The tragic lot of the literary fiction writer

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clemency

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Hi,

A recent poll of the UK concluded that being a novelist would be the ideal job for more people than any other. That led to some debate on The Guardian last week. First came an article about how writing a real novel HAS TO BE a descent into madness, forsaking family and friends and poking and dissecting the fragile inner turmoil of the writer's psyche. Then followed a response from some YA writers talking about what a great community writers have and how supported they have felt.

What do you all feel? Is writing a slow torture only tolerable because not writing is even less endurable, or is it a fulfilling muse and by and large a pleasure? Is the traditional model of the literary writer as a passionate but troubled loner becoming outdated in our time of total interconnectivity or does that only apply to writers of genre fiction who will usually have it slightly easier than us? Will truly great work only ever come from truly troubled individuals?
 

Kylabelle

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Yes please! If you can locate the links, that would be awesome.

Also, welcome to AW.
 
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Ravioli

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Does everything have to be turned into a pseudo-scientific drama? Picking up writing and neglecting your life, are two different matters, both matters of choice that don't have to depend on one-another.
 

TheCuriousOne

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I write for pleasure, so it never comes as a torture. I cram in words here and there, so writing doesn't impact my life as such. I don't retreat in my writing cave for hours to the point where I become invisible to my closed ones.

I don't think you need to be troubled to write. Passionate yes. But trouble no. I wrote a fairy tale when I was depressed. Depression went away, and I wrote a horror story. I'm still in the same kind of mood now and I'm writing another fairy tale. I don't think my mood influences what I write, I just write what I feel like writing.

Maybe I'm an exception, but based on what you are saying, Clemency, I don't agree with that article.
 

clemency

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Those are indeed the links. There was also this article discussing the poll results:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/17/author-uk-dream-job

I'm curious because I'm relatively new to writing in prose. I worked in film some years ago and never felt any sense of community or comradeship among screenwriters. Any online communities at the time were strictly invite only, so I found them all quite exclusive and competitive. That makes me wonder if prose writers have always been supportive of each other or have things changed over the past ten years?
 

gettingby

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Writing can defiantly be a lonely and time-consuming process. You can neglect responsibilities when you are caught up in a project. It happens. I think the same can be said for many different kinds of artists. Art, in this case writing, does take a lot of time and soul. I'm not sure why you think prose writers are supportive of each other any more or less so than other artists. Yes, there are places like AW. And there are writer in MFA programs that form communities. But writing is a solo act. We spend hours in rooms by ourselves typing away and trying our hand at greatness. Of course something like that affects the people who do it. But, still, a lot of people seem to want to do it, making it pretty competitive. Even among writing friends, there is a sense of competition.
 

djunamod

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I think the idea of the tortured and lonely writer might apply to very few writers but there are many many writers I see who are writing more genre fiction that don't fit this mold. They are well connected, have rich family life, and see writing in more commercial than artistic terms. Nothing wrong with that. In America, I think, writing has evolved into much more of a form of commercial entertainment, so the idea of it being a tortured and lonely art is a fallacy.

I do think there are those writers who prefer to go it alone and maybe more the tortured artist type and can produce some amazing work. The ones that I'm thinking of are no longer alive and pretty esoteric (like Anna Kavan and Djuna Barnes), not popular or even semi-well-know authors.

For myself, I have been writing since I was 14 (more years than I care to remember :)) and it is a mix of torture and joy. I know that if I was forced to stop writing, I would probably go crazy. I can't not write. I think many writers on the AW boards, whether they are literary writers or genre writers, feel the same way.

Djuna
 

cmi0616

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There seems to me something incredibly hokey about the whole "bleed for your work" thing. The idea that writers are haunted recluses with no social lives who must suffer from some kind of madness or demon... Somehow I'm not sold. I know professional literary writers, and they all seem more or less well-adjusted.

If there is a "torture" associated with writing, it's not nearly so romantic and mysterious as that. Writing fiction isn't that different from any other kind of job in this respect. The fact of the matter is, it's hard work, and it's often not very fun. Trying to write the same fifty pages for the third time only to fail yet again is not fun. But occasionally, amidst the drudgery, you hit on something that works and it's very rewarding. I think those moments are what keep me writing.
 
