“Though I have doubted my talent, I’ve never doubted my conviction that this was the path I had to be on. Writing is like my Siamese twin: freakish, alive, weighty, uncanny. Were we to be separated, I doubt that I could survive it.”
At a certain point, the writer asks herself, How do I keep doing this? It’s book three, maybe book four or five, and the question is a not unkind whisper, a murmur, a constant hum. How do I keep doing this?
You might think, well, James. Bergman. Duras. O’Keeffe. Bob Dylan. Sure. Okay. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve been quite successful, more or less successful, a disaster, a frantic player, a surly underdog. I know a lot of writers. This is what we all say to ourselves, once we’re past the life-or-death Rocky-esque movie of the first book or so: How do I keep doing this?
And the related question, Why? Not the easy, self-loathing, adolescent why? but the why? of the artist who knows only too well when she is telling the truth in her work and when she is lying, however beautifully or with what technical finesse. Why go there, why put myself through that? Wasn’t it painful enough the first few times around? The contempt one has, early on, for the “made” writers who phone it in while happily cashing the checks changes over time to a rueful sympathy: It’s very hard to keep doing this. And to do it for real, to write from the marrow? Only a college student would self-righteously insist on that sort of purity. Even Tina Turner still sings “Proud Mary.”
But how does the writer make the long haul? As I go on through the gates of novel three, novel four, I find that I am increasingly interested in this question. Something changes. Something shifts: How do I keep doing this? I don’t suffer from an excess of self-confidence, nor rage, nor purity of spirit. Doors have opened for me, but other doors have remained closed. I have had as many reasons to stop as I have had to continue. Yet I always chose the latter, without hesitation. This may be a matter of temperament, astrological alignments, a warp in my DNA, psychology, race, class, the weather on a certain day in 1974—who knows? But, though I have certainly doubted my talent and my ability to pull off what I am trying to do, I have never doubted my conviction that the pursuit itself, the vocation, was the path I had to be on. This business of making sentences, images, scenes—it is so constitutive of my being that I hardly know who I would be without it. Writing is like my Siamese twin: freakish, alive, weighty, uncanny. Were we to be separated, I doubt that I could survive it.
Still, will only takes you so far; faith only takes you so far, for that matter. I have begun asking other artists—dancers, filmmakers, photographers, composers—how they do it, how they keep doing it. No one says: Because I know I am a genius. Even the ones who I suspect secretly think that they are geniuses do not seem especially sustained by this knowledge. A dancer I met recently, whose body is beginning to move him out of performing and into choreography, said, “Well, I think you just have to accept that the spark will come and go.” A filmmaker friend said, “It’s how I know I’m alive.” Another friend, a photographer, continually pushes herself into uncharted territory in a battle not to collapse into a prettiness, a commercial appeal, that comes all too easily to her. Lorca tells us, “The true fight is with the duende”; everything else is wallpaper, more or less.
Over the long haul, the writer draws on these qualities—the fickleness of eros, the steep and exhilarating drop of risk, demons that can be relied upon to put up a fight—but I have also begun to believe that the writer who continues to write, and to write well, to write deeply, often finds that she quietly, year by year, constructs a system of values that is by nature resistant. It’s not that one sets out to do this, exactly; but it happens, it accretes, as the choices the world offers inevitably arise. It may begin as an uncomfortable awareness, a prickling, even a sinking feeling. But you know it. You see the deal. You hesitate, almost wishing you didn’t know what you know, which is something along these lines: You cannot continue to write well if you believe that money is the measure of a person’s worth. You cannot continue to write well if you believe that critical consensus is the measure of an artist’s worth. You cannot continue to write well if you are protecting your family, your children, your community, or your social position. You cannot continue to write well if you don’t believe in the value of art as such—as itself—not in the service of some greater cause or system or set of beliefs, whether those beliefs fall to the right or the left or rise to the more spiritual realms above. You can write well without money, without praise, without social or political approval—you might not be that happy or look that great, but you can do it—but if your writing is essentially obedient to any of these powerful forces, its light will slowly flicker and then go out.
Does this sound harsh? Did you think I was going to say that the secret to the long haul is a loving partner, a great agent, a meditation practice, a reasonable publishing climate, a vital overall artistic culture, eating right? All true, of course. I wish them for myself, I wish them for all my fellow writers and artists. I take my fish oil every day. But over nearly twenty years of doing this, writing about it, observing other writers, and now teaching, what I see in the people who make it over the long haul—though many of us are past masters at concealing it—is an obdurate, willful, sometimes contrary set of values that insists, silently or loudly, on the importance of doing this strange and wayward thing.
