Tuesday, March 3: High-Heeled Gumshoe
WAITING FOR A GODOT
by Melodie Johnson Howe
Recently, talking to an auditorium filled with beginning writers, I quoted Leon Russell: “It took me twenty years to learn to write without inspiration.” I saw many mouths, mostly women’s, drop open in shock. Or was it fear? Or was it the disappointing reality of the statement; cold water on the romantic idea of writing. I had the feeling that some of those women equated inspiration to a magical orgasm. And the lack of the muse equaled a cold, empty bed.
Luckily I dropped this bon mot on them at the end of the day which allowed me to escape without having to answer for my dark, uninspiring view of being a writer.
I think some of these writers come to workshop/conferences not just to be inspired but saved. It’s almost evangelistic. I conducted two workshops: one was very successful; the second was a disaster. The writers who wanted to be inspired by me also wanted to know if they were going to have lawyers or Homeland Security come after them if they wrote about Harvard. Or certain poisons. The women in the group were very chatty. Out of desperation I asked them to close their eyes. They did, and as waited they for further instruction they stopped talking. I thought I had an exercise for them, but it went out of my head. Then I had a brilliant idea. I would get up and walk silently out of the room. I would get in my car, drive home, sit down, and write, leaving them there with their eyes closed. Waiting. But I was getting paid, so I stumbled on–the blind leading the blind.
It takes great discipline to be a writer. Maybe that’s why so many learning-writers seek inspiration. It’s like being in love. When you’re in love you can do anything. You feel blessed as if you’re walking around in a warm hot glow. He loves me! She loves me! He/she gets me! It’s a state of mania, and in that state you are ready to conquer anything. Inspiration can make you feel the same. But if you don’t act on that inspiration immediately it will quickly flutter away and disappear. You must put it into words on paper. It must have a structure, a plot, a theme, characters, dialogue, action, and reaction. And if all that doesn’t spill perfectly out onto the page? It sucks the inspiration right out of you. Suddenly you’re not an inspired artist, you’re a tailor who has to sew and stitch and release and take-in and hem and lengthen. You’re only a writer trying to make your story work. Hardly romantic.
So what keeps me going if I don’t have inspiration? Passion. I love writing. We’ve had our up and downs. We’ve even betrayed each other. But the passion is still there. It gets me up in the morning. It gets me to the office. It allows me to take a sliver of an idea and work on it until it turns into something that is alive. But I never confuse that with inspiration.
A brilliant summation of how I felt during my years as Consultant in Residence (whatever that means) for the Midwest Writers Workshop at Ball State University. I’d sit alone looking wise at a table in a room set aside for relaxing and snacking. There were always a few people who spoiled a good thing by actually wanting to consult. Had there been a way to fill bottles with inspiration and place them on sale I would have become a wealthy man. Sneaking away never occurred to me, proving you are smarter than I am for even having had the thought.
Fantastic metaphor – I’m deeply in love with a first draft at the moment. Trying to consummate the deal before we settle into dull familiarity.
I think you SHOULD have snuck away. And left a note telling them to write about it.
Is it true or apocryphal that Faulkner spoke to a writer’s group as follows.
“How many of you want to write?”
All hands go up.
“What are you doing here? Go home and write.” (Exits.)
Rob, I heard that same episode attributed to both Vonnegut and someone else whose name escapes me. Perhaps JLW can track down the truth as he always seems to do so well?
Mellie, Mellie, Melodie… so many things I love about this post. “Wanting to be saved.” So true.
I completely understand and empathize with what you’re saying. When I was over at Murderati, I did a post about the importance of discipline in writing. It was mostly about the discipline that was so lacking in my own writer-self.
I wrote it years ago, but it’s still the most hit (hitted? struck? linked? whatever) post they’ve ever had over there.
Your metaphors are brilliant and this whole post shows that, not only are you still deeply in love with your art, but that you still know how to bring the wild and kinky passion when the lights go off!
Well done.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go take a cold shower.
As far as I can tell, the “go home and write” anecdote originated from some advice given to William Faulkner by Sherwood Anderson in 1925 in New Orleans. Faulkner was working on his first novel, following Anderson’s encouragement to try his hand at fiction.
Anderson apparently advised Faulkner to leave New Orleans and return to northern Mississippi and write about what he knew. In other words, Anderson suggested that Faulkner return to his roots rather than search for inspiration in a foreign city. As is so frequently the case, this anecdote apparently evolved away from its actual origin, changing from Anderson advising Faulkner to “go home and write” as a means to get in touch with his source material to Faulkner advising students to “go home and write” instead of wasting their time in a tutorial.
It was probably given a little impetus by the famous but apocryphal anecdote that Faulkner once told Howard Hawks that he was having trouble with a screenplay, and wanted to go home to work on it. Hawks supposedly agreed, only to discover that Faulkner didn’t mean his Los Angeles apartment, but his ancestral digs in Oxford, Mississippi.
As far as the Kurt Vonnegut connection is concerned, I can only believe that the story was attributed to him as a suitable curmudgeonly authorial substitute for Faulkner at a time when Faulkner’s verbose style was out of favor, the way that practically all political humor is falsely attributed to George Carlin or all British humor concerning America is falsely attributed to John Cleese. Vonnegut was actually very liberal in his advice to aspiring writers.
But all this reminds me a little of the pitfall of Biblical literalism. People get hung up on whether something is true or not when they ought to be concerned with what it means and what it teaches us. The lessons of Aesop are not wrong because his stories, being about talking animals, are factually false. The “Go home and write!” story is most likely nothing but an invention, but so what? It’s true on a more important level than mere fact.
P.S.: I didn’t tell Melodie, but I was secretly tempted to change the title of this post to “WAITING FOR A GUYOT.”
Hey guys. thanks for the geat feedback.
Now, Dick, I had that thought and didn’t act on it. Rob was right. Turn it into a writing exercise and leave.
Paulie, Paulie, Paul,
You were right about discipline. Which is not romantic, unlike a cold shower.
JLW,
I must admit that WAITING FOR A GUYOT( is this man still in the shower?) did cross my mind.