A serious writer has the identity of a writer, emphasizes the production of works, and is a skilled craftsman.
Serious Writers Have a Writer’s Identity
Sometimes a person who one day will become a serious writer doesn’t know herself what she might do with her life. But she feels instinctively that she’s good for something and has some reason for existing. She has a hunch that there is something important in her that’s worth pursuing further. She finds that something in words. She makes herself into a writer–an expert in expressing herself via written language. At times, with some people, writing becomes the center of their identity, and they become another Saul Bellow who said that when he wrote he felt like an artist, but when he was not writing he didn’t feel like anything.
As a writer you’re specially endowed with (and may have been born with) not only “creative stuff” but with an assortment of personality qualities that equip you specifically for the writer’s role. And it’s that identity that gives you the sense that you’re a person with a definite life task—to write, to create. Whether you find writers in big cities or in remote jungles or rain forests and deserts you will also find them generally to be quite similar. Writers who succeed have a combination of such inner qualities as curiosity, obsessiveness, doggedness, and endurance. They’re playful, sensitive to life, open to experience, and have an abundance of physical strength, energy, and stamina. Often it’s the end of the writer’s endurance that stops her work day. They have a much higher tolerance for ambiguity than the great majority of people—one reason they’re usually such good problem-solvers.
Your everyday identity isn’t the same as your writer identity. The “you” that shines through a novel you’ve written isn’t the same person your neighbors know. It’s a version of you, but yet it’s different. As a writer you’ve a sensitivity to language which a person either possesses or does not possess.
Language—for a writer shaping it into phrases, sentences, and paragraphs–is delightful. Amy Tan wrote, “I am a writer. And by definition, I am someone who has always loved language. I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the power of language.”
You know the basics of grammar (know a noun, a verb, and a preposition when you see them), and have the biggest vocabulary and highest appreciation of words, the greatest skill in using them, and the best ear for them. Most writers are able to produce large volumes of work. But that’s just the tip of the characteristics writers have in common and which make up the identity of serious writer.
Serious Writers Emphasize Production of Works
A main goal of writers and all other creative people is to produce works. Writers make the structure of their creative lives by means of their work. If they are unable to work or the work doesn’t go well, they suffer. The writer–the artist, whatever the art–uses the art to express emotion and when they are denied that expression they feel tension and conflict.
Always have your production goals in mind: “The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about…but simply written” (Janet Frame). Saul Bellow said, “For the artist work is the main thing and always comes first.” Psychologist Howard Gardner writes about high-excelling creative people. He says, “Individuals whose stock in trade is to do things which are novel, are people who’ve got to have a pretty good command of how they work.” Psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “The fact that people who create are good workers tends to be lost.” The inventor, whether artist or thinker, creates the structure of his psychic life by means of his work…It is only as the work is done that the meaning of the creative effort can appear and that the development of the artist…is attained” (Brewster Ghiselin.)
In Art & Fear, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland write about what happens in a ceramics class that I’ve found also happens in a class of writers. You could take two imaginary groups of writers in a class—those on the left side of the room would be graded solely on the quantity of the work they produced. Those on the right side would be graded only on the work’s quality. On the final day of the class the teacher would measure the amount of work of the quantity group—500 pages an A, 350 pages a B, and so forth. Those the teacher graded on quality would have to produce only one story, but it would have to be perfect to justify an A.
A curious thing would happen. The quantity group would also produce the highest quality work. The quantity group would churn out streams of work and learn from their many mistakes and develop a wide variety of skills. But the quality group would get caught in the elusive concept of perfection and grandiose dreams and would become paralyzed. Some writers produce 10, 15, or 25 times more writing than others and those most productive usually rise higher, do better work, and find a greater sense of accomplishment.
Experienced writers almost always structure their work time and environment carefully. A perfect work place and good production routines and rituals are to be treasured. Simply by being there, ready to work repetitively the same time day after day, the power of good habits goes into effect. Some writer’s production habits will strike you as strange. The poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) splashed ink on her clothes to give her a feeling of freedom when she wrote. Hard-boiled detective writer Raymond Chandler could only write when he was drunk, and poet A.E. Housman rarely wrote unless he was sick. Voltaire wrote love poems in bed using his mistress’ back as a desk. I’m sure you have your own peccadillos too, and if we ever meet you can tell me about them. I’ll tell you about mine.
Writers’ production ebbs and flows. Some periods the words come out of you in torrents. You’re in overdrive–700 words a day, a thousand, 1,500, and every word is perfect. Other days they wouldn’t come out were you to use blasting powder. Some writers—most—find it easy to be distracted. Beth Henley, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright at 28, said, “I love to work, although sometimes I spend whole days doing nothing more than picking the lint off the carpet and talking to my mother on the phone.” Joyce Carol Oates says she squanders as much as 90% of her time writing letters—e-mails—to authors, her writer friends. “The problem is that they write back, and so do I. And suddenly the morning has vanished irretrievably.”
There isn’t one universal work/production program that suits all writers. A production program won’t work if it’s imposed on you. Your program will have to be custom-designed by yourself for yourself. To find the ways and means to improve your production should be a major aim.
If as a writer you’re productive, you’re happy. If you’re not, you’re unhappy. Ernest Hemingway, as hard a working and production-minded writer as there’s ever been, said that for him, “Work could cure almost anything.” But many writers aren’t successful because they haven’t figured out the best work/production program that equips them to:
- Focus on the work for desired periods of time
- Abandon what isn’t working, putting aside futile problems that will lead to dead-ends
- Free themselves from distractions and time-wasters
- Persist in the midst of obstacles and setbacks
- Maintain their energy
- Achieve a desirable level of output
Serious Writers Are Craftsmen
The sciences and anything involving a machine are mysteries to me. I have no aptitude for them. Once I got hold of an old used paperback on how to become handy around the house and did some wiring and put in a light switch in the children’s bedroom without burning the house down. My children watched me and marveled. I swelled with pride. I felt I’d really accomplished something. I’d say to guests, “come upstairs for a second” and show them the light switch and brag, “I put that in.” A very unusual accomplishment for me. But writing I understand and am good at. I’m confident about it. It’s my best craft.
Writers are talented people who have open to them many routes that could enable them to express themselves. But they focus on writing. Everyone has one dominant ability, and writing may well be yours. Ernest Hemingway could have been a professional big-game hunter or deep-sea fisherman—he was that versatile. He said, “I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit.” William Faulkner could have made it as a painter.
The craft you choose to try to excel in has to be appropriate and can’t be simply wishful thinking. A moment comes—an experience occurs—and you become aware that writing, not something else, is the direction that suits you best and will lead to a fulfillment you might not reach if you follow another route to another craft—the craft of the engineer, the attorney, the athlete, etc., for example.
Your aptitudes, personality, abilities, capabilities, temperaments, tastes, strengths, weaknesses, and interests are matched up first of all with a writing career and then with the kind of writing you wish to do. Will you specialize in fiction or non-fiction, drama, or poetry, novels or short stories, comedies or tragedies, or will you be a jack of all trades and write more than one? What you choose becomes the craft that’s your own.
Awakening to the realization that the writing craft is appropriate to you and you to it can strike at any time in a person’s life. Harriet Doerr finished her degree at 67 and won the National Book Award at 73. Englishman Thomas Chatterton was a mature poet by the age of sixteen. Poets, like mathematicians, mature very young. Dylan Thomas was at his most talented at nineteen.
A serious writer’s identity, production, and craftsmanship are three pillars of a structure of writing excellence.
© 2024 David J. Rogers
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