What Percentage of the Population could be professional Writers if they really wanted to be?
We can argue all day about whether you think the ability to write is inborn, epigenetic, or just a matter of hard work, but I remain convinced regardless that quite a few people have what it takes to write something that is worth reading, and worth publishing. Most 101-level introductions to narratology make a point of saying that the desire to tell a story is inborn, and dates back to the days when our ancient forebears dwelt in caves and used ochre and clay to paint bison and hunters roaming the plains across limestone walls. Humanity managed to focus some of its energy on telling stories even when survival was the overriding prerogative, and there was definitely neither the time nor the luxury for much beyond subsistence. That must mean imagination has always ranked high on Man’s hierarchy of needs.
If you’ve ever been in a bar, around a campfire, or just have decent hearing, you have eavesdropped on someone relating a tale to someone else. This person, who probably doesn’t have an MFA (and may not even have completed high-school) understands innately something about pacing, suspense, and the mechanics of storytelling. Maybe there is some compliment to the hypothetical module than linguists talk about, the LAD (Language Acquisition Device) that makes it almost impossible not to pick up a language, provided you’re young enough and your brain has enough elasticity in it to soak the new language in. Maybe we’re hardwired, when recounting events, to ornament and embellish them as well as chronologizing them. You’ve heard people who automatically segue from voice to voice when playing various principals in some encounter they witnessed. Someone recounting a car crash to the first officer on a scene is capable of telling a story.
How about that transition from telling a story to writing one, though? Is the leap from griot to scribe a large one to make? It depends who you ask, but I always thought Charles Bukowski’s insight that the frame-of-mind one is in when writing a letter is also suitable for telling a story. It could be that the desire to perceive literature as separate from any other form of communication is many times what stymies works and gives them a pretentious quality. Steven King said “You must not step lightly to the blank page,” but there is a granular distinction to be made between “lightly” and “loosely.”
You see this logic in boxing as much as in writing. Good trainers, coaches, and experienced boxers tell their fighters to “stay loose.” It seems counterintuitive on its face, doesn’t it? Relaxing in a situation where you can literally get killed? Still, I’m convinced that the seizing up that trainers caution against is also applicable to writing. Writers who regard the blank page as an enemy, an opponent, a mountain to be climbed, have never been my thing. I understand Hemingway and his “white bull” (what he called the blank page), but I much prefer Knut Hamsun’s gentle perception of writing, as his way of listening to the drip of water to amuse himself, regardless of whether anyone is listening besides him. It needn’t all be binary, of course. One can face a bull one day and then listen to water drip the next. It could be a matter of whim, fancy, mood or age.
To return to my central question, though, and the one posed in the title of this blog piece, I think about roughly twenty-percent of people have the innate ability to write a story or book worth publishing. Where the men and boys separate is in the prosaic, more obnoxious details of the game. It’s the minutiae and attritional nature of the game that discourages people from ever trying, or that grinds them down so that they try, perhaps have a little success, and then walk away, feeling exhausted.
To write, and then rewrite, and then revise, and then to tailor your work to the specifications of a certain publisher, and then to submit your work, and then to have it rejected, and then to begin the process again, and then to have the work rejected again…well, you see where I am going with this. In order to write, I suppose, and continue to write until you finally make it, you must, to paraphrase Camus, learn to see Sisyphus as happy. To return to Bukowski, you must learn to dig through a hard wall with tin spoon. But I think that if you can write an email, you can write a book.
Watch out for carpal tunnel syndrome along the way, though. And good luck to you.
If you’ve ever been in a bar, around a campfire, or just have decent hearing, you have eavesdropped on someone relating a tale to someone else. This person, who probably doesn’t have an MFA (and may not even have completed high-school) understands innately something about pacing, suspense, and the mechanics of storytelling. Maybe there is some compliment to the hypothetical module than linguists talk about, the LAD (Language Acquisition Device) that makes it almost impossible not to pick up a language, provided you’re young enough and your brain has enough elasticity in it to soak the new language in. Maybe we’re hardwired, when recounting events, to ornament and embellish them as well as chronologizing them. You’ve heard people who automatically segue from voice to voice when playing various principals in some encounter they witnessed. Someone recounting a car crash to the first officer on a scene is capable of telling a story.
How about that transition from telling a story to writing one, though? Is the leap from griot to scribe a large one to make? It depends who you ask, but I always thought Charles Bukowski’s insight that the frame-of-mind one is in when writing a letter is also suitable for telling a story. It could be that the desire to perceive literature as separate from any other form of communication is many times what stymies works and gives them a pretentious quality. Steven King said “You must not step lightly to the blank page,” but there is a granular distinction to be made between “lightly” and “loosely.”
You see this logic in boxing as much as in writing. Good trainers, coaches, and experienced boxers tell their fighters to “stay loose.” It seems counterintuitive on its face, doesn’t it? Relaxing in a situation where you can literally get killed? Still, I’m convinced that the seizing up that trainers caution against is also applicable to writing. Writers who regard the blank page as an enemy, an opponent, a mountain to be climbed, have never been my thing. I understand Hemingway and his “white bull” (what he called the blank page), but I much prefer Knut Hamsun’s gentle perception of writing, as his way of listening to the drip of water to amuse himself, regardless of whether anyone is listening besides him. It needn’t all be binary, of course. One can face a bull one day and then listen to water drip the next. It could be a matter of whim, fancy, mood or age.
To return to my central question, though, and the one posed in the title of this blog piece, I think about roughly twenty-percent of people have the innate ability to write a story or book worth publishing. Where the men and boys separate is in the prosaic, more obnoxious details of the game. It’s the minutiae and attritional nature of the game that discourages people from ever trying, or that grinds them down so that they try, perhaps have a little success, and then walk away, feeling exhausted.
To write, and then rewrite, and then revise, and then to tailor your work to the specifications of a certain publisher, and then to submit your work, and then to have it rejected, and then to begin the process again, and then to have the work rejected again…well, you see where I am going with this. In order to write, I suppose, and continue to write until you finally make it, you must, to paraphrase Camus, learn to see Sisyphus as happy. To return to Bukowski, you must learn to dig through a hard wall with tin spoon. But I think that if you can write an email, you can write a book.
Watch out for carpal tunnel syndrome along the way, though. And good luck to you.
No comments have been added yet.
