Every unpublished writer thinks about self-publishing, and frankly it wasn’t all that long ago that this was the normal route a scribbler took to get their work in front of the world. After a brief intermission, wherein giant publishing firms took shape, we seem to be returning to times where authors will be more and more responsible for managing their own work from beginning to end.

Of course, many authors will tell you that this has always been the case anyway but why quibble? There’s a romantic dream of the way the world of publishing works, and who am I to squash it?

Well, to be fair, I’m just the sort of person who would do such a thing…

So, without further ado, I bring you the 2012 Six Question Self-Publishing Survey. This results of this survey (with names changed to protect the innocent) will be published in a few weeks. If you have a few moments to spare I would really appreciate your very special comments below.

Note: If you are one of the bajillion RSS subscribers reading this post, please drop by the site to fill out the survey. It’s just 6 questions!

I don’t really want to go back and look at how long it’s been since I sat down to Write (yes with a pretentious capital ‘W’). I know it’s been months, but to be fair it’s really been years. Sometimes I look back to my best writing days and see it as another lifetime. A human life is made of many little lifetimes, overlapping yet often so distinct as to be held as a perfect memory separate from the whole.

For me, the little lifetime was six years. I locked myself in a room nearly each and every day and wrote for several hours. I wrote two novels, several stories, a few stubs of tales as yet untold. And yet, millions of words are not enough to be a writer.

It’s true that writing is hard work. Frankly, it is impossible to come day after day to the page and expect to release your best work. You must take what the writing gives and be happy that it gives at all. You must also show up.

Some writers, when faced with the prospect of not writing, will say things like:

“I would rather stop breathing than stop writing.”

“I would die if I wasn’t writing.”

“I cannot live without writing.”

But the reality is that you will not die nor will you stop breathing. You won’t stop living or stop feeling alive. You will still be a writer, you will simply not be writing.

This may sound sad and depressing but not as bad as you might think. In fact, it becomes rather pleasant after awhile because you stop worrying about all those things which only exist in your mind. You stop tending the universes there and the characters and the stories.

Not writing, after a time, is as pleasant as a warm bath.

As I said above, I’ve been in the tub a long while now. My skin is well past pruning. It’s withered and white. Soft and rubbery. My muscles are weak from buoyant caresses. My bones do not feel capable of holding my weight, and oh how that weight has grown.

Yes, it is pleasant in the bath. Pleasant and dreadfully dull.

Getting out of the tub, especially after you’ve been in it for awhile, is a painful experience. First, you must gird yourself against the atmospheric effects. Then you heave yourself out of the water, for there is really no graceful way to exit a bath. Even though you have prepared yourself mentally, you’ll find that your limbs have forgotten how to support your weight. A curse for the chill that wasn’t in the air five seconds before and a hustle for the towel. You’re focus is entirely on the goal of drying off quickly all sense of relaxation gone.

If you think about this, you’ll stay in the tub a bit longer. You’ll use your toes to fiddle with the nobs and eek out that last bit of hot water from the tank. You’ll sink below the water till it nearly touches the edge of your nose, knowing that if you fully submerge you’ll be freezing when you come up for air.

This is what the latter stages of not writing feel like. You know the chill is spreading. The water has long since stopped steaming. You wouldn’t be surprised if ice began to form near the edges of the tub, slowly closing in on you, forcing you to pull yourself into a tight embrace around your fear of emerging.

But like the warm bath, you know that even your fear cannot last. The water will be flat and cold as the grave. Your eyes, held shut against the inevitable, will open wide and you will clamber from the tub like a scalded monkey. Teeth chattering, you’ll wonder why the hell you ever got in there in the first place.

And maybe, if you’re smart, you’ll get back to work.

This post is more about writing than you might think.

Yesterday, I watched the launch of STS-135. Maybe you did too.

Before the launch I texted my son to make sure he was watching too. It was just a few minutes before lift-off and he scrambled to make sure everyone in the house was watching.

Later that night, I asked him what he thought about it. He thought it was sad because the program was over. I asked him what he thought about private companies going into space. He said, “I don’t think it’s going to happen.” I asked why, and he replied, “Because there’s no one to advertise to.”

What Ideas Are We Giving To The Next Generation?

This is NASA’s picture of STS-1 lifting off on April 12th, 1981. I remember it clearly. Do you?

