From Seems to Fit:
“For this one time,” [Bonnie] said aloud, “I want us each to think about the same question, one question, while we do this. We don’t have to say anything out loud, and we don’t have to spend more than ten minutes doing it, I don’t think—”
George: “Wait! Brandy first, question second.” He raised his glass, uttered a single syllable: “Al.”
“Al,” they all repeated, and downed their shots.
The three men downed their shots, that is. Not Bonnie. She didn’t want the shock of the liquor to bring on a second wave of laughter, and she wanted to ensure she could ask the question straightforwardly and without qualifying or explaining it. Bonnie sipped at hers, and put the glass back down on the table.
“Now,” she said. “Now we touch hands — that’s right, almost like a séance, good. And now we close our eyes, all the way Larry, no peeking. That’s right. This is just us, each of us, answering the question for ourselves.”
“So what’s the question?” said Larry.
“Just this: why?” Bonnie said. “Why am I — each of us — why would I do this thing… put so much at risk? Not what’s in it for Al, either. What’s in it for me. For each of us, inside our own heads, that’s the question for each of us: Why would I do this?” A pause to let it sink in. She closed her own eyes. “Okay? All clear? Go.”
—
Why would I do this? thought Pierce.
The question resisted focus. He could not think of a single argument, a single fact that would convince him to pursue such a strange, reckless course of action…
A recent post on one of Nathan Bransford’s forums asked the question directly, with the title “What Do You Write For?” INTERN asked it, customarily obliquely, in her post of a couple weeks ago (“chain of (publishing) fools”) and in one a couple weeks before that (“exhaustion hunting the great spotted WIP-alump”).
And it often percolates between the lines at Marta’s writing in the water blog, sometimes bubbling to the surface — as in an entry of last week (“This is a sign by the side of the road”). A couple days ago she offered this trailer of an award-winning documentary:
Marta asked:
Would you write if every word stayed in the room with you until you died and left them behind?
Which pretty much lays it out there in stark terms, eh?
Writing is such an oddball thing to spend one’s time doing. Especially writing fiction. With non-fiction, I think most people, including non-writers, would understand an author motivated by (abstractly) a desire to educate and/or inspire readers or (concretely) the somewhat more reliable monetary return on the time it takes to write an entire freaking book.
But novelists and short-story writers? Are they crazy, or what? Why do they do it?
One answer which frequently puts in an appearance goes something like this:
I can’t describe it. I can’t put it into words. I’ve just always been driven to write stories. Ever since I was in [fill in the blank] grade, I wrote stories down. It’s in my DNA.
I’m willing to accept that this is “why” they write — it’s their reason, after all, and who am I to say? (On the other hand, it seems to beg the question: “I want to write because I’ve always wanted to write.” Um, okaaaay…)
All writers (even gregarious, glad-handing, ambitious, superficial social climbers) have to answer the question anew with every blank page; at least, they must be able to ride a wave of temporary confidence, to feel enough of the answer to get them to the second word, and the third, and fourth, then to page twelve…
Something must justify the tedium, the fear and anxiety of putting stories into words. It might not be some reward you get now. But if you can’t put your finger on any answer at all, you have precious damned little reason to keep at it.
As I get older, I find myself less interested, almost day by day, in fantasizing how much money I’ll make, how many copies I’ll sell, how many trips I’ll make to New York or Hollywood, how soon after publication date till The New Yorker runs its (first) profile of me, or when the fifth or six mailbag full of fan letters will be drop-shipped to my London pied-à-terre.* I don’t have a critique group to urge me on, and even the non-writers around me have stopped asking — their innocent eyes sparkling — “How’s your book coming?”
No. When I sit down each morning to face the next blank page, I’m finding — day by day — that the only need driving me on is expressed in the voice of someone else: someone other than me. Not a family member; not a reader, not even an imagined reader (let alone agent or editor). Furthermore, almost every day, it’s a different someone else.
My characters are talking to me. They’re patient but they urge me on, cluck their tongues, cock their eyebrows, fold their arms in disgust or look at me slyly or shyly out of the corners of their eyes. And they — even the ones offstage, the ones dead or incapable of speech — are always saying the same thing:
Tell it right.
________________
* Note careful wording: I didn’t say I no longer harbor such fantasies. I said I’m daily less interested in doing so. :)
marta says
When I read excerpts from your novel, they come across as excerpts from a published book. Perhaps it is the rhythm that makes me feel that way?
