I don’t think one needs to be a drunk, lost, or lonely to be a writer. Given the desire to sit alone for hours pushing a blinking cursor across a blank white page, most of us with the urge to write are already tortured enough.
Becoming a Writer by Dorothea Brande, one of the first books I read about learning to write, is about everything but writing, so to speak. Published in 1934, the book still stands as the sort of speech to which every writer should have to listen to know it’s okay to feel everything one feels while writing, and learn to just get on with it.
The copy I had contained a foreword by John Gardner, so his book, The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, was next. Reading it left me with pages of notes, my paperback glowing from the fluorescent markers used to highlight important passages. Faithfully followed, it became my own creative writing program.
From there, I leapt to Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stucky-French, and Ned Stuckey-French. This book had a slightly lighter glow than the The Art of Fiction, but glowed nonetheless. More importantly, the book was filled with writing exercises and short stories illustrating various styles of writing. I read stories such as “We Didn’t” by Stuart Dybek and “Currents” by Hannah Bottomy Voskuil, and asked if I could do this.
Carver, Murakami, and King. I’d read a biography of Raymond Carver years ago, but forgot everything except one line (either in the book or in a review) wherein he was quoted as saying the best kind of job was a night job—in my mind a security guard or hospital custodian. Carver said these jobs allowed one to work uninterrupted on their writing and get paid. I never had the courage to do that.
Having previously read Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running I knew Murakami had “borrowed” his title from Carver. I wasn’t sure if Murakami’s book was about writing, running, or rock and roll (it’s all three and more), but from Murakami additional inspiration came in the form of this line:
“… and pretty much out of the blue I got the idea to write a novel.” It was a “simple” matter of one making that decision. So I did.
While writing 1967: A Coming of Age Story I was challenged by my mentor to compress, compress, and then compress some more (she would have used “compressed” here only once). I took a break at one point and read What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Carver, after which I finally understood the meaning of compression. Of saying the most with the least. Of cutting out all the big words and letting the small ones do the talking. That is Carver.
Last but not least, I finally read On Writing by Stephen King. A gift given but long left on the shelf, it called me (like all King’s horror books) to read it. I had resisted the temptation, in part because I don’t like horror stories (and so, by extension, King), and in part because of who had given it to me.
In both cases my prejudices were unwarranted. If you are in search of a perfect sentence, one that provides a ton of detail in the most economical manner, King has one:
As always, Uncle Oren was wearing khaki pants and a clean white tee-shirt. Sweat gleamed in his graying Army crew cut.
King’s greatest gift, however, was the following, presented in summation of his book:
Much of it has been about how you can do better. The rest of it—and perhaps the best of it—is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.
As a writer you are your own means of production, raw words hammered and fashioned into sentences. This output cannot be delegated to others. Every day a word goes unwritten, so too does one’s story. This is my story. – R.W.D.
