Manual For Fiction Writers

by Block, Lawrence

  This talk of starving puts me in mind of another attitude that's important if one is to be comfortable as a free-lance writer. You have to have a pretty high threshold for financial insecurity. If a regular paycheck is emotionally essential to you, perhaps you'd be well advised to stay with a regular job.

  I was very fortunate in this respect. I started writing so early in life that my ordinary expenses were extremely low. The last job I held before taking up writing fulltime was in a literary agency, where my base pay was sixty dollars a week before taxes. That doesn't sound like much money now, and it wasn't much money then, either.

  My low standard of living made the small sums of money I could earn writing more significant than they'd have been otherwise. If I went home from the office and wrote a three-thousand-word pulp story and sold it for a cent a word, that was half a week's income right there. And, once I'd left the job, I didn't have to hit the bestseller list in order to match my previous income. Before very long I had a standing assignment writing a book a month for a paperback publisher. The pay was six hundred dollars a book, which was more than double what my salary had been.

  All of this was helpful early on. As I grew older and acquired a wife and children and a higher standard of living, what helped keep me from going crazy was a temperament which took financial insecurity for granted. This is not to say that I find poverty a treat, or that I am not aggravated by slow-pay publishers and inconvenienced by the stretches of financial hardship that seem to be an inescapable part of the writing life. Sometimes a pile of bills and dunning letters can have a paralyzing effect on just about anyone. But most of the time my writing goes on independent of my solvency or lack thereof.

  This is true of most of the people I know who function successfully as free-lance writers. But not everyone is so constituted. I know a number of established professional writers who simply lack the temperament required for fulltime free-lancing. They continue to hold forty-hour-a-week jobs, jobs which they often profess to hate, simply because they are not comfortable without the security of a regular paycheck. In several cases, there's no question but that they could earn more if they gave up their jobs. And they know this, but some of them have found out fulltime self-employment cuts their writing production to the bone because they can't work effectively when burdened with all that anxiety.

  It has always seemed to me, on the other hand, that writing is infinitely more secure than any employment could hope to be. All my friends who hold jobs could conceivably be fired. Who can fire me? Even a tenured college professor could one day see his college go out of business, and then where would he be? I, meanwhile, can go on writing for a variety of publishers, adapting to changes in the marketplace, and all without a care for compulsory retirement rules or other abominations.

  Of course I can't look forward to a pension, and I have to pay my own medical insurance, and I don't get any fringe benefits or sick leave or paid vacations. Nor am I guaranteed a day's pay just by showing up for work in the morning; if I don't produce anything, neither do I earn anything. I can generally accept all that. But not everybody can.

  There's another essential quality in the writer's temperament, and it seems on the surface so obvious that I came close to overlooking it altogether. Quite simply, you have to like the work.

  By this I don't mean that the physical act of sitting at a typewriter has to be enjoyable in and of itself. Most writers hate the process, to one extent or another, and everybody hates it now and then. (This is an anomaly of writing, and an interesting one at that. Most of the painters I know enjoy the act of painting, and almost every musician I've known loves to play so much that he goes on doing it after his day's work is done. But writers often hate writing.)

  What a writer must enjoy, or at least be able to tolerate, is the utterly solitary nature of the work. When all is said and done, writing is a matter of sitting alone at a desk, staring more often than not at a blank wall, and turning thoughts into words and putting the words on paper.

  I know a man who free-lanced for a while some years ago. He started off working at home, then rented a hotel room so he would have an office to go to. That structured his days somewhat, but it didn't really help because he couldn't take the solitude. He gave up the hotel room and rented space in an office so that there would be other people working around him. He enjoyed that more but it cut into his productivity because he preferred interacting with the other people to concentrating on his own work. He stopped freelancing and got a job, and he's been gainfully employed ever since. He's published books now and then, writing them at night and on weekends, and periodically he tells me how much he hates his job and how he longs to quit it and write fulltime, but that's nonsense. He'd go nuts without a job to go to.

  Even if you're the sort who finds solitude comfortable, I think it's very important for writers to make sure they have sufficient human contact when they're not working to compensate for the lack thereof during their working hours. We can't be alone all the time, nor can we expect our families to fill our needs in this area. The isolated writer loses touch with the world. He forgets what people are like. He uses up his writing source material and fails to replenish it.

  In my own case, I've found that I need the occasional company of other writers. There are things about writing which people who are not in the business simply cannot share. The company of my fellows is stimulating. There's a certain amount of cross-pollination in such social intercourse, and a few hours in another writer's company serve to reinforce my own perception of myself as a writer.

  At the same time, I definitely require the company of people who are not writers. An exclusive diet of shop talk is an unbalanced one. Besides, one wants to be occasionally exposed to reality, if only in small doses. As a friend of mine, herself a writer, says, People who spend the most meaningful hours of their lives in the exclusive company of imaginary people are apt to be a little strange.

  And that's the final requisite of the writer's temperament. We're every last one of us a little strange, a wee bit different.

  And vive la difference.

