I had the pleasure and the pain, late Thanksgiving night, to run across the New York Times 100 Notable Books 2008 list. Pleasure because, obviously, it's a list of books I've either read and loved/admired or hated and possibly admired, or books I might love or hate. (I stop reading a book pretty quickly if I don't at least admire the writing.) Pain because it was late, I was exhausted, and couldn't stop following the links, googling the authors, and updating my wish list. Although I often disagree with the NYTBR, reading it is like having a discussion with other like-minded, book-obsessed people: always stimulating. I was heartened to discover that many of the books that made the 2008 fiction/poetry notable list were debuts. Maybe I'm mis-remembering years past (or, more likely, failing to remember at all), but it seems there is a bumper crop of first novels, story collections, and poetry books this year. Nam Le's The Boat has been on my list since it came out last spring. (Also, bonus, he's brainy and gorgeous.)
I could go on for days about books I hope to read, but the broader point of this post is to acknowledge the authors who manage to write at all. I am reminded constantly how hard it is to write, never mind to write well. I can come up with a thousand excuses to procrastinate; many a successful effort is cataloged in this blog. Drafting this novel of mine has proven to be more of a struggle than I'd expected. Not the actual writing so much, which I enjoy and comes easily, but the ass-in-the-chair aspect of it. I'm good at improvising, so I trust myself to follow the characters and come up with a compelling story. I'm good at writing (I think) on the sentence level, and even on the chapter level. But because I've never tried a novel before, I don't know if I'll be any good at the entirety, at finishing -- and I get lazy quick when I'm not certain I'll succeed. (See: Algebra I; high school; disaster.)
I'm impressed with the other writers in my novel workshop. They are writing. They are not afraid of the mess. They are real writers.
I admire my instructor, who has written a dozen novels and has an extraordinarily loyal readership. He is a real writer.
Likewise J. Robert Lennon and Rhian Ellis, both authors, both steeping in fiction (teaching, running a book store), both blogging about writing, reading, and publishing at the smart and thought-provoking Ward Six. They are real writers.
Poet Seth Abramson, a current Iowa Writers' Workshop student, has recently won some high-profile accolades for his work, and his first book is coming out next spring. Seth is a real writer.
I admire my friend Lily, whose first novel has won or been shortlisted for awards and fellowships, and is now being shopped around by an excellent agent. (Lily also started submitting short stories to journals just a few months ago, and already has met with success. Go, Lily!) Lily is a real writer.
And just today, I read that my friend Valley just completed the first draft of her first novel. An Anne Lamott-style shitty first draft, according to the author. I seriously doubt it's shitty; I know it's thrilling for Valley. It thrills me, and I haven't read a lick of it. But Valley makes her living as a writer and book reviewer. Valley is a real writer.
I've always made my living as a writer, too -- journalism, then (God help us) the more lucrative and much less substantial advertising. Still, while I think of myself as a writer, I don't consider myself the type of writer I want to be: a writer of fiction and poetry. A novelist. At the moment I feel like a tourist, a dabbler. It's not because publication eludes me; I know that publication doesn't amount to authenticity. It's that I don't have that ass-in-the-chair ethic yet, and I don't know that I'll ever have it. I write when it's fun for me (i.e. easy); I write when there's a deadline (i.e. out of fear). If left to my own devices, however -- I know my own propensity toward laziness -- no matter how much I want to say I have written a novel, I doubt I'd have the discipline to do it without prodding. Saying I am writing a novel is painful and embarrassing, because I feel like a poseur. It feels disrespectful, somehow, to make a claim on that sacred territory.
I don't know what the fuck I'll do when I'm finished with my degree and have no one expecting twenty pages of me every couple of weeks.
Meantime, cheers and great thanks to the real writers who help me, for the moment, keep the faith.
Posts
4 comments:
'Faith' indeed. They can keep it.
This post makes me sigh.
Fiction writing is a kind of insanity ("unless you get paid, in which case its a job"). Some famous writer said that. I can't remember who. I've forgotten everything I used to know.
Anyway E, you're a real writer because you still have that particular insanity. The rest of us are (temporarily) sane.
But here is what I think (and feel) is the real truth of the matter (and I've been thinking about it for a while now): you write only for one person, and its never, ever, ever "you". It could be an imaginary lover in your head; your biographer; your son or daughter; a long dead father; and so forth. People who say "I write for me" are lying - to you and to themselves.
You write because you want some very specific person to: (i) fall in love with you; (ii) respect you; (iii) think you're an artist; etc. or all of the above. How else could you possibly be motivated to work so hard, and to come up with the good shit day after day?
I suspect (although I wouldn't know for sure because I never was one) that this is true for 'successful' writers as well - that is to say those writers that are read by strangers and not just their friends and family. I bet even those people, who can actually conceptualize an "audience" or a "public" that they are trying to entertain or touch or impress. . . even they, ultimately, are speaking to an audience of one.
This post makes me laugh, and confounds me.
It's all true. Even if the writer can't figure out who the hell that person is -- what his motivation is -- it must be there, otherwise he wouldn't keep cracking his head against this particular brick wall day after day.
I agree with everything you say.
I don't know whom I'm writing for; the end-all (The Novel) is for my daughter, I think, and M and all the other people in my life I'd like to be proud of me. But the narrative itself... I don't know yet.
Maybe I need to bring that person into focus so I can get this thing written.
You are a lovely woman, E. Thank you.
I love this question -- for whom do you write? -- and think it's probably truest to say that (1) it changes; and (2) it's different for different people.
But I'll tell you that I wish I wrote for Leonard Woolf, who always used to tell Virginia when she'd finished something, "You've done it again, Virginia."
Now there's the ideal reader.
Yes, Lily -- someone whose opinion you respect who looks you in the eye and does what you can't for yourself: affirm your ability.
I agree with Anon above; I don't think it's possible, in this ego-dominated being of mine, to write exclusively for myself. It's not simply thinking out loud onto the page. It's an effort at intimate understanding between me and a reader.
A reader.
A Lenny Woolf.
xo
E.
Post a Comment