On Not Writing
Isn’t it always better to write something rather than nothing?
This morning I thought for some time about not writing.
Initially, it was just about spending the cold sunny hour reading instead of working on the novel. (Which is what I ended up doing.) But soon it turned into another question, broader, scarier.
Maybe I should take Sunday off every week, rather than seeing it as a chance to do rather more writing than I get done on the average Wednesday?
Or maybe, I should stop writing for a month or a year, because — in the longest run — that might be the best thing I could do to get better as a writer?
One of the books I’ve been reading recently (after seeing the great show at Tate Modern) is Philip Guston’s I Paint What I Want To See.
In conversation with the American poet Clark Coolidge, Guston says:
..art is the frustration of the desire not to make art, you know?
Although I agree with this, it’s not a statement I empathise with. My desire, it’s long been clear, is to make art of some sort all the bloody time. Just scribble some notes. Half a page.
Sundays. Christmas Days. Hospital waiting rooms.
With other forms of learning, there’s the chance for the artist to stand back and judge their effect. To compare one period with another.
I got a lot from copying Moby Dick by hand, say. It was a better use of my time than just reading it, or writing another short story. Or at least, that’s how it feels.
With not writing, as a way of productively lying fallow, of allowing deeply buried objects to surface, you’re never going to be sure.
Couldn’t you have just kept going? Isn’t it always better to write something rather than nothing?
Writers are said to be ‘blocked’, as if their blockage was what blues singer Robert Johnson called ‘stones in my passway’ — a painful obstruction, either medical or in the road they hoped to drive.
The ideal, it seems, is to be regular and free flowing.
A few years ago, I’ve forgotten where, I read someone talking about making art. They gave this advice, Don’t treat yourself like a factory.
Yes, I thought, but also, Don’t treat yourself like a museum.
I spent the morning reading, but then I wrote this, and now I’m going to have a very quick look at the novel.
I’ll try not writing another time.
Or maybe I won’t. Too scary.
I don't think writing every day is necessary. I heard several famous authors say they rest between books. Muriel Spark talks of doing work in her head before writing. Whatever works is best. My way isn't the prescribed method. I have a more Mystic approach. I have visions, let them cook a bit first.
I do write most days. Sometimes, every day. I'm schizophrenic and suffer with periods of cognitive malfunction and avolition. So it's not always possible. But I also do a lot of the work in my mind, before writing anything, like Muriel Spark.
I never get block. I always have something to write about. But I like to meditate on ideas and visions. I use imagery from dreams, visions, hallucinations. I sometimes let these ideas percolate through my conscious, a process of alchemy. The images received from my Demon, and processed through conscious. From dream, meditation, Active Imagination, schizophrenic hallucination, delusion. Magic potions. In these altered states, I exist in a delirium, which is not always possible to write in.
However, I do also agree that practice is good, and I go through well phases of writing all the time. Sometimes, all day, others, just ten minutes. I never annoy me with a word count ambition. I'll often achieve 500 words a day, but sometimes, it's only 2 or 3 hundred, other times, a thousand or more.