What I've Learned So Far

When we turn pro as artists or entrepreneurs, we do not achieve enlightenment. Nirvana still eludes us. We will not wake up tomorrow morning freed of our fears or our self-doubts or our Resistance. In some ways, these demons will be even worse because now we’re more excruciatingly aware of them.

But in the Breakthrough/Turning Pro moment we have changed everything, because we now see our problem for what it is and we see ourselves for who we are.

–Steven Pressfield, “Inside the All Is Lost Moment”

“When you make music or write or create, it’s really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you’re writing about at the time.”

–Lady Gaga, quoted in the August 2012 Esquire

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She’s right. After you’ve gone on that remorseless bender, then you can let your critical-thinking faculties take over and refine the work, polish it, give it more structure (or less). But at first: go crazy. You can’t get an STD from an idea.

“To live in the world of creation—to get into it and stay in it—to frequent it and haunt it—to think intently and fruitfully—to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation—this is the only thing—and I neglect it, far and away too much; from indolence, from vagueness, from inattention, and from a strange nervous fear of letting myself go. If I can vanquish that nervousness, the world is mine.”

—Henry James, quoted by Alan Hollinghurst

“I know that if I don’t write, say on holiday,
I begin to feel unsettled and uneasy,
as I gather people do who are not allowed to dream.”

–J. G. Ballard, The Paris Review Interview

“Write when the book sucks and it isn’t going anywhere.
Just keep writing. It doesn’t suck.
Your conscious is having a panic attack
because it doesn’t believe your subconscious knows what it’s doing.”
—Cory Doctorow

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Related: Raison d’etre.

Photo by Amy Palko.

“I always think you start at the stupid end of the book,
and if you’re lucky you finish at the smart end.
When you start out, you feel inadequate to the task.
You don’t even understand the task.”

–Salman Rushdie, The Art of Fiction No. 186, The Paris Review

“Now, I am one of those people who makes a distinction between being a writer and being an author. A writer puts words on a page. An author lives in story. A writer is conversant with the keyboard, the author with character.

“Roland Barthes has said: ‘The author performs a function; the writer an activity.’ We are talking here about the difference between desire and obsession; between hobby and life. But in either case, I suggest you learn to write not with blood and fear, but with joy.”

—Jane Yolen (source)

“Active valor may often be the present of nature;
but … patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.”

—Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“It’s nice to have the luxury
of not being overburdened
with a self-image.”

—Mary-Louise Parker in Esquire

Having a family has been very good for me (and I hope good for them too). It gave me the stability I needed to begin and pursue a career as a writer. People tend to romanticize the picture of a writer—they want it to be easy, something a genius can just knock off between debauches, because if it is, if it doesn’t require talent, discipline and a lifelong commitment, then maybe there’s a hope that they, too, someday can knock out their own great and stirring work. We have the devastating example before us of the overwhelming numbers of American writers destroyed by dope and booze—Tom Dardis’s The Thirsty Muse is a real eye-opener—and people tend to think that chemically altering one’s mind is the way to inspiration. Maybe it is. But for me it seems counterproductive. I have never written a sentence—or even thought of writing a sentence—without being in the clearest state of mind. This is my life’s work. This is what I’m meant to do, and why screw with it? I think the way to be a writer is to experience things, certainly, and be open to things, but at some point to become dedicated to the craft of writing and to create a stable environment for that writing to occur in. At least in my case that’s true. So having a family and leading a stable life is absolutely essential to any writing I’ve ever done. When I did my earliest writing, I led a pretty wild life, and the writing was fairly spotty. I would write occasionally. Now I write every day, seven days a week, all year long. And it is my life.

T. C. Boyle
The Art of Fiction No. 161
The Paris Review, Summer 2000