  PART TWO

  Nose to the Grindstone, Shoulder to the Wheel:

  Fiction as a Discipline

  CHAPTER 13

  Writer's Hours

  I'VE FOUND over the years that the mechanics of writing appear to be endlessly fascinating to writers and non-writers alike. Perhaps because the creative process is so utterly incomprehensible, even to those of us who are personally involved in it, it is easier for us to focus on more tangible aspects of writing. Do we write in the morning or at night? At the typewriter or in pencil?or with a crayon, for those of us who are not allowed to use anything sharp? Do we outline in advance or plot things out as we go along?

  Somewhere in the course of this sort of conversation, one is apt to be asked just how many hours a day he tends to put in. The answer, whether it's two or twelve hours a day, is apt to be followed by a qualification. Of course that's just time spent actually writing. Of course that doesn't include the time I devote to research. Of course, that doesn't include the time I devote to research. Of course, when you come right down to it, a writer is working from the instant the alarm clock goes off to the moment when he goes to bed. For that matter, the process doesn't stop when I'm asleep. The old subconscious mind takes over then and sifts things around and sets the stage for the next day's work. So I guess it's safe to say that I actually practice my craft twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  I suppose most of us deliver some variation of that speech at some time or other, and I suppose some of the time we even believe it. A certain part of me, however, does not buy this load of pap for a minute. As far as that stern writer's conscience of mine is concerned, I'm only really working if I'm sitting at my desk tapping my typewriter keys and turning out pages of finished copy. Thinking about writing isn't work, and research isn't work, and reading proof isn't work, and meeting with publishers isn't work, and talking on the phone isn't work, and not
even rewriting and editing are work. Unless I can actually see a manuscript of mine getting further from the beginning and closer to the end because of what I'm doing, I'm not entirely capable of regarding the task I'm performing as work.

  Understand, please, that I know better. I realize intellectually that the non-writing chores I've enumerated above are directly related to my profession, that they take time and energy, that I can't slight them without adversely affecting the quality and/or quantity of my writing. But this knowledge doesn't seem to help me much. Unless I've put in my daily stint at the typewriter, and unless I've got something to show for it, I feel as though I've played hookey.

  This attitude probably serves a purpose. My mind is sufficiently fertile that I can almost always dream up some worthwhile occupation which will keep me away from my desk. There's always a book it would pay me to read, a neighborhood I could profitably explore, a person whose expertise I should seek. None of these extramural activities is as hard as actually sitting down and writing something; thus, but for the conscience that hounds me, I could happily go months on end without wearing out a typewriter ribbon.

  Sometimes, though, I find myself backed into a corner, locked into a no-win situation, damned if I do and damned if I don't. This happened quite vividly when I was working on The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling. Bernie Rhodenbarr, the burglar of the title, had just hied himself off to Forest Hill Gardens, an upper-middle-class enclave in the borough of Queens. It occurred to me that I had not been to Forest Hill Gardens in over twenty years, at which time I had visited it very briefly. I had only dim memories of the neighborhood and had no way of knowing if it had changed in the intervening years.

  I had two choices. I could trust my memory while taking comfort in the fact that every work of fiction takes place in its own alternate universe anyway. Or I could spend an afternoon zipping out there on the F train and walking aimlessly around to see what I could see.

  Either way I was determined to feel guilty about it. If I stayed home and worked, I'd beat myself up for slacking on research. If I went out there, I'd accuse myself of wasting time on pointless research when I might have been tapping typewriter keys and producing finished pages. Once I was able to see that I was in a double bind, I tossed a mental coin and went to Forest Hill Gardens.

  As it turned out, my memory was sound and the place hadn't changed a bit. But I felt my time had been profitably spent; I'd refreshed my impressions, picked up a little local color, and certainly enabled myself to write the scene with increased confidence.

  It doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes hours devoted to this sort of research are a waste, and sometimes there's no way to determine in advance whether this will be the case. American Tobacco's George Washington Hill used to say that fifty cents of every dollar he spent on advertising was wasted. The trouble was, he went on to explain, that there was no way of knowing which fifty cents it was, so he'd go on spending the whole dollar all the same. It's that way with research, and with all the other tasks that take me away from my desk.

  One factor in the operation of my personal Jiminy Cricket mechanism is, I'm sure, that I don't spend all that many hours at my desk. Years ago I was given to putting in long stretches at the typewriter; I was younger then, which may have had something to do with it, and I was a less meticulous writer, which must have had plenty to do with it. In any event, I could work effectively for five or six or eight hours at a clip.

  I can't do that now. I don't structure my work in terms of hours, finding it more useful to aim at producing a certain amount of work, usually somewhere between five and ten pages depending on the sort of material I'm working on, the deadline I'm facing, and the phases of the moon. My work usually takes me somewhere between two and three hours. If I'm done in an hour, I'm delighted to call it a day. If I'm not done in three hours, I generally call it a day anyway, though I'm by no means delighted about it. There's a point at which it becomes counter-productive for me to continue to work, on a par with running a car's ignition when the gas tank's empty. You don't get anywhere and you just run down the battery.

