Smart

Dear Karen,

I laughed out loud reading your letter, not because of what you said, but because of the man who said to you, “The more you learn, the more you say.”

Really? Would someone really say that without seeing how (damn, I’m sorry to say this) stupid it sounds? I don’t want to believe it. Yet isn’t the evidence of this thought all around me?

We are a noisy society, and the noise is increasing and magnifying and growing. I believe that many of us feel disempowered, feel as though we are only cogs in a game in which we will never cross the finish line. We want to take up a little more space, be remembered for something. Whatever our noise of choice is, we feel tempted to, and often do, amp it up. If we like to play loud music, we make it louder. If we like guns, we shoot them more. We blow our horns, flip other drivers the bird, yell and cuss at everyone else’s stupidity. And if we want to be seen as smart? What do we do then? According to this man you quote, we say more. Noise, noise, noise.

My noise of choice is writing. It always has been. When I first chose writing as my vocation, it was not just because of my love of stories. I also thought the lifestyle would fit me. I’m a homebody, and I pictured my days spent this way: Writing. A walk. Breakfast. Writing. Lunch. Reading. Dinner. Bed. With a little variety thrown in here and there to keep the juices flowing, but basically a sort of monkish existence. I don’t think I’m alone in wanting such a life.

I have written six books and published four, I have been reviewed in the New York Times, I have attended festivals and given readings and taught workshops, and yet I have experienced fewer than a month’s worth of days like the one I just described. I don’t think the job description I imagined was so far off at the time; I think the writing life has changed dramatically in the last fifty years.

I have heard that only 100 authors in America actually make a living off their writing. I think this means authors of books, making money off their books. Period. The rest of us work for a living, and we compete for grants, and teaching positions, and spots in MFA programs. We travel. We talk. We blog. We hope that when our names are googled (if our names are googled) it is actually our webpages that show up at the top of the screen. In short, we work. Every artist I know is working hard at something.

In the past, when I first wanted to crack the code of being a writer, I attended as many readings and conferences as I could. As I watched and listened to each writer, I thought that before me stood a person who had “made it.” I thought that writer would return to his or her home the next day and happily start writing again. There was so much that I didn’t know, that no one told me, things I know now that it seemed were, and in some circles still are, taboo. Such as this: Being seen is not the same as being paid. And this: It’s difficult to transition from a public life to the private life required for writing. And this: If your book does not sell well, there is a feeling of unspoken blame, whispers, the writer suspects but cannot verify, that she is blackballed. Considered “untourable” or worse, not worth the trouble of publishing, no matter how brilliant she may be.

We keep asking this question: How do we find the silence? How much silence is acceptable? What if we disappear?

I decided some time ago that my job is not just to write, and to promote my books (although I do accept that as part of my job, within reason), but also to protect my creative life. In fact, I am the only one who can do this, the only one who can decide what I will and will not do, what works for me and what doesn’t, what will feed my creativity and what will cause it to retreat and hide like a frightened child. No one else involved in the publishing or sale of my books can possibly care about my creative life the way that I do. It is not a matter of drying up. Given the right conditions, I won’t dry up. The right conditions include putting my work out before the public, and promoting that work, but the right conditions also include silence, space, and time to develop the slow intuitive relationships I have with my characters. Yet I feel that I must always fight for these things, fight against the market, against the very success I long for. It seems we should all want the same thing, for the writer to write.

So here is what I say to the little man who did not recognize quiet as also smart. Smart is saying yes and no, depending on the circumstance. Smart is being seen, and not being seen. Smart is a sleight of hand. Smart is an observer. Smart is the artist finding her own process, and treating that process as sacred.

I underlined this quote from James B. Conroy from an interview in Writer’s Digest this month. “…ask yourself if you are putting down your pen or taking your hands off the keyboard out of laziness or necessity.” I think this applies to everything.

Love, Nancy