Great writers lead funny lives. What's best for them is to live alone.
I just got back from a long trip to a dance camp & to family. I wrote nothing the whole time I was away. I was in the midst of people. If I had a thought, I transmitted it to them -- and I listened to what they had to say.
Writers can't live "in the world." If they live there, they will spill their seed there. Some people said that if they knew how little the great writer Randall Jarrell would ever write, they would have transcribed all that he said. He was a brilliant conversationalist -- but what he said, he did not write down. Writing takes time, organization, direction. And that is partly why writers must live alone - -must talk to themselves--must learn to spill their seed on paper, for posterity.
Since I've been back home I've hardly stepped out to talk to people. I am at home, alone, writing -- talking to people who are not here. I have conversations on paper--or more correctly--in the ionosphere--I've sent fifty e-mail messages if five days.
Writers write -- that's how they get good at what they do. Seldom are great writers great talkers, and seldom are great talkers great writers. There are exceptions to the rule, and the exceptions immediately spring to mind: Mark twain, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw -- all great talkers and great writers.
But most writers are as someone once said, sticks to talk to. They've got nothing to say. In my case, when I do say something -- I often realize I am quoting myself. I wrote an essay on this subject recently -- crime in America -- prisons -- schools -- and in conversation, I'm not saying anything new -- I'm regurgitating thoughts I'd had in private, at home, on paper, when I was talking to people who are not there. And whenever I say what I've written, it sounds stupid, out context -- so I try not to talk.
Do you see why writers are weird people? Who, but crazy people, talk to people who are not there? You've got to be a little crazy to sit at home & talk to a piece of paper. Perhaps its because most writers don't like people in the flesh. People in the flesh talk back, interrupt the flow of one's thoughts. They don't listen carefully enough. So writers stay at home where they get to deliver uninterrupted lectures -- called novels, poems, essays -- to an unseen audience.
Leonard Bernstein once said that an orchestra should be invisible. Watching the conductor conduct, or the fiddle player fiddle, gets in the way of appreciating the music. Music is gorgeous sounds, and looking gets in the way of hearing
Writers are people who want other people to disappear, to not physically be there. Don't interrupt me. Listen. Wait until I'm finished. And writers have found a way to make sure people don't interrupt them: they live alone & talk to people who are not there.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein