John Steinbeck on Writing

I've been aware of John Steinbeck as long as I can remember. I've known the titles of his famous novels but never read any until last year. When Elmore Leonard died I read about his writing inspirations and at the top was John Steinbeck. I've always marveled at Leonard's gift of dialog and was excited to learn that it was Steinbeck that inspired him. In 2002 he wrote:

For me that is what John Steinbeck inspired, the simplicity that if you can’t do it well, don’t do it. If you can do something well . . . from that time on, 1954, I concentrated on telling my stories in dialogue so I wouldn’t have to describe the characters.
Library of America blog

After reading Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, and The Grapes of Wrath, I have to agree, Steinbeck's ability to convey character through dialog is a wonder.

In 1975 The Paris Review published an interview with Steinbeck.

In that interview, a close personal friend of Steinbeck, Nathaniel Benchley, made the following observations:

• He once said that to write well about something you had to either love it or hate it very much. 

•...his fierce dedication to his writing, and his conviction that every word he put down was the best he could find, were signs of a man who dreaded ever having it said that he was slipping, or that he hadn't given it his best.

The remainder of these quotes are from Steinbeck's East of Eden diaries (Journal of a Novel), and personal letters.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced that there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes but by no means always find the way to do it.

It is not so very hard to judge a story after it is written, but after many years, to start a story still scares me to death. I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and tantalizing majesty of the medium.

In a letter to his Creative Writing teacher at Stanford, Steinbeck tells just how easy it is being a writer:

But surely you were right about one thing, Edith. It took a long time—a very long time. And it is still going on and it has never got easier. You told me it wouldn't.

It gives me hope that even the best struggle. All that matters is perseverance.

It is the duty of the writer to lift up, to extend, to encourage. If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice. And how any negative or despairing approach can pretend to be literature I do not know.

I hope I can keep all the reins in my hands and at the same time make it sound as though the book were almost accidental. That is going to be hard to do but it must be done. Also I'll have to lead into the story so gradually that my reader will not know what is happening to him until he is caught. That is the reason for the casual—even almost flippant—sound. It's like a man setting a trap for a fox and pretending with pantomime that he doesn't know there is a fox or a trap in the country.

My work does not coagulate. It is as unmanageable as a raw egg on the kitchen floor. It makes me crazy. I am really going to try now and I'm afraid that the very force of the trying will take all the life out of the work.

Suddenly I feel lonely in a curious kind of way. I guess I am afraid. That always comes near the end of a book—the fear that you have not accomplished what you started to do. That is as natural as breathing.

In a short time that will be done and then it will not be mine anymore. Other people will take it over and own it and it will drift away from me as though I had never been a part of it. I dread that time because one can never pull it back, it's like shouting good-bye to someone going off in a bus and no one can hear because of the roar of the motor.

Edgar Allan Poe on Writing

A Peep Behind the Scenes

Any creative effort can seem magical. As writers we are sometimes awed by the moments of inspiration that lead to our creations. Three and a half years before his death Edgar Allan Poe wrote an article illuminating his writing process titled The Philosophy of Composition for Graham's Magazine in 1846. He pulled back the curtain and showed us

“...the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought—at the true purposes seized only at the last moment—at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view—at the fully-matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable—at the cautious selections and rejections—at the painful erasures and interpolations—in a word, at the wheels and pinions—the tackle for scene-shifting—the step-ladders, and demon-traps—the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio.”

He thought it would be interesting to see an author's step-by-step process and he didn't have

“the least difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions,”

and so we have a wonderful explanation of how he composed his most famous poem, The Raven.

Writing The Raven

He spent much effort in deciding the length, effect, tone, and construction before writing a single word.

“Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its denouement before anything be attempted with the pen.”

Only after this preliminary work did he start writing. And he began with the end:

“Here then the poem may be said to have had its beginning—at the end where all works of art should begin—for it was here at this point of my preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in the composition of the stanza: 

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! prophet still if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us— by that God we both adore,
Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven— "Nevermore." 

"I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by establishing the climax, I might the better vary and graduate, as regards seriousness and importance, the preceding queries of the lover, and secondly, that I might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, and the length and general arrangement of the stanza, as well as graduate the stanzas which were to precede, so that none of them might surpass this in rhythmical effect.”

The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty

After his death a number of his lectures were published in 1850 as an essay under the title The Poetic Principle. Poe was an early proponent of the idea "art for art's sake." He had particularly strong words against trying to use poetry to be all preachy:

“a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more in the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies combined. I allude to the heresy of The Didactic.”

Poe went on at great lengths to define what should and should not be allowed to be called poetry. It bears reading this section of The Poetic Principle a couple times to follow what he's saying. Here's a little chart to sum it up:

Here are some of the points he emphasized in The Poetic Principle:

• -A poem can only be called such if it elevates the soul.  It's hard to sustain that feeling for much longer than 30 minutes.
• -Poetry touches beauty the strongest when it has nothing to do with Truth and Duty.

“I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.”
“An immortal instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors and sentiments amid which he exists.”
“And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, ... through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which through' the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.”

• In short, a poem

“is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem's sake.”

In the final authorized printing of The Raven, the poem is prefaced by these remarks:

"These people... are possessed with a false theory. — They hold that every poem and poet should have some moral notion or other, which it is his “mission” to expound. That theory is all false. To build theories, principles, religions, &c., is the business of the argumentative, not of the poetic faculty. The business of poetry is to minister to the sense of the beautiful in human minds. — That sense is a simple element in our nature — simple, not compound; and therefore the art which ministers to it may safely be said to have an ultimate end in so ministering. This the “Raven” does in an eminent degree. It has no allegory in it, no purpose — or a very slight one — but it is a “thing of beauty,” and will be a “joy forever,” for that and no further reason. ... The worth of the Raven [[sic]] is not in any “moral,” nor is its charm in the construction of its story. Its great and wonderful merits consist in the strange, beautiful and fantastic imagery and colors with which the simple subject is clothed — the grave and supernatural tone with which it rolls on the ear — the extraordinary vividness of the word painting, — and the powerful but altogether indefinable appeal which is made throughout to the organs of ideality and marvellousness."

Richmond Weekly Examiner, September 25, 1849, col. 4-5

And here is a poster of Edgar Allan Poe with a thought-provoking quote on writing.

Free Wallpaper

Save this wallpaper to your desktop for that friendly reminder to write every day.

Writers Need Rewards

It's been said writing is its own reward, but let's face it, sometimes we need just a little bit more to keep going.

There are days it takes all my energy just to get to the end of a chapter or blog post. I wish I could hold out clear to the end to feel that sense of accomplishment, but it helps me to break down my writing goals into smaller milestones and give myself a mini-reward. Somedays it's the end of the chapter, somedays it's the end of a paragraph. I'd be lying to say I've never needed a reward at the end of a sentence!

Whatever your writing milestones are, this will help:

The Leaky Pen Writer's Reward

There's nothing like that little sweet reward, that naughty little sugar rush to push you on! When the jelly beans are gone, refill it with whatever motivates you.

And if you're not a writer maybe it's your significant other or family member who is the writer and needs a little incentive.

Christmas, 1998

From the Editor, December 1998:

Another year blinks past.

I remember Christmases as a kid. I grew up here in Utah, in Kearns and in Cache Valley. Christmas was magic, especially the year there was a knock on our back door and we found a box of presents on the back porch and sleigh tracks with reindeer hoof prints (we didn't have a chimney, so I guess that's the best he could do).

I would sleep in the front room in my sleeping bag, near the Christmas tree, letting the lights carry me off to sleep with dreams of anticipation.

Every year, the presents I looked forward to the most were books. I remember sitting on Santa's lap—I was only six years old—and having him ask me what I wanted. All I told him was "books."

Over the years I've come to regard the gift of reading as one of the greatest gifts I've ever been given. With this one gift I've traveled the world, through space and time, and always before me are worlds yet to explore.

This year, I hope books are among the gifts we all give, and along with them, give the gift of your passion for reading. Share it often with those you love.

The Leaky Pen, Vol. 1 Issue 5, December 1998

Jane Austen on Writing

Jane Austen's most popular novels were written over a twenty-year period between the ages of 21, and 41 when she died. You could probably chop off nine of those years when the family was moving around a lot before settling down in Chawton—from her existing letters it doesn't appear she was actively writing much during those years. 

Early on she kept her writing a secret. She wrote in the main room of the house and the door had a squeaky hinge, giving her time to cover her papers with a blotter and pretend to be doing something else.

