“Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery.”
Joseph Conrad, A Personal Record (1912)
A story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things he would be unable to discover otherwise.”
Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind (2001)
“Suddenly I don’t know, haven’t the faintest idea, how people make up stories about anything. Anything is whatever it happens to be, why on earth make up stories?”
Russell Hoban, Turtle Diary, pg. 42
“I’ve heard the way a writer reads described as ‘reading carnivorously.’ What I’ve always assumed that this means is not, as the expression might seem to imply, reading for what can be ingested, stolen or borrowed, but rather for what can be admired, absorbed and learned.”
Francine Prose, Reading like a Writer, pg. 31
“Fiction writers are generally concerned with building up; their job is to synthesize real and imagined life to invent something that could pass as whole.”
Lydia Davis
“The novelist now better understands his medium; he is ceasing to pretend that his business is to render the world; he knows, more often now, that his business is to make one from the only medium of which he is a master — language.”
William H. Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life, pg. 8
“There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
W. Somerset Maugham
There is that phrase about heroes being born and not made. I’ve always thought it was the same story for writers. Particularly, the exceptional, talented ones. Can an intelligent human being with an interest in writing become a better writer? Sure. Maybe take a writing course or two, work at it and become more proficient? Probably. But, it seems to me that such a strategy can only take the aspiring writer so far. As with the Law of Diminishing Returns, despite continued input, there will very likely come a time (for most) when there will be progressively smaller, lesser output results. And, the less potential talent a person ultimately has in terms of writing, the sooner the diminished returns will set in.
My feeling is that a true writer is born predisposed to becoming very good at the craft. I think that whatever capabilities a nascent writer is born with, it will most likely include a natural ear for language, and a clear feel for “what just sounds right.” Also, the naturally developing ability to take an idea or concept previously advanced by others, supply additional insights, further develop and improve upon the message, and synthesize something that is totally new. Something that has, in fact, never before existed.
Of course, it is necessary for the successful writer (in particular, the novelist) to be socially perceptive in terms of accurately interpreting the thoughts and actions of others. And, it goes without saying that to be most effective, the author needs a highly developed understanding of human nature to more ably read the varied traits and temperaments of other human beings. These are attributes that novelists will employ to develop the characters who populate their stories.
You can certainly teach grammar and usage and structure, but you can’t implant an animating spirit in a person after the fact; that, I’ve always believed, is something that you have to be born with. As the great writer, Kurt Vonnegut offered: “You can’t teach people to write well. Writing well is something God lets you do or declines to let you do.” (Wampeeters, Foma & Granfaloons, 1974)
However, even with such a positive congenital predisposition, I feel that a person must still work at the craft in order to improve and achieve optimal success. Still, without that inborn spark, anything exceptional will probably not occur. Let’s face it, in order to succeed at a high level in any endeavor — sports, the arts, life — a strong combination of natural ability and hard work are necessary. Oh, and a little bit of luck wouldn’t hurt, either.
Those of you who know me, can tell that I have an intense interest in the written word. Though I’m certainly not anywhere near the category of born writer that I’ve been discussing thus far, I’ve spent a considerable number of years poking around on the outer fringes of writing respectability, knocking tenaciously at the door, hoping to gain admittance. Thus far, no luck. Actually, not even close enough to say ‘…but, no cigar.” However, who knows, with a little more maturity on my part, perhaps I’ll still evolve.
But, this essay is not primarily about yours truly. What I really hope to do in this piece is to offer my understanding of what accomplished novelists are actually doing when they develop their art. When we read a particularly fine novel, it may occur to us at times that the author has described and recounted specific, real life experiences in the most exact terms. Some of us may think that the writer has simply re-told something from his or her own life; or, perhaps they are relating events and characters from an almost historical standpoint. In reality, I believe that successful authors are simply taking into account ideas, perspectives and character assessments that have already been written down and shared previously, offering their own take and bringing into existence a unique and brand new creation. In the doing, they will uncover a truth that is a separate reality. And, as Joseph Conrad wrote, the result is“a form of imagined life clearer than reality.”(Conrad, A Personal Record, 1912)
Here is one of the best descriptions I’ve come across that clearly spells out how talented authors “borrow” from other writers; and, in the process, they create something that is both new and transformative:
“One of the surest tests (of the superiority or inferiority of a poet) is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.”
