A
student that I like and respect tells me, “Talking to you about writing is kind
of depressing.”
I
understand.
I
will never be the pitch-person for a Write Your Way to Happiness seminar. At a book festival, after a reading, someone came
up and wanted to discuss the life-affirming qualities of literature and the
healing qualities of writing. Perhaps it
was simply out of orneriness, but I pointed at a shelf nearby that contained
“Classics.” Ernest Hemingway –
suicide. Sylvia Plath – suicide. Anne Sexton – suicide. Virginia Woolf – suicide. Richard Brautigan – suicide. David Foster Wallace – suicide. Hunter S. Thompson – suicide. I was about to work my way through the
attempted suicides – Twain, Vonnegut – and then I was going to substitute
“alcoholic” or “drug addict” for “suicide,” but I finally noticed the woman’s
horrified expression. I mumbled something
like “Well, maybe writing helped them postpone killing themselves for a
while.” She moved away quickly, as if
she was afraid that I was about to launch myself through a window.
My
student made the comment she did, not because I had given a suicide litany, but
because I had been explaining how writing doesn’t necessarily make me feel good
as much as it makes me less miserable.
I’m irritable if I don’t do it, so much so that my wife can tell. Noting my crankiness, she’ll say, “You
haven’t written yet today, have you.” And
she’ll send me off so that my company will be more bearable. But, even when I do sit down and put in some
time, the next day I have to do it again.
In an interview recently, Billy Collins pointed out that a poet can finish
work quickly, but this means a constant resetting back to zero and having to
start all over.
As
a writing teacher, I emphasize the work it takes. The need to revise. The need to put in the time. The day-to-day struggle. The discipline and craft. It’s not romantic or inspiring. It’s …
well . . . boring which is why it’s difficult.
Most of us have a low tolerance for boredom. (It’s also why movies about writers are usually
boring. At least those that want to show
them “working.” The craft of writing is
fundamentally uninteresting to watch; there is no action.)
I
know my students want to hear something motivational. Something elevating and quasi-mystical. Maybe something that emphasizes the joy, the
sense of accomplishment, the God-like power of creating worlds. And sometimes I even want to say something
like that. But, just as I warn them
about exclamation marks, I’m no Keating from Dead Poets Society. I’m no
coach, no personal trainer, no rah-rah speaker.
And
yet . . .
F.
Scott Fitzgerald (alcoholic) talked about a mind needing to be able to hold two
opposing ideas at the same time. I think
the writing of poetry (and most writing) is … pfffff… piffle, not a waste of
time, but certainly not as valuable as working in a hospital, fixing a toilet,
taking care of a baby. It’s just a poem,
and usually not even that. Just a draft. It won’t affect anything, change anything,
mean anything. And yet simultaneously, I
think it’s the most important thing that I can be doing.
In
the movie Shadowlands, someone tells
C.S. Lewis that God may be answering his prayers. He responds, “That's not why I pray,
Harry. I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray
because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't
change God, it changes me.”
This is how I feel -- there is an internal need and my writing doesn't change anyone but myself -- but I'm no minister, so I don't put it in these terms. Instead, I
try to explain it more prosaically quoting Gloria Steinem who once said,
“writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing
something else.”
