It's become a semi-annual thing, hasn't it, to think to oneself, "Hmmm, isn't it about time for Joyce Carol Oates to put out a new book?"
Well, it has for me, at least.
JCO has published FIFTY SEVEN books since 1964. Think about it -- that's two a year!
Is it just me, or is that mind boggling?
The woman teaches creative writing at Princeton, which one would think is a huge time-suck in and of itself. Imagine having to deal with the fragile egos of a seminar of post-adolescent writers (is there any creature more self-regarding than a college-age writer? Well, maybe the hipster population of Brooklyn, but that's a topic for a different post).
Who knows, maybe she has a big red rubber stamp that says, "forget it, kid, you'll never be a writer -- go down the hall and sigb up for Krugman's classes," and that frees up her time for writing.
The only conclusion I can draw is that she must spend every free waking moment writing something. It's kind of inspirational, and oh so basic when you think about it. The lesson is: the way to be a writer is to write all the time (have you seen her? She's certainly not wasting any time fussing about how she looks, that's for damn sure. Too mean?).
I've always got so many ideas for stories, characters, scenes. But they fly around in my head like those flocks of birds that take off from telephone lines and whirl around in crazy circles before settling down again. I haven't mustered the discipline to snag even one out of the sky.
Why is that? There was a period in my life, spanning the time roughly from when I was about four years old to my early twenties, when I did nothing BUT write stories. What happened? Lots of other people do it, why haven't I?
Now I find that we are surrounded by a whole lot of published crap (much of it. perpetrated by my own gender, I'm sad to say) and when I dip my toes into the latest airport bestseller, the first thing that crosses my mind is "I'm a better writer than this," not "Wow, I wish I could write like this."
It's not a matter of reading books about writing (guilty as charged, I've read them all, and I will whole-heartedly recommend Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird" and Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones") but of actually writing.
Oh, and please don't talk to me about The Artist's Way. There's something insufferably smug and self-satisfied about Julia Cameron. I think her 12-step bullshit creeps into her books, and besides, she is a writer who only writes about writing. It's a little too meta for me. (I guess you can give her a tiny break; she was married to Martin Scorsese, after all, and if I was a super-ambitious moderate talent married to an authentic genius, I'd probably drink and drug, too.)
You know what I'm going to give myself for my birthday? The time to write stories, that's what.
Now -- go write something. And steer clear of Krugman's office. That way lies madness.
6 comments:
I have that Bones book. Writing enough is hard. It's no coincidence that the vast majority of published authors are journalists and college professors. Their work lives dovetail nicely with the writing life. The rest of us have too much other shit to do!
My favorite remark is Kerouac's: "You have to work at it like a benny addict." Whereupon he ate a handful of benzedrine, typed On the Road, passed out, and woke up rich and famous.
Ole Jean-Louis. I've been reading lots of late 20th century american writers, particularly Kerouac and I'm in love with him.
I can't believe I chose all those English Lit classes over 20th Century American in college.
My favorite writing teacher at PSU was a guy by the name of Toby Thompson, who started the first class of the semester by reading aloud the following:
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive..." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"
How cool is that?
I love that passage. The stoned-out-of-their-kugs school generally charms me. Burroughs: "I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil-doll stool pigeons..." Kesey: "They're out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them."
For about a minute and a half I dated a guy who claimed that Hunter S. Thompson was his favorite writer. When he told me that, I immediately recited the opening line of "FLLV" as noted above. He looked at me with utter incomprehension. Eventually I realized that he had never actually READ Hunter Thompson, but he really liked the character of Hunter Thompson as played by Johnny Depp.
He also did not have a single book in his apartment except "Alcoholics Anonymous" and various other 12-step propaganda tracts.
And he was a lousy lay, to boot.
Needless to say, he didn't last long.
Yeah, sleeping with an illiterate is a lot like necrophilia.
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