T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood
So, where do fictional stories flow from? How do novelists come up with their ideas? The renowned Peruvian novelist and Nobel Prize winner, Mario Vargas Llosa, felt that while all stories are rooted in the lives of those who write them, and that personal experience is a necessary source from which fiction flows, “…this doesn’t mean, of course, that novels are thinly disguised biographies of their authors.” (Vargas Llosa, Letters to a Young Novelist, pg. 15)
However, Vargas Llosa does claim that in every fiction, there is:
“…a starting point, a secret node viscerally linked to the experiences of the writer….all fictions are structures of fantasy and craft erected around certain acts, people or circumstances that stand out in the writer’s memory and stimulate his imagination, leading him to create a world so rich and various…”
(Vargas Llosa, Letters, pg.15)
Vargas Llosa reinforces his previous statement about the author’s “starting point,” and how it must be transformed into a new creation having a life of its own:
“Although the starting point of a novelist’s invention is what he has lived, that is not, and cannot be, its ending point. …Those stories that never cast off from their authors and that serve only as biographical documents are, of course, failed fictions.”
Vargas Llosa, Letters, pgs. 18-19
Stephen King, of horror fame, shares his approach about how stories are “made.” King doesn’t really believe in creating a plot line for his fiction. He wrote:
“I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren’t compatible. It’s best that I be as clear about this as I can — I want you to understand that my basic belief about the making of stories is that they pretty much make themselves. The job of the writer is to give them a place to grow (and to transcribe them, of course.)”
(Stephen King, On Writing, pg. 163)
Luigi Pirandello, the Italian dramatist, believed that if the author could create interesting and vital characters, then he could probably just set them free and follow their lead:
“When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.”
Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921)
In circling back to Mr. King, he has advanced a very similar argument. His approach is to develop well conceived characters, put them into some type of situation and let them do their thing. He writes:
“I lean heavily on intuition, and have been able to do that because my books tend to be based on situation rather than story. … I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free.”
(King, On Writing, pg. 164)
Vargas Llosa made it clear he didn’t believe that literature was totally unconnected to reality. What he was saying is that the “truths” that come out of literature are never the truths personally expressed by the writer, or the reader. Instead, he felt that:
“Literature is not a transposition of living experience. Real and important knowledge about reality always comes out of literature, but through lies, through a distortion of reality, through a transformation of reality by imagination and the use of words.”
(Vargas Llosa, A Writer’s Reality, pg. 79)
Because, he goes on, the goal of the novel is not to:
“…transcribe reality, but to transform it, to do something different, to make of real reality an illusion, a separate reality. When you succeed in creating something different out of real reality, real experience, you also achieve the possibility of communicating something that was not evident before that novel or poem or play existed.”
(Vargas Llosa, A Writer’s Reality, pg. 79)
Ford Maddox Ford, the English novelist, poet and critic, thought that Impressionist writing was about showing the reader rather than telling. For him, Impressionism’s primary concern was to render in a novel a sense of “the queer effects of life…to attain the sort of vibration that scenes in real life really have.” Both Ford, and his contemporary, Virginia Wolf, “sought to represent life in what they believe to be a more truthful way.” (Brit Wiki)
Again, Vargas Llosa says that in writing literature, “you must lie without any scruples, but in a convincing way so that the reader accepts your lies as truths.” Further, he states that “…in order to persuade and convince the reader, literature must become a sovereign world, independent, a world that has emancipated itself from its mother, from reality.” In fact, he says, that the novel’s text has to “…become independent of reality, to have a life of its own.” (Vargas Llosa, A Writer’s Reality, pg. 80)
Elsewhere in his writings, Vargas Llosa tells us that:
“Fiction is a lie covering up a deep truth: it is life as it wasn’t; life as the men and women of a certain age wanted to live it and didn’t and thus had to invent it.”
(Vargas Llosa, Letters, pg. 18)
Additionally, the Peruvian novelist writes about “inventing lies that pass as truths.” (Vargas Llosa, The Language of Passion, pg. 71)
Vargas Llosa stated in one of the previous quotes that in order to be persuasive and convincing, literature must create a “sovereign world” freed from reality. He felt that literature is a predatory art that “annihilates the real…, constructing a mock world…an artifice built with materials always plundered from life.” He sees the writer as one who “seizes and steals — and manipulates and deforms — what is lived and what is real more by instinct and intuition than by conscious deliberation.” (Vargas Llosa, Language, pg. 226) Our friend, Stephen King, of course, talked about how important intuition is to his writing.
