WRITING
When asked why she wrote, Anais Nin said, “One has to create a world in which one can live.” I didn’t completely understand or appreciate the gravity of those words until I started writing myself. I needed a space wherein I could simply breathe and be true to myself, and to hell with everything else.
For the record, a disclaimer: I don’t pretend to be an established writer, let alone one with “answers.” In fact, it might be considered ironic that the impressions I’ve garnered about writing wouldn’t have arrived had I been “established.” Something to consider. Here are just a few of those impressions.
Most of the writers I’ve ever read seemed to have been misfits of one kind or another, ill-fitted to their social or familial circumstances. This to me was because of the very same dilemma experienced by Nin. Women writers had to carve out and defend rooms of their own, while male writers had to fight for literary turf. The first just for sanctuary, the second (and later both together) for recognition on a fierce and bloody battlefield.
I have never had either the appetite, temperament, or ego to fight people over matters of creativity. The two notions seemed like an oxymoron and a terrible mishandling of creativity. What does creativity become when the first thing we do with it is turn it into a marketing tool, then a political and legal weapon for power, status, and wealth? It then becomes the subject of envy, jealousy, and resentment. But that’s always the name of the game, first and foremost, in the world of markets. An art’s intrinsic worth is measured by its dollar value. The only way to preserve and protect it is to keep away from marketing temptations. Otherwise, to create anything means lawyers and editors reconnoitering you like vultures. You’re “sized up and weighed” for your pound of flesh.
In an article entitled “Reply to a Critic,” Gore Vidal said “Straight sentences must be bent like pretzels to change meanings to score points. But then much of what passes for literary discourse in these states is simply hustling words to get them to mean what they don’t.” Touche.
With that, I’m very happy to have my own inviolate “room.” It’s all I have, or need. Hunter Thompson said, “I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left to me.” — I write for the drawer, and creating is its own reward. It’s about carving a world of my own, and to hell with detractors.
Yes, there are those moments when published writing is actually appreciated for its own merits. It invites simple intelligent dialogue in the spirit of mutual respect and learning. But that alone seems like such a long perilous journey, through thorny thickets, just to get there. And then there are always the even thornier thickets upon leaving. People want a piece of you just in case you gain a patina of financial success.
It’s a tragedy married to a travesty. Opinions and loyalties on this seldom ever waver. The only thing that does waver are the strategies learned to undermine and sabotage one’s competition. And when argumentum finally hits rock bottom to ad hominem, it’s really time to leave. If anything, all that bleeds through are the true colors of the human character.
Another thing I’ve noticed about the turf (nonfiction) writers so desperately defend is that all they really defend is knowledge, and very little else. Someone once said that knowledge is really nothing more than “borrowed information,” and I agree. Wisdom on the other hand is what you do with it. I’ve seen writers with trains of PhDs dangling behind their names and resumes that would impress anyone. But they were as dumb as doorknobs when it came to an original, creative, improvised, and above all “useful” idea. I finally figured it out that this is why so many choose to stay hidden on campuses and inside classrooms. The only time you hear their names is through abstrusely written, convoluted, long-winded, and impossible to understand articles and essays. It’s all about “control and power” over those “less” than themselves (inferiority complexes), especially among students. They actually don’t want readers to understand them. That would put them on equal footing. And that would risk criticism and competition.
Rule #1: If you want to know about Marx, Jung, Freud, Gandhi, Lincoln, Jefferson, Adams, Orwell, Kafka, Hemingway, Eliot, Dostoyevsky, Hitchens, Chomsky, Jesus, Muhammad, or anyone else – just read those people. Do not read those who write about them. Go to the source, or as close to it as possible, and form your own impressions and opinions. It took years before I realized that most Freudians and Jungians knew virtually nothing about Freud and Jung. If it weren’t for tenure and imprimatur earned at universities, many “-ians” would never get published. I have books by many PhDs which serve me best as doorstops and coasters.
