On Writing
A few thoughts on this thing I've done most of my life. Some of you too. There is a writer in all of us.
“The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.” - ― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Birds
“Teach your pen to write what is in your heart.” Naked And Alive
It’s going on a year now since on my 60th birthday I chucked it all and officially came out as a writer. I’m poor but alas, it's the meaning I’ve always followed and been. A writer.
Nothing much has changed except the exterior self-will. I am still doing the same writing thing that I’ve done most of my life. I’ve probably even been a writer before I started to write. I think that is how it starts with us all.
I thought it would be good for my soul to share some thoughts about the craft of writing. Maybe something will resonate with you the writer.
Nothing below is a must. I don’t think anyone can teach you how to write or tell you what to write. It’s you and you alone, who decide everything. True freedom. If writing is anything, it is the internal freedom that the external life doesn’t fully offer us.
So here we go, nothing too intellectual, just some things I’ve learned about writing and being a writer.
You must have something to say. One can tell “write” away when a writer is insincere, just writing for the sake of writing. Say something damn it and god damn well mean it! Your writing needs this necessity and juice.
“There is one kind of literature which never reaches out to the voracious masses. The work of creative writers, written out of the author’s real necessity, and for his own benefit. The awareness of a supreme egoism, whereby laws become insignificant.” Tristan Tzara
Read. Read everything that interests you. Long before you can truly become a writer, one needs to be a reader. So much of writing is subconscious fed and you need fuel for that deep tank. Reading will give you that. Just read, what you like. Fall in love with words. It’ll pay off in spades, in your pen.
Find your voice. Or several. Anyone who has thought about writing knows that “style” as old Bukowski would say, is so, so, so important. Carve out your voice and identify as a writer. Or depending on the genre, create another. Be unique, there’s enough middle of the road, riff raffers out there. You are special, let that show in your writing.
Don’t take a class to learn to write! MFA programs and writing workshops have killed more writers than booze and drugs combined. You can’t be taught to write. You learn to write by reading and then writing. Find one or two people you respect to give you feedback. But even then, you got to become your best critic - every great writer is also their own best reader. Fact.
Take with a grain of salt all the regular motivational, knowitall stuff and advice about writing. You don’t have to write every day at X hour. You don’t have to rewrite what you write. You don’t have to use a certain formula or register or format. Sure, you can but you don’t have to.
If you are a good writer, you can break every rule and so long as your “voice” rings out, it’s all good. Maybe you can find something in a book to help you as a writer, but this hasn’t worked for me.
I remember years ago, my grandmother bought me a copy of Rilke’s “Letters To A Young Poet” and as a young poet I sat not far from where he’d written many of those letters, on the banks of Lake Geneva. I tried reading it, all afternoon but what garbage. I kept it incase it might grow on me, some time down the road. It sits along with all my other 1,000s of books and notebooks, journals - in some cardboard box, somewhere. About the only book about writing that I did get something from was the old codger Ezra Pound - read his tips about poetry writing.
Less is more. Like sculpting, a writer actually doesn’t produce words. Rather, he or she chops away at the blablabla of coherency to reveal a new order of thought. There is a pact between the writer and the reader. The writer only writes so much that is necessary and leaves the rest to the freedom of the readers imagination. The problem of much modern writing is it tries to paint reality, a picture. That’s wrong. Let the reader do that. Cut out all the dross in your writing. Get to the point and only write in what is absolutely essential. Learn from the imagists, even if you aren’t one.
“Shorter, shorter, until only one syllable remains.”
”Be brief and tell us everything.”
- Charles Simic
On Writer’s Block. I can’t say much here, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced it. Possibly because I just being to write and then the ideas arrive. Too often we are like poor Degas who complained to Mallarme about writer’s block saying, “I have so many ideas but …” To which Mallarme replied, “But my dear Degas, poetry isn’t written with ideas, it is written with words.” Heminwayesque before Hemingway. As you begin to write - what you have to say will appear.
”All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know and go from there.” - Ernest Hemingway
Learn to let ideas die on the flame of your mind. So much when I was young, I would be out and about and so many fine words would appear in my head, bouncing around waiting to be set into concrete by a pen. I’d run into shops screaming for a pencil (much like my friend and mentor Irving Layton wrote about in a poem). Now, I just enjoy the creation in my head as “exercise”. I don’t panic. If it was meant to be, it will still be there when I sit down and ink/think it out. This poem of mine might resonate on this topic.
A piece of writing is never finished, merely abandoned. I’m paraphrasing Valery. Learn when to stop polishing and just let the piece be, shine as it is. So much good writing gets less good - it’s true!
“A poem when you are done with it, must be able to get off the page, turn the door handle, and walk directly into the lives of people.” - Irving Layton
Commit. You are a writer. Like I did last year. It’s not for the money, the chicks, the medals or the wine and cheese invites. It’s for the purity of revealing your inner life and making it live outside yourself. And that in a nutshell is what all good writing is, writing with voice. Making the invisible, visible. You are beautiful, write, let the world know so.
I’ll return to this subject and add to it from time to time. Let me know any thoughts, tips about writing, in the comments! It would be a pleasure to hear some that have worked for you.
P.S. Attached a speech given by Irving Layton. He talks about the process of becoming a writer / poet. If you haven’t read any of his work, highly recommend it.
A writing book I enjoyed is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, in the first third he writes about resistance. According to Pressfield, it's what prevents writers from writing. Besides Layton (Leonard Cohen's teacher) my favorite Canadian poet is Al Purdy. Purdy and Bukowski wrote to each other, and the letters are collected in a book, appropriately titled The Bukowski/Purdy Letters 1964-1974.
Thanks for this insightful essay, David. I've always loved to write for myself and blurt out whatever's on my mind. Until recently, I never had the courage to do so because my biggest obstacles in writing are writer's block and constant dissatisfaction with my texts (it comes from my perfectionism).