I’d like to get back to a concept briefly mentioned earlier in this piece: that literature must be “persuasive and convincing” in order to create a “sovereign world.” William Gass, the American writer and critic, wrote that the artist must “show or exhibit his world, and to do this he must actually make something, not merely describe something that might be made.” He goes on: “furthermore, he must present a world that is philosophically adequate…” (William Gass, Fiction and the Figures of Life, pg. 8)
Well, if authors are creating their own “worlds”, then by extension, are they in fact the gods of their worlds? It seems Gass thinks that might be the case:
“If the esthetic aim of any fiction is the creation of a world, then the writer is creator — he is god — and the relation of the writer to his work represents in ideal form the relation of the fabled Creator to His creation.”
(Gass, Fiction, pg. 18)
So, for Gass, and I’m sure for others, the author is a god of sorts, in that he creates the “world” that is his novel; he “establishes the logic, the order of his world.” And, Gass sees this created world as a “world of chance.” (Gass, Fiction, pgs. 21-22)
So, the great writers of fiction don’t simply transcribe verbatim what they’ve lived or heard or seen, though they do borrow and steal elements from those writers who preceded them. Then, by integrating “remembered or invented materials,” they manipulate and distort reality, with a bit of lying and deception thrown in, to transform that reality by creating something that was nonexistent previously, And, which may in fact, turn out to be, as Conrad opined, “a form of imagined life clearer than reality.” If done properly and successfully, the great writers are thus able to create a world with its own logic and order, and also with a life of its own.
So, as I began this piece, I talked about my intense interest in the written word, and how, thus far, I have not risen very high on the pyramid of either writing ability or writing accomplishments. Well, you ask (and I’ve also asked myself, quite frankly) how can I even speak of myself as a “writer”, when there are so many great and talented ones who make their home in that category? It’s like a young kid guitarist in a new rock band comparing himself to Clapton.
Since I like challenges, I’m going to attempt to answer that question for you. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been interested in words, their meanings and how using one word over another word with a similar meaning might not only be more appropriate, but would perhaps establish the point I was trying to make more perfectly, more fittingly, more convincingly. Remembering back to the earliest, mutually beneficial conversations I’ve had over the years with friends, relatives, business colleagues, I’ve always found myself naturally responding in a give and take by rephrasing what I’d been told and feeding it back. This, to confirm that I clearly understood the meaning, and the intent.
I think this practice helped me to find various ways to express the same thought, which is a helpful technique in the writing process; it definitely provides more options. Yes, so I’ve not only had an interest in the meaning of words, but also with writing. Way, way back in the sixth grade, I was editor/writer for the class newspaper. (Not to brag, but I was also simultaneously president of the class and captain of the safety patrol.) Obviously, you may have already gotten the feeling that I peaked way too soon; I’ve definitely had to work at keeping my losses to a minimum over the years. In High School, I wrote for The Dodger. And, in college, I wrote for The Setonian.
Upon graduation from Seton Hall University, I applied to several graduate schools for journalism, the top one being the Columbia School of Journalism. I came fairly close to getting accepted at that prestigious school, however, it didn’t quite happen. But, I won’t bore you with the details. Okay, on second thought, maybe I will. Seems like Columbia was looking at roughly 500-600 applicants to fill approximately 100 spots that year. In the first go round, they accepted 75 applicants out of about 400 or so. At that point, I was still in the running. A few weeks later, they accepted the final 25 students from the remaining pool of 100 or so. Yours truly did not make the cut. I guess the silver lining is that if I had matriculated at Columbia, then gotten a good job working at one of the major newspapers, by now I would have been in a target group that the former guy labeled “failed” and accused of providing “fake news.” Now, who would want that on their resume?
After graduation, I had actually ended up taking a job as a sales promotion writer and house organ editor for a utilities company. I attended night classes to obtain a Masters Degree in English. One thing led to another, one marketing job led to another, and during my career I served variously as an advertising manager, an account executive and a copywriter. I finally ended up as a partner in an advertising agency, where I eventually came to write all of the copy for clients. Though I turned out to be a completely serviceable copywriter and eventually always came up with copy that satisfied our clients’ needs, I never considered myself to be anywhere near the top tier. I did have several friends who I think were definitely up there though: Joe and Shawn. They consistently did great work and they had a facility for producing strong headlines and copy, both quickly and efficiently. I used to tell them they they were actually “copywriters”, while I was someone who “wrote copy.”
