Sins of Literature

Drama is life with the dull parts left out, says The Road to Somewhere. Ha! Have I left the dull parts in? Is there always something at stake? These are important questions, and I ought to be able to judge my own work by now and say a straight yes or no. If I cannot, I'm not learning. But all I pick up from the despised How To Manuals goes out of the window when I read published books and wonder why an agent, an editor, a publisher thought they were worthy of publication, for most of them break the so called rules of writing. Perhaps it is because there are no rules of writing. Perhaps the sudden spate of How To Manuals is born of the current need so many have to write and see a book published, and mid-list writers have turned their hand to earning a few pounds by providing them. Martin Amis thinks writing, like having children, can be seen as a bid for immortality. Now there's food for thought.

Will Self confesses to a love/hate relationship to the demands of his vocation and every morning  visualises a RSM ordering him to "get in that room and write." Is he disciplined? How can he not be, he asks. He needs solitude especially during drafts 1-3 when he needs to keep the whole novel in his head. He wonders if young writers have what it takes to be alone and cut off so they can write. Picasso is reputed to have said "they write better in prison," and many books, including Pilgrim's Progress, have been written in prison.

On the other hand, some authors write in cafes, or in the living room with the family hopping about. Sarah Waters goes out for a walk at the end of a writing day and re-acquaints herself with the world. Susan Hill, it is said, stops writing when she is happy. Writers Block may be nothing more than depression. Some writers like music while they write, others do not. One says the rhythm of the music interferes with the rhythms of her sentences as they are generated. Alexander McCall Smith listens to Mozart to get into the calm frame of mind needed to write.

The need for solitude and silence in which to write - Virginia Woolf's Room of One's Own - is in direct opposition with today's need for authors to be out in the world promoting. Readers want to know who they are and what they think, which many writers find disturbing. Howard Jacobsen, on the other hand,  loves book festivals and audiences though he knows he should resist them and write.