This is just a preview of what a writer runs into (or what I’ve run into) when tempted to pull something “out” of the drawer. As for critics, he’s barraged with critiques (opinions, data, quotes, cherry-picked accounts) designed to simply short-circuit his self-confidence. It’s meant to overwhelm him to a point of not even knowing where or how to respond. And then, as the lawyers say, qui tacet consentire videtur – “He who remains silent is understood to consent.” How can one refute a quote he’s never heard, or an event he didn’t know about, especially if it never happened? Then, upon finding the answers, it’s too late. One faces “the stairway” as the French say – knowing what to say when it’s too late and you’re already out the door (esprit d’escalier).
I think of Deborah Levy’s comment: “To become a WRITER I had to learn to interrupt, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL” (Levy’s caps).
Another incentive for staying home and preserving your own niche – age. Something which – gee – might just go hand-in-hand with a little wisdom. You haven’t the inclination or the energy to even want to know your detractors and critics, even if they want to promote you. There seems to be a natural force that takes over independent of your intentions. When you do wish to pull something out of the drawer, your diminished state reigns you in and says “don’t even think it.”
Writing is also a template for other professions. If you do something just to gain notoriety and wealth, you’re already in the wrong business. Actors, performers, doctors and scientists are strange bedfellows in this way. They all fall into the pit. Doctors I’ve known presented the worst bedside manners imaginable and made terrible public servants. Writers of the same ilk write atrociously bad books. They may not initially (they need that lucky debut product). But then they get lazy and start searching for their laurels.
Rule #2: What makes a writer is what he puts into it. And real writing is, again, its own reward. Everything else is a distraction and ultimately a liability. Philip K. Dick said, “The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in addition, he will balk at doing it.” This applies to no one more deeply than an artist/writer.
Rule #3: The best way to learn how to write is to write. It’s that simple and difficult. Just as the best way to learn tennis or the violin is by not reading “how to” books. New writers do not want to hear this, so they attend workshops hoping to find an easy dodge to the painful reality of an empty page. They’re “workshop junkies.” But they’re soon left to themselves feeling like they’re floating in the middle of nowhere without a compass. The same must be true for painters and empty canvasses.
But the tabula rasa changes from something uncomfortable to a kind of portal, initially small, but widening in time. You begin realizing that you can create anything you want, in any way you want. A word is worth a thousand pictures. There are no restraints, especially when you avoid those wishing to crowd you with rules. If e.e.cummings had worried about split infinitives and commas, or Hemingway about “too many adjectives” (thank you, Ms. Stein) – enough said.
Cleansed of such expectations, writing also becomes therapy. As you talk to yourself through words, things become clear. Life begins to sort itself out. Slowly, you begin to validate yourself where validation failed elsewhere. You begin to learn who you are – which in turn then makes you a better writer.
George R.R. Martin said there are two types of writers: “the architects and the gardeners.” The architect plans everything ahead of time, foundation, rooms, windows, plumbing, and wiring. Everything is “blueprinted” and pre-designed. The gardener digs a hole, drops in a seed, waters it, and walks away. He knows the seed he plants, the soil, and weather conditions, but what grows is a mystery and is out of his control. Creative writing requires a gardener’s approach and a willingness to free associate, to allow thoughts and words to guide. It’s not necessarily “automatic writing,” but it is about letting the imagination lead to discovery.
The architect is good for expository writing, putting down facts in trying to explain things. The gardener is good for creative and imaginative writing. I also imagine that good (both fiction and nonfiction) writers are both, alternately.
In that vein I also submit that writer’s block is a myth. It’s like saying that one runs out of things to say about himself. Hardly. One can get hung up on a theme or train of thought and then convince himself that he’s reached a cul-de-sac of some kind, an inability to express something. But what does he do then in that situation? He turns the focus back onto himself and questions himself. He goes to “the source” of the dilemma which suggests that everything begins and ends with “him” in the first place – including his subject.
The answer to writer’s block then is rather simple: to write about not being able to write. It’s no different than writing about describing the experience of not being able to describe yourself to yourself. Following that path, eventually the train of thought returns. And even if things don’t become clear again right away, knowing it or not, you’re writing again. You may be off in another direction initially, but the curve soon arcs around to your original thesis. You just continue or start over again.