The Family Who Reads Together...

I understand what family life was like back then, to a degree. My teenage years were spent with no TV in our home. We  spent our evenings reading aloud Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. What I can't understand is what it must have been like to be a published author and hiding it from everyone.

“...sometimes the niece [Anna] would skim over new novels at the Alton Library, and reproduce them with wilful exaggeration. On one occasion she threw down a novel on the counter with contempt, saying she knew it must be rubbish from its name. The name was Sense and Sensibility—the secret of which had been strictly kept, even from her.”*

Sense and Sensibility was published anonymously with the attribution "by a Lady." The other books simply said "by the author of Sense and Sensibility," or one of the other books.

Learn to Write by Reading

Many times Jane mentions in letters the books the family was reading together, and we glimpse some helpful insights. One of those insights is to know and develop your characters so they become believable in their own right and are not a reflection of the author. Jane mentions one book they were reading together and comments,

“Never did any book carry more internal evidence of its author. Every sentiment is completely Egerton's. There is very little story, and what there is is told in a strange, unconnected way.”

Writers Are Always Writing

It may appear that writers are engaged in the same mundane daily activities as the rest of us, but don't be fooled. You might be standing there riding public transport, not paying attention, while the writer across from you is mentally taking notes about your awkward stance, bright lipstick and striped leggings, and your boyfriend who is too cool to hold on to anything.

After Jane's writing was no longer a secret, her niece, Marianne Knight, recalls an instance of her writing:

"[Jane] would sit very quietly at work beside the fire in the Godmersham library, then suddenly burst out laughing, jump up, cross the room to a distant table with papers lying upon it, write something down, returning presently and sitting down quietly to her work again.”

Criticism and Encouragement

Some of Jane's best advice we have on writing comes from letters with her niece Anna. Anna was 21 years old at the time—the same age Jane was when she began writing what became Pride and Prejudice.

Awareness of Locations and Travel Distances

“Lyme will not do. Lyme is towards forty miles' distance from Dawlish and would not be talked of there. I have put Starcross instead. If you prefer Exeter that must be always safe.”

“We are reading the last book. They must be two days going from Dawlish to Bath. They are nearly 100 miles apart.”

“...we think you had better not leave England. Let the Portmans go to Ireland; but as you know nothing of the manners there, you had better not go with them. You will be in danger of giving false representations. Stick to Bath and the Foresters. There you will be quite at home.”

Go Easy on the Minute Descriptions

“You describe a sweet place, but your descriptions are often more minute than will be liked. You give too many particulars of right hand and left. ”

Naming of Characters

Have you ever found yourself mulling over the name of a character in a novel you're reading? Sometimes the name is so perfect it launches a story all by itself.  Stephen R. Donaldson tells of three names he liked "so much that [he] began consciously trying to pull together a story good enough for them," eventually leading to the best-selling four-volume Gap series.

Jane particularly liked a name in Anna's story.

“The name of Newton Priors is really invaluable; I never met with anything superior to it. It is delightful; one could live upon the name of Newton Priors for a twelvemonth.” 

Humor in Developing Characters

In developing the character Emma, Jane created “a heroine 'whom no one would like but herself.” The authors of Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters have this to say on the characters in Emma:

“And the humour is always essential to the delineation of character—it is never an excrescence. It also depends more on what is said than on any tricks of speech; there are no catch-words, and every one speaks practically the same excellent English. Besides this, Emma also gives a very good instance of the author's habit of building up her characters almost entirely without formal description, and leaving analysis to her readers.”

Again, Write What You Know—Recognize Your Limitations

As Emma was nearing publication Jane learned that the Prince Regent was a huge fan of her novels, and would she consider dedicating a future novel to the Prince Regent? This news was delivered to her via the Prince Regent's personal librarian, Rev. Clarke.

Mr. Clarke also thought it would be wonderful if she would write about an English clergyman, since no one had captured one in the right way yet, and she could do it perfectly, he was sure.

She responded,

“I am quite honoured by your thinking me capable of drawing such a clergyman as you gave the sketch of in your note of November 16th. But I assure you I am not. The comic part of the character I might be equal to, but not the good, the enthusiastic, the literary. Such a man's conversation must at times be on subjects of science and philosophy, of which I know nothing; or at least occasionally abundant in quotations and allusions which a woman who, like me, knows only her own mother tongue, and has read little in that, would be totally without the power of giving. A classical education, or at any rate a very extensive acquaintance with English literature, ancient and modern, appears to me quite indispensable for the person who would do any justice to your clergyman; and I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.”

