The Writing Habit
Next to the defeated politician, the writer is the most vocal and inventive griper on earth. He sees hardship and unfairness wherever he looks. His agent doesn’t love him (enough). The blank sheet of paper is an enemy. The publisher is a cheapskate. The critic is a philistine. The public doesn’t understand him. His wife doesn’t understand him. The bartender doesn’t understand him.
These are only some of the common complaints of working writers, but I have yet to hear any of them bring up the most fundamental gripe of all: the lifelong, horrifying expense involved in getting out the words.
This may come as a surprise to many of you who assume that a writer’s equipment is limited to paper and pencils and a bottle of whisky, and maybe one tweed sports coat for interviews. It goes far beyond that.
The problem from which all other problems spring is that writing takes up the time that could otherwise be spent earning a living. The most humble toiler on Wall Street makes more in a month than ninety percent of writers make in a year. A beggar on the street, seeing a writer shuffling toward him, will dig deep into his rags to see if he can spare a dime. The loan officer in the bank will hide under his desk to avoid saying no yet again to the wild-eyed and desperate figure looking for something to tide him over until he finishes the great novel. He knows that the man of letters is not a good credit risk. ‘Writers’ and ‘money,’ like ‘military intelligence,’ are not words that fit together with any conviction.
From time to time, of course, mistakes happen. Money originally sent off on some adult and worthwhile mission gets diverted somewhere along the way and finds itself in a writer’s pocket. Its stay there is short; not, as any writer will tell you, because of foolish extravagance, but because of the demands of the profession.
The first of these is the need for peace, which is not easy to find these days. City living disturbs the concentration. That traditional haunt of the urban writer, the garret, has become insupportable; the landlord is forever hammering on the door for his $2,000 a month, and in the brief moments between his visits the cockroaches make a terrible noise on the bare boards, the dripping tap bores into the brain, and the force-eight gale howling through the brown paper stuck over the broken window rattles the back teeth. Emigration to the country is the only solution. Look what it did for Thoreau.
But it can’t be an old tar-paper shack miles from anywhere and anyone. That is too much peace. In fact, that’s enough peace to send a man gibbering into the woods looking for a tree to talk to after a day spent on his own. Peace is all very well as long as there’s a place to go when work is done, a place where a sympathetic ear can be found to complain to. And what better ear, who more sympathetic, than another writer? He knows how tough it is. He understands.
That is how writers’ colonies come into being. And inevitably, as soon as they are established, they also attract agents, editors, publishers and owners of funky restaurants, as well as real estate operators on the make. Peace and the simple country life gradually disappear. The local bar sprouts ferns and starts serving complicated drinks, and the whole place goes to hell. Time to move again.
But we can’t allow these domestic upheavals to interfere with the act of creation; God knows, there are enough interferences as it is.
Let’s take, for example, the question of research. To the outsider, this probably suggests a few hours in the library or half a dozen phone calls, and maybe that’s all it used to be. Today, however, writers are expected—more than that, required—to produce work that is totally authentic in all its details. Imagination and a couple of blobs of local colour aren’t enough; the reader has to know that the writer has been there and done it. Direct personal experience is the thing, and don’t try to fob off that sharp young editor with anything less. You’re going to write a novel about love and death along the Bolivian border? Wonderful. Off you go. See you in six months, and don’t forget your cholera shots and medical insurance.
The writer in the throes of research can often be seen in some of the world’s most uncomfortable and dangerous corners. (For some reason, presumably expense, very little research is conducted at the Ritz or in Palm Springs.) In Beirut, in Nicaragua, in the stews of Hong Kong and the oven of the Australian outback, you will find him soaking up the atmosphere, crouched intently over his notebook. But if you should look over his shoulder expecting to see the jewel-like phrase or the telling observation, you might be disappointed. The poor wretch is more likely to be doing his sums to see if his advance will stretch to a plateful of beans as well as a beer.
After a few months of this, and a brief but costly check-up in the hospital for exotic diseases, he is technically ready to start work. The ream of blank paper awaits. The pencils are sharp. A saga of epic proportions, the stuff of which Pulitzer prizes are made, swirls around in his head.
But can he get the damn thing out of his head and onto the paper? He paces up and down. He stares out of the window (writers watch a lot of weather) and monitors the progress of a fly on the wall. Eventually, he recognises the problem as a severe case of writer’s block. (Or, according to Arnold Glasgow, writer’s cramp: “an affliction that attacks some novelists between the ears.”) The words aren’t ready to come out yet. A catalyst is needed, something to start the flow, and you can be sure that whatever the catalyst is, the writer isn’t going to find it in the room where he works.
Cures for writer’s block are many and various and usually involve getting into debt or into trouble. Women and drink are the two old favourites, but most writers, ingenious and creative fellows that they are, resist the straightforward solution of finding local women and local drink. They want a change of scene as well, preferably a few days of high-speed roistering in New York or Paris, draining life’s cup to the dregs until the credit cards are cancelled. It is what Hemingway described as “the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.” Except that, in this case, the writing hasn’t actually been done. But it will be, it will be.
And to help it along, now that the research has been done and the block has (we hope) been unblocked, it is time to call in modern technology so that the torrent of words can flow as fast as thought. Those primitive pencils must go, to be replaced by the latest in desktop computers, complete with the author’s software package. It is even worth ambushing the loan officer at the bank for this; great steps forward in efficient productivity can be achieved here, and all for a miserable few thousand dollars.
At last! The words are beginning to come out, and none too soon either, because the spectre of deadline has become a constant companion, and those calls from the editor that used to be so friendly now have a distinct air of do or die about them. There is a thinly veiled threat that if the manuscript isn’t delivered, the advance (by now long gone) will have to be returned.
This sets off a chain of events and emotions familiar to all writers. It starts with panic, as realisation dawns that time and excuses have both run out. Panic is followed by exhilaration, as the pages pile up and look increasingly promising—a bestseller at least, and possibly a movie too. Exhilaration is followed by relief, as the manuscript is delivered. Relief is followed by anticlimax when nothing much happens—and won’t, for at least six months. And anticlimax is followed by massive doses of doubt and consolation.
The period in between finishing a manuscript and seeing a book is bleak. Nobody calls anymore. It’s too early for galleys. It’s too early for reviews. It’s too late to change anything. The work has vanished, and postnatal depression can easily set in unless the writer’s reward system is activated to help him through the limbo months.
It may be a further plunge into the fleshpots, a trip (this time without the notebook), a new hobby, an old flame, a second honeymoon. Whatever it is will undoubtedly involve another visit to the moneylenders, because no consolation worth having is cheap. But at least there is the hope of becoming a rich literary lion before too much longer.
Occasionally, just often enough to encourage optimism, this does happen, and we see the bestselling author toying with a six-inch Havana while he waits for the Brink’s truck to come up the driveway with his royalties. But the odds are long. Most writers aren’t so lucky. For them there is nothing for it but to try again. Or to get a job, pay the bills, live a regular, orderly life and generally behave like a responsible member of society.
I don’t know how other writers feel, but I’d rather live precariously in my own office than comfortably in someone else’s. My powers of concentration in meetings have atrophied. Wearing a tie gives me a rash. Corporate routine makes me claustrophobic, and I have a deep horror of attaché cases, with all that they imply. The lure of the solitary endeavour, at whatever cost, is irresistible. Is it a habit or an affliction? I’m not sure. But I do know that a writer’s life is the life for me. Please send the cheque by registered mail.