  Most workers, I've been told, don't really spend more than two or three hours a day actually doing anything. They take breaks, they file their nails, they daydream at their desks, they talk baseball, and two hours get stretched into eight. It's comforting to know this, but it doesn't change the fact that I think of myself as putting in a shorter working day than the rest of the world.

  I've found a couple of things I can do to make my writing life as guilt-free as possible, and I pass them on for whatever they're worth.

  1. I MAKE WRITING THE FIRST THING I DO. Over the years, I've written at every possible time of day and night. For some time now I've written immediately after breakfast, and it's by far the best system for me. There are several advantages?I'm freshest then, my batteries recharged after a night's sleep?but the most important reason for me is that once I've got my day's work done, I'm able to give myself permission to do as I wish with the remainder of the day.

  2. I TRY TO WORK SEVEN DAYS A WEEK. Again, there are other reasons why this is useful. With a novel, for example, working every day keeps the book from slipping away from my subconscious mind. Whatever I'm working on, novels or short stories, daily production helps me keep from feeling profligate over working so few hours per day. By the same token, when I do take an unscheduled day off, I can do so with a clear conscience; after all, I'm still working six days that week.

  3. I SAVE ROUTINE WORK FOR LATER. I'm frequently tempted to answer my mail the minute it arrives, to proofread galleys as soon as they hit my desk. These chores enable me to be practicing my profession without actually having to write anything. But they're of secondary importance, and I don't have to be at my sharpest to deal with them. They'll still be around when I've got my daily five pages finished. Lately, for example, I keep getting packages from Cincinnati, parcels chock-full of entries in the Writer's Digest short-story contest. My natural inclination is to drop everything and read these stories as they appear, but instead I stay at my typewriter and save those stories for late at night when I can't sleep. After I've read a couple dozen, I sleep like a baby.

  Finally, I allow myself to make occasional use of that old reliable copout?i.e., that writers are really working twenty-four hours a day. Because in certain respects it's undeniably true. Just the other day, for example, I did my daily quota of pages in the morning, spent the afternoon in the gym lifting heavy objects, and then wandered around for an hour or so. In the course of my wandering I watched a car enter an apartment building's underground garage, and it suddenly occurred to me how Bernie Rhodenbarr could get into an otherwise impregnable apartment building by first locking himself in an automobile trunk.

  Will I ever use that little bit of business? I probably will, as it happens, but almost every walk I take produces some comparable bit of woolgathering, and most of the wool I gather never gets spun into a yarn. Is it work? And does it matter if it is or not?

  Points to ponder, and I leave you to ponder them. For my part, I've spent a shade over three hours writing this chapter, and I'm done now. I think I'll give myself permission to enjoy the rest of the day.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Carrot and the Stick

  SO YOU'RE a writer, she said, spearing a cocktail frank. You know, I'd love to be a writer, but I know it's impossible. I lack the discipline.

  I suppose I could have offered to supply the missing ingredient, perhaps by lashing her nude to a desk chair and flogging her with a flail, but I only muttered something inoffensive and went off in search of the stuffed grape leaves. Because everybody would love to be a writer, and everybody lacks the discipline, and it's a good thing, because the profession is crowded enough as it is.

  Imagine, for instance, if every dreamer with an urge to see his byline on a book jacket actually went so far as to roll a sheet of paper into his typewriter and start filling it up with words. Imagine, further, if all the people who started no
vels had the effrontery to finish the bloody things. Imagine if everybody with an itch and an idea took the trouble to turn the idea into a plot, and then sat down and wrote the story.

  Why, we'd be up to our nostrils in literature, for heaven's sake! Forget the trees that would be pulped to facilitate such a gush of literary productivity. Think instead of the editors who would be the recipients of it all. They all have too much to read as it is, and it takes forever to get an answer from them, and just consider how much worse the situation would be if their daily reading load were increased by a factor of ten or twenty or two hundred.

  You lack the discipline to write, sir?

  Well, good for you. Stick with it.

  Ah, but for you, Gentle Reader, the situation is rather a different matter. You, let it be said, are a writer, not a bore at a cocktail party or some similar sort of ship passing in the night. The last thing I want to do is discourage you from putting words on paper. You, clearly, are Serious About Your Work. Haven't you purchased this book? Are you not reading this very page? If that's not a commitment to one's art, a dedication to one's craft, whatever is?

  It's my belief that self-discipline is a problem for the vast majority of writers, however productive and successful they may be. In order to get his work done, the writer has to be every bit as much of a self-starter as the chap they're always looking for in those ads for door-to-door widget salesmen. He doesn't even have the advantage of an early morning pep talk from the divisional sales manager. He has to supply all his motivation himself. Ultimately, he has to tempt with the carrot and swat with the stick?and at the same time he's the poor old donkey pulling the cart.

  Novelists are especially assumed to require a full measure of self-discipline, and for good reason. It takes a lot of hard work over an extended period of time merely to complete a book-length work of fiction. A poem can be dashed off in a matter of minutes. A short story can be hammered out at a single sitting. In both cases, inspiration can carry the writer through the completion of the work.