Chekhov’s Mistess

On Writing: The Bias of Survivorship

I remember in eighth grade watching a movie in class about a man who had had a heart attack and went out jogging to try and kill himself. Much to his surprise, he survived and kept on running and became so fit and happy that he no longer wanted to die. Another guy had lost his foot and somehow found a way to run. The moral is if these guys could do it, against all the odds, so could you.

This month’s “Literary Life” column in Poets & Writers magazine starts out in my own backyard of Ft. Greene in Brooklyn, where Michael Drinkard has been writing a novel due out in January called Rebels, Turn Out Your Dead. Drinkard, the article details, works 50 hours a week, sleeps 49 hours, spends 25 on daily minutiae, 12 hours devoted to his three daughters, and five for exercise and another five for reading and note-taking. That leaves 22 hours a week to write his novel.

I’ve never measured my life like that, but it probably breaks down to something similar except for the five hours for exercise would be lumped over in the children category and the five for reading might be doubled on a good week and then blogging would wipe out a chunk and then the times that I work late, sleep more or sleep less, so that I can’t manage to do anything, at least very well, and then somehow or another through all that, those 22 hours that should go to writing get distilled down to sneaking it in, like an alcoholic stealing nips of vodka at the water cooler.

The difference is discipline. And that’s what it takes to write creatively, to carve out the time for solitude in a busy life and focus when it’s so much easier to watch reruns of Gomer Pyle. I admire Mr. Drinkard and now that I’ve seen his photo, I’ll stop him and say hello if I ever see him around the neighborhood. It’s motivating to hear stories like his.

I read that Alice Munro, who owned a bookstore for a while, would hole up in the store away from family and distractions to write one day a week. I heard Toni Morrison talk about getting up very early in the morning as a single, working mother, to write her first books. Of course, there are lot of stories like that (other good ones in the P&W article too) of successful authors winning over incredible odds with a lot of hard work and dedication.

With few exceptions, no one pays you up front to commit countless hours thinking and writing and dreaming your characters or placing your words, to take a chance on descending into the raw unforgiving world of personal and professional failure. So maybe it’s more than just discipline, it’s belief. It’s belief and fear that drive discipline. Some people never doubt themselves and others don’t quite believe, deep down, they will ever make it or quietly fear what the hell they would ever do if they did make it.

I fall somewhere in between, where publishing a book is such a distant prospect that I content myself with writing for writing sake with what time I can make for it, or writing like Nietzsche said, taking “more pleasure in making small, incidental things well than in the effect of some dazzling whole.”

Maybe one day that will pay off, like Frank McCourt who lived a literary life, but as a high school teacher, writing over the summers and not publishing his first book until he retired. The more I write, the more I want to write, but the more I write, the more I feel like I need another decade of practice, more in the perfectionist sense than a lack of confidence, I like to think.

I also like to think that, like the runner I mentioned earlier, I’ll go for it one day and write like there’s literally no tomorrow, and if I survive I’ll just keep on writing.

comments

It’s always nice to know that others struggle with the same discipline/lack of discipline problem. So cheers to us and lets nip at the vodka to celebrate.

I enjoy reading your blog.

    – zia (08/24  at  11:59 AM)

Thanks, Zia and thanks.

    – Bud Parr (08/26  at  11:30 PM)

As Bing Crosby used to sing, you’ve got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative

A few minutes of running or swimming can be a lifetime ...

    – Jozef Imrich (08/28  at  02:41 AM)

I cherish my memory of another moment from Morrison: writing with a babe on her knee, he threw up on her notebook & she wrote around it before cleaning it up rather than lose track of the sentence.

    – Anne (08/28  at  06:50 PM)

Your original post and Anne’s comment on Toni Morrison certainly make me feel better.  I’m a new mother trying to get back into writing, and finding it extremely difficult 1.  to find the time and focus (I know I’m not the only undisciplined writer out there, but it’s nice to hear it all the same.) and 2.  to type one-handed as my 8-month old tries to type on my keyboard at the same time.  Perhaps I should go back to writing long-hand--writing around spit-up is a lot easier than contemplating the blue screen of death after your child accidentally locks up your computer or spits up on the keyboard and shorts it out.  Thank God neither of those have happened yet

    – nessili (09/12  at  01:09 AM)

I read that article in P&W and found it inspiring too...I’m a schoolteacher who often dreams of the writing life as seen in Woody Allen films or in Hemingway novels, 9-12 the morning shift and then off to the library stacks or the cafe.  Maybe someday, but in the meantime you have to live your life and be happy, and that article reminded me to be grateful for being able to both make a living and make the time I do to write every day.  Ultimately, writers write, no matter what else they do.

    – Nora McCrea (12/24  at  01:38 AM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: August 23, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Song of Myself: Diary

• Comments:6
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