It helps if you’re already outside the social norms for whatever reason and have some experience making a path where there isn’t one. John F. Kennedy, Jr., say, probably wouldn’t have been a very interesting writer. James Baldwin was a great one. We don’t teach this to our students—we can’t. What would we say? Be a freak, or at least have the courage of one? I mean, sometimes we do say that… but since we usually say it while standing in a university classroom—and the university is the patron of the arts of our time; we’d be toast without it—the context tends to belie the message: Be a freak, but meet with my institutionally validated approval.
Nevertheless, this is what I see. Over the long haul, whether you ever intended to or not, you find yourself building a system of values that supports your art as much as, if not more than, any of your grants, publishers, prizes, editors, or good reviews. And to see this is also to see that what I have created over the years is a sort of double life, split between two communities. There is my public community at the university where I work, at all the universities and other institutions where I’ve worked. But there is also a more fluid, polyglot, polymorphous, rambling, private community of writers, artists, rent boys, intellectuals, musicians, dancers, activists, and freaks of various stripes which is where I live, and who are part of that mysterious community in my mind of the living and the dead, friends, lovers, and admired strangers, to whom I write. Michael and Maud and Chris and Alice are in there, along with Elizabeth Bowen, and Joni Mitchell, and every man or woman I’ve ever loved. My public community is where I speak, where I listen, and where, hopefully, I create an environment in which people can learn how to make good prose. My private community is where I dream, where I feel most deeply that I can be known, where I am bowled over, where I am changed, where I break down, where I break through; it’s where I sweat, and who I sweat with.
It seems to me no accident that this community, a community of outsiders in one way or another, has sustained me over the long haul. But both of these communities, the public one and the private one, share the belief that to make art, to make something new in this world any which way you can, rewarded or not, is of transcendent value. I need them both and feel lucky to have them. Without them, and without the values that we share, I would have gone under a long time ago. I’m brave enough, but I’m not bulletproof.
Let me just be clear that I am describing—not, as we are warned not to do in workshop, prescribing. Some people don’t need much community of any kind, don’t need to feel that their values are shared with more than one or two others, or anyone else at all. They would rather be on their own. I’m always struck by how the Dadas, for instance, were not only few in number but also often geographically distant from one another. They seem to have been connected by a galactic vibe more than by daily interaction. Some people are quite well-nourished by leading conventional lives; their art thrives. For me, the gently unconventional path, and access to various unconventional worlds, have been crucial to my work as well as to my life. I don’t know why, honestly. But somehow they’re linked, they flow into one another. I need one side of the box to remain open. And, of course, this is who I seem to have been most interested in writing about: the folks who live a little (or more than a little) outside, the artists, the wannabe artists, the queers, the dreamers, the thieves, the in-betweeners, the modern restless ones. I light to that. I find it heroic, even when it doesn’t work out. I suppose I am more interested in freedom than in greatness; the story of what people do with their freedom compels me more than whether they win or lose the big game. I’m sure that gender, for one thing, has something to do with this. Female freedom still generally comes at a price. We write the stories we both wish for and fear.
Or maybe I just like having company, as a dear writer friend once said. I always want to know: How do you do it? And how about you? How do you keep doing it? In seeking out people of whom to ask this question, I seem to have built myself a life. This is the long haul, it ends up. It is rare, and precious.
34 responses
I write because it gives me an excuse to drink.
Fantastic piece. It really reads like a fine commencement address. Personally, my commitment to writing had to go through three stages. First was my childhood, when I discovered this form of my expression and declared that it was going to be what I did the rest of my life. Then, in college, realizing I wasn’t going to become the rock star I imagined I’d become, I had to decide whether to carry this thing I’d loved as a kid into adulthood. And this decision seemed to hinge on a question: if I knew with total certainty that I’d never get published and write in obscurity, would I still do it? When I answered in the affirmative, my writing seemed to reward me. The third stage was fairly tactical. Now that I’d committed myself, in my early 20s, to pursuing this at all costs, how exactly would I go about it? I had a fateful encounter with a WWII friend of my grandather at a Legion of Valor conference that showed me the way. At this Ramada ballroom in Glendale, California my grandfather introduced me to Ray Hunt, who had escaped the Bataan Death March and survived as a guerilla soldier in the Philipines for the remainder of the war. I asked him how he pulled it off psychologically, and he told me that he did two things: wake up every morning convinced he was going to die, and never stay in the same place mire than a week. This struck me as exceptional advice for a writer, and I’ve tried to keep it in mind through numerous disappointments ever since. I try to assume my own irrelevance while making guerilla attacks week by week. I think what this has helped me do is find the pleasure in the work itself and feel genuinely grateful when my work reaches readers.
