My Screwed Up Writing Life: A response to the great Jim Belshaw

On his blog, Personal Reflections, Jim Belshaw has written his thoughts on the struggle to identify oneself as a writer. Jim, a very good writer of everything from academia to business, is writing a non-fiction book on the history of New England, Australia. It's a weighty tome, and it involves skill, vision, research and great passion about the topic. Fortunately, Jim has all of these qualities.

In his post, he tells us about the distinction he used to make between those who write using the words as a tool to make a point/ get a job done and those who do it because writing and the exploration of it is central to how we express ourselves.

Jim points out that a writer is someone for whom the writing is central, not just a way to get a point across. They must do it. He's given me an unexpected nod, acknowledging me as a writer.
I'm immensely flattered by this.

But it always wasn't like this for me.

California Delta

I never wanted to be a writer. I wasn't one of those kids who hang out at poetry jams with a portfolio of poems, or a notebook. In my small town, no one read poetry outside of a textbook. There weren't role models to show me writers existed beyond the back page of book jacket, no book fairs or reading groups.

Instead, creativity came in other forms. I'd draw, going through reams of paper. As a teenager, I'd buy ridiculous patterns from Germany and France to make my own outfits. I played the piano and flute, discovered Basie, Brubeck, Earth Wind and Fire, along with Bach in one stupendous year. During hellishly hot summers, I rode my bicycle for miles along levees for hours, and shunned company during our summer holidays to walk alone on the beach. Later, I received my college degree in fine arts, though I can't remember the name of a single classmate. Everything I did was training for being a writer. But the cradle was learning to be alone. That I didn't mind and still prefer my own company probably is the sign of someone destined to become a writer.

An artist or a writer will tell you that it takes precedence over everything --sometimes badly so.
I like writing more than mothering, than keeping house, than money, than being married. I like it more than being nice. And this is the time when writing is a real nuisance because balance isn't something we're very good at. Admittedly, writers are hell to live with, and our worst roommates are ourselves.
The hierarchy of a writer's life (if left to themselves) would probably be like this:

1. Writing
2. Cat or Dog
   
3. Heat and AirCon
4. Food
   
5. Sex (though sex can jump to 3, it may never take the place of 2. And the writer who replaces number 2 with sex is usually seen as slightly off-kilter later on in life --see Norman Mailer).

Fortunately, we rarely get our way, thus rendering lists like the one above useless. Our lives are complicated and we learn that the writer without stress, or one who gets their way all the time is thundering, but dull (see Gordon Lish).

Lastly, I agree that writing in itself is a craft. I learned it on the job, through a writer's program in workshops, and studied poetry. Interestingly, I've learned less from books on writing than I have from novels by great writers such as Harriet Doerr, Thomas Keneally, Eric Newby, Edward Abbey and through the rewriting process. Perhaps this is what separates the wheat from the chafe --we've had people pushing us along, those who have offered critiques on a weekly basis. Though we don't mind being by ourselves, we didn't get here alone.

Writing is a gigantic puzzle that I see and hear. I've learned the importance of rhythm in writing. By manipulating tempo and sound through choosing the right words, one can shape the mood of piece, infusing it with artistry.

But alas, every writer gets stuck. Simply put, writing is thinking. And sometimes we over think, we get too intellectual, we worry about things we can't possibly predict, when in fact we should write more spontaneously. When I find myself in a tight spot, I turn on some jazz and just start pounding to the beat, letting the words spill out and finally, yes... I'm at it again, experiencing the pleasure of putting images into words.

Just like Jim.

Irreverent Conferencing

Fellow writer John Yelverton shared this with me. This passage is quoted in The Long Embrace, a biography of Raymond Chandler by Judith Freeman.

Raymond Chandler wrote this in 1950 called "A Couple of Writers."

"...Just a flat emptiness. The emptiness of a writer who can't think of anything to write, and that's a pretty awful painful emptiness, but for some reason it never even approaches tragedy. Jesus, we're the most useless people in the world. There must be a hell of a lot of us, too, all lonely, all empty, all poor, all gritted with small mean worries that have no dignity. All trying like men caught in a bog to get some firm ground under our feet and knowing all the time it doesn't make a damn bit of difference whether we do or not.

We ought to have a convention somewhere, some place like Aspen, Colorado, some place where the air is very clear and sharp and stimulating and we can bounce our little derived intelligences against one another's hard little minds. Maybe for just a little while we'd feel as if we really had talent. All the world's would-be writers, the guys and girls that have education and will and desire and hope and nothing else. They know all there is to know about how it's done, except they can't do it. They've studied hard and imitated the hell out of everybody that ever rang the bell. What a fine bunch of nothing we would be, he thought. We'd hone each other razor sharp. The air would crackle with the snapping of our dreams. But the trouble is, it couldn't last. When the convention is over and we'd have to go back home and sit in front of the damn piece of metal that puts words down on the paper. Yeah, we sit there waiting--like a guy waiting in the death house."

