Happy 4th Month Birthday, Finn (on May 11)
"When should I write?" This is a question most of us writers ask ourselves.
There are two types of answers that suit me; logically they work for two (really three) kinds of writing.
With fiction, or essays without deadlines, I agree with the great E.B. White, who said: "Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer - he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along...."
Yes, that's how I write fiction. I'm not of the Hemingway school of 600 words a day and then I can do other things. (In his case fish and drink, but that's another matter.)
Yet, for those of you who are corporate writers or journalists, E.B. White's quote, above, is a luxury you can't afford; I understand this completely, having been both of those, as well as a creative writer, for much of my writing career. If you have a deadline, you have a deadline.
So how to balance these two disparate - and perhaps frustrating - views. I would simply say that I concur with White for creative writing where I have no particular deadline. For the other kind, what works for me is to relax into it. To psyche myself out. I have written under deadline and duress; I once wrote a magazine column while in the waiting room of an E.R. where my mother had been taken. When that kind of situation is the case, you have to compartmentalize your brain. Awfulness may be happening around you, you may be under pressure and even feel sick and exhausted. But you do it.
It's nice to be able to write in the way that White suggests. Remember, though, that he wrote in a different age. Simpler, mellower, less distractions. So apply these thoughts to your own situation. Only you can figure it out for yourself. Figuring it out is one of the things that separates the serious writer from the amateur.
There are two types of answers that suit me; logically they work for two (really three) kinds of writing.
With fiction, or essays without deadlines, I agree with the great E.B. White, who said: "Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer - he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along...."
Yes, that's how I write fiction. I'm not of the Hemingway school of 600 words a day and then I can do other things. (In his case fish and drink, but that's another matter.)
Yet, for those of you who are corporate writers or journalists, E.B. White's quote, above, is a luxury you can't afford; I understand this completely, having been both of those, as well as a creative writer, for much of my writing career. If you have a deadline, you have a deadline.
So how to balance these two disparate - and perhaps frustrating - views. I would simply say that I concur with White for creative writing where I have no particular deadline. For the other kind, what works for me is to relax into it. To psyche myself out. I have written under deadline and duress; I once wrote a magazine column while in the waiting room of an E.R. where my mother had been taken. When that kind of situation is the case, you have to compartmentalize your brain. Awfulness may be happening around you, you may be under pressure and even feel sick and exhausted. But you do it.
It's nice to be able to write in the way that White suggests. Remember, though, that he wrote in a different age. Simpler, mellower, less distractions. So apply these thoughts to your own situation. Only you can figure it out for yourself. Figuring it out is one of the things that separates the serious writer from the amateur.