Fiction Daily

It’s a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes it rains.
– From the movie Bull Durham

A friend asked about writing and editing, wondering if writers like Kerouac, who has a reputation for spontaneous narrative, struggled.

I don’t think any writer, anywhere, doesn’t struggle. Now, the question becomes, does the writer enjoy the struggle? For some writers, I suspect, it doesn’t seem like a struggle, this act of creating. It is akin to cooking, which some folks just adore. I do not.

Blossoming Almond Tree, 1890, Saint-Remy by Vincent Van Gogh

Process is how we do things. Otherwise, really, we are like babies wailing or children playing. It has a place, and it feels good at the moment, but it’s not creation.

Looking then at a writer like Kerouac, whose “On the Road,” legend has it, was written in three weeks on a single scroll of paper. It’s true. That novel came whole cloth from Kerouac’s mind. Yet prior to that, for years he wrote character and episode sketches. In his mind, he rehearsed the writing, again and again.

Going even further back, it’s important to remember that Kerouac’s mind was prodigious; he was known as “Memory Babe” because of his ability to remember things. He ran an entire major league baseball season in his mind with stats for every team and player. So for him to have a novel roosting up there isn’t hard to imagine.

Charles Bukoski comes to mind, too, as a somewhat spontaneous writer. Yet if you look at his total body of work — several novels, 13 short story collections, and more than two dozen short story collections including “Love is a Dog from Hell,” it’s clear he worked at it. Although his gravestone reads, “Don’t try,” his advice in a poem to those who asked how to write.

It always comes down to Scott Fitzgerald, who said, “Writing is rewriting.” (Or was that E.B. White?)

I also found this quote by Vladimir Nabokov, “I have rewritten–often several times–every word I have ever written. My pencils outlast their erasers.”

When I read Vincent Van Gogh’s “Letters to Theo,” what struck me most about the painter was his hard work, sketching, studying, doing and redoing. Yet regarding his canvases, we see light, energy, life — not overworked or too studied, the confident hand of someone for whom painting is breathing.

Looking at the year ahead, it means hours and days writing and rewriting. If I do my job, that is. That’s because the struggle is the meaning.

New Year’s Day 2010

Looking out on the gray morning, the titmice, cardinals, juncos and sparrows breakfasting in the yard, the year ahead, too, appears before me, now empty but for a few birds of thought. The steps and turns, the hopeful dreams.

With new obligations of work and City Council, I wonder how I’ll make progress on the novel. A friend in theater shared with me her own story of how, when she was in college, and had a leading role in a play, she’d make dean’s list, too. With all the demands, she excelled at balancing; with no room for slouching, she focused with greater intent.

Hugh Laurie as the good doctor House

Her story made an impression on me. It reminded me that no matter our obligations, we can make good use of our time, use it in meaningful ways. And still have time to loaf around watching House, M.D.

It’s a matter of centering on what’s important. Not losing time procrastinating. Working with direction, and if possible, delight in creating.

Thinking through the novel as I often do, I’m imagining a quicker pace, more intensity, and a regular schedule of writing.

Mostly I’m thinking about the whole coalescing in my mind, all the parts together, with meaningful episodes taking shape from the large currents of plot.