupted into uncontrollable laughter that infected 20 or 30 other clueless 11 and 12-year-olds. Miss McConnell, herself, was not immune.
High school started late. I was so boney, I might have been able to fly if I'd had feathers. Instead, I tried football. Several operations involving screws and pins and infections and "complications" set my apperance in class back about six weeks.
Hopelessy behind, I decided my native genius would have to see me through. Graduated 58 out of 60.
When you have no idea what you're talking about, creative answers (bullshit) are essential. I could write.
The Book our class read and discussed for weeks, (it seemed like months), was Moby Dick. I was impressed by the first three words but that was it. Sister Mary Something returned my paper and sighed, "Michael, that may be the best book report I've ever read but I'm wondering what book it was about."
And so it went. As I reached larger audiences, facts became more important (interesting, even). When writing congressional testimony for someone trying to wrest a few additional billion for a project that defies simple explanation, you don't want someone calling "BS" on some nit.
Whether writing fact, fiction or fantasy, vision is always part of the mix (at least for me). I used to write speeches for some umpty-star general whose words were important to our work.
My immediate boss wanted outlines, progress reports, drafts, timelines. What a waste. Almost always, when within a line or two of The End, I'd lean back in my chair for a few minutes then say "fuck this" and toss it in the trash.
Before closing the door, I'd warn my secretary that anyone who entered or knocked was in danger of physical violence. I might turn on some music - LOUD! My mind can create its own space and I can make that space be anything I need it to be.
I'd start typing the speech that had been growing in my head for days and wouldn't stop until I had the whole 20 or 25 minutes on paper. I'd read it once out loud, then give to the secretary with instructions to change nothing but misspelling
The Big Dog always beamed when he read it and said, "You got this just right". That ego stroke was nothing compared to the pleasure of seeing my boss go bat-shit-crazy over me deviating from "The Plan".
Ha Ha! Some tale about writing this is. By the third sentence, I wandered away from whatever truth's in the second sentence.
Some things, I think, are universal. Writers have to write. Not everything we write is good but sometimes you can't tell for years. SAVE WHAT YOU WRITE. Even comments on forums like this need to be copied and put in a file.
Years from now, all or part of it can become something or part of something. Think of them as "war stories" - a foundation that in one form or another can be polished to serve a worthy purpose.
There is a great comment in "Masters of the Air" about the importance of stories. Spoken, I think, by Crosby... "We told each other all kinds of stories. Some of them were true. Most were not. It didn't matter. Tall tales. Music. Laughter. Good Irish whiskey. We all needed something to get back in that plane and do it all again."
I have begun to collect my writings about my life and add to them. I plan to do the book, with its main title being, "GLIMPSES", in small essays, divided only by title and decade, or something of that sort. My father did the same, but after my mother died, he gave up the project. Two years before he turned 80, my sister surreptitiously went to his house and downloaded all of his "stories" -- as he like to call them. My father was a good storyteller, and pretty much every story was true. I won't bore you with those recollections. Anyway, my sister, my brother and I put together an 80 page book with his stories and photos of each subject matter - he once was "Checker Champion of Brooklyn". I edited it mostly for style as I got my writing abilities from my dad. We sent it off to the Blurb company and ordered hardback copies of it for him, and the three children. We ordered softcover books for the grandchildren. Each child and each grandchild contributed an essay about my dad and his effect on their lives. He had re-married and his new wife was in on the secret. He was in Albuquerque during his birthday month and we had him on the phone with his children, who called together "just to wish him a Happy Birthday". We explained that we had sent him a small gift from the three of us and asked if Jan, his wife, had received it (she, of course, did and had it ready). We were on the phone when he opened the gift box and when he saw the cover and title and flipped through it in just a few seconds, he burst out sobbing, declaring happily, "This is the best birthday gift I have EVER received. Oh my God, thank you, thank you SO much. How did you DO this?" We explained the plotting we did and how the other copies were distributed and what he could expect in the contents.
So I plan to do my memoirs in the same way. I have had an interesting life, full of joy but also of despair, and no way near as colorful as my father's. I have the photos ready but Blurb was expensive at that time and I will probably use Amazon.
P.S. There was one mistake in the book. In the chapter about his German immigrant parents and how the family name was changed at Ellis Island, we included a flow chart that my dad had put together for a family tree elementary school project for my young brother. But he had made up the names of his great-grandparents out of whole cloth, because my brother asked for help the night before it was due, and my dad had no time to call his older sister and get the correct names. So we issued a second edition on his 81st birthday, with a legitimate family tree and we included a photo of him during the birthday phone call, all teared up. He also wrote an essay on what the book meant to him.
I miss him so very much.
For those unfamiliar with Amazon publishing, at kdp.com
It is not like the traditional vanity where you have to pay and/or print a minimum number of copies.
Want to print a family memoir? Only need 10 copies? No problem, no cost.
Download an Amazon template, copy paste your book, make a cover. Submit, they will review to makes sure it fits formatting g reqs approve the electronic proof, or order a physical proof. 48 hrs later the book is available on Amazon. Or not, you choose.
Need 100 copies? A nicely bound 8x10 book, 250 pages is about $5/copy author copy.
Need 3 copies? Still $5.
Amazon will publish anything you submit (with a couple exceptions)
All free.
John Henry
A note on Theroux. I've enjoyed much of his work; especially the traveler's tales.
We have much in common when it comes to "solitude" but I can get mine anytime I want it, regardless of the environment.
Traveling solo invites experiences and insights you could never have otherwise. But there is much joy in sharing a journey with a good companion.
I don't think Paul is capable of being a "good companion". I think he'd be an absolute asshole, in fact. Even when he writes about admiration of others, I have a sense he's just using them.
"The only difficulty is its necessity for solitude." ... followed by a nicely (beautifully? skillfully?) written paragraph that either repeats or expands on that simple, direct and complete statement.
The man can write. And does. And does. And does some more.
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