Well, we don’t do it for the money…

Novelist Pat Conroy apparently doesn’t write happily.

He commented recently that his wife, Cassandra King, an aurhor of popular novels, was a “much happier writer” than he was.

“I’ll hear her cackle with laughter at some funny line she’s written. I’ve never cackled with laughter at a single line I’ve ever written. None of it has given me pleasure. She writes with pleasure and joy, and I sit there in gloom and darkness.”

It’s an odd thing, writing. I suppose my “happiest” book was my first. There were no expectations. No-one (including myself) expected me to finish writing it, and I spent many happy hours making up “When my book is published” daydreams.

As soon as I was published, I developed expectations. My book did well, so I developed a feeling of responsibility. I felt I had to repeat that clever trick.

It was criticised (Hard to believe, I know). And since then, I’ve never been able to read a review without hyper-focusing on the negative, and not quite seeing the positive.

Then there are book awards (unless you win, of course). I’ve recently heard a number of writers and publishers comment on how damaging they can be. Rationally, writers can probably understand that, for any single award, a number of books are probably “good enough” to win.
Besides pure questions of quality, there is personal taste involved, and fashion and … it’s a small world. Perhaps human likes and dislikes also creep in. Who knows.

Yet writers judge themselves. They consider themselves unworthy or begin to see themselves as irrelevant, or useless. They lose faith in the reason they do something that consumes them, while providing no affirmation in return.

Well, you can’t blame them. What else do they work for? It’s certainly not the money.
South African writer Michiel Heyns recently wrote a hilarious piece on what he’d be if he weren’t a writer. He told an all-too-familiar story of driving miles to address an audience clearly more affluent than he – for free, of course. They hadn’t read his book, and some thought they might perhaps borrow it from the library.

He drove home and found a request to write – for free – a small piece on what he’d be if he weren’t a writer. So, he said, what he’d really like to do … is get paid.

It’s hard to write without all the comments and criticisms and expectations sitting on your shoulder. But I have been trying not to care what may or may not be said about my next book. I have been trying to write, consciously, for myself.

I spend so much of my life on it, I would like to regain the joy and love with which I tackled my first book. It was still hard. Some days I still felt agonised. But I wasn’t trying to please anyone.

Sometimes, like Pat Conroy, I struggle. I trudge through words that lie thick as sludge in my brain. Yet some days I fly. And there’s no feeling better than that. It’s euphoric. Better than chocolates. Better than sex.

So, need I look further than that? Perhaps that’s why we do it. We don’t feel quite normal if we’re not writing. So I’m going to concentrate on that. To hell with what happens when it’s written.