What I remember most about STS-1, besides the white fuel tank, is being excited about space and the beginning of a grand voyage of human exploration and adventure. It was an idea that grew from the Apollo program, which itself had inspired an earlier generation. It was a gift of the best sort. The gift of an idea that we could do something even bigger than the last generation. That we could be more as human beings…

And now, with STS-135 zipping around for a final few victory laps around this blue globe of ours, I’m left wondering just what the next generation must think of all this, what they must think of us. What ideas do they see out there in the world today? What dreams have we sown by our own actions? How have we encouraged the next generation to dream bigger than the last generation?

The answer, I think, lies in the clear-headed response of a 12 year-old boy: In space, no one can hear you advertise.

So, What Exactly Have We Done?

I think it’s a fair question.

We’ve solved none of the pressing problems of the past. War is rampant and eternal. The energy crisis is worse than ever. We’ve destroyed much of our sense of community through aggressive polarization, and reduced our sense of humanity to the petty needs of instant gratification. We may have access to all of the knowledge in the world in the palm of our hands, but we no longer have the will to bend the laws of nature to our imaginations.

In short, we seem to have chosen a path of apathy instead of one of adventure. We’ve chosen to become static instead of dynamic. We are squabbling amid the wreckage of a civilization that has not yet died, creating evermore selfish systems in commerce, in politics, and in life.

But I think that all is not so bleak as it appears. If we put our minds to it, we can be more than this one moment in time. We can reclaim our dreams and reinvigorate the spirit of adventure which has defined the best in human achievement throughout history.

The Human Spirit Is Not So Easily Defeated

My younger son and I talked about the shuttle launch too. He was excited about the roar of rockets and the smoke and the flames. He talked like a boy who is seven about the majesty of such an incredible achievement, which is to say there was lots of “wow” and “cool” and whooshing whoops.

His excitement was infectious and I told him about the first shuttle launch. I told him how we watched at school and what it meant to us. We talked about space then and what lies beyond, and then we set about killing zombies because that’s what we do on Friday nights.

So while we can be sad about the closing of this chapter in the space program, we must be ready to write the next. Those who follow us are counting on us to live our dreams. We must supply them with nothing but the very best examples of our imaginations brought to reality through the willpower of the human spirit.

We must fight through the malaise of the moment. We must create. Because it’s not enough to simply shake our heads and walk away… We must repay the deficit dreams we leave for those who follow.

WIRED has a post about what Hemingway would think of the Internet. The author is a little young to be writing about Hemingway. He’s not even 30, but if you read his bio you’ll see that it’s really just tongue in cheek (or rather some other body cavity) humor he’s after.

It’s unfortunate though. With a little effort, the author could have taken a fluff plug for his new book and turned it into something poignant. He could have sliced off about half of his monologue intro, dropped into the fairly predictable jokes quickly and then discussed what an older Papa would have been like on the Internet. He could have done that, but he’s really not that sort of writer.

You might think I’m being a little harsh here, but let’s consider that the author just published a sensationalist book lampooning a man on the 50th anniversary of his suicide. That’s just a wee bit crass, don’t you think?

So rather than complain about this piece further, let’s really examine what might Hemingway do on the Internet. Of course, we must select a Hemingway and there are so many from which to choose…

Are we talking about a young Hemingway on the battlefield? Say, a medic in Iraq or Afghanistan? A couch-surfing Hemingway learning his writing trade in the virtual expat community of Gawker and HuffPo stringers? An adventure junkie Hemingway flinging himself off mountains in wingsuits or war reporting in Africa?

“Those the world will not break it kills. The good, the gentle, and the brave. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too.”

Or maybe we have a Hemingway who’s best days are far, far behind him. A Hemingway bypassed by the world, whose last novel was a disaster. This Hemingway, the author of Across the River and Into the Trees (1950), would have a very different approach to the Internet.

“Sure they can say nothing happens in Across the River, all that happens is the taking of Paris …plus a man who loves a girl and dies.”

The author who finished The Old Man and the Sea would have something very different to say. That Hemingway called in favors from every corner of the literary world to get his name pushed to the top of the Nobel ballot. One can only imagine the endless flow of tweets and Facebook posts pushing for acceptance and visibility culminating in his inevitable acceptance speech.

“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. A writer does his work alone and if good enough he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.”

