Writers on Writing

The other bedtime book I finished last night was Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from The New York Times. This was a gift from Lou, and when he initially gave it to me I was apprehensive. Most books "on writing" leave me feeling frustrated, inadequate, depressed, and generally irritable. Mostly because of the fundamental issue—no matter how many different opinions I read about how to write, I still don't have the a) time, b) discipline, c) guts (circle one) to actually sit down and do it. (Also, I'm not very good at taking directions!)

So I opened the book not expecting much. First few essays didn't grab me. But the farther I got into the book, the more delighted I became with what I found. First off, it's not a writer's guide. It's a collection of essays by writers on whatever facet of writing they found interesting at the time. An author named Mary Gordon discussed in great detail her love affair with the pens and paper she uses for writing. David Mamet wrote, essentially, a love letter to Patrick O'Brian. Barbara Kingsolver wrote about the difficulty of writing about sex. It was a glimpse into what occupied their minds, written as though they were writing to an equal, so I left the essays feeling that I had some insight into the writing life, rather than feeling (as often with books on writing) that I had been patronized and talked down to by someone who never thought I would actually cut it.

Some of what spoke to me:

"Never bother to say you'll sleep on anything. In the first place, you won't sleep; and in the second place, you've already agreed in your heart to do whatever you were supposed to sleep on." - Gail Godwin

"There is never enough time for writing; it is a parallel universe where the days, inconveniently, are also twenty-four hours long. Every moment spent in one's real life is a moment missed in one's writing life, and vice versa." - Gish Jen

"Writing novels bears some modest (very modest) comparison to grinding on the higher slopes of the PGA tour, magical afternoons bunkered by afternoons of routine or appalling play and reminding yourself every minute to trust your swing." - Ward Just

"The purpose of literature is to Delight." - David Mamet

"How can I create when I have to go to work, cook my dinner, remember what I did wrong to the people who have stopped calling? ... The answer is, always is, every day." - Walter Mosley

"How do you write? You write, man, you write, that's how, and you do it the way the old English walnut tree puts forth leaf and fruit every year by the thousands." - William Saroyan

and finally, from Susan Sontag, in an essay about the importance of reading to a writer that spoke to me from first to last:

"Is there a greater privilege than to have a consciousness expanded by, filled with, pointed to literature?"