“…a detective must find it as important as a novelist to amass his trivial material before picking out the right clue. But how difficult that picking out is–the release of the real subject…Now that I come to write my own story the problem is still the same, but worse–there are so many more facts, now that I have not to invent them.” ~Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. ~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Of course it is a rather stupid thing to spend one’s morning reading a book about writing instead of writing the book one is supposed to be writing, the book that has been paid for, the book that a very kind and conscientious editor is waiting for, kindly and conscientiously but possibly inpatiently, because she has every right to be impatient at this point. But a good book is such a temptation! It is not unlike truffles from Joseph Schmidt or men with beautiful backs. It is a terribly difficult thing to resist! But it must be resisted. It must be put aside. One must return to the work at hand, this book of one’s own, this thing that has sucked up four years of one’s life, not consecutively but spottily, in fits and starts, a few weeks here, a few months there, with long intervals in between for things like babies and husbands and trips to far-off lands, sex and pilates and Scotch, movies and more movies and books and books and books.
Another writer told me recently that when she is in the throes of writing, when she is truly inspired, when the words are just coming, flowing forth, that it is “better than sex.” I have not found this to be true.
“I have tried to disregard as much as possible the history of literature. When my students asked me for a bibilography, I told them, ‘A bibliography is unimportant–after all, Shakespeare knew nothing of Shakespearean criticism. Why not study the text directly? If you like the book, fine; if you don’t, don’t read it. The idea of compulsory reading is absured; it’s only worthwhile to speak of compulsory happiness…if a story doesn’t make you want to know what happened next, then the the author has not written for you. Put it aside. Literature is rich enough to offer you some other author worthy of your attention–or one today unworthy of your attention whom you will read tomorrow.”
From “Poetry,” a lecture in Seven Nights
I have read almost all of Croce, and though I am not always in agreement with him, I am enchanted by him. Enchantment, as Stevenson said, is one of the special qualities a writer must have. Without enchantment, the rest is useless.
~from “The Divine Comedy,” the first lecture in Seven Nights
I love what Borges says here, by way of Stevenson. As authors we try so hard to enchant, but it is impossible to do so without being, by turns, enchanted–not only with language and narrative, but also with the complexities of human nature and the intricate mysteries of the natural world.