A collection of essays by successful writers on the people who inspired and influenced them leaves me wondering: First, what the hell do all these stories have to do with me? And second, why did I ever think they should have anything to do with me?
I have been sitting with the book Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives for more than two weeks, growing increasingly desperate for a coherent response so I could blog about it. I have given up on coherence but blog I must.
I’ll try to explain why I was so flummoxed by this book but first let me say that yes, it is worth a read. There are a handful of really beautiful pieces (Boyers, Cantor, Grunberg, Strayed, Shreve), a fabulous reading list to be culled from the essays, and even the tiniest bit of good writing advice here and there. Plus gossip. And a reference to this great quote by Joy Williams (who, sadly, does not appear here) about the importance of being original: “The world makes everything taste like chicken.” Okay, I gave you that last, but the stellar pieces and the reading list make the book worth your time, I promise. No need to bump it up on your list, though, because there is nothing urgent or transformative, here. And that’s why I’m so cranky, why I go blurry when I try to figure out what I want to say about this collection. I believe—and this is my fault entirely—I actually expected a kind of mentor/muse how-to.
***
Somewhere in a Virginia landfill, nestled in soiled diapers and peppered with cigarette filters, lie the computer remains of my first few years as a writer. My first short stories, a rambling writing journal, countless pages of a garbage thriller that made my husband laugh when he was supposed to be riveted. And an outline for the definitive book on how to become a writer.
My ambition to be a writer came as an epiphany at the age of 30, on the way home from another 70-hour week in the marketing department of an insurance company. The moment should be a fictionalized anecdote in a gooey self-help book—When Your Heart Speaks!—but it actually happened: A blinding sunset, squealing brakes, the still small voice. I can be forgiven, I think, for feeling born again.
To spread the Word you need a Bible. I bought a shelf-full of books promising writing secrets. A few of them were inspiring and helpful—Bird by Bird, If You Want To Write, Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings. Most of them were kind but silly. And not one told me what to do when two readers had completely different opinions about my work, or how to re-imagine a draft, or how to ask the right questions about my material. I would find that advice in school, but the world of writing was so veiled in mystery in those first few years of private striving, I’m not sure I even knew MFA programs existed. I just wanted a how-to manual, dammit. And if no one had written one then by god I’d write it myself. I decided to record the results of all my trial and error, saving other novices possibly years of effort.
As I said—landfill. The chapter on how to start a writing group (I knew what not to do because I’d made every possible mistake with my first, abortive attempt), the one on self-confidence (in which I would talk about how much I wanted some??), and the one full of punchy reviews of every writing book I read—these and the chapters I can’t remember, I started in the full fever of evangelism. And I abandoned them all within a few months. Because no one can write a how-to on those first becoming-a-writer days, that liquid time when you have only the merest glimpse of what you want, when you write pages and pages of glorious sentences that sing you to sleep at night, then in the glare of the morning disappear into dusty piles of marked-up crap you know you will never look at again. I was driven but half-blind and after a while I stopped keeping any record of my stumbles. All to the good, because the less I futzed around with writing journals and building the perfect writing space the more I spent my desk-time writing short stories. Which is to say that the less I worried about how to be a writer the more I became one.
***
What is a mentor? How do you find one? When can you turn a monster into a mentor or a mentor into a muse or a favorite book into a siren call? Why do I keep expecting the writers who have arrived to give me a map to how they got there?
Why do I have to re-learn every important lesson I think I’ve mastered?
***
In his Bookforum review, Robert Baird writes, “[M]any of these essays read like paeans to the structures of literary privilege in America. The writers insist that their success owes to some combination of luck, talent, and the generosity of their mentors, but they unwittingly leave the impression that the most important choice facing a young writer in America is which elite northeastern university to attend.” I had a similar cynical reaction. At times I felt I was reading “when my great talent first showed itself” stories or a long-winded, literary version of “Thank goodness I was able to impress this famous, brilliant (but difficult!) door-opener.” Perhaps this is why I enjoyed so much the essays about books that served as “paper mentors” (Southgate) or muses. I have had my own obsessions with short stories and novels that serve as lessons in craft. While we still have public libraries everyone can experience this form of mentorship.
When I read about the writing life I look for any way I can apply anecdotes, wisdom, and confessions to myself. I want to learn. I want to be sustained, at least. In this case, I read the book all wrong. I can’t learn from these success stories because, of course, nobody in this book has had a life like mine. Because most of the essays describe a literary world that is rapidly disappearing. Because this book isn’t about how to write or how to endure, it is a book mostly about what it was like to go from being a writer to being a successful, published author.
Again, Mr. Baird in Bookforum: “Writing is not the same thing as being a writer, and if Mentors, Muses & Monsters has one lesson, it’s that literary mentorship has more to do with the latter than the former.” Or, being a beginning writer scrambling for credits is not the same thing as being a published, respected novelist. I could tell you about my inspirations and mentors but why would you care? That story is still writing itself, and for all I know it may never have an ending that makes it worth telling.
Tales of transformation are powerful, and as many of these writers prove, they can be beautiful. But nobody can explain how one goes from having potential to realizing that potential, because when that happens the path to accomplishment is a singular one, formed probably just as much by happy accident as focused work and ambition. For someone like me, still serving my apprenticeship, it’s frustrating to see that not one outlined path in this book is re-traceable. Frustrating until I just stop. Stop looking for that map. Stop asking to be disappointed. If I do that, I can let myself enjoy the stories. And then get back to work.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I really liked this piece because: Even though you made me read until the very last four sentences–and whammed it home with the last one–to find your “real point,” I enjoyed the ride/read. And after all, the point of writing is to make the reader read, so if you’d told me the end at the beginning, I’d have missed the ride.
I really liked this piece because: Even though you made me read until the very last four sentences–and whammed it home with the last one–to find your “real point,” I enjoyed the ride/read. And after all, the point of writing is to make the reader read, so if you’d told me the end at the beginning, I’d have missed the ride.
Thank you, thank you for sharing the beginnings of what is going to be a most interesting career journey. I loved your epiphany paragraph. I agree with you that we know too much about writers with glamorous or sophisticated growth stories. I already know that there are huge differences between famous writers and myself, and while their stories are interesting, I would rather read about people in every day trenches.
Thanks Lynn! Honestly, it took me all the way to the end to figure out exactly what I was trying to say.
Patty, yes! That’s why I wanted “how to be a writer” books that charted the real beginnings. We want to connect with those on the same kind of journey. I’m so glad you read this piece exactly as I meant it. Thank you!