So, while working in advertising as my profession I never completely gave up the dream of producing literature of some kind. Early on, I guess I thought that I might want to write a novel; I mean, who wouldn’t want to try and write the Great American Novel? But, after spending considerable time and energy in writing my 125-page Masters Thesis, I could see that I probably wouldn’t be able to sustain that effort over the length and breath of at least a 300-page book. And besides, the world of literature might be a much better place if most of us decided not to attempt to write a novel. Per the famous quote about writing attributed to the journalist Christopher Hitchens: “Everyone has a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.”
I began to work on short stories for a while. I kept a writing journal, I had some good ideas. Even submitted stories to a few publications. Maybe I didn’t stay at it long enough, but after a while, I pretty much decided that perhaps short stories were not gonna be my thing.
Fast forward to last year and the pandemic times. I have always kept a writing journal with interesting ideas and quotes I’ve picked up from novels I had read. One day last year, I began to look at some of the quotes in particular as a starting point for essays on various topics. In talking to my sons one day about writing, they suggested that I make use of those quotes and start my own blog.
I’ve been at it almost a year now and I have not only enjoyed developing these pieces, but am also pleased with the reception and feedback I’ve gotten from my loyal readers. It seems that there are about 35 to 40 of you folks out there who have been reading my essays as I publish them. What do I really hope to accomplish? Are my insights absolutely necessary for the common good? Am I making any ground-breaking comments? Probably not, but if I am even able to make some new or interesting connections, perhaps that adds just a little bit to the knowledge base out there.
So, to finally, and perhaps mercifully, bring this long essay to a close (my thanks to those of you who have persisted and gotten this far), I’d like to leave you with my own personal, and humble, philosophy on writing. I’m hoping that for those of you who like to write, or perhaps who like to interpret, to elucidate, to shed light on, to offer new insight – basically those of you who like to communicate — I’m hoping that some of this will resonate with you. I’m not a super technical guy, never have been, so the various ‘rules” about writing are something I’ve always blithely ignored. I can’t diagram a sentence for you to save my life, but I think I have a pretty decent “feel” for words and phrases and for “what sounds right.” I’m kind of in agreement with Elmore Leonard, the American novelist, who wrote:
“If it sounds like writing, I re-write it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative.”
Elmore Leonard
This reminds me of a story that my good friend Becky related to me about James Michener. (Her dad, a local pastor, was friends with Michener, who was from the Doylestown, PA area.) On one occasion, while speaking to local high school students about writing in an assembly, the author recommended something to this effect: “Listen to your teachers. Follow their advice. And, then, throw out what doesn’t work for you.” It was probably Michener’s way of telling the students that to become serious writer, you had to develop your own voice and style.
I guess that ultimately when I put down my opinions for everyone to see (well, maybe at least for 35 to 40 people to see), I want them to read what I’ve written, think about it a little bit and exclaim: “Yeah, that’s right!” You want your reader to take in what you’ve proposed and have them feel like what you’re offering not only makes perfect sense, but that it seemed to just exist out there in the ether, waiting to be plucked and delivered.
I’ll end with a very apt description of how I feel a serious writer should proceed. Though this excerpt mainly deals with literature, I think it applies to almost all forms of writing. To me, each sentence must logically lead to the next sentence. And each new sentence must relate back to the previous sentence. I think that’s how you make an argument, that’s how you build a case, that’s how you convince readers of what you truly believe:
“It was easy to write a sentence, but if you were going to create a work of art, the way Melville had, each sentence needed to fit perfectly with the one that preceded it, and the unwritten one that would follow. And each of those sentences needed to square with the ones on either side, so that three became five and five became seven, seven became nine, and whichever sentence he was writing became the slender fulcrum on which the whole precious edifice depended. That sentence could contain anything, anything, and so it promised the kind of absolute freedom that, to Affenlight’s mind, belonged to the artist and the artist alone. And yet that sentence was also beholden to the book’s very first one, and its last unwritten one, and every sentence in between.”
(Chad Harbach, Art of Fielding)
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Resonance 