But then, at the end of his life, we are left with a very different sort of Hemingway. This Hemingway could no longer bring his mind to craft particularly good sentences, let alone the great ones he demanded from himself. This Hemingway was slipping into mental illness, dementia, and paranoia (which may have had roots in fact as well). What sort of Internet presence would the author at the end of his life have? Would he be the Charlie Sheen of his day? Ranting like a madman, setting up town hall shows to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the torpedo of truth?

“It’s the worst hell. The goddamnedest hell. They’ve bugged everything. Everything’s bugged. Can’t use the phone. Mail intercepted.”

Then we come to the very end and perhaps in a moment of lucid realization he would dash off one final thought…

“He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.”

Yesterday, I was frustrated, pessimistic. I was disappointed and pissed off. Today is different.

I’ve taken steps to ensure that the coffee is up to snuff, but you can’t really avoid it. The down times, I mean, not the coffee. Problems with coffee can always be avoided. You just dump out the pot and try again. With writing, not so much.

When I’ve been Not Writing for awhile, I tend to get melancholic. You might recognize these symptoms in yourself.

You take a favorite book down and read some words. You think, “How the hell did this writer find the time to do this?” Or perhaps you say, “I live in a different age. No one will appreciate this sort of work today. Philistines!” And then you slam the book closed and console yourself with a nice little rant or maybe just work on your own personal storm cloud.

All of which is really Not Writing, isn’t it?

Of course it is, but it’s also part of the process. You let it come and have its say and then you let it fade away. Then, you begin the work.

The body retains the memory of what it has done before and so does the mind. The pathways may be a bit overgrown but they’re there. You just need to practice a bit to get back into the swing of things.

For me, that practice involves writing but also reading and listening. I listen to podcast stories while mowing the lawn. I read books with honest-to-god plots. These are the things that will spark your imagination in a fruitful way.

Well, that and extremely strong coffee.

Six Steps to Returning to Writing

I went way back into my notes this morning, and I found the same pattern repeated over and over. The fits and starts are easy to identify. They’re usually punctuated at either end by some external distraction that’s taken over my life. I’m sure the same could be said for anyone. In any case, I also noticed that I had developed a series of habits that led to successful runs in my writing life:

1. Show up – This is the first step. You must appear at the desk daily. You know this. You also know it is not optional. There is nothing more important than this.
2. Purge – This is the second step. You must put your hands on the keyboard (or pen to paper) and purge yourself. You cannot get beyond yourself if you are stuck on yourself.
3. Write – Once you have purged, you must write. You must not break or go wandering about. You must not take the relief of purging as a sign you are done. Write.
4. Stop – When you are returning to writing, it is important that you stop before you are written out. You wouldn’t try to run a marathon or even a 5K if you hadn’t trained. You’ll hurt yourself, or at the very least burn out the desire to show up the next day.
5. Be Patient – I’ve written for over 20 years, and still I have problems with this one. If I return from a break, I expect my work to come off like it did before. It won’t. It may never be the same. Depending on how you view your work, that may be a comfort. The thing is to be patient and take what the writing will give. You will return to form (some form) after a time.
6. Show Up – You begin the cycle again… Perhaps, you’ll think I’m cheating here by repeating the first step, but this is part of the method. When you leave the desk and step to the door, do you turn out the light knowing that you won’t return the next day? Leave the light on, if only in your mind. Remember that this is a process, a habit. This is something you know how to do, but you have to commit to it first and foremost.

A final word about planning… By design, I have not included planning in the six steps. Many of you may wonder why. After all, isn’t planning an essential part of writing? Yes, it is, but we are not writing just yet. We are returning to writing after a long layoff. If you do not show up and you do not purge and you do not write, you will spend your life planning and not executing. Ultimately, writing is keeping your ass in the saddle. Get yourself into that habit first.

I am reading an essay I’ve read many times before. It’s a travel piece, but it’s also a discourse on philosophy an exposition of the human soul in all its basic forms as told through the lens of a journey from war to sunshine.

How is it, that when we read a piece like this, one that we’ve tread over many times… we find ourselves caught up in just a few words that seem to have slipped our attention. This turns into a sudden realization, a spark of profound insight which ignites the imagination and calls us to do the bidding of the universe or in some cases to bend the universe to our will.

Or, it could be that this coffee is a bit too strong.

Still, the words are beautiful. The author wraps history, philosophy, and anthropology into a portrait of an entire people. It’s a romanticized version, but it is obviously quite stirring.

