Dear Literary Ladies
Do I Have Enough Wisdom to Be a Good Writer?
By | On Jun 12, 2013 | CommentsDear Literary Ladies,
Sometimes I feel that I don’t have enough life experience to be a good writer. Everything I write, in hindsight, looks rather shallow and inauthentic. Should I wait until I’ve lived more fully, and gain some wisdom, before I bare my soul to the public in writing, or should I just plow ahead?
I wrote “Their Eyes Were Watching God” in Haiti. It was dammed up in me, and I wrote it in seven weeks. I wish I could write it again. In fact, I regret all of my books. It is one of the tragedies of life that one cannot have all the wisdom one is ever to possess in the beginning. Perhaps, it is just as well to be rash and foolish for a while. If writers were too wise, perhaps no books would be written at all. It might be better to ask yourself “Why?” afterwards than before. Anyway, the force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.
—Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography, 1942
Should you write for yourself, or for others?
By | On May 19, 2013 | CommentsDear Literary Ladies,
Which is better—to write purely to please yourself, or to write with an audience in mind?
No, you don’t write for yourself or for others. You write out of a deep inner necessity. If you are a writer, you have to write, just as you have to breathe, or if you’re a singer you have to sing. But you’re not aware of doing it for someone. This need to write was for me as strong as the need to live. I needed to live, but I also needed to record what I lived. It was a second life, it was my way of living in a more heightened way.
—Anais Nin, from a 1973 interview in A Woman Speaks
Is it possible to write well if you are a “starving artist”?
By | On May 08, 2013 | CommentsDear Literary Ladies,
It’s so hard to make a living at writing these days. There used to be so many more paying outlets for short stories, essays, and sketches; now everyone expects writers to contribute free content. How did you manage to earn a living while building your reputation? Do you think it’s necessary to be a “starving artist” until one’s ship comes in?
I always took little dull jobs that didn’t take my mind and wouldn’t take all of my time, and that, on the other hand, paid me just enough to subsist. I think I’ve only spent about ten percent of my energies on writing. The other ninety percent went to keeping my head above water.
And I think that’s all wrong. Even Saint Teresa said, “I can pray better when I’m comfortable,” and she refused to wear her haircloth shirt or starve herself. I don’t think living in cellars and starving is any better for an artist than it is for anybody else; the only thing is that sometimes the artist has to take it, because it is the only possible way of salvation, if you’ll forgive that old-fashioned word. So I took it rather instinctively. I was inexperienced in the world, and likewise I hadn’t been trained to do anything you know, so I took all kinds of laborious jobs. But, you know, I think I could probably have written better if I’d been a little more comfortable.
—Katherine Anne Porter, The Paris Review Interviews, 1963
How can a writer deal with rejection?
By | On Apr 18, 2013 | CommentsDear Literary Ladies,
I know that rejection is part of a writer’s life, but every time one submits something that gets turned down, it’s hard not to feel crushed. How did you learn to cope with it, and not take it personally?
After leaving Prince of Wales College I taught school for a year in Bideford, Prince Edward Island. I wrote a good deal and learned a good deal, but my stuff came back except from two periodicals the editors of which evidently thought that literature was its own reward, and quite independent of monetary considerations. I often wonder that I did not give up in utter discouragement.
At first I used to feel dreadfully hurt when a story or poem over which I had laboured and agonized came back, with one of those icy little rejection slips. Tears of disappointment would come in spite of myself, as I crept away to hide the poor, crimpled manuscript in the depths of my trunk. But after a while I got hardened to it and did not mind. I only set my teeth and said, “I will succeed.” I believed in myself and I struggled on alone, in secrecy and silence. I never told my ambitions and efforts and failures to any one. Down, deep down, under all discouragements and rebuff I knew I would “arrive” some day.
—L.M. Montgomery, The Alpine Path, 1917
How can one persevere when writing pays so poorly?
By | On Mar 28, 2013 | CommentsDear Literary Ladies,
I work so hard at my writing, putting in an inordinate amount time and effort. For all that, the rewards are so meager. Adding up the hours I put into my work (which I’m not even sure is more than mediocre), I would be making much less than minimum wage! My family thinks I should pack it in. What can you advise to help me persevere in a pursuit that’s so poorly compensated?
How can we know if we work hard now and develop ourselves we will be more than mediocre? Isn’t this the world’s revenge on us for sticking our neck out? We can never know until we’ve worked, written . . . Weren’t the mothers and businessmen right after all? Shouldn’t we have avoided these disquieting questions and taken steady jobs and secured a good future for the kiddies?
Not unless we want to be bitter all our lives. Not unless we want to feel wistfully: What a writer I might have been, if only. If only I’d had the guts to try and work and shoulder the insecurity all that trial and work implied. Read More→