I’m don’t have enough professional knowledge to know really.
And I didn’t mean to be stark, but, well, my mother started novel and I’m sure these rough pages were not what she meant anyone, least of all me, to see.
Writing is so very oddball. But when I talk to people who have no desire to write (or to make art or anything!), I just don’t…hmm. I find myself wondering what’s wrong with them? Of course, they’re wondering what’s wrong with me.
There was this headline the other day about bacteria. I meant to go back and read the article but forgot. It’s just popped back into my head. Anyway, the headline suggested that bacteria divide us into three different types of humans. And this silly rash thought came to me–That’s it! I’ve got writer bacteria!
Oh. And another thing. Are you familiar with the book The Midnight Disease? I blogged about it years ago. It had some interesting insights into the writer mind. One story is about a woman who never wrote and never wanted to. She got sick and when she started her medication, she was overwhelmed with a desire/compulsion to write. She wrote pages and pages and pages. She couldn’t stop writing. Until she stopped the medication. Then she didn’t care to write anymore.
So. Food for thought.
John says
marta: Is this the bacteria article you mean? Cool!
marta says
Oops. Meant to post this link for the book.
http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Disease-Drive-Writers-Creative/dp/0618230653
The Querulous Squirrel says
I believe Alice Flaherty had bipolar disorder and a common symptom of mania is hypergraphia — an intense and unremitting compulsion to write. It can also be triggered by temperal lobe epilepsy. I have also seen it with obsessive-compulsive disorder in various forms, from detailed things-to-do lists to detailed journals. In none of these cases does it really matter to the person whether others will read the writing. In fact, with my own compulsive journaling when I was younger, I destroyed all the writing at some point. It served a cathartic purpose at the time, but I didn’t want to writing to outlive me and certainly not to be seen by my children. My blog is somewhat compulsive, but I like that a few people read it. I don’t want a large group of readers. It feels too personal and would feel out of my control. A lot of my fiction is just fun to write, though I really do wish my fiction and memoir writing could eventually be published. Because I have a job that feels very creative and satisfying, my desire to be published waxes and wanes. I don’t seek the social aspect. I’d be fine if it were published after I was gone. We all have very different, complicated motives. You have to have some narcissism to desire the admiration and recognition of publication, which isn’t necessarily a bad motive, no worse than anything else. It’s impossible to generalize.
Ashleigh Burroughs says
I tried a diary and couldn’t believe how self-aggrandizing it read. When the kids told me that they, at least, would be interested in reading my blogging output I tried again and now, 655 posts later, I’m finding that I am writing for myself more than for others.
Surviving January 8th brought me 100’s of new readers and 100’s of new sources of input and 100’s of new responses and ideas. Suddenly, I was writing to reassure my readers.
Now, as the bloom is off the rose (so to speak… the roses here in the desert are gorgeous right now) I find that my blog is a quiet space in tumultuous days. I find that my thoughts are more organized than I’d imagined and that I am more in touch with myself than I’d imagined.
I write for myself; I publish for you.
a/b
John says
marta: You probably know — I’ve mentioned it here several times — that the differences between people who make mostly stories and the people who make mostly art (paintings, sculptures, collages, etc.) always fascinate me. (And then there’s music, a whole other kettle of fish. And dance, and drama. photography and film…) You’re one of the few who seem to move back and forth with relative ease, but most creative types “lean” one way and sort of dabble in the other. All of it taken together is just one of the most interesting things about humans, I think. At root, I don’t know if I care about why somebody starts doing it (a project or a career). But the “Why continue?” question — oh, yeah: that. It seems to fly in the face of what we know about both rewards and punishments. The vast majority of us seem to get so little of the former and so much of the latter — regardless of the medium (e.g., electronic/self vs. traditional publishing) — that it seems we should have given up long ago, just on evolutionary grounds.
Love the idea of a writer’s bacteria. It would explain a lot!
John says
Hello, Squirrel: According to a review at Amazon on the page marta linked to, Flaherty’s hypergraphia (and depression) was triggered by a “postpartum episode.” Which adds an extra level of complexity (and curiosity, especially because I haven’t read the book) — the possibility of a hormonal link, and/or (for those less neurochemically inclined) a link of unconscious intention between the two sorts of creative impulse (two ways of creating stories peopled with characters?).