I am writing about a series of essays by D.H. Lawrence, but in particular The Lemon Gardens. I’ve read this essay at least half a dozen times, mostly because the title pleases me and I have a idealized image of estate Lawrence describes between musings on the nature of the Italian soul. You might read the essay and think it is pure pap, but that’s because you don’t see what I see. If I were a better writer, I would take the time to describe this to you. I would certainly not tell you outright my feelings about the piece. I would never be so direct, though in fact I would be precise by the manner of my investigation.

This is how Lawrence goes about telling the reader what he wants them to feel. He gently slips the emotion into your consciousness by framing it within a distraction. I imagine that if he were to put the technique into words, it would sound a little like this:

“Look at this thing. I tell you something about it, which is actually something about yourself. You will not hear it that way because I have not addressed it to you directly, but you will feel a kinship. As a result, it will come to be a part of you.”

I doubt that Lawrence would ever be so direct. I doubt that any writer worth their pen would be so direct. Thankfully, I am not that sort of author.

You might ask why I felt compelled to write this little piece today. I am curious as well. It is a sunny morning. The rains of the past few days have left everything smelling fresh and slightly damp. There is a cool breeze that comes and goes. I have the aforementioned coffee which, upon further reflection, really does need to be stronger. I should be content to sit and read one of my favorite essays in the languorous way I imagine I used to read on days like this some time ago.

But I’m not.

I’m not content to merely read the essay for the umpteenth time. I am not content to merely dream that I am Lawrence standing on the terrace of the Church of San Tommaso. I am not content at all really. I am restless and and annoyed. I am annoyed at the coffee, yes, but I am annoyed to be Aware.

For awhile now, I’ve been Not Writing. This is the serious sort of Not Writing which involves no actual writing. There are no words that need writing. No thoughts that need sorting out. There is nothing.

I’ve known about this for some time, but I’ve let it slide into a state of being that comes from allowing distractions to pile up and clutter the mind. They are the worst sort of distractions too. They are distractions against which little or nothing can be done. They are disactions.

Awareness of distractions like this could easily lead to anger and rash action. It can lead to changes which are dangerous and destructive. It can also lead to a manic burst of creativity. I don’t believe any of this is really helpful to any writer.

Writing is a long game. It is measured in persistence and constant progress toward the goal. Flashes of insight (hopefully brilliant) may puncture the wall from time to time, but generally speaking it is slow, diligent work that leads to the creation of something worthwhile.

The same could be said for reading an essay like The Lemon Gardens. It is a pleasant piece which could be read quickly and enjoyed, but to be appreciated fully it must be read slowly with a considered eye.

Oh if only!

Today, I’m 480 feet above sea level, and give or take 156 feet, you will find me at 39.983501°N 83.045066°W. This is my writing chair. I rarely get the chance to sit here anymore but when I do it feels like I’m taking my first breaths.

Perhaps this has happened to you. You get involved with something. You get distracted. You lose your place and when you wake up you’re driving 80 miles an hour down the highway with a scuba diver, a muskrat, and four mermaids in the backseat. Well, to be fair, if that last part happened, you probably drank a Four Loko last night and your car is significantly larger than mine, but I digress.

Distraction is part of the business. You can’t avoid it no matter how vigilant you remain. It will happen. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to fight it off or build habits and practices that protect against its whimsical charms. Yes, by all means, do that, but realize that distraction happens. When it does, don’t dwell on it. The longer you hold onto a distraction, the more likely it is to become a wall. The key thing is to never let go.

Never letting go is one of the things I’ve learned about writing. Of course, first and foremost is sit down and shut up. You’ll find it is so much easier to write when you are actually writing and not talking about writing or walking about and dreaming about writing. Second is be selfish. Writing takes time, time that you could give over to other pursuits or someone else’s interests. Be selfish and take that time for yourself and your work. Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, writing does not happen in the margins. Still, the third and perhaps most crtitical thing is never let go.

Life is not going to make things easy for you. That’s the whole point. Life is supposed to be hard. It is supposed to be a struggle. If it is easy, then you’re probably floating on the surface or just going with the flow. In which case you should remember that only dead fish go with the flow, even very successful dead fish.

But it’s difficult to write when you’re underwater… I know, I know. Yet, note that I said difficult, not impossible.

The fact of the matter is that you will probably have to learn to write underwater if you are ever going to get anything done. It is as unavoidable as life, which is to say that things will happen and you will get distracted. You may stay submerged for a very long time, in which case a metaphor like this one will start to sound pretty good to your oxygen-starved mind. Don’t worry too much about that, just keep swimming.

