This is the last in our series of guest posts from Thomas E. Kennedy about the 4 questions a writer must answer for him - or herself. Once you know the answers to them, in your heart, you know what you are about..."In his wonderful book On Writing, Henry Miller said that if you don’t listen when the Muse sings, you get excommunicated. He claimed that when they sang his racy tropics to him, he begged to be let off the hook; please, they’ll kill me! But – fortunately for us – he listened and he wrote.
"The fastest way to a writer’s block is to be super-critical of the words that are offered to you from the place – be it mind, soul, body – that words are offered up from.
"As a writer, in my experience, you have an impulse to write something, but you don’t know what you are going to write until you have written it. To berate and reject the words that are rising up in you, crying out to be told is to insult that within you which is most important to you as a writer – the place where the spirit becomes word and takes form.
"There is time enough afterwards to pinch and poke them into shape, to discipline and revise them – but first allow them to take form. Allow your stories or poems to tell themselves before you begin to go at them with the editorial knife."
Thomas E. Kennedy is the author of eight novels, as well as several collections of short stories and essays. He teaches creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University.In the Company of Angels, published by Bloomsbury in June 2010, is one of four novels comprising the Copenhagen Quartet. It is the first of Kennedy’s books to be published in the UK.
Read Thomas E. Kennedy's other guest posts:
1. When do you become a writer?
2. Must you write?
3. What is the greatest reward of writing?
Click to visit the official website of Thomas E. Kennedy
DavidWard on June 11, 2010
Thomas - thank you for these superb contributions, I've passed them on to a group of young writers I'm working with. The 4 articles go to the heart of the major issues for any writer of fiction. They ask profound questions & offer clues as to what the answers imply; whilst giving excellent advice to new writers. As an observer & editor of new writers it's sometimes painful to watch as they confront the eternal questions you have addressed. The experiences of those who have done this & succeeded can become their inspiration during the long hours of work & their armour against the vicissitudes of the industry. On another thread on this site, you will discover Jessica Blake, a young writer asking these same questions Thank you for coming to her aid & on behalf of all the others.
Leigh Russell on June 12, 2010
F Scott Fitzgerald said you don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say. I share that position and consquently don't understand the notion of 'writers' block.' If I run out of inspiration, I stop writing and turn the possibilities over in my mind. When I'm ready to write them down, off I go again. There's no point in trying to force the process. I agree with Thomas E Kenned that confidence in your own writing is vital - as is enjoying the writing process. If you don't love writing, why do it? Leigh Russell
Xean Puccio on July 16, 2010
Thomas,
Again, you share essential insight. When writing, I temporarily keep a copy of what I wrote before an edit because sometimes ideas can spring out of the original material itself and later supplant the edit. It happens.
Leigh,
Good question. I believe writers can have motivations besides a love of writing to write. For one, there’s love of adventure; some writers feel like journeying the seven seas to actively research their story. Others may want considerably less adventure than other fields of work, deciding instead they’d rather lounge in posh divan abaft choice trusty notepad. Yet others want to leave their ‘mark’, or raise needed income by craft of words. As you can see, there are many reasons for writers to write besides love of the writing. In fact, no matter how much someone loves the literary craft, I find there is almost always something else they would rather be doing instead. Which begs another question. Is it not less the love of writing and more the love of the idea(s), ‘the singing muse’ as Thomas implies, what promotes a writer to write?
Xean
16/6/7/2010