"Do you write with a pencil, a pen, or a typewriter?" On Becoming a Novelist - John Gardner

I’ve only recently started to count myself as a writer despite writing for more than a decade. A chance encounter with a writer I thought I’d never meet, has stopped me in my tracks and changed my life as I knew it (what an understatement). I’ve begun to feel lately that I’d die if I don’t write. And that’s the most liberating statement I’ve written in this space in all these years.

Life has always been beautiful as it is torrid. It isn’t the same it was a couple of years back. A simple act of picking a book to read, jotting down thoughts has become more challenging than ever though. External factors like a loved one’s frown, meeting a deadline someone else has committed to etc., will persist and the most stoic part of my mind thinks it can live with that. It’s the internal factors that play havoc -  I wouldn’t prefer placing it under the omniscient “writer’s block”, the phrase has lost its sheen these days– palpitations that halt sleep, anxiety that builds up day after day constantly questioning your ability to see things through, the doubt that surfaces even when you have faith in your stance that you can unlearn and learn innumerable times, the knowledge that what you earnestly seek has evaded many curious souls in the past and so on. “On Becoming a Novelist (1983)” is John Gardner’s gesture of placing a hand on your shoulder and letting you know you’ll get along just fine, by emphasizing certain aspects you’ve known all along. You have to think a couple of things through, willingly part with things that others deem important, the zeal must be real and things will discreetly fall into place.

John Gardner (1933-1982) was an American writer who doubled as a literary evangelist, teaching fiction for writing aspirants and "On Becoming a Novelist" was published a year after his unfortunate death in a motorcycle accident at the age of 49. This book was recommended by a friend who reveres Gardner and I’m grateful. The book starts from describing the traits of a writer, what training the writer must undergo to get his craft right, some now defunct details on getting published and ends by dispensing some helpful points on how to sustain faith.

The Writer’s Nature

Verbal sensitivity, Gardner says, is the interest in understanding how language works. “The writer who cares more about words than about story (characters, action, setting, atmosphere) is unlikely to create a vivid and continuous dream; he gets in his own way too much; in his poetic drunkenness, he can't tell the cart—and its cargo —from the horse. So in judging the young writer's verbal sensitivity one does not ask only, "Has he got any?" but also, "Has he got too much?”

He cautions against the Pollyanna way of writing (idealism and optimism in its extreme form) and its antithesis of disPolyanna writing (writing with aimless cynicism). He advises the writer to be vigilant for blunders and keep at it, so that he might “catch on” with his craft.

“If the promising writer keeps on writing—writes day after day, month after month—and if he reads very carefully, he will begin to "catch on." Catching on is important in the arts, as in athletics. Practical sciences, including the verbal engineering of commercial fiction, can be taught and learned. The arts too can be taught, up to a point; but except for certain matters of technique, one does not learn the arts, one simply catches on”

Gardner also addresses some moral conflicts that afflicts writers.

·       Calling out a book for being bad doesn’t always come down to professional jealousy if it arises from scrutiny.

·       To be observant is an essential trait of a writer but he’ll face moments amounting to moral dilemma. He cites his initial detachment accompanied by inhumane fascination on observing an accident involving a pregnant woman and his later disgust with himself. He admits “For better or worse, the practice of fiction changes a person. The true novelist knows things another man with his own specialization does not know and might not wish to.”  

·       A good writer doesn’t declare outright what is moral or not, say, incest. He says “Good fiction does not deal in codes of conduct—at least not directly; it affirms responsible humanness.”

 “There is a peasant in every good novelist’ 

He quotes Fitzgerald, "the peasant" in the novelist makes him endure and maintain pace like that of a marathon runner, unlike a poet or a short story writer. He must be directed by his inner ambitions to keep going and should not rely on occasional bursts of applause. If the novel is bogged down by some state the writer cannot fathom, it is okay, though unpleasant, to put the manuscript away for a considerable period and look at it again.

“All writing requires at least some measure of trancelike state: the writer must summon out of nonexistence some character, some scene, and he must focus that imaginary scene in his mind until he sees it as vividly as, in another state, he would see the typewriter and cluttered desk in front of him, or the last year's calendar on his wall. But at times—for most of us, all too occasionally—something happens, a demon takes over, or nightmare swings in, and the imaginary becomes the real."

