When I started writing twenty-five years ago, I had the discipline of a German factory foreman. Every morning at six, I leapt into my work boots and began slapping keys, writing in furious labor seven, eight, ten hours, breaking only to smoke, gulp coffee, and brood. I shouted at sentences, as if the words were lazy employees. Of course, the more I abused the words on the page, the more they refused to function, and the door to creativity was often locked.
Now and then, as if against my will, I slipped into the gentle trance of art.But much of my time was spent in this factory, noisy with the clatter of machines, the sound of will, ambition, and control. I worked in frustrated insistence that a convincing world appear on the page now. It's a miracle such a "work ethic" finally produced a book. There was a price to clocking hours in a cold, noisy place: prematurely gray hair, a breakdown, and a constant scowl.
My sanity required a change. When I began my second book, I altered my work habits. The new, calmer method was more promising, and it was certainly more fun.
Now when I sat down to work, I didn't touch the keys for thirty minutes or so. I sipped coffee and looked out the window--waiting, listening, sitting still. The factory knew I had come to work, and it would wake to its task in due time. There was no hurry, no clock to punch anymore. The tools were silence, calm, patience. I trusted the unconscious to do its slow work.
Soon the factory lights flickered on, the conveyor belts rattled to motion. I glimpsed pieces of my deepest self riding the belts, memories, hallucinations: a sun-faded beach ball, a package of cellophane-wrapped hamburger, a snapshot of my father barbecuing.
When I was in that deeper place, I began to write. Soon recognizable shapes appeared on the page. The gray, still world began to turn, colors emerged. Hazy characters from my past and from my dreams, unconvincing in sketch form, stood and walked, moving and talking almost like people.
I'd like to say my writing comes faster now, that this slowness has accelerated my production. But that would be more bottom-line nonsense. What's needed is better work, not faster production.
In literature, better means truer. And it's very hard to transfer emotional and psychological realities to the page. We'll fail most of the time, and knowing about this failure is good: Experiencing the pain of close but not quite, after so much work, after so many years, implies that we have a standard, and that our work will improve.
Henry James wrote a careful first draft simply in order to glimpse the germ of his novel's direction and possibilities. The real world moves too fast to see it clearly, and meaningfully, at first glance. Since the most perceptive of us humans are half-blind, groping creatures, we simply can't conjure a true world on the page now. A page a day! A book a year! Ten easy plots!
I left assembly-line writing behind me, and slowed down. Only the dreamy way will get me there, eventually. Literary writers need a lot of time to decide the simplest of things. Is this bright beach ball of my childhood a sweet, nostalgic thing? Is it an object of menace? Both at once? Who cares if I appeared shiftless reading on my porch all afternoon when I was supposed to be at some job. Let the rest of the country speed circles in their forklifts and Teslas. I'm done rushing.
Don Quixote is my lead-man at the factory. Together we run a perfectly useless operation that produces an occasional object of beauty that we cannot sell for much, and I rejoice.
I still go to the factory and work hard every day, now on my fourth book. Good writing needs form and shape, hard work, discipline. But I've remodeled the factory. There are windows. The machines are fixed to work at a slow, comfortable speed; they are fixed to quit often and, finally, to lie still, scattered with old cowboy boots, whiskey bottles, filthy socks, through twenty hours in the day, when the lights are out and I am, say, taking a walk, doing my best not to worry about the factory.
I'm a neglectful, diligent foreman, and it's a good job. The only rule is that I have to sit in the chair during operating hours, and yet I get to stare into space whenever I feel like it. Stretch my legs out. Dream, think, feel, and enjoy the work.
My sanity required a change. When I began my second book, I altered my work habits. The new, calmer method was more promising, and it was certainly more fun.
Now when I sat down to work, I didn't touch the keys for thirty minutes or so. I sipped coffee and looked out the window--waiting, listening, sitting still. The factory knew I had come to work, and it would wake to its task in due time. There was no hurry, no clock to punch anymore. The tools were silence, calm, patience. I trusted the unconscious to do its slow work.
Soon the factory lights flickered on, the conveyor belts rattled to motion. I glimpsed pieces of my deepest self riding the belts, memories, hallucinations: a sun-faded beach ball, a package of cellophane-wrapped hamburger, a snapshot of my father barbecuing.
When I was in that deeper place, I began to write. Soon recognizable shapes appeared on the page. The gray, still world began to turn, colors emerged. Hazy characters from my past and from my dreams, unconvincing in sketch form, stood and walked, moving and talking almost like people.
I'd like to say my writing comes faster now, that this slowness has accelerated my production. But that would be more bottom-line nonsense. What's needed is better work, not faster production.
In literature, better means truer. And it's very hard to transfer emotional and psychological realities to the page. We'll fail most of the time, and knowing about this failure is good: Experiencing the pain of close but not quite, after so much work, after so many years, implies that we have a standard, and that our work will improve.
Henry James wrote a careful first draft simply in order to glimpse the germ of his novel's direction and possibilities. The real world moves too fast to see it clearly, and meaningfully, at first glance. Since the most perceptive of us humans are half-blind, groping creatures, we simply can't conjure a true world on the page now. A page a day! A book a year! Ten easy plots!
I left assembly-line writing behind me, and slowed down. Only the dreamy way will get me there, eventually. Literary writers need a lot of time to decide the simplest of things. Is this bright beach ball of my childhood a sweet, nostalgic thing? Is it an object of menace? Both at once? Who cares if I appeared shiftless reading on my porch all afternoon when I was supposed to be at some job. Let the rest of the country speed circles in their forklifts and Teslas. I'm done rushing.
Don Quixote is my lead-man at the factory. Together we run a perfectly useless operation that produces an occasional object of beauty that we cannot sell for much, and I rejoice.
I still go to the factory and work hard every day, now on my fourth book. Good writing needs form and shape, hard work, discipline. But I've remodeled the factory. There are windows. The machines are fixed to work at a slow, comfortable speed; they are fixed to quit often and, finally, to lie still, scattered with old cowboy boots, whiskey bottles, filthy socks, through twenty hours in the day, when the lights are out and I am, say, taking a walk, doing my best not to worry about the factory.
I'm a neglectful, diligent foreman, and it's a good job. The only rule is that I have to sit in the chair during operating hours, and yet I get to stare into space whenever I feel like it. Stretch my legs out. Dream, think, feel, and enjoy the work.
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