All writing is, at its root, fundamentally a self-conscious (solipsistic) exercise. It’s another way of saying “objectivity is a myth.” It repeats the main tenet of modernism. And not only is writing quintessentially self-referential, it obliterates all pursuits toward whole paradigms, grand narratives, and even inductive reasoning on occasion (specific instances to general rules). Even when the writer thinks he is shooting for some axiomatic pronouncement about “the forest,” what he does instead is go deeper into the trees. He dissects to the point where eventually there can be no quick formulas for anything. This is what writing does. He is not fatally nihilistic, but he leads in that (existential) direction as a phase before reaching only conundrums and paradoxes.
Speaking of self-consciousness, the more we know ourselves, the more we know our peers, and the more they relate to what we write. Proust said: “Every reader, as he read, is actually a reader of himself. The writer’s work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader’s recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book’s truth.”
As for readers “relating,” alas, there’s the difference between American readers and European readers. It doesn’t take much to see the obvious disparities, and for this reason I would expatriate in a heartbeat if I could!! Back in the 1960s, a Gallup poll showed that fifty percent of American adults never read a book after graduating. Before then (and ever since) Americans have never had much use for reading. The typical 19th century pioneer household generally had two books, the Bible and a limited set of Shakespeare (not that they understood Shakespeare). And since World War II, Americans became the quintessential TV culture. TV replaced reading and was/is a mentally passive activity. It’s become the prime “alpha wave” provider. Americans hate thinking too much, and it serves as the biggest pacifier of all time.
What TV also did (and does) is turn writers who wish to be successful into public figures, TV-celebs, and “opinion-makers.” They get solicited for answers to problems they know nothing about. Writers even replace the clergy on matters of the supernatural. TV producers turn to celebrity authors for answers to street violence, fiscal policy, the death penalty, and even if we should go to war. Celebs draw larger audiences and higher ratings than stuffy, boring “experts.”
Writers therefore learn that forms of exhibitionism are good for selling books. They become marketeers, free agents, and “personalities” expected to “be seen” in Hollywood circles, glossy magazines, and high society. – Contrast that sharply with Martin Amis’ observation: “The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.”
Flaubert used to say, “I stayed home and wrote.” And to the serious-minded writer, this is still the best (and only) way to write. When annoying questions were put to Faulkner, his answer was always “I’m just a farmer.” He turned his back on glitz and politics, just as Salinger did in his secluded farmhouse (if anything, it enhanced Salinger’s celebrity status, to his regret). Samuel Beckett was the same, as was Louisa May Alcott, Dorothy Day, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Henry James, Eudora Welty, and Thoreau.
Thomas Jefferson was also an intensely private man. He considered himself “first” a farmer, then an inventor, and only third a “president.” His library of 8,000 books (donated to Congress to start the Library of Congress) was the nucleus of his private life. He had many more books and kept collecting even when he went over-budget, which was constantly.
The celebrity-writer is like the celebrity “Healer-Prophet” who ends up marketing everything from t-shirts and mugs, to DVDs and – only lastly – books. The gregarious personality-type is in his element in front of cameras and kleig lights. And (again, in my view) his primary work (healing, writing) suffers because it’s the first to be sacrificed. Eventually readers begin to see that book sequels lose their potency and focus. They become nothing more than filling quotas for publishers. Meanwhile, “the Healer” becomes an aging rock star. He burns out. He fades away along with last year’s music and Superbowl. He’s just a product with a shelf-life.
Eventually we all “come home.” Either beaten and half-dead, or still healthy but rejected by a throw-away culture of “conspicuous consumption.” And we have no recourse but to go back to that one beast that started it all in the first place.
I understand the wisdom of the yogi who never leaves home because he never has to. He’s done “the rounds” in life (either in this or another life), and he repeats Dorothy’s final discovery after her rite-of-passage (into womanhood), that everything you need is in your own backyard. “I’m not going to leave here ever, ever again…. There’s no place like home.” – Knowing that, how could there ever be a problem like writer’s block?!
© 2020 Richard Hiatt
The Subversive Imagination: Dispatches from the American Frontier 