This trancelike state requires what Gardner terms “daemonic compulsiveness” which assists “in the making of splendid works of art, allowing him indifference to whether or not the novel sells, whether or not it's appreciated. Drivenness is trouble for both the novelist and his friends; but no novelist, I think, can succeed without it. Along with the peasant in the novelist, there must be a man with a whip”

 The Writer and his community

Writing workshops and degrees in creative writing were fashionable in Gardner’s period as well. He elaborates on the ways such units can assist and limit the writer’s will. 

“Talk about writing, even in a mediocre community of writers, is exciting. It makes you forget that by your own standards, whatever they may be, you're not very good yet. It fills you with nervous energy, makes you want to leave the party and go home and write. And it's the sheer act of writing, more than anything else, that makes a writer.”

Gardner is not fascinated by experimental writing and remarks a realist might feel out of place in a community that entertains such experiments, like the one heralded by John Barth. The student, in our case the writer, should keep company of those whose interests seem closest to his own. He quips that it helps to hang around a writer, who may or may not directly teach the workings of his art.

“Perhaps the chief value of the famous writer is his presence, his contribution as a role model. Just by being around him day after day, the young writer learns how the famous man reads, and what he reads; how he perceives the world; how he relates to others and to his profession; even how he schedules his life. The famous writer's presence is vivid proof that the young writer's goal is not necessarily unreasonable”

I have to admit I was grinning from ear to ear when Gardner says, “If the student is extraordinarily lucky, the famous writer may also be a good teacher: he not only knows what real art is but can explain it"  Thank you Jeyamohan.

A community is likely to make or break the writer. Gardner has a word of caution for writers of a workshop who critique a fellow writer’s work.

“Classmates of the writer whose work has been read do not begin, if the workshop is well run, by stating how they would have written the story, or by expressing their blind prejudices on what is or is not seemly; in other words, they do not begin by making up some different story or demanding a different style. They try to understand and appreciate the story that has been written. They assume, even if they secretly doubt it, that the story was carefully and intelligently constructed and that its oddities have some justification. If they cannot understand why the story is as it is, they ask questions”

It felt good reading the piece where Gardner suggests that it is better if the aspiring writer doesn’t major in Literature.  It is advisable, he says, to take as many courses in Literature as one can to hone one’s techniques but “If he can, the young writer should give at least glancing attention to as many as possible of the major fields of study: a foreign language, history, philosophy, psychology, one or more of the hard sciences, fine arts. Glancing attention to these fields will enable the student to pursue them further on his own whenever he—or one of his characters—needs information”

Okay Gardner does whack you in the head at times. “The best way of all for dealing with writer's block is never to get it. Some writers never do. Theoretically there's no reason one should get it, if one understands that writing, after all, is only writing, neither something one ought to feel deeply guilty about nor something one ought to be inordinately proud of. If children can build sand castles without getting sandcastle block, and if ministers can pray over the sick without getting holiness block, the writer who enjoys his work and takes measured pride in it should never be troubled by writer's block”

Gardner doles out generous advice on the kind of profession that allows a writer to make time for writing without much intrusion. The writer who survives by teaching writing may discover, however, that his teaching hurts his art. Journalism may be a better option, but it may undermine the writer's prose and sensibility. But what I did not expect next was this,

“The best way a writer can find to keep himself going is to live off his (or her) spouse. The trouble is that, psychologically at least, it's hard. Even if one's spouse is rich, it's hard. Our culture teaches none of its false lessons more carefully than it teaches that one should never be dependent. Hence the novice or still unsuccessful writer, who has enough trouble believing in himself, has the added burden of shame. That's one reason writers, like other artists, have so often chosen to live off people that, at some conscious or unconscious level, they need not respect—generous prostitutes, say. It's hard to be a good writer and a guilty person; a lack of self-respect creeps into one's prose. Yet for all that may be said against it, living off one's spouse or lover is an excellent survival tactic.”

I believe I will listen to Gardner’s observations and ideas on the craft of writing as mentioned in the book but I don’t think I will buy the above advice, however lucrative. But future novelists hear, hear!