After further encouragement she responded:

“No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way, and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.”

Even though she declined Mr. Clarke's request, it must have tickled her sarcastic vein because she outlined a vastly sweeping novel about just such a clergyman.

We All Like Visible Proof of Our Efforts

Finally, in a letter to her niece, Fanny, explaining the purpose of a recent London trip to discuss printing a second edition of Mansfield Park, she expresses what must surely be the feeling of all writers:

“People are more ready to borrow and praise than to buy, which I cannot wonder at; but though I like praise as well as anybody, I like what Edward calls 'Pewter' too.”

Jane Austen Poster

Here is a poster of Jane Austen with a thought-provoking quote on writing.

*All quotes are taken from the book Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters by William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

Robert Louis Stevenson on Writing

In honor of my friends who are tackling NaNoWriMo this year, let me share some encouragement and insight from Robert Louis Stevenson—it's his birthday today (November 13, 1850).

He wrote his first novel, Treasure Island, when he was 33 years old. He had been writing short stories and travel essays for ten years. Echoing feelings many writers have felt, he said of this time:

“I had quite a reputation, I was the successful man; I passed my days in toil, the futility of which would sometimes make my cheek to burn - that I should spend a man’s energy upon this business, and yet could not earn a livelihood: and still there shone ahead of me an unattained ideal: although I had attempted the thing with vigour not less than ten or twelve times, I had not yet written a novel.”
“I remember I used to look, in those days, upon every three-volume novel with a sort of veneration, as a feat... of physical and moral endurance and the courage of Ajax.”*

But it's so hard! (said in a whiny voice)

If you have not written a novel yourself, have you considered the scope of the task? I have so much more admiration for those who have, after reading this:

“Anybody can write a short story - a bad one, I mean - who has industry and paper and time enough; but not every one may hope to write even a bad novel.  It is the length that kills. The accepted novelist may take his novel up and put it down, spend days upon it in vain, and write not any more than he makes haste to blot.  Not so the beginner.  Human nature has certain rights; instinct - the instinct of self-preservation - forbids that any man (cheered and supported by the consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the miseries of unsuccessful literary toil beyond a period to be measured in weeks.  There must be something for hope to feed upon.  The beginner must have a slant of wind, a lucky vein must be running, he must be in one of those hours when the words come and the phrases balance of themselves - even to begin.  And having begun, what a dread looking forward is that until the book shall be accomplished!”

I hope that wasn't discouraging. Obviously successful writers must have determination. He mentions another tool every writer should use, a map.

The Sun Rises Where?

The idea for the novel Treasure Island came to him from a map he drew with his stepson. It's one of the most famous maps in literature.

In the development and research process nothing grounds you quite like a map. Now in our age of Google Earth we can zoom right to any area we need, and once there, enter street view and get a fuller sense of our character's surroundings. I can't afford to travel to Robert Louis Stevenson's native Edinburgh, but I did the next best thing and zoomed over there and took this screenshot.

Using a map will help you avoid errors in your characters' timetables and directions. Robert Louis Stevenson tells how maps have helped him in his writing.

“It is, perhaps, not often that a map figures so largely in a tale, yet it is always important.  The author must know his countryside, whether real or imaginary, like his hand; the distances, the points of the compass, the place of the sun’s rising, the behaviour of the moon, should all be beyond cavil. ...But it is my contention - my superstition, if you like - that who is faithful to his map, and consults it, and draws from it his inspiration, daily and hourly, gains positive support, and not mere negative immunity from accident.  The tale has a root there; it grows in that soil; it has a spine of its own behind the words.  Better if the country be real, and he has walked every foot of it and knows every milestone.  But even with imaginary places, he will do well in the beginning to provide a map; as he studies it, relations will appear that he had not thought upon; he will discover obvious, though unsuspected, short-cuts and footprints for his messengers; and even when a map is not all the plot, as it was in Treasure Island, it will be found to be a mine of suggestion.”

And one final thing, here's a poster of RLS with a thought-provoking quote on writing.

*All quotes are taken from Robert Louis Stevenson's Essays in the Art of Writing.