Ah, the writing life. We know it’s a stereotype, (almost?) never true, but the image remains skulking around our collective unconscious:
The disheveled hair. The soulful eyes, staring out the window of an upper-floor barely-furnished apartment in which the heat has been turned off, a “scarf” — fabric torn from the edge of a bedsheet — collaring the neck, the fingers poised above they keys of a typewriter into which one has not yet bothered to insert paper because nothing is coming, dammit, nothing even resembling the first word, let alone sentence, and accomplishing an entire paragraph feels like something only gods can pull off. Meanwhile, the landlord is banging on the door demanding at least token attention to seven months’ back rent; food molders in the lukewarm fridge; and yet the Muse — the Siren — still sings to one from nearby rooftops and trees…
Glamorous, eh? No wonder so many (as it seems) want some of it.
This blog post was inspired by and involves, but is not actually about, the author A.L. Kennedy. On the off-chance she’s new to you, you may want to know something of her before we proceed. Says Wikipedia, she:
…is a Scottish writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction. She is known for a characteristically dark tone, a blending of realism and fantasy, and for her serious approach to her work as well as a passion for the art of yodeling. Alison Kennedy lives in Glasgow with her pet Luwak.
It’s hard to know where to start with that, especially if you decide to pursue your curiosity about the last word. Its own Wikipedia entry first implies that the animal’s more common name, apparently, is the Asian Palm Civet, scientific name Paradoxurus hermaphroditus:
The species name comes from the fact that both sexes have scent glands underneath the tail that resemble testicles. It can spray a noxious secretion from these glands.
Recalling Kennedy’s bio, which says she “performs as a stand-up comedian at the Edinburgh Fringe, comedy clubs and literary festivals,” we might by now begin to suspect someone is having us* on, as the expression goes.
But this post doesn’t really mean to be so distracted, and distracting. It really means to be about the first post of Kennedy’s new blog on The Guardian, AL Kennedy on Writing. (She previously did — still does, maybe — an entertaining one for the New Statesman, too, called Obsessive Compulsive.)
The title of that first Guardian post: “Why it’s pointless telling anyone that writing isn’t worth it.” Of the writing life, she says:
I do try to tell other people what it will come to — hence my occasional visits to Warwick University and its creative writing students. They want to write, they have application and vigour, they’ve all come on since I read them last and yet … it would be unfair not to remind them of how horrible their futures may become. If they’re unsuccessful, they’ll be clattering through a global Depression with a skill no one requires, a writing demon gnawing at their spine to be expressed and a delicately-nurtured sensitivity that will only make their predicaments seem worse — and yet somehow of no interest to anyone else. If they’re successful, they still may not make a living, will travel more than a drug mule, may be so emotionally preoccupied that they fail to notice entire relationships, will have to deal with media demands no sane person would want to understand and may well wear far too much black. (Yes, it is slimming, but unisex Richard III isn’t always what the occasion demands. Trust me: experience is a painful teacher.)
All right, yes, again: clearly Kennedy wakes up every morning with her comic sensibility already showered, dressed, and waiting for the rest of her to catch up. But she’s getting at something true and truly serious. Speaking of the widespread recession:
…the bleakness may even be a help to the artistically inclined… Now that so many of us dream of bitch-slapping bankers up and down the high street and there are, once again, no safe havens, new writers may feel they have nothing to lose by taking the plunge into typing.
So then: what’s your take on the writing life in lean times — the one you already lead, as well as the one you hope to? Is it really — really — going to be worth it? “If you’re lucky,” Kennedy says elsewhere, “after only 20 years or so, you can get to be an overnight success”; if that turns out to be true, is the prospect of waiting two decades worth whatever you hope to get from it?
The Missus and I have noted, in the back stories of many contestants on American Idol — at least as expressed and shown on camera — a tendency to regard success in the competition as a ticket out of a life chockablock with disappointment and stress. This is my shot, they say, their eyes glistening. My one shot. I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t win this. Often a spouse and at least one baby figure in their daydreams, and in the backgrounds of their this-is-my-life-before-Idol videos.
And then there’s the rule of thumb about how long it takes, on average, to start and succeed with a new small business. They say you need to have enough cash on hand to make it through three years (or five, or whatever it is) of no income but continued expenses, before you can expect to get the thing afloat.
Again: what about you?
Start with something trivial — say… um… say the calendar on your wall. Would you give that up in order to have the writing life you dream of? Yes? Then keep on ramping up the importance of things dear to you now.
How about the wall on which that calendar hangs?
If you could live in a tent and sleep on a bed of pine needles and straw, requiring no housing expenses at all, would you be willing to take a job which pays, say, $500 (US) a month, for however long it takes you to succeed at your writing?
When we say we “have to write,” as a lot of us (including present company) do, how absolutely true is that?
Does it matter if it’s true or not?
Did it ever matter, really, for any writer?
_________________________________
* And Wikipedia.
** In ten years or so, someone will make a tidy bundle of cash by tracking down and reporting on (probably via another reality-TV show) some of those who missed that last chance.
Julie Weathers says
This was an intriguing post, as usual.
I always enjoy your insights.
Julie
travis erwin says
Great post. Thanks for making me ponder.
Misssy M says
I think you have to make a decision when you think about submitting your writing for material gain (erm, I think it’s called publishing…). You have to decide to fit it all in with your day job. Give up telly, give up sport, give up going out, give up anything that will give you time to wrote. but please, don’t give up the day job. In most cases the two have to co-exist.
