suffer for your supper
I read Chekhov’s letters and copied in my journal: “When you depict sad or unhappy people, and want to touch people’s hearts, try to be colder - it gives their grief a background against which it stands out in sharper relief.” And he went on to say that the writer does - and must - suffer with his characters, but he “must do this so that the reader does not notice it. The more objective, the stronger will be the effect.”
An English poet - I copied his uncredited words in my journal over twenty years ago - said that poetry is like ice cream; tremendous heat is needed in generating it, but during the actual “making” there must be ice, otherwise the ice cream will melt. All the scenes that move me deeply while I am writing them end up in the wastepaper basket.
Kierkegaard says, “A poet is an unhappy creature whose heart is tortured by deepest suffering but whose lips are so formed that when his sighs and cries stream out over them their sound becomes like the sound of beautiful music. ... And men flock about the poet saying, ‘Sing for us soon again’ that is to say, may new sufferings torture your soul and may your lips continue to be formed as before.”
All right, but I’d better not take it too seriously; at any rate, I’d better not feel it. If I become subjective about pain, no matter what causes it, the it becomes destructive, not creative. ~ Madeleine L'Engle
I used to think as Kierkegaard says, that I wrote best and most when I was not in my happiest states of mind. While I know this to be true of many skilled poets, I also think it’s a romantic image of a poet or writer that one must suffer to create. Being a generally happy person, this notion would not bode well for my writing career, or my sanity for that matter. And so I think that it all goes back to just living. If you have that misery, you have that ability to directly, and with experience evoke that despair in your work.
However, I noticed during some of my happiest times and some of my most mundane times, that I have been able to churn out not only quantity, but quality as well. I don’t know. In the many books I’ve read and the many workshops I’ve been in, I have often found the Outsider to be equally skilled at rendering these moments. And don't mistake my intent, I do not mean to negate the writings of those who have been there and written exceptionally on those experiences at all. Here I only wish to point out that a skilled writer, observant, empathetic and informed can be true to moments they know nothing of.
Which, I think, goes back to what Madeleine spoke of when she wrote of the human predicament. We all share that, and we all share those emotions, the hurts, the pains, the ups and downs. The writer who taps into that spring of human emotion and renders it in a scene with the physical actions and reactions of war, birth, sickness, suicide, victory and all the other blacks and whites and greys of life can do so successfully. That is the point, after all, one of them anyway. You write to create, not to mimic. You write to feel, to discover. If you are successful, your words, your passages your pages evoke the experience in your reader.
And so the Master Writer’s voice in my head is once again Chekhov and I know. When I write those scenes, those heart-wrenching ones, the real ones, I am there, I am crying and shaking and terrified. But then I am done with it. I have to be. To draw back and not only emotionally breathe again, but in the end to bring the scene to the reader.
And yes, Madeleine, thank you. Creative, not destructive.
An English poet - I copied his uncredited words in my journal over twenty years ago - said that poetry is like ice cream; tremendous heat is needed in generating it, but during the actual “making” there must be ice, otherwise the ice cream will melt. All the scenes that move me deeply while I am writing them end up in the wastepaper basket.
Kierkegaard says, “A poet is an unhappy creature whose heart is tortured by deepest suffering but whose lips are so formed that when his sighs and cries stream out over them their sound becomes like the sound of beautiful music. ... And men flock about the poet saying, ‘Sing for us soon again’ that is to say, may new sufferings torture your soul and may your lips continue to be formed as before.”
All right, but I’d better not take it too seriously; at any rate, I’d better not feel it. If I become subjective about pain, no matter what causes it, the it becomes destructive, not creative. ~ Madeleine L'Engle
I used to think as Kierkegaard says, that I wrote best and most when I was not in my happiest states of mind. While I know this to be true of many skilled poets, I also think it’s a romantic image of a poet or writer that one must suffer to create. Being a generally happy person, this notion would not bode well for my writing career, or my sanity for that matter. And so I think that it all goes back to just living. If you have that misery, you have that ability to directly, and with experience evoke that despair in your work.
However, I noticed during some of my happiest times and some of my most mundane times, that I have been able to churn out not only quantity, but quality as well. I don’t know. In the many books I’ve read and the many workshops I’ve been in, I have often found the Outsider to be equally skilled at rendering these moments. And don't mistake my intent, I do not mean to negate the writings of those who have been there and written exceptionally on those experiences at all. Here I only wish to point out that a skilled writer, observant, empathetic and informed can be true to moments they know nothing of.
Which, I think, goes back to what Madeleine spoke of when she wrote of the human predicament. We all share that, and we all share those emotions, the hurts, the pains, the ups and downs. The writer who taps into that spring of human emotion and renders it in a scene with the physical actions and reactions of war, birth, sickness, suicide, victory and all the other blacks and whites and greys of life can do so successfully. That is the point, after all, one of them anyway. You write to create, not to mimic. You write to feel, to discover. If you are successful, your words, your passages your pages evoke the experience in your reader.
And so the Master Writer’s voice in my head is once again Chekhov and I know. When I write those scenes, those heart-wrenching ones, the real ones, I am there, I am crying and shaking and terrified. But then I am done with it. I have to be. To draw back and not only emotionally breathe again, but in the end to bring the scene to the reader.
And yes, Madeleine, thank you. Creative, not destructive.