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Inclinations

Priscilla Fagan

Work Habits

American novelist, short story writer and playwright, Kurt Vonnegut: "The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down."

"Yes, yes, yes," I scream. "Leave me alone, I'm thinking!" And I believe thinking is truly part of creativity. Some writers say you have to sit and write for ten minutes, an hour, four hours in order to call yourself a writer. This, my friends, I believe is hogwash. There are no rules to a writer's work habits, save one, you must write.

Gerald Brenan says: "It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs." That's one opinion that I don't particularly agree with but here's another that I do. Bernard Malamud, 1967 Pulitzer Prize for fiction: "You write by sitting down and writing. There's no particular time or place" you suit yourself, your nature. How one works, assuming he's disciplined, doesn't matter." Now this is a keeper.

John Steinbeck quips: "Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time." Like I said, to think is to create. This is one of my favorite quotes, you'll see it pop up occasionally. I think it's a great excuse for just about anything.

So, work habits must fit the writer and at some point you must write and you must finish. Some say it is drudgery others say it is euphoric but either way we are writers who are driven to get our story told on paper.

I agree with Sharon O'Brien who said in the New York Times Book Review: "Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to find out what I was going to say." Oh can I identify, I think it's called enthusiasm. How can anyone say writing is a lonely job with so many characters and ideas going on in our heads.

Thoreau said: "New ideas come into this world like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion." Yes, and what a beautiful experience. Of course, now we have to make that idea work on paper, rewrite after rewrite. Maybe that's why Mark Twain observed: "The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds." Well, two steps forward, one step back.

Now where we will write? Again, an individual choice. With me it varies: in bed, in my head, in my car (that's dangerous), on my swing or at my desk in front of my computer. Wherever the fancy hits me. Actually, you never know when an idea is going to come along but when it does you better be ready with paper and pen or keyboard. "An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of a revelation." William James, 1902. Best be sitting, too.

Nevertheless, E.B. White has a warning which I will leave you with: "I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it."

Till next month, I remain,
Priscilla, the eternal optimist