I may be in my writing seat for the first time in months, but I’m 480 feet above sea level. I’m sitting in the sun. I’m writing… And maybe, with just a little oxygen, I might write something more coherent than this post.

“Every novelist must begin by creating for himself a world, great or little, in which he can honestly believe.” ~ Joseph Conrad

We all have a manuscript lying about in various stages of “unfinished”. Some are close to done with an ending just out of reach. Most are just fragments of characters or scenes stillborn on a handful of pages. Yet, nothing except the belief of the writer can bring these ideas to their eventual conclusion.

A writer must believe.

A writer may spend years looking for their belief. They may start and stop time and again. Many travel or undergo hardships and forge their beliefs from painful or exalted experience. Others look deep into the souls of fellow writers, drinking in their words and sifting through the dregs for the core of their own beliefs.

Then, there are those who scarcely trust that they exist at all except for the fact that they rise each day and move through the world. They do not feel alive nor do they wish for the grave. They pine for silence. They pray for belief, which is a foolish prayer that will go unanswered.

Yet, to achieve something singular and important, a writer must believe.

Why?

Conrad was 16 years at sea before retiring and taking up the pen. He wrote from what he knew and what he knew was the sea. He wrote from experience. He was a writer believed in the world because he had seen much of it with his own eyes, but even still he knew that a writer’s role was to peel back the layers of what appears to be and show something more.

That is the task, but also the reward.

“Where a novelist has an advantage over the workers in other fields of thought is in his privilege of freedom–the freedom of expression and the freedom of confessing his innermost beliefs–which should console him for the hard slavery of the pen.” ~ Joseph Conrad

Find Your Belief

It is true that each writer struggles in their own way to find their craft. We pick up bits and pieces from those who have come before us or we slavishly imitate those we admire. We struggle to find the meaning and the belief that is so apparent in the books we hold dear.

After all, there they are!

Books bound in paper or cloth, leather or electrons. Their very physical presence in the world demonstrates the indisputable belief of one mind forging a story, striving for connection with another person through the craft of writing.

And yet, finding belief is the most difficult task a writer faces. It isn’t the words or the style. It isn’t the dreary pace of pages piled day after day. The real challenge is finding the belief to press forward. When we have that on our side, the work itself becomes secondary to all else.

Here is perhaps the simplest answer to finding belief:

“Of all the inanimate objects, of all men’s creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very thought, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to truth, and our persistent leaning towards error. But most of all they resemble us in their precarious hold on life.” ~ Joseph Conrad

If we are to write we must believe in ourselves, because books are reflections of who we are and what we have experienced as human beings. To believe in your story or your work is to be at your most fragile and human self.

If this is not enough, I turn to Joseph Conrad’s thoughts of Stephen Crane, the author of Red Badge of Courage.

One day Mr. Pawling said to me: “Stephen Crane has arrived in England. I asked him if there was anybody he wanted to meet and he mentioned two names. One of them was yours.” I had then just been reading, like the rest of the world, Crane’s Red Badge of Courage. I was truly pleased to hear this, and on my next visit to town we met at a lunch.

I saw a young man of medium stature and slender build, with very steady, penetrating blue eyes, the eyes of a being who not only sees visions but can brood over them to some purpose. He had indeed a wonderful power of vision, which he applied to the things of this earth and of our mortal humanity with a penetrating force that seemed to reach, within life’s appearances and forms, the very spirit of life’s truth. His ignorance of the world at large–he had seen very little of it–did not stand in the way of his imaginative grasp of facts, events, and picturesque men.

But this stirring rendition of one author’s appreciation for another is not why I shared this with you. Rather, it is just an opening to the second part of the story…

I saw Stephen Crane for the last time on his last day in England. It was in Dover, in a big hotel, in a bedroom with a large window looking on to the sea. He had been very ill and Mrs. Crane was taking him to some place in Germany, but one glance at that wasted face was enough to tell me that it was the most forlorn of all hopes. The last words he breathed out to me were: “I am tired. Give my love to your wife and child.” When I stopped at the door for another look I saw that he had turned his head on the pillow and was staring wistfully out of the window at the sails of a cutter yacht that glided slowly across the frame, like a dim shadow against the grey sky.

Life is short and brutal. You must find your belief or watch as your visions are washed away beneath the waves. You must believe in your work and press forward.

It’s just a little over 100 years since Mark Twain died and here he is right smack in the middle of a national debate on Race. There’s no doubt in my mind the man’s playing billiards in Hell and pleased as a cock who’s just woken up half a town of drunks on New Year’s Day. If nothing else, he’s probably laughing as cash registers ring up sales of Huck Finn and fuming as Project Gutenberg downloads heat up because Mark Twain was first and foremost a man concerned about getting his rightful coin for every word.

Obviously, it’s hard not to wade into the current discussion of Huckleberry Finn. After all, I’m working on a book that is unabashedly modeled after Twain’s classic twist on the Odyssey (and by twist I mean total rip off). I’ve spent a lot of time with Huck and Jim and the words of their chronicler. I am not, however, a Twain scholar. I’m a writer, a two-bit scribbler of words and tales.

As a writer, I understand why Twain used the word in question. Yes, it was “natural” for the time but that’s not why he selected the word. He chose the word explicitly to incite a reaction in those who could discern the meaning. He was making a point. If anyone thinks the Mark Twain chose that word as just a natural part of speech they are fooling themselves.

If anyone in Twain’s circle was going to complain about the dehumanization of Jim or the use of the word in question, it would be his wife. Olivia Langdon Clemens grew up in a family that was religious, reformist and above all abolitionist. As my previous (completely serendipitous) post reveals, Twain read the book to his wife, her mother, and her aunt. These Yankee women of the time, did not complain about the use of the word and my guess is that they understood exactly why the author had used it and used it frequently.

Do I feel the same about the use of the word? Do I feel it is necessary? I do.

Words Matter

In my book, I have a similar word. No human alive today could possibly take offense to this word, but a century or two from now, who knows? It might be expunged if I am so lucky as to finish the damn book (and twice as lucky again to see it published). Yet, I chose that word specifically for the same reason that Twain chose his and I am using it to reach the same means.

I do understand the feelings of those who cannot read Huckleberry Finn because of the word in question. I understand because I’ve read Malcolm X, and while I don’t lay claim to understanding Malcolm X in the way a black man would. I do understand the emotion that wells up each and every time “white, blue-eyed devils” appears in By Any Means Necessary.

By Any means Necessary is not Huckleberry Finn and yet each book has an author and each author made very specific choices when they wrote their respective books. Each author sat down put those words on paper and thought about them carefully. Each author read and reread those words, shaped and sculpted the prose to produce very specific reactions.

As much as it angered me to read those words (because I did not feel they were fair or applied to me), I kept on reading till the end. I also saw the effect just carrying this book around had on people, black and white. In the end, I didn’t read Malcolm X just because I thought his ideas were important. You can get the basic premise of it quick enough. I read By Any Means Necessary because of the impact the words had on me, the way the words made me reevaluate my white, middle-class upbringing. I read it for the lesson the book taught me about careful word choice.

What Would Tom Sawyer Do?

That’s what Huck asks himself time and again and in his heart, Twain was always Tom Sawyer not Huck Finn. Tom Sawyer always knew how to turn a situation to his advantage (if he wasn’t already in control of the situation in the first place, which would be almost never). So what would Tom do?

My take on this is pretty simple. If there was a buck to be made, Tom Sawyer would have the word out of the book so fast it would make Samuel Clemens’ head spin. But we’re still talking about this book 125 years after it’s publication for a reason and because of that I don’t think he’d remove it. Twain would do the same and keep it in because there was an advantage to it both commercially and artistically.

That’s it. No great cry of censorship or sensibilities. No indignant ire as one of my heroes is vilified by those living in times more than a century removed from the events in Huck Finn.

And if there is any question about Twain’s reaction, I point to a letter he wrote on the subject in 1907 when his book Eve’s Diary was banned because of the illustrations it contained:

The truth is, that when a Library expels a book of mine and leaves an unexpurgated Bible lying around where unprotected youth and age can get hold of it, the deep unconscious irony of it delights me and doesn’t anger me.

Words matter, but only if you are willing to read them. Words matter, but only if you know how to use them.

There’s great truth to striking while the iron is hot, but in the end you have to set yourself to the drudgery of revisions. I’ll use Mark Twain as an example here. Below, Twain is writing to William Dean Howells as he started writing Tom Sawyer.

