On Writing Books

The Writer on Her Work, edited by Janet Sternburg by Melanie Jennings Copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved On Writing Books will explore the brilliant (and sometimes tarnished) advice put forth in writing books. As a writer, what can you learn from these books? Are they for beginners or can folks with years of writing experience find something between the covers as well? Please recommend to me your favorite books on writing: MelanieJennings@WritersMonthly.com

I’m writing this from a tiny but cozy yurt on Wallowa Lake in eastern Oregon. If it sounds romantic, it is, and I have my pursuit of writing to thank for it. The Writer on Her Work, a collection of essays by well known women writers edited by Janet Sternburg, reminds me once again why I write. In each essay I recognized the habits, dreams, demons, and ways of being shared by the unique people on this planet that seriously pursue the art of writing. Particular standouts of the collection include Michele Murray’s "Creating Oneself from Scratch," Susan Griffin’s "Thoughts on Writing: A Diary," and Gail Godwin’s "Becoming a Writer." And for those writers who aren’t women, don’t be put off. While some essays address concerns particular to women writers (motherhood, for example), the bulk of the material in The Writer on Her Work applies to all writers. But back to the yurt and my thoughts.

The Writer on Her Work got me thinking about all the things I’ve done that I owe to my pursuit of writing. Here’s a brief list:

• I’ve travelled to many places to write (either alone or in community), including Hawaii, Squaw Valley, Borrego Springs, Wyoming, and Oysterville, WA.

• I went to Mills College and studied with excellent teachers and fellow student writers.

• I started writing for Writers Monthly, Fahrenheit, and Chick Lit, among others.

• I’ve had decent day jobs the last couple of years (no small thing).

This continues to be how I want my life: writing-centered.

Of course, writing has its pitfalls, too. They’re so routine I’m not going to give them space here except to name them: mental probs, financial probs, relationship probs, blah blah blah. What life doesn’t have its complications? But when I think about what writing has given me, what I’ve given it, and its place in my journey on this planet, I’m grateful.

When asked if he could say what writing had meant to him, Bernard Malamud replied, "I’d be too moved to say." Remembering that nearly always brings me to tears. Writing is a gift. The Writer on Her Work reminds me of that. It also reminds me how difficult it has been for writers, particularly women writers, to write, to be seen, and to be heard, and for a variety of reasons. The Writer on Her Work reminds me that I write and am seen and am heard because many others went first and carved out the path for me.

In "Creating Oneself from Scratch," the late Michele Murray writes in her journal of her "growing commitment to writing as the desperately serious occupation that it is, with all the resultant labor and readjustment of personality and goals." She describes all the things she would never have–a large family, a house, money–and how giving up these things essentially gives up part of her personality and dreams. I felt her grief, and then, in the very next entry, her sudden joy in the form of a handwritten rejection letter from the Paris Review with a request to see more work. And a couple of entries later: "Amazing how all goes well when I am writing. I cease to worry about money or to want things, but rest within the delights of my work. If only I could always be like this!" The bittersweet quality of a writing life, that of simultaneously recognizing all that writing gives and yet demands in return, is a theme running throughout many of these essays.

There is also the way in which words and writing haunt and define a writer’s life. Susan Griffin’s "Thoughts on Writing: A Diary," riffs on the ways words shape her thoughts and dreams: "Last night I dreamed that I wrote the beginning of this diary in Sanskrit. The night before in a lecture (not in a dream) Sanskrit was explained to me as ‘the mother of all language.’ And perhaps poetry is also the mother of language. And thought. And once again, I have solved a problem in writing by falling asleep and dreaming." Later she describes how language also torments her in the form of her Inner Critic: "Too much an imitation of Sappho, the voice of despair says. Because she is also wholly absorbed with ideas of authorship, and who said what, and one’s reputation, and respectability. She is prideful and out of her mouth speaks a whole chorus of social disapproval which ranges all the way from professors, and male doctors of law, and male authorities with awards on their breasts, such as those Virginia Woolf envisioned, to feminists, different factions of the movement, to a friend I know who disapproves of a word I find I want to use. Too much an imitation of Sappho, she says, and no one, she says, will understand what you are saying. And this, she says, has been said over and over again. What you wanted to say is inexpressible." Knowing other writers feel this way makes you want to weep, doesn’t it?

It may be hard to find a copy of The Writer on Her Work; I found mine in a used bookstore. But it’s well worth the search. If you’re lucky, you’ll also find volume two, which I’m off to read now in my yurt.

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"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." --Jack E.
Leonard