Thank you so much for this stunning piece. I will read it and refer to it many times. And, most important, post it on FB. ;->
I like this. I usually hate essays about writing, but this was about much more than simply that.
A interesting, thoughtful piece. For me, the community of the books I love is first and foremost. These are long-haul relationships. My writing is part of what I bring to the relationship. I think if I stopped loving books by others then I would lose the drive to write my own.
Love this idea of the long haul, and this is an interesting meditation on building the writerly life. This part caused me to pause: “Writing is like my Siamese twin: freakish, alive, weighty, uncanny.” The conjoined body is so frequently and problematically referenced in literary and pop culture and I wish that troublesome baggage had been more fully unpacked here. (I wondered if the sentence would have the same weight without the phrase…Writing is like my invisible twin, perhaps?) The idea of reclaiming ‘freak’ as in “freaks of various stripes” seems wholly separate in my mind from going one step further with the metaphor of conjoinment…but perhaps other readers do not agree.
Thanks for that. You’re absolutely right, it is a long haul. A lifetime of pursuit. Getting it “right” may always be just beyond my grasp, but I can always try, can’t I?
When you’re on the road for several days, and you come along a dive in a place you’d overlooked it feels good. But when that meal is great…it’s satisfying in ways you won’t know until the journey’s over. Thanks for the meal. Family style, too.
Loved this piece.
And to partially answer the question: I write, forever trying to articulate all that goes unsaid.
“You cannot continue to write well if you are protecting your family, your children,” WRONG. SOPHISTRY. NONSENSE.
Thanks for the navel-gazing and existential angst. I wanted to be a writer from age 10 when I learned that Mark Twain did it for a living and I didn’t want to ever have to go to work.
After that I published 40+ books, stories in 11 languages around the globe, and a lot of other stuff, won awards, made a living.
I have never known any professional writer who had the slightest doubts about himself at any time . And I’ve known a lot of them.
But I have also learned that writing is a compulsion, whether you think so or not. Writers just turn on the tap, and the underground river starts to flow through them. It is impossible for them not to write. When they throw their typewriter out the window, it bounces up off the sidewalk, back through the open window, and chases them around the room.
As Isaac Bashevis Singer put it: “Of course I believe in free will–I have no choice!”
“I have never known any professional writer who had the slightest doubts about himself at any time.”
Wow, Gladiator. You really run with a cool crowd. This essay’s really more for the rest of us, but thanks for your thoughts. And congratulations on your many books and awards – you’d think you’d be willing to use your real name in the comments section!
I’m just not sure if I’ve heard of a person who’s never had the slightest doubts about himself at any time.
Talk about nonsense, dude: “It is impossible for them not to write.” What baloney. Award-winning baloney!
Oh, I’ve had plenty of doubts about myself. But never about my ability to “write right”. And when I refer to other professional writers, I was referring to doubts concerning their ability to write stuff. Even when they get buried in rejections from idiotors, they always know they’re just fine and keep sending stuff out.
Full disclosure: I am no longer a “professional” and only made my living as a writer for about 16 years. I never made a gigantic fortune in the business and gave it up to do something easier that paid better. So I am not a great example. And these days I just write to amuse myself. But I assume that young writers want to hear viewpoints from all quarters.
Uh, thanks for the baloney award. I’ve put it on the mantle under the boar’s head.
“You cannot continue to write well if you are protecting your family, your children,†WRONG. SOPHISTRY. NONSENSE.”
Pretty sure “well” here implies a modicum of worthwhile human meaning and artistic value rather than technical abilities to compose a proper sentence. You confirm the fucking statement in your last post:
“Full disclosure: I am no longer a “professional†and only made my living as a writer for about 16 years. I never made a gigantic fortune in the business and gave it up to do something easier that paid better.”
Gladiator’s a terrible example. This essay is to inspire writers to never give up. Gladiator didn’t make the long-haul.
Hey Stacey,
Thanks for the essay.
Make what you will of it, it is a wonderful read and thought provoking.
Let those of us who Rumpus take care not to allow the comments section to become a means to piss on one another.
This is a special place. Let’s treat it as such.
Beautiful true stuff, Stacey, and wonderfully said.
Loved this. Thanks.
I admire everything about Stacey D’Erasmo. Her beauty, her grace, her talent.