I have manuscript enough on hand now to be two-thirds done. I intended to run up to Hartford and take it along, but I find myself so thoroughly interested in my work, now (a thing I have not experienced for months) that I can’t bear to lose a single moment of the inspiration. So I will stay here and peg away as long as it lasts.

It took Twain several years to write Tom Sawyer. During that time, Twain actually stopped working on the book altogether and set it aside. Yet, you’d never know that by reading this comment. You’d think he was almost done. You’d think the fires of creation would keep him warm right through to the end, but in reality they burned him out.

Night before last I discovered that that day’s chapter was a failure, in conception, moral truth to nature, and execution–enough blemish to impair the excellence of almost any chapter–and so I must burn up the day’s work and do it all over again. It was plain that I had worked myself out, pumped myself dry. So I knocked off, and went to playing billiards for a change.

It’s something that happens to all of us as we write, and certainly Twain was no stranger to it. You can see that when he says that he hasn’t been interested in his subjects for months. Still, Twain also knows that this will not last and that eventually it will come to the revisions.

My present idea is to write as much more as I have already written, and then cull from the mass the very best chapters and discard the rest. I am not half as well satisfied with the first part of the book as I am with what I am writing now. When I get it done I want to see the man who will begin to read it and not finish it.

There’s a Time to Revise

On the whole, you have to be something of a freak to enjoy the process of revision. After all, you are taking some bit of art that has come from your soul and tearing it apart in the most merciless manner. More often than not you’re as likely to do harm as you are good.

Here Twain is giving advice to his brother, Orion, who was working on his own autobiography.

Stop re-writing. I saw places in your last batch where re-writing had done formidable injury. Do not try to find those places, else you will mar them further by trying to better them. It is perilous to revise a book while it is under way. All of us have injured our books in that foolish way.

Consider that for a moment before you run off headstrong in the belief that you know exactly what you “need to do” to a chapter or story before it is finished. Will you injure the story in some way that will harm the rest of the work? Will you destroy your creative fire by interrupting it midstream?

All of us have injured our books in that foolish way.

If it happened to Twain, it will happen to you.

Taking the Advice of Others

Of course, not all of us have a William Dean Howells in our pocket but it is important to have those you trust reading your work. Ideally, those you trust will be writers. Other writers will find things that you have overlooked a dozen times. They will find plot holes. They will find gross errors in structure and dialogue. They will find misspelings (yes, I did that on purpose).

There was never a man in the world so grateful to another as I was to you day before yesterday, when I sat down to set myself to the dreary and hateful task of making final revision of Tom Sawyer, and discovered, upon opening the package of MS that your pencil marks were scattered all along. This was splendid, and swept away all labor. Instead of reading the MS, I simply hunted out the pencil marks and made the emendations which they suggested.

And yet, there’s often a time when one shouldn’t take the advice of other writers just because it is convenient. Sometimes you have to read the public.

There was one expression which perhaps you overlooked. When Huck is complaining to Tom of the rigorous system in vogue at the widow’s, he says the servants harass him with all manner of compulsory decencies, and he winds up by saying: “and they comb me all to hell.”

Long ago, when I read that to Mrs. Clemens, she made no comment; another time I created occasion to read that chapter to her aunt and her mother (both sensitive and loyal subjects of the kingdom of heaven, so to speak) and they let it pass. I was glad, for it was the most natural remark in the world for that boy to make. When I saw that you, too, had let it go without protest, I was glad, and afraid; too–afraid you hadn’t observed it. Did you? And did you question the propriety of it? Since the book is now professedly and confessedly a boy’s and girl’s hook, that darn word bothers me some, nights, but it never did until I had ceased to regard the volume as being for adults.

And damn it all if Howells didn’t tell Twain that he’d missed that word and that he’d “have that swearing out in an instant.” And damn it all twice if Twain didn’t do it and change the dialogue to “They comb me all to thunder.”

If ever the word Hell belonged in a book it was that line said by that character in that very place. Here the author, in spite of his misgivings about a children’s book, has done his work severe injury. He should have listened to the silence of Mrs. Clements, his mother-in-law, and her sister. After all, if three women of the time who were also loyal subjects to the kingdom of heaven did not take offense then no one else would either.

Revision can be delicate work, which is an ironic thing to say because it’s a bludgeoning, bloody business, but it is up to the author to follow their instinct especially in times of fear.

When you are afraid of what you write, you are probably on the path to the truth.