Ask Franz Kafka!
John says
Julie, Travis: Thanks so much. I certainly know the two of you have had to ask a lot of “Jeez, do I really have to do THIS to write?!?” questions in the last year. (And good to see you here, Travis.)
Misssy: Aside from the Kennedy piece, what triggered this was coming across a reference on an aspiring writer’s blog somewhere which exulted something like, “I found the most adorable pair of shoes today!”
I mean, there’s no second-guessing someone else’s tastes and hopes — what’s important to them. (Whoever that was would probably be appalled that I’m excited about having a new PC at work.)
But it did make me wonder about the kind of choices we make, where the threshold lies for each of us. I sensed the writer would be miserable had she had to turn her back on the Jimmy Cho’s (or whatever they were), and, if so, wondered if it would make her feel better if the gods said, “In return for passing on those shoes, achieving your goal of writing success will be one month closer.” Would she take the bet?
marta says
I wouldn’t give up my son for writing, but I might make our lives miserable… And I won’t give up my day job because we have to eat. But I fit the writing in. I give up promising new friendships, I suppose.
Of course, it is all well and good to talk about giving things up when one is safe at home.
I sympathize with the shoe person. Yesterday I got a new pair of jeans and I’m way too happy about them, but at my height I tend to get excited about nice clothes that fit. But I digress…
I figure that I live in a time when I can choose not to have a zillion kids and I don’t have to worry about growing my own food and I don’t have to do all the things that women used to do. And I don’t want FAME.. I’m like to be able to live on a creative life. Sounds spoiled.
And what about those people who write things that can get them shot. At least here in these United States we can write and now the biggest cost is a paycheck. Would you write if it got you carted off in the middle of the night?
recaptcha: ALICE would
John says
marta: Holy crow. That recaptcha, in the context of your last paragraph, suggests an entire storyline.
You used a big important word in trying to figure all of this out: “choose.” Like you said, we — pretty much anybody with casual Internet access — really has it pretty easy, in that choices are much more available to us than they were to the wispy dissipated types in their garrets, in the grip of laudanum. Let alone all those living NOW who have no hope at all of even imagining, let alone getting to, the “I choose writing” decision.
Querulous Squirrel says
I have no faith about anything else except about writing, even at my lackadaisacal pace. Crazy, I know. I will take it as my only pace. There won’t be much. But people will read read it, of that I am sure. Because I am not fanatical about it and don’t exclude but draw on the rest of my life, my writing will have a richness it would lack if I did .
Jules says
I”m sorry …I didn’t get much past the testicles-esque secreting glands, on account of laughing too hard. And then when I thought I had regained composure, there was the bitch-slapping bankers bit. Oh my.
John says
Squirrel: “don’t exclude but draw on the rest of my life” strikes me as a prescription for sanity. Nicely put.
Jules: Hilarious, isn’t she?
But if you want something to sober you up, read some more about Luwaks (Asian palm civets). One can only hope no one requests Kopi Luwak for one of your Impossible Interviews Before Breakfast… :)
froog says
The really cool thing about the Luwak is that it eats coffee beans and then shits them out undigested in hard dry turds. I guess it’s easier to harvest the turds than to pick beans off the tree in the regular way, but coffee nerds have convinced themselves that the Luwak’s gastric enzymes somehow enhance the flavour, and so it’s become one of the most expensive specialty coffees in the world. I am not making this up.
John says
froog: When I read that about the Luwak I was even more certain that Ms. Kennedy’s Wikipedia entry might be the work of a prankster, I’m guessing the lady herself (or a publicist).
I picture large Luwak farms, something like dairies, in which the little beasts are periodically squeezed by machines. The CBC article I linked to in my earlier comment says that the going rate in Toronto — at least in 2002, when it was published — was $600 (Canadian?) a pound, and that only 500 lbs of, er, processed beans are produced annually. In seven years’ time one assumes they’d have figured out something to boost the output.
Sarah says
I’ve written sometimes more, sometimes less over the years, depending on things like having the kids around, making a living, crisis management, etc. But I’d say that most things I’ve “given up” to write, were good things. Like negative relationships that hindered my sense of self. as a writer who can produce worthy work and succeed. Time spent on worrying about outcomes. The tendency to stall and procrastinate. Magical thinking about fame and fortune. Believing that nothing matters more than my being able to write. But I also gave up believing that writing wasn’t, ultimately, all that necessary for my spirit.
I do know that the time I spent earlier in life pretending I didn’t care about not writing, denying to myself that I wanted to write, was bleak.
As for those who are willing to risk torture, prison or death in order to write the truth? I can only stand in awe.
John says
Sarah: I think a good part of growing up (at least in the US) is giving up — giving up things, I mean. That word “things” covers a lot of ground — not just objects (like toys and so on) but a lot of messy abstract possessions (innocence, etc.). A lot of people realize that giving up one of them opens up (more) room in their lives, hearts, and/or souls for another, but it’s never a simple trade, never “unplug this” so you can just “plug that in, in its place”; there are always extra costs — learning curves, risks, and so on. (It’s much simpler, in fact, to give up NONE of the abstract possessions. People who go that way instead substitute the act of swapping new objects and experiences in and out of their lives. They’re like grownups manqué.)
I once told a nephew, after he’d learned a very mildly “disturbing” bit of family history and was a bit confused, “Growing up is a bitch.” Wise people know that it can also be quite wonderful. I have to congratulate you on what sounds like a richly rewarding growing-up.