“We are the stuff that dreams are made of, and our little lives are rounded with a sleep.”
“Every day is a good day in the arena.”
not harsh, not harsh at all. and I find so much truth in this; my community of writers include people very much in my life and those not in my life at all, they humble me, but who keep poking themselves into my sub- and my surface consciousness, reminding me that no great soul-unsheathing has not, a hundred, a thousand times, been attempted, before.
Many years ago a young writer told me he had written a book about group homes, but he thought nobody would be interested. I told him “if it’s well written, it will have an audience.” And that’s what I tell young writers today, when they tell me their lives are uninteresting, small, and they have nothing to write about.
There is drama in everything. In every life, in every day, in everything, there is birth, death, loss, romance, love, sex, conflict, danger, confrontation, happiness, grief. No one escapes, and no one comes out unscathed.
This is extraordinary — a question I’ve been asking lately, a question to which I’ve had only half-good responses. I know I must keep doing this; I wonder why the must.
Thank you for the patient exploration.
What a fascinating essay, followed by a fascinating string of comments. I’m still (relatively) young; I might be a writer, but I haven’t even yet played the role of Rocky. There is a novel, perhaps, clanking around in my head, but at the moment it’s still buried beneath a lot of everyday to-dos. The impression I get is that it will have to be a long haul. That first fully fleshed out story is still a ways away. Over the long haul, I guess, it even takes a long time to get started. But we keep plugging along.
I’ve asked this question to every writing workshop applicant prior to joining, and none have had a succinct response. I think this will at least open all of us to discovering our own personal truth(s) about the WHY of it all.
I write because I need to clear my head and heart of soon to be forgotten oral histories and fictional characters that descend upon me in the shower, while driving, or standing in line at the grocery store — all instances when I don’t have pen and paper.
“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” – Thomas Mann
Stacey – Thanks for this gently visceral reflection on the writing life. The communities that sustain the writer are far more important than those that sustain the product. And Andrew, thanks for keeping the Rumpus one step ahead of the present.
So fucking great. And heartening. Wait. Is heartening even a word, or can you only be disheartened? That seems unfair. (No, it is. I checked. Phew.) In other heartening news, you know you’ve made it when Stephen Elliott’s shithouse crazy dad calls you out in the comment thread.
Such a good ESSAY!!!
My first wife’s family would videotape everything and then want us all to go into the other room to watch it. I steadfastly refused. ‘I don’t have to see myself doing something I just finished doing and remember perfectly well I did.’
But I do the same with pen and paper (or the 21st century technological equivalents). It does remind me that a writer I’ve long since lost contact with once told me there was something wrong with a person who does something and then must run home to immediately write about what they’ve done. Or maybe he was paraphrasing from someone famous? But his point was: that “something wrong” is to be admired.
Yes it is something to be admired. No, there’s nothing wrong with it or us. Think cave paintings. It is how we make sense of and comminicate who we are – to ourselves and to each other.
Writers write because we see things that are worth sharing and no one sees the same thing in the same way.
Artists art . . . for the same reason. Just fill in the blank. Medium makes no difference.
Everybody has at least one novel (or movie or (just fill in more art forms, I think you get my point)) in them because everyone’s life is a volume of . . . same kaleidescope of artforms.
The world we live in today with all its devices and means to document and share and be heard makes reading (read receiving) more worthwhile, writing (read creating and expressing and comminicating) more priceless and going the long haul (read living) much more manageable and enjoyable.
If, when my in-laws were videotaping and viewing, I knew then what I know now, I would have run with them to see it all. I’m sure I would have seen something new and learned.
Thank you
Thank you for this. We have to trust our own strangeness.
Very thoughtful.
The siren song of recognition is very powerful, but slowly but surely, as you say, I find myself coming to recognize that I prefer my life to any other. Even with all that it sometimes seems to lack.
Man oh man. What a great piece.
Re: “You cannot continue to write well if you are protecting your family, your children,  For the type of writing that drew us all to this forum this is absolutely true. I have a collaborator. She uses a pen name. I draw lines and while working those edges is like setting out to write a sestina, an excercise that sharpens the work, there is always something beautiful and nearly perfect you find yourself forced to jetison. I am one of those people discussed in this space elsewhere–mortgage, kids, &c.–so like that sestina analogy, these are limits I have placed on myself and have to live with.
Truth and beauty.
“You cannot continue to write well if you believe that money is the measure of a person’s worth. You cannot continue to write well if you believe that critical consensus is the measure of an artist’s worth…” & etc. Words to engage with, to live up to. Terrific piece.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment.