For the Young Who Want to Write

I came across this poem today and just have to share it here:

For the Young Who Want To - Marge Piercy

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved. 

As I mentioned before, it can sometimes be very dispiriting to be a young writer. People dismiss your ambition as a mere hobby, fad, or delusion. Those in the world of 'real work' don't take you seriously and either ignore or diss your career choice.

In this poem though, there is much-needed consolation and empathy and truth. Marge Piercy seems to have had her fair share of knocks and discouragement too. (And then all-too-easy praise.)  But she's gone beyond it, as all writers do I suppose. We are always told that to succeed as a writer, we must have a 'tough skin.'  I get it. We need a rhino's hide to brush off all those rejections and indifferent dismissals. But we must also have a fine skin, an innate gossamer sensitivity, if we're able to make any written observations about the world in the first place. And so we must protect that fine skin... with a tough skin. So, the challenge seems to be how to reconcile the two. Ay, therein lies the rub.

Anyway, the main message of this poem is all you really need, is dedication -'The real writer is one who really writes.' And look at that last word - 'loved'. Love. Love for it more than anything else. Of course. And young people are capable of love most passionately.

It's great to read these inspiring encouragements from established writers. It blasts the cobwebs of doubt off you.  I also recommend you read this article, a strengthening tonic: 23 Tips from Famous Authors for New and Emerging Writers.  There's another link too about how Hemingway takes a young writer under his wing, who travelled across the country to visit him. 

To be taken seriously as a writer, as a young writer, builds backbone. But then again, to not be taken seriously, to forge a fighting spirit to do so, builds it too.

~ Siobhán   






 

Advice to Young Writers

I came across this article in The New Yorker and just had to share it (here's the link: Jeffrey Eugenides's Advice to Young Writers)

It's the text adapted from a speech writer Jeffrey Eugenides gave to the Whiting award winners in 2010.  The Whiting Writers' Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging young writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays with bursaries to advance their writing careers.

For one thing, it's one of the few articles I've come across that addresses young writers, yay! At last! 

Because, really, what is it about young writers that they are often overlooked for the older ones, especially the older male writers, the so-called 'geniuses' of the craft? Apart from Rilke's 'Letters to a Young Poet', I can't think of any other pieces dedicated solely to young writers.  It's like we're a lesser species! 

I especially remember one time being lambasted by an elderly gentleman when I said I write to which he replied he hadn't met any 'young' person before who writes and continued - 'that's probably because older people have more experience to write about', inadvertently igniting my defence firing missiles - which went something along the lines of: Pah! Writing ain't all experience  - rather it's about having an unique perspective and observer stance and talent and style and imagination and ability to express in language what most people can't even acknowledge. It is a craft that disregards how may years you've got clocked up!

Some of the best writers are (and have been) young writers. (Keats, anyone??) And the most exciting writers are often young writers - who are not afraid to embrace innovative styles - look at Jack Kerouac and the never-ending roll of stream-of-consciousness travelogue/existential manifesto (which can now be found in the 'Classics' section of most bookshops). 

Young writers and their budding writer status are acknowledged in this article. Eugenides speaks of the spark of writerly otherness in these budding writers and encourages it - that's what I think is so great about the article.  Like here, in the first part of the piece when he addresses that moment of awakening within every writer which usually occurs in childhood (it is implied):

'When you started writing, in high school or college, it wasn’t out of a wish to be published, or to be successful, or even to win a lovely award like the one you’re receiving tonight. It was in response to the wondrousness and humiliation of being alive. Remember? You were fifteen and standing beside a river in wintertime. Ice floes drifted slowly downstream. Your nose was running. Your wool hat smelled like a wet dog. Your dog, panting by your side, smelled like your hat. It was hard to distinguish. As you stood there, watching the river, an imperative communicated itself to you. You were being told to pay attention. You, the designated witness, special little teen-age omniscient you, wearing tennis shoes out in the snow, against your mother’s orders. Just then the sun came out from behind the clouds, revealing that every twig on every tree was encased in ice. The entire world a crystal chandelier that might shatter if you made a sound, so you didn’t. Even your dog knew to keep quiet. And the beauty of the world at that moment, the majestic advance of ice in the river, so like the progress of the thoughts inside your head, overwhelmed you, filling you with one desire and one desire only, which was to go home immediately and write about it.'

And I don't know why, but for some reason, I've always associated New York with young writers. An ideal place of nurturing. (Maybe it's because I've seen countless TV serieses and films where young writers are taken under the bosom of older mentor writers in New York amongst the Brooklyn fire-escapes and panelled libraries and the buzz of The New Yorker  and multiple writing retreats and internships and the cityscape a happening background to all kinds of verbal comings-of-age.)

I've seen new publications recently hit the shelves entitled '30 Under 30' and the like celebrating and showcasing young writers, which is great. Maybe the stereotype is shifting.

Eugenides's last piece of advice is particularly affecting: 

'To die your whole life. Despite the morbidity, I can't think of a better definition of the writing life. There's something about writing that demands a leave-taking, an abandonment of the world, paradoxically, in order to see it clearly. This retreat has to be accomplished without severing the vital connection to the world, and to people, that feeds the imagination. It's a difficult balance.' 

And maybe that's what that man I was talking to (briefly I might add) was referring to when he said older writers have more 'experience.' Maybe some might think it's easier for older people to remove themselves from life in order to to observe it and write about it, seeing as they have already 'lived' their life and are now keen to pen the autobiography! But this entirely wrong view sees writing as a step you progress to, a maturity badge, an older people only practice. But, as Eugenides says here, writing requires two conflicting things: to immerse oneself in life and to remove oneself from it almost simultaneously; it is a balance to be maintained consistently, the whole way through life. And only from this balance, will good writing flourish forth. 

And I might add, it is this balance that young writers have been coming to terms with ever since they first laid pen to paper. As such, we've become quite adept at it.

Keep writing young guns! 

~ Siobhán 

Further Reading/Proof!:

25 Best Novels Written by Writers Under 30

3o Under 30

Granta's Best Young Novelists

Why I Write - Writers (and Me) on Writing

This blog has been a long time coming. Why? Because it's important.  And here it is: Why do I write? Why do you write? Why do writers write exactly?

Is it to make a living - albeit a very random and penniless one? To provide a public podium for our frolicking imaginations? Because we're wordy and want somewhere to indulge our verbal acrobatics? To dictate to the masses? On a notion, a whim, a wish? To make ourselves heard? To have the last word?

Writing is not just a pastime, a hobby, or indeed a career. It's a passion. A pursuit against all odds of ordinary. Not the shallow stereotype of  scribbling and doodling and making up stories to entertain, it's more about engaging with the world, responding to it and creating. It's not trivial, it's powerful. 

 

It's hard to explain - exactly. There's a lot to it. I've tried to explain it to people and I can never seem to get across how important, essential it is. Most writers, serious writers, would say that they feel they have to write, that it's an inner essential need, as necessary as breathing. 

Granted, there are 'writers' who engage in the art of the pen for entertainment sake only. Those who engage in writing from time-to-time, a hobby. And on an echoing note, there seems to be a stereotypical consensus out there that writing is something you take up  only when older, as retirement recreation, like knitting. (I say this as it seems every writing group I've ever attended has been populated mainly with older members.) But why? Some of the greatest writers have been and are young writers. Those who have been passionate about the craft since they first put pen to paper in single digits. Today young writers are clearing the score-board - Zadie Smith for example and this year's mid-twenties Orange prize winner, Tea Obreht (and Cecelia Ahern, dare I say it, one of the wealthiest and youngest writers around, regardless of her chick-lit status). Wilfred Owen was only in  his early twenties when he wrote what is today considered some of the greatest war poetry ever.  Keats left a legacy behind him after his death at twenty-five. Seamus Heaney was peddling verses at school, as were the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen when she was just a young woman on the threshold of adulthood... Need I go on?

Anyway, back to topic - Why do I write? Not as a hobby. I have enough other hobbies. Reading is a hobby. But writing is not. Writing is more important than a hobby, more demanding, more purposeful. Writing is the career I'm chasing, but more than that too, it's also a fulfillment of a kind, of every kind. A fire that I've lit and tended to and if I let go out, I'll turn to ashes and embers in its wake. It's a need, a devotion, above all else.

And why do writers write? Margaret Atwood, one of my favourite writers is someone who has managed to express this 'need' for writing. She has been writing since her youth, as most great writers have been. In her book on writing  'Negotiating With the Dead', she examines the whole business of writing, the whys and whats and hows on a psychological level, and one memorable passage where she pieces together all the reasons for writing she has ever heard from writers of all shapes and sizes goes as follows:
 
'To record the world as it is. To set  down the past before it is all forgotten. To excavate the past because it has been forgotten. To satisfy my desire for revenge. Because I knew I had to keep writing or else I would die. Because to write is to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we know we are alive. To produce order out of chaos. To delight and instruct (not often found after the twentieth century, or not in that form.) To please myself. To express myself. To express myself beautifully. To create a perfect work of art. To reward the virtuous and punish the guilty; or - the Marquis de Sade defense, used by ironists - vice versa. To hold a mirror up to Nature. To hold a mirror up to the reader. To paint a portrait of society and its ills. To express the unexpressed life of the masses. To name the hitherto unnamed. To defend the human spirit, and human integrity and honor. To thumb my nose at Death. To make money so my children could have shoes. To make money so I could sneer at those who formerly sneered at me. To show the bastards. Because to create is human. Because to create is Godlike. Because I hated the idea of having a job. To say a new word. To make a new thing. To create a national consciousness, or a national conscience. To justify my failures in school. To justify my own view of myself and my life, because I couldn't be a 'writer' unless I actually did some writing. To make myself appear more interesting than I actually was. To attract the love of a beautiful woman. To attract the love of any woman at all. To attract the love of a beautiful man. To rectify the imperfections of my miserable childhood. To thwart my parents. To spin a fascinating tale. To amuse and please the reader. To amuse and please myself. To pass the time, even though it would have passed anyway. Graphomania. Compulsive logorrhea. Because I was driven to it by some force outside of my control.  Because I was possessed. Because an angel dictated to me. Because I fell into the embrace of the muse. Because I got pregnant by the Muse and needed to give birth to a book (an interesting piece of cross-dressing, indulged in by male writers of the seventeenth century). To serve Art. To serve the Collective Unconscious. To serve History. To justify the ways of God towards man. To act out antisocial behaviour for which I would have been punished in real life. To master a craft so I could generate texts (a recent entry). To subvert the Establishment. To demonstrate that whatever is, is right. To experiment with new forms of perception. To create a recreational boudoir so the reader could go into it and have fun (translated from a Czech newspaper). Because the story took hold of me and wouldn't let me go (the Ancient Mariner defense). To search for understanding of the reader and myself. To cope with my depression. For my children. To make a name that would survive death. To defend a minority group or oppressed class. To speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. To epose appalling wrongs or atrocities. To record the times through which I have lived. To bear witness to horrifying events I have survived. To speak for the dead. To celebrate life in all its complexity. To praise the universe. To allow for the possibility of hope and redemption. To give back something of what has been given to me. '


Phew! That's a mighty long list, but no doubt an accurate one, of both lowly and lofty reasons. Margaret Atwood herself, leans to the idea of writing as a way of lighting up the 'darkness.' She also notes the example of Samuel Beckett, who famously said that writing was all he was good for. And Flaubert, who said that you will always write the greatest for yourself, and not any audience.

Hmmm. So many different reasons, seemingly correlating to the literature status sought,  those with lowly ideals and those with lofty ones. Me? I write on an impulse, and electrifying urge.  Like Lord Byron, to clear all the clutter out of my head and onto the page where it becomes legible (lest I go mad in its cerebral  crowding and in-squabbling).  To define things: the world, states of emotion, truths, myself. 'To give to airy nothing a local habitation.'  Because I'm head-over-heels in love with language. Because I'd like to spend every spare moment  I have tinkering at the treasure of words and nothing else. Because it's a fire that needs to be fed. Because writing makes things matter.

Why do we write? As Rilke put so beautifully, in every serious wannabe-writer's handbook - 'Letters to a Young Poet - 'This above all - ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple 'I must', then build your life according to this necessity...'

And the answer is a resounding YES - for those of us who are serious about writing.  The lofty ones, the committed ones, the do-or-die ones. The ones who may have it tougher, struggle to make a writerly living, whose futures consist of garrets and solitary scribbling, who go to writer-groups for literary criticism not tea and chit-chat, who  painstakingly ponder on the meaning and magic of manuscripts, rather then churning out lite, bright, by the bundle bestsellers.  Oh well, we have the deep soul solace of words, where they merely skim the surface.

(Maybe I've left out some quotable writers on this million-dollar question, have I? Anyone out there able to quote some more?) Or better yet, add some new reasons to this treatise I've set out??  And you fellow lofty writers out there - share your aspirations! Now that I've laid down my gramophone, I'm all ears as always...


wondering and pondering and writing on,


~ Siobhán.