I love your blog, While I’m more inclined to comment on the more obviously fictional entries, I find much there that makes me hope someone, somewhere, is keeping an archive of it.
John says
a/b: You’ve got that many posts — almost exactly the number here — and you started a full year after I did? Sheesh. I better get to work. :)
I’ve tried a “real” journal a few times, too. Always in response to some personal crisis… which means it’s never lasted for me, either, and for much the same reason. When the crisis passes (I’m lucky: they’ve all passed), just recording activities and agendas and thoughts of the moment feels self-indulgent and kinda boring. Of course, as a blogger I feel the exercise is fully justified — as long as it’s posted online!
Journaling or blogging, though, I believe as you say that putting experience into words helps to ground the experience, to make it if anything more real. More textured, and more (literally as well as figuratively) sensible. Which is odd, because you wouldn’t think that abstracting one step up from what happens in The Real World would render it more graspable, but there you go.
From the outside looking in, when we learn that an online friend whom we’ve “known” for a while, through her words alone, has experienced an offline crisis — death in the family, say, or job loss, or (yes) getting herself shot — the world tilts. We know our friend will be remade by these events. Will they be the same person online as they used to be? Will we need to re-learn what friendship with them means?
But then they return to the screen. What they’re now writing about is completely alien to us (as well as to them, obviously). But as they continue to write, we start to recognize their patterns of thought and of language. Oh, we say to ourselves. Of course. “She” has indeed been remade. But she is the friend I always had.
For such a lightweight social convention, what a difference air quotes make!
marta says
@The Querulous Squirrel – Being published (for me anyway) shouldn’t have anything to do with the social. But getting published does seem to require these days. Woe unto the recluse. Having met other writers is great. And some of these relationship I wouldn’t trade. But they aren’t why I write.
The admiration…that’s tricky. And uncomfortable. I’ve met people who have expressed admiration for my art…and I never know how to process that. Recognition…well acceptance, I guess. I want publication, yes. I’d be fine if they didn’t put my name on it though. Fine for a while. Who knows.
Getting what is in my head on paper and from there into the world, well, on one level that is lunacy. It certainly is a complicate tangle of emotions.
marta says
@John – I saw it on the Huffington Post, but yes, that’s the research. I love how you find things.
marta says
@John – Why do we do it if we get far more rejection (negative reinforcement!) that acceptance? What kind of mind seeks out this sort of thing? It’s like mental masochism. Is that a term? Should be.
I’m blaming it on bacteria.
Jayne says
Well, I’m long past fantasizing, but I do often wonder why I write. I wrote an Ars Poetica not long ago, and I had to lock myself in a room for a weekend to scratch it out. What is it about writing?
This post made me think of that Ars Poetica. And as much as I wanted to pack it away for good, it’s been stirred again after reading your post.
In any event, an excerpt:
There, that’s what it’s about. It’s painful, I tell you. It’s Hell. And I can’t stop doing it.
The Querulous Squirrel says
John: Yes, a lot of people talk about being pregnant with their novel (mainly women I suspect). But postpartum is a very vulnerable time for women with any hint of a mood disorder because of the hormonal triggers. In fact, during pregnancy was the only time in my life I felt emotionally fantastic for nine straight months. After my first birth, I sunk into an epidsode of depression. After my second, I soared into an episode of hypomania. But Kay Redfield Jamison wrote a book Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. Thanks for what you wrote about my blog. It means a lot.
John says
All: we need a break… I haven’t seen this yet — just opened in March — but, hey, about time somebody made a movie which takes writers seriously. :)
Now back to our regular comments thread…
John says
marta: “Mental masochism” should absolutely be a real term.
We watched Black Swan the other night and I kept seeing all these metaphors for the inner landscape of a writer’s mind in the behavior of Natalie Portman’s character. I could just hear an editor or agent speaking in the the voice of Barbara Hershey, “Are you still picking at yourself?!?”
John says
Jayne: Hi! I hope you don’t mind that I set off that paragraph in your comment as a blockquote; I wanted to highlight it.
And for anyone who — like me — didn’t know already what “an Ars Poetica” might be, I refer you to a post at Jayne’s Suburban Soliloquy blog, from last August. Her actual Ars Poetica, though — whence came that sterling paragraph — appeared in a post in December.
