Manual For Fiction Writers by Block, Lawrence (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

occasionally winning a little recognition. But they don't sell paintings, they've never tried to sell paintings, and they don't consider themselves failures.

These painters are very fortunate?they don't need to prove themselves in the marketplace in order to get a sense of accomplishment from their work. They can produce a painting and either give it to a friend or hang it on a blank wall. Their artistic struggles may be rewarding or frustrating according to whether they do or do not achieve what they aimed at artistically. But, once a painting's finished, they don't succeed or fail if it does or does not sell.

Why aren't there more Sunday writers? Why don't those of us who write as a hobby find our work satisfying in and of itself?

I think there are some good reasons. Foremost, I suppose, is that communication is absolutely implicit in writing. If a story is not to be read, why write it down in the first place? An unpublished piece of fiction is an incompleted act, like a play staged in an empty theater.

We can't effectively hang our manuscripts on the wall. Some of us do give them to friends?by having our work privately published. But that's expensive, and in addition there's a certain stigma that often attaches to it. If it's really good, we and our friends wonder, why should we have to pay to have it published? And if it's not of professional caliber, why don't we keep it in the attic?

Poets have an edge here. The prospect of making a living from poetry is so remote as to be nonexistent, and that's very liberating. Since every poet's a financial failure, no odium attaches to such failure. Only a minuscule proportion of skilled poets ever have their works published in book form, and they make no more than a pittance from such publication. So the poet who circulates his verses privately, or pays to have them printed, is less likely to feel qualms about it than the fiction writer who does the same thing. When all poets are essentially amateurs, one's not ashamed to be less than professional. One's friends and neighbors probably don't know the names or work of many widely published poets. They're not forever reading in the gossip columns of staggering sums paid for film rights to a sonnet sequence. Poetry, like virtue, is its own reward.

Where's the reward in unpublished fiction?

As far as I've been able to determine, it does not lie in the sheer joy of the act of writing.

Because writing's not much fun.

I really wonder why that is. Again, comparison with other art forms is instructive. It's been my observation that painters, both professional and amateur, love to paint. They get genuine enjoyment out of the physical act of smearing paint on canvas. Sometimes they're blocked, sometimes they're frustrated, but when they're painting the very process of creation is a joy to them.

Same thing certainly holds true for musicians. They only seem to feel alive when they're performing. The jazz musicians I've known spend their afternoons practicing scales and such, work all night performing, then jam for free at an after-hours joint until dawn, just for the sheer pleasure of it.

In sharp contrast, almost every writer I know will go to great lengths to avoid being in the same room with his typewriter. Those of us who are driven to produce great quantities of manuscript don't necessarily get any real pleasure out of the act; it's just that we feel worse when we don't write. It's not the carrot but the stick that gets most of us moving.

I don't mean to suggest that there's no positive pleasure connected with writing. I enjoy getting ideas, for example?both the initial plot germs and the ideas that develop in the course of extended work on a novel. And I very much enjoy having written; the satisfaction of having completed a taxing piece of work can be monumental.

This latter pleasure, come to think of it, is a negative one, isn't it? When I'm delirious with joy over having finished something, my joy stems in large part from the fact that I do not have to work on it any more, that the dratted thing is over and done with.

So it's nice being about to write, and it's nice to have written. But is there no way to enjoy writing while it's going on?

One thing that impedes enjoyment, I would think, is that writing's hard work. Painters and musicians work hard, too, but there's a difference. You can't really relax and go with the flow while you're writing?at least I can't, and if anyone can show me how, I'll be delighted to learn. Writing demands all of my attention and focuses me entirely in the present. I can't let my mind wander, and if my mind wanders in spite of itself I find I can't write, and when I want to write and can't write I find myself possessed of murderous rage.

When a painting doesn't go well the artist can keep on painting and cover it up. When a musician's not at his best, the notes he plays float off on the air and he can forget about them.

When I'm off my form, the garbage I've written just sits there on the page and thumbs its nose at me. And when it gets into print that way, it's there for all the world to see,