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calieber

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This seems like something people who have a hard time writing tell themselves because they fear* the alternative is to say "the fact that I'm having a hard time means writing is not for me."

*I think wrongly, for the record
 

BWretched

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Does everything have to be turned into a pseudo-scientific drama? Picking up writing and neglecting your life, are two different matters, both matters of choice that don't have to depend on one-another.

Agreed, I wrote the majority of my first manuscript while getting my bachelors. The description the OP is pretty dramatic to me and has more to do with a specific kind of person than being a writer.
 

lacygnette

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I'm with Caligulas. Editing is my favorite thing. Getting that first stuff out, not so much.
 

Calder

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From the Guardian article: 'A new poll for YouGov of almost 15,000 people found that 60% would like to be an author.' That isn't the same thing as saying that 60% want to go through the process of writing. Of course people would like to be an author. They imagine celebrity, interviews on TV, a fortune from their sales and multi-million film-rights deals. Who wouldn't like that?
I would say that the survey is spurious, to say the least, with the opinions/preferences expressed having much more to do with some wish-fulfilling conception of the highly-successful author than with reality. When the respondents say they'd like to be an author, what they really mean is that they'd like to be in the shoes of Clancy, or King, or Cussler, without any knowledge, or understanding of the work and processes involved.
I don't believe for an instant that 60% of people want to spend months at a keyboard crafting their work, only to suffer rejection after rejection, go through the agonies of self-doubt and insecurity, and end up with a manuscript that only they think is good.
'I'd like to be a multi-million earning sports star' doesn't feature in the survey because people realise that they don't possess the skills and talents necessary to achieve that. Unfortunately, everyone thinks they can write a book and that writing must be easy. They read a piece of fiction and believe that they can do that, or better, especially if the book leaves them unsatisfied in some way. They don't appreciate that writing is difficult. At best it's hard graft, and to be original is the most difficult thing of all.
Personally I class the response 'I'd like to be an author' alongside 'I'd like to win the National Lottery.' We all would, but very few will see the dream come true.
 

lacygnette

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I once read that someone stopped random people on the streets of L.A. and asked, "How's the script going?" or the like. Some vast number said they were working on it.
 

Taylor Harbin

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I certainly do NOT fit the image of a "tortured" writer. There are things that bother me, and sometimes I use writing as a way to explore those, but I'm not like the AA writers in the 50s and 60s trying to break Jim Crow. Those guys were tortured. Charles Bukowski and Hemingway were tortured. Silvia Plath was too.

Some days I am glad for my day job, other days I wish I could write full time. I write because I enjoy the stories and hope others do too.
 

Twick

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I'd also like to be a rock star. Or an archaeologist. Or heck, Leader of the Free World.

Doesn't mean I'm suited for those jobs, or would enjoy them if I got them.

I think people saying "I'd like to be an author" really means "I imagine that it would be fun to tell stories, and have people listen to them." It doesn't mean they're all frustrated Hemingways, or even Pattersons. Everyone is free to fantasize about "dream jobs," which are dreams because we skip over the hard or boring parts.
 

doubledoc

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Macquarie Uni conducted a study on the lot of Australian writers. The key findings are here (PDF).
At first I was surprised to see that the best-paid writers are those writing educational material. Then I remembered that the only work of mine that has been nicely rewarded so far is an online philosophy course I wrote during my academia days. It took such an effort to teach myself away from the academic style that I no longer think of it as writing :)

As for literary writers being tragic, I think there are two conspiracies afoot here. First, these writers want you to think that their suffering is greater than it is. Secondly, people who dislike these writers want you to think they're all antisocial weirdos.
 

HoosierJoe

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I'm not the tortured writer or the driven writer. I enjoy it. I have a lot of ideas and no writers block. Editing doesn't bother me either. I have a list of things I check for when I edit (common pitfalls and mistakes that make the story unpolished.).

I just never could relate to that whole tormented soul and artist that no one understands mystique. Never could do the heavy drinking, two fisted rugged writer or the intellectual, life of the party witty writer thing. I think I'm just a grandpa that can write and enjoys it and expects little in the way of fortune and fame from it.
 
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