Re: Writers on this List
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Mon, 23 Mar 1998 07:04:13 -0500
> I must suppose that I am a writer. Somewhere along the line of
> self-torment that is me I just said 'I'm writing.' If I could be LIKE
> anybody, without actually BEING anybody, I would like to be a something
> balanced precariously between Salinger and Milne
> (Winnie-the-Pooh-Style). I don't want to be famous or anything, all I
> want is to say as best I can, as concise as I can, exactly what I am
> trying to say. I want to say TRUE things,
...
> I live for anecdotes.
...
> Isn't there some sort of Test that will tell me I'm a writer and should
> die if I don't, or some single criteria or something?
A writer I love (though someone I don't want to *be* or to emulate) once
said to me in a letter, when we were not discussing "whether to be a
writer," but "earning a living as a writer," in the manner he did in his
early days. He said something I've nearly tattooed on my forehead:
Write what sells, or fail to. All the rest is gossip.
One can debate the merits or demerits of trying to write what SELLS, or of
being so glib; I don't propose such a debate, and do not intend to
participate in one if it should emerge, but the brutality of the sentiment
has always remained with me.
Do you mind if I offer uncoated remarks that might or might not offend and
might or might not be brutal?
Live for anecdotes -- but write them down.
Write down everything you can. Keep a notebook, a journal, something you
can come back to every day, so that you develop a sense of consistency. If
privacy concerns you, lock it away.
Come back to it every day. Even if all you do is write nonsense, come back
to it. It is your friend.
Drop the vaguely irritating Other Voice You Use to Describe Your Life,
because it's not your voice, and neither is Beckett's your voice.
(Including those of his characters.) You *have* your own voice, even if
you don't know it yet. That's what a notebook is for -- develop that voice
there, make your mistakes there, say there the things you would never say
in public. Eventually, when you are working on something, you may have an
audience in mind. It might be the old English teacher. It might be this
list. (Ugh -- too inbred, but mostly encouraging of you in your efforts.)
It might be an old friend. You'll find that out. Write for that audience.
Or write to thumb your nose at it. But above all else, keep at it.
Perhaps you will fail. Perhaps you will be happy. Perhaps you will
succeed. But try, and try as YOU, and only then can you know.
There is no test. The test is what I just described, and it is lifelong.
Think of Frank McCourt, whether you loved or hated Angela's Ashes, a man
who kicked around and was a wonderful English teacher until his retirement,
when he managed to write a book even he thought would be dismissed as
"charming and lyrical" and then dismissed to the discount tables in the
bookstores. Sixty-something years of life, and there was his voice, all
along. And his subject. And may we all leave him alone long enough that
he can get more work done.
Oh -- and re-read Scottie's last message, "writers' encampment," which was
wise and generous.
And perhaps like old Hemingway you might keep a rabbit's foot or a horse
chestnut in your pocket for good luck. As he claims he used to tell
himself in Paris, in those young days:
" 'Do not worry.' [He would tell himself on bad days.] 'You have always
written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one
true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I
would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then
because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had
heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone
introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut the
scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true
simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that room I decided that
I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying
to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe
discipline." He had plenty more to say about this, too -- it's in A
Moveable Feast, a book I invariably find on my desk or in my pocket or
(miracle of miracles) at work. I must have ten copies of it by now, and
nearly all are dark with fingerprints.
Read. Write. Make the effort. It's nearly all you can reasonably do.
Hell, look at my return address. Is there anything that's NOT a rough
draft, as we make our ways along? So, it's rough. Rough is better than
vapor, which is better than a vacuum.
I'm sure there's some local gentle maxim I can end with, but I'm damned if
I know what it is.
--tim