The Writer's Apprenticeship: 7 Years or Age 30???

citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Thu, 14 Jan 1999 20:46:46 -0800

Please read carefully:

This will be one of my last posts for awhile.  Rereading some of my posts,
esp, the 2nd re Rilke, bespeaks of a mind that needs some rest.  Not to
mention a body that, since about Saturday, has been subject to swings of
mania and insomnia.  But please, one last word.

In the first post re Rilke , Mt. Everest , etc., I contructed an *arbitrary*
set of  *rules* re wanting to write, learning to write, and *really* writing
(I guess real writing makes even the trees happy they  are carrying the word
out to others).  I think , I know, that I was trying to stress the idea of
apprenticeship as in the old craft or guild sense, I *thought* they use to
be 7 years.  (I invoked carpenters, bricklayers, and the great unsung makers
of heavenly omlettes).  I did not, please believe me, *mean*  even if one
had done the seven years, and was still under thirty, one had to do *even
more* --sort of like, taking oh, another extra 75 credits on top of the 120
most people do to get the BA.  I recall invoking Rimbaud, Keats and some
others --I didnot explicitly say who those others might be--I thought it
might be tactless, or betray some sort of privacy or some such thing--and
let it go at that:  Rimbaud, Keats and some others....  30 is just a nice
round figure one might have recourse to when one's mania gets the best of
one and one stands on some imaginary soapbox in cyberspace and declares for
any or all within earshot, that, this is his *personal* credo, which happens
to pertain to him, for, though 48 years of age, he has under his belt, even
with the MA in Creative Writing, a scant 4 or 5 years of the so-called
necessary 7.  Perhaps part of it was that heady infusion of god knows what,
while on said soap box, that comes from calling out to  unknown passerbys
and even some who stop, and listen  hard to what this unknown ranter out of
San Francisco might be saying.  (Said ranter with 4 or 5 years, and , as it
happens no publications to date.  Though he himself, in the early flush of
writing sent out several poems on several occasions and each time they were
duly denied access to print (as, in retrospect, they should have been, and
oddly , he is glad, at the hoary age of 48 that they were.) )

I hope this ranter was *not* up there, at some subliminal level,  while
calling out the names of writers he loves, Rilke, Keats, JDS, Kafka, Beckett
and a whole bunch of others (and I sincerely believe JDS was right when *he*
called out his list of loves in that old Book of Month club note by Maxwell,
that he should *not* mention the living) and was really, at some base level,
calling out his own name a half dozen of so times. I hope not, no.  At this
moment I am not completely sure said ranter would recognize his own name if
it came up and hollered in his tin ear.

Each of you on this list, you writers, or would be writers or those in
between--Only you can *truly* know when the Muse of Absolute Joy is sitting
on your shoulder when you are there with pen and pad of paper on your knees,
at desk, or before that horrifically intimidating blank screen.  (Words
tapped out into  the Void, trusting their reception is taken as intended,
relying on Tennessee Williams's kindness of strangers, even strangers who
have read the same texts over  and over again and wish to put their heads
together and ponder some and shout  gold discovered or some such thing.)
*I* dont really know, I didn't invent the list, I joined only 7 or 8 days
ago.

Almost done:  My last word about the creative process which for some reason
interests me unduly:  After you feel in your heart of hearts that supra Muse
was with you, you need to somehow prove she/he was, as they usually dont
hang around the next morning.  They might drink some of your orange juice,
whilst you still are on the bed, slowly coming out of that incredibly
special sleep, that ultimate writer's dream, and will be off before you know
it.  So what must be done?  Go back and check those pages, those scribbles,
in the cold light of the next day, at least, and look at them with your
critic's eye,  the artistic conscience developed over decades of reading
what?  The writers you, yourself, for some inexplicable reason, love.  Your
conscience, if you never misuse it--like thinking 3rd or 2nd rate is really
1st rate--wont let you down.   After reading those scribbles, and you still
feel happiness when your eyes drink in the words you wrote, then go  to the
frig yourself and partake of that orange juice.  The orange juice is sort of
like the bathroom soap scribbles the glass kids left for each other, I
guess.  I always felt that in the stories, the best moments were things like
that:  Boo Boo's message to S on his marriage (only to end in , alas,
suicide, yes?), the letters of S to Buddy re , what else, the writing
process; why, because writing was what was closest to B's heart --not golf
or finance or the newest auto.  S , in his heart of hearts, wanted to give B
what B felt he wanted most out of life:  the secret re that mysterious
activity we ultimately dont conduct on blank page, but within the crucible
of our own heart .  Enough.  I need to tap out a couple of very short ones
to a couple of  very special people and then be off.