A Writer Writes

I’ve mentioned the writing habits of some famous authors in a previous article, here, but I wanted to dig a little deeper.  All writers have things that work for them, to make the hard art of staring at a blank page and filling it with thoughts a little easier, but habits can become a crutch and an excuse not to write. There’s always something or someone that comes along and kicks the crutch out from under you.  But if you want to write, or call yourself a writer, you write, no matter how hobbled you are.

                There’s a debate as to whether F. Scott Fitzgerald drank while he wrote.  Personally, I don’t think he did.  Or, if he did, he certainly cleaned it up in a sober draft.  It is a fact, however, that when he was on the wagon in Hollywood and working for the movie studios, he drank Coke-A-Cola constantly while he suffered away in his office, trying to conform to what the studios wanted.  Both of those are crutches, even if one is worse than the other. 

                Suffice it to say, the man was out of his comfort zone.  He lived most of his life on the east coast, or abroad in Europe, writing when he wasn’t too drunk or occupied with his manic wife, who was in and out of asylums (say what you want about Zelda, but she did try to kill them both by driving their car off a cliff after a party – and that’s only one of the documented episodes of their tumultuous life together), so the man had his hands full. 

                But, he continued writing.  And he wrote a lot. Maybe the quality of the old Fitz wasn’t always there in the short stories he was hacking out to pay for his daughter’s schooling and his wife’s medical bills, but he kept writing.  At the end of his life, when the most popular writer of the Jazz Age was all but forgotten, he managed to produce another classic novel from his sick bed.  The Love of the Last Tycoon, though he died before it was finished, is considered by some to be on the level of Gatsby, or better, if he had lived long enough to finish it.

                The point is, he was a writer who didn’t let his own habits and crutches get in the way of producing words. He wrote.

I wrote my first novel on a typewriter.  I found the rhythm of punching keys conducive to putting words on the paper.  The thing about typewriters, though, for all you kids out there who have never used one, is they use ink ribbons, which run out of ink.  These days you can’t exactly run to the corner store when you need a new one.  You have to order them and wait for them to come.  So, when the ink ran out, I was stuck.  I would have to break out of the habit, grab a pencil and notebook, and try to find that rhythm without the clackity clack of the typewriter keys.  It was hard, at first, but I managed to keep going until the mail arrived with my ribbon.

Another habit I formed was writing outside.  In the summer, when the mornings are warm and the sun comes up early, I would go out on the patio with my typewriter, or computer, or whatever other habit I had found necessary to help me get the words down, and write until the sun was to high and bright, or I had spilled to much sweat onto the paper.  It was glorious.  When I was stuck, I could light a cigarette, take a puff, and the word I was searching for would just come magically from the atmosphere.  (Smoking is a bad habit.  Don’t do it.)

I started that habit (the writing outside one) when I lived in California.  I live in the south now.  One big difference between the two, is that it rains a lot in the south.  So, when the rains come, and I stare outside at my flooded patio, pen and paper in disappointed hand, I get stuck.  How will the words come if I’m not outside to catch them?

Well, I sit on my couch, put pen to paper, and they come.  Not easily, mind you, but they do come.

If you want to be a writer, even one who only writes for themselves, you have to put the words down.  It’s not always easy.  You won’t always have your crutch.  But if it’s something you have to do, you’ll do it.