John thinks that Raymond was down when he wrote it.

So now, fifty-eight years later, the lady (me) speaks to the grumpy protagonist in the late Mr. Chandler's story:

Oh, why bother with the pretense of a writer's conference? Especially if we know the crackle and sizzle just won't last? Who needs to be reminded that the lady in front of you submitted a short story to journals 77 times before having anything accepted? Or the girl who spent $60 grand on an MFA can't get a job at a University, nor can she afford to move to NYC and no one wants her manuscript? Do we need to get embroiled in the font controversy and hear that if you submit in Courrier rather than Times, the lackeys below will think you're a neanderthal? Does it really matter whether or not the group you've been assigned to think your trans gender protagonist would be better as a metro sexual male, and do we really need handouts with passages from Wittgenstein and Gardner with no opportunity to discuss what they were saying or acknowledge the crossover between fine arts and writing?

No. I say go on a cruise. Why not a cruise of writers, where the pages are lost below deck, everyone plays drinking games, goes for broke in the casinos and then uses rusty social skills and reacquaints themselves with the concept of "dressing for dinner?"

At least the booze would be decent, we'd know the life stories were bullshit and there'd be time for outrage and fun. That's exactly what I think of the $1500 spent for a conference fee. Better to upgrade and get a balcony view room on a good cruise line, workshop lightly, flirt outrageously with someone you'll never see again, and have a really great time. And there'd be no academia la la la.

And if Josephine Damian and Chumplet Writes came along, at least there'd be a few saucy minxes.

Writer Impossible: Addicted To Workshops

Workshop Writer 1: The writer has been taking ten-week workshops for years. He has enjoyed the weekly inspiration, finds it necessary to continue writing, loves the camaraderie of other writers, and yet, the writer has not finished his novel, in fact, still stumbles with the style, and has yet to figure out how the novel ends. When he takes a few weeks off, he quits writing, but claims that the 3 week boar hunting trip he took in Texas served as great material to be inserted somewhere in his book.

Workshop Writer 2: This writer has a 1000 page novel and has been working on it steadily for about 7 years. It is written in multiple perspectives, has a storyline that goes beyond War and Peace. He attends conferences regularly, jetting off to Squaw Valley, Maui and driving anywhere within a six hour radius. Sometimes he hears the same speakers. Often he signs up for the additional workshops and takes the same teacher. His pitch is quick and efficient because he has been pitching the same three chapters for seven years. He can say "Your protagonist does not have that... je ne sais quois," hand your paper back, while blowing smoke from a Gitane.

Workshop Writer 3: This writer takes workshops paid via credit card, a home equity loan, or by a spouse or much younger girlfriend who has it on a promise that when they finish the book, the writer will sell it, get a 7-figure advance, and they'll be swimming in money. Despite his arrears, he too finds it difficult to finish his book. He struggles with money and has mentioned that maybe a rich relative will die and leave him a bundle so that he can live the life of Henry Miller in Big Sur, with a new wife or new much younger girlfriend.

Workshop Writer 4: Works all day, takes an occasional workshop at night. Works on his novel sporadically, as time or inspiration permits. Has to miss some meeting because, well, life is busy. When he doesn't go to the workshop, he doesn't write. And even when in the workshop, he'll often dash off the week's pages in one sitting in an afternoon, or worse --egads! at work. When he passes them out to his peers for critique, he apologizes profusely for the quality, saying he didn't have time, dashed them out at work --as if no one else is as busy or even busier.

Yet any one of these could make it someday. Life's a crap shoot that way, innit it?

When I decided to take the jump into fiction (and long after I'd gotten my baccalaureate in fine arts), I decided to enroll in classes at the university extension writers' program. I found the experience invaluable. So I took them for years, passing through workshops on short story, literature, poetry and novel writing. It was my education, more to the point, it was where my skills were honed. But as would be expected, eventually the same things were being repeated. This wasn't a bad thing, rather it was an indication that I'd learned everything from them. It was time to write on my own. This wasn't as hard as others might think. It's how most writers write. By themselves, with the feedback of just a few other writers. In fact, I found it liberating to finally move away from the university stuff, and work on many projects, really stretching myself. I've managed to keep track of friends by helping form a group, The Writerly Pause.

Lesson learned: If you're taking workshops, do a reality check. Workshops are expensive ($500 for a ten week course, not including parking, gasoline, food, supplies and your time), so the pay off has to be not only to be in gaining the strength to do it everyday, but also improving and becoming a deeper writer. Make sure that it's not the taking of workshops that makes you identify yourself as a writer, but the reward of steadily working on your own --doing it everyday, learning, improving and finishing a piece.