John says
Squirrel: Can’t remember if I told you this story before… About 7-8 years ago, I was seeing a therapist to help me through a personal crisis. We went through all the initial stuff (Who are you? what do you do for a living? what do you hope to get out of therapy?, etc.) and then, either at the very end of that session or beginning of the next, he strongly recommended that I read Redfield’s book.
When he explained what it was about, I took umbrage. Like: “You think that’s ME? You think THAT is my problem?” But I gave it a try anyway, and I was glad I did. I don’t know that I’d fit into any classic bipolar diagnostic profile, but I could absolutely trace back through my history of jobs, relationships, and writing and see where the bursts of elevated mood hit. I think it’s a great book for any creative person to at least sample, if not read in full.
Jayne says
John – Not at all. And thanks for that trailer break. I’m going to have to look for that movie. And medication. ; ) @John –
marta says
@John – I haven’t seen Black Swan, but from what I know of it, here’s hoping I don’t go too far down that mental masochism road!
I read a review that called it Full Metal Tutu.
John says
marta: Full Metal Tutu — now, THAT is funny. It seems that it came from James Wolcott, which doesn’t surprise me. He is one funny guy.
s.o.m.e.one's brudder says
While it would have been considerably more dull and less affecting for your readers (me inclusive) most of what passed here could substitute “creative person” for “writer”.
My perception of the central question of this post haunts me every day – why do I get up to do this, given how little of it anymore has to do with the design/creative aspect of what I feel compelled to. And that’s part of the rub, I suppose – compelled. I feel compelled to try and create new and better places for people to live, work, play, worship, interact -but in each and every moment of that compulsion I feel simultaneously thwarted. Why do this? Is it for me? Is it for my clients? Is if for the appreciation of others? Is it for the betterment of society? Who actually does, know?
If anyone were to ever view/review my sketch books (frequently started in times of crisis, too, btw) could I stand/withstand their critical observations or worse yet – boredom?
Full Metal TuTu – I think I see a Will Farrell F.o.D. posting sometime soon with Amy Poehler in the Natalie Portman role. And “Limitless” – don’t get me started on how devilishly tempting that ENTIRE movie’s plot development was to me (or maybe ANY architect). If only I just didn’t have to sleep…..how we could make the world so much better. Don’t know how much bi-polar I could be, but there is no Architect I know that couldn’t dream of the megalomaniacal possibilities of that drug! Talk about your mash-ups – Limitless meets Inception……NOW we’re talking!
Oh, and another btw regarding marta’s initial comment regarding your writing: It generally does feel like it’s already been published. For me, I think this was exceptionally true back in the Ashland days, when I was regularly reading your short stories. I always felt like I really was reading something that was right out of Harpers, The New Yorker, or Atlantic Monthly and that I was just privileged to be seeing the original type written copy. From “The Head” to “Sing, Sing, Sing” to countless others. Compulsion or otherwise – please keep giving me a reason to read something joyful because it’s so clearly “thought”-ful, nearly daily. Thanks.
s.o.m.e.one's brudder says
that would be “thought”-ful, of course.
John says
brudder: Fixed the typo for ya. Even though I rather liked the enigmatic original version. :)
I suspect even rock-star-caliber creative folks ask themselves a lot of these questions… The only difference being, of course, that if and when they decide (or are forced) to stop doing it, they’ll still be able to live comfortably on what it’s earned them so far. Actually, now that I think about it, Stephen King (say) may no longer be tortured with the question, Why do I keep doing this for so little reward? His big mystery now might be more along the lines of, Why do I keep doing this, now that I no longer haveto?
And it’s tempting to think that people with more, uh… well, let’s say with less ethereal professions/avocations have clearer heads about what they do for a living. Despite all the woe-is-me moaning, I don’t think either they or us would really want to trade places with each other. It’s probably just more entertaining to bitch, ha.
Thanks for the writing/reading feedback. On the other hand… You know the expression, “Anyone who chooses to be his own lawyer has a fool for a client”? Something like that occurred to me when I read your comment. Along the lines of, “Anyone who decides he writes well because his family says so — even says so passionately and intelligently — probably deserves what he gets.” Nothing personal, understand… just gotta keep the eye on the ball!
s.o.m.e.one's brudder says
write on, dear brother, write on!