Ask the Author: Sandy McIntosh
Answered Questions (3)
Sandy McIntosh
I re-read all of Carlos Castaneda after many years, thinking that I'd something more to say about him, after the dust of the years had settled. I discovered that, though I'd had several good ideas and insights, going back over my files I discovered that I'd already used them in op-eds and other articles many years ago. Ah, well.
Sandy McIntosh
My most recent book is Lesser Lights: More Tales from a Hamptons' Apprenticeship. When I was twelve years old, I was sent up the Hudson River to the New York Military Academy. I was there for six years. Instead of the military life that I abhorred, I spent much of my sentence in the library reading—reading anything odd, arcane, and outside the limited glimpses of literature that a military school curriculum allowed. In short, I hid myself in the darkest, most remote of intellectual caves for those years. In an alien world, my aim was to educate myself as a poet, to survive.
To my great good fortune, after graduation, I found myself enrolled at Southampton College, in Eastern Long Island. Like every college, Southampton looked to form a pool of part-time professors who lived locally to supplement the smaller full-time staff. But, unlike most every college in the country, Southampton was able to hire the local artists and writers, who—the Hamptons being the Hamptons—were often the best in the world. For instance, Willem de Kooning lectured on elementary painting. Ilya Bolotowky, the neo-plasticist painter, with his huge mustache and thick Russian accent, taught my Freshman English class. The Bollingen-prize poet David Ignatow taught creative writing, as did the poet, playwright and translator, H. R. Hays. I had encounters with writers such as Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. During those college years and for decades after, I was privileged to apprentice with many of them. I was not only their student, but their chauffeur, gardener, even informal psychologist, and their friend. My two memoirs, A Hole in the Ocean: A Hamptons’ Apprenticeship, and the newly published Lesser Lights: More Tales from a Hamptons’ Apprenticeship tell their stories and my own.
To my great good fortune, after graduation, I found myself enrolled at Southampton College, in Eastern Long Island. Like every college, Southampton looked to form a pool of part-time professors who lived locally to supplement the smaller full-time staff. But, unlike most every college in the country, Southampton was able to hire the local artists and writers, who—the Hamptons being the Hamptons—were often the best in the world. For instance, Willem de Kooning lectured on elementary painting. Ilya Bolotowky, the neo-plasticist painter, with his huge mustache and thick Russian accent, taught my Freshman English class. The Bollingen-prize poet David Ignatow taught creative writing, as did the poet, playwright and translator, H. R. Hays. I had encounters with writers such as Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. During those college years and for decades after, I was privileged to apprentice with many of them. I was not only their student, but their chauffeur, gardener, even informal psychologist, and their friend. My two memoirs, A Hole in the Ocean: A Hamptons’ Apprenticeship, and the newly published Lesser Lights: More Tales from a Hamptons’ Apprenticeship tell their stories and my own.
Sandy McIntosh
Some years ago, a friend announced that he would like to be a writer. He asked me what would he have to do? I thought about it a little and told him that he’d have to write something.
“Oh,” he said, fading.
And that was the end of that for him.
If you’ve already decided to write something then I would suggest you make a study—really, a life-long study—of the books in your genre written throughout history. As writers, we are part of the dialogue of books already written. When you read a book you may not be aware that you are evaluating it as part of this ancient dialogue, but you are. The more you read the more you understand what has already been written and what may be left for you to write. Without doing a lot of reading you’re bound to re-invent the wheel, so to speak, which, unless you’ve taken quite an extraordinary angle on it, will get you nowhere in the end.
But whatever you write, you must be genuinely enthusiastic about it, if you’re going to hold another reader’s attention. If you think you’re writing something important but are bored stiff with it, how would you expect a stranger to be excited by it? It doesn’t work like that. You have to be your own best audience. You have to be able to come back to your story or poem or novel and reread it after some time. At that point, if you surprise yourself and think “Hey! This isn’t bad,” then you’ve got somewhere.
“Oh,” he said, fading.
And that was the end of that for him.
If you’ve already decided to write something then I would suggest you make a study—really, a life-long study—of the books in your genre written throughout history. As writers, we are part of the dialogue of books already written. When you read a book you may not be aware that you are evaluating it as part of this ancient dialogue, but you are. The more you read the more you understand what has already been written and what may be left for you to write. Without doing a lot of reading you’re bound to re-invent the wheel, so to speak, which, unless you’ve taken quite an extraordinary angle on it, will get you nowhere in the end.
But whatever you write, you must be genuinely enthusiastic about it, if you’re going to hold another reader’s attention. If you think you’re writing something important but are bored stiff with it, how would you expect a stranger to be excited by it? It doesn’t work like that. You have to be your own best audience. You have to be able to come back to your story or poem or novel and reread it after some time. At that point, if you surprise yourself and think “Hey! This isn’t bad,” then you’ve got somewhere.
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