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By Michael Cain
"Fool," said my muse to me. "Look in thy heart and write."
— Philip Sidney
My muse abandons me from time to time. Is she so busy? Rather, I
ignore her and rediscover her, depending on my disposition,
alternating between my self-censure or better, self-vituperation,
and gabby grandiloquence or explicating my loftier emotions. I would
never rail against myself for any better reason but for my writing.
Reflecting on my writing history, I safely conclude the only place
I find good writing originates in outpourings of my spirit, comes from
some place deep inside the space of my brain, in my heart of hearts.
When I was young, my writing was rarely good. Now my writing is
sometimes good. The seeds of greatness occasionally found
their way in, and a few gems are there.
Being a writer is about achievement. It is also tripping and
falling, stumbling, floundering. A few great accomplishments and
many mundane moments give me a sense of voice, of clarity.
"I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far
write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all."
— Katherine Mansfield
My creativity suffers under my own scrutiny.
For some reason I don't throw away even the worst twaddle
imaginable. Unbelievable blather.
"There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and
perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it
out with charges."
— Ernest Hemingway
When writing is easy it becomes more perfect. When writing is
perfect it comes easy. The more I write the easier it comes.
"I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the
first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be
understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. I will try. All my
life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or
to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable
position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you
most want. Let's leave it like that. That block has always been
there and always will be, and my chance of getting, or achieving,
anything that I long for will always be gravely reduced by the
interminable existence of that block."
— Tennessee Williams
I feel expansive when I write and I contract when I encounter a
block. When I hit a topic and things go well, I lose track of time
and place and produce an interesting patch. When I hit a block I am
bored or simply uninspired. I rely on my Buddheo-Christian
background and my writing mentors, Roethke, Auden, Whitman) to find
it within myself to continue through any blocks.
"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in,
shockproof, shit detector."
— Ernest Hemingway
Built-in suggests innate ability, and shockproof connotates that
mystery functions in the human psyche. Hemingway hypocritically
(knowingly) insists there is that which exists which contains surprise, that
people just enjoy saying "shit detector." I refined my shit
detector wading through broods of vipers. {Christians, critics and
co-conspirators}
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for
the public and have no self."
- Cyril Connolly
Amen, sister. I'd pretty much given up on having a public, even a
single person, and then I met you...
"Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-
exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not
necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent."
— Harper Lee
I write to myself first and then I invent [my] audience.
There was a time in my young adulthood when I imagined recognition.
...A legend in my own mind at some level... equal to my fantasy of
being a professional baseball player or footballer...
"If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing."
— Kingsley Amis (Lucky Jim)
I am the pesky thorn in your side. Fortunately for [most of] tou, I am
not published, have given up writing for publication and so my
thorniness is sweetly silent.
"I always write from my own experiences, whether I've had them or
not."
— Ron Carlson
I give myself poetic license. Now I give myself a prosaic license, or a
prozac cocktail. I swear it sometimes just comes, it flows out of me. It is
a blossoming. I kinder a kindred kind or I'm kindling my demise.
"The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which
he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and
works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and
to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection;
and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time
when it will no longer consent... "
— Charlotte Brontë
OK CHARLOTTE… Wouldn’t wanna be ya
"To desire to write poems that endure-- we undertake such a goal
certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and if
we succeed we will never know it."
— Donald Hall
My conclusion: I will be famous when I'm dead. Sometimes I imagine,
because the day I was born arrives in close proximity to the death
of Roethke, that I am he, reincarnated.
"I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even
millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going
up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad,
making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen
Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their
heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange
unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody
and to all living creatures."
— Gary Snyder
I share the vision. I dream similarly, except in my dream we replace
lunatics with fanatics. And we're all butterflies fluttering around
the treetops when we wake
"If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad."
— George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron)
Empty minds make me mad.