"The Productive Writer"
"The Productive Writer"
Some thoughts on writing against commodity.
I recently returned to Amsterdam after three weeks on the road, a split between work obligations, family visits, and a short holiday to celebrate my 10-year wedding anniversary.
I love to travel, but along with that, a certain anxiety always arises. Where will I find time to write? At home, I have a certain amount of wavering discipline that I use to instigate a writing practice. But on the road, I’m away from the routine I’ve built for getting writing done.
Writers are used to hearing from coaches and gurus and celebrated authors in fancy Paris Review interviews that if one wants to be a success, one needs to write every day without fail. Sure, there is a certain kind of wisdom behind the idea that writers should write as often as possible. Writing is an art of practice and duration—you learn to write by doing so, and it takes time (a lot of time) to create something worthwhile. But does a writer need to feel guilty if they aren’t always on a schedule?
I have long stretches of writing every day, and I enjoy these periods. There’s nothing like catching an idea and running with it. Hopefully, something comes from the effort. But the anxiety that I won’t be able to write while I travel, that I will have a short fallow period, bothers me. Why? Because it speaks to other intentions. When does writing every day change from an act of discipline and craft into something more insidious—that of production for the sake of creating commodities?
In the fabulous essay On Marble, Rachel Cusk examines the many ways marble has been used throughout history as a material for art and of tyranny.
She makes a very interesting observation about the difference between being an artist and a dictator:
The artist and the dictator stand at opposite ends of the concept of agreement, which is essentially the concept of storytelling. As a story does, the created object seeks agreement: unless successive generations agree with the statement the object makes, it will be destroyed by time. The artist makes a bet on that future perspective, even at the cost of dispensing with agreement in the now. By contrast, the dictator tries to stop time and control the future, by staking everything on the present moment.
I had this quote in mind while I was away. As a protest against my own tyranny, I didn’t write. I didn’t set the alarm for 5 a.m. (as I usually do). I didn’t write for a two-hour minimum. Instead, I set no expectations. If I did anything, I took notes. I observed. I tried to be in the present without worrying about the future. I’m not trying to make this out as a heroic act. It was lazy and indulgent. But by taking some time away, taking notes, and letting the world come to me instead of constantly grasping at it like a petty dictator, I’ve come back home ready to create better work. It’s very easy for an artist to become a tyrant. They bet everything on the here and now, produce for the moment, and chase quick publication. They create work that is formally compelling but lacking soul. And in an interesting way, working (or not working) against this tendency opens a conversation with the cultural moment—how do we create something true and lasting in a throwaway culture? How do we compose art worthy of future generations? And if that isn’t our goal, are we any better than a factory producing IKEA furniture?
Upcoming class
Just a quick reminder: Revising Your Prose, a two-week seminar on revision techniques, begins this month! Sign up if you’re interested in learning new methods for polishing your work.