If, in the unlikely event I ever get round to writing a personal memoir (nothing so hifalutin as an autobiography), I might encapsulate the whole shambolic roller-coaster ride in a terse executive summary, to wit…
From age seven, I discovered a fascination for words, and I knew I wanted to write. And indeed I scribbled away. With adolescence came writer’s block, and with adulthood, the realisation I needed to go off at a tangent and do something entirely different. I disappeared into medicine. Forty odd years later by some gift of benevolent providence I was permitted to return to my first love, and publish.
Codswallop.
You must realise, that is a version of the truth, a cosmetic, sanitised version. But I thought of it when I listened to Desert Island Discs yesterday. Lauren Laverne interviewed Kate Mosse (the writer, as opposed to Kate Moss the supermodel, whose own recent outing as castaway I thought rather impressive). Anyway Ms Laverne asked Ms Mosse what advice she would give to up-and-coming young writers. She advised them to emulate Picasso, who went into his studio every day, even as an elderly man. When he was asked why he persisted in doing this, he said that if and when inspiration struck, he wanted to be there. So writers have to report to their desk every day, even when they don’t feel like it. You might not write your novel that day, but you might, for example, pen a description of steam coming out of a kettle. So when the time comes, you are match fit.
It’s good advice. As a matter of fact I’m following it, even now, as I write. But it’s not the whole story. I might rather be inclined to state, ostensibly, something diametrically opposite: don’t live in a garret. Go out into the real world and live a life. I think it was Doris Lessing who said that the problem for a writer was not how to write, but how to live. (She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, like Bob Dylan in 2016, with apparent reluctance.) The fact is that if you live most of your life hunched over a keyboard, in front of a computer screen, you are not likely to know much about real life. And you are also likely to get very lonely.
Another invaluable piece of advice often given to writers is to read widely across time and space, in different genres and different languages. Wise counsel again. But this too has its limitations, which run parallel to those of the recluse occupant of the garret. The experience you accrue is second-hand. The life you thus choose to lead through reading is vicarious.
(And you are also likely to get very lonely.)
So there is a balance to be struck between leading a life and then producing something, in letters, born of your own personal experience. The writers I have most admired have had hinterland; more, they have led another life. Ian Fleming was in wartime intelligence. He was an unsuccessful stockbroker and later a successful journalist at the foreign desk of the Times. John Buchan was also in wartime intelligence. He was a publisher, an MP, and Governor-General of Canada. Somerset Maugham qualified as a doctor and he said himself that he wished he had spent more time in the profession, precisely because it would have afforded him a very special and privileged way of entering people’s lives. This I can attest to.
T. S. Eliot (Nobel Laureate 1948) was a banker, and a publisher. (Incidentally Four Quartets was Kate Mosse’s Desert Island book.) Sorley MacLean was a school teacher. Albert Camus (Nobel Laureate 1957) was a philosopher and a political activist, as was George Orwell. Churchill, who even surprised himself by winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953, had so many second jobs that it would be hard to compile a comprehensive list. Bertrand Russell (Nobel Laureate 1950) in a very long life was a mathematician, a logician, a philosopher, and again a political activist.
But hinterland brings its own problems, precisely because it is hinterland. I think this is what Doris Lessing was alluding to when she talked of the writer’s difficulties in leading a life. You can have a hobby, or a pastime, or a profession, and you can approach it with profound interest, conviction, enthusiasm, effectiveness, and even passion. You may do it well. You might receive plaudits. To all outward appearances, and to all intents and purposes, you might be deemed “a success”.
But there is one thing you cannot do. You cannot give it your all. Because that has been reserved, like it or not, for something else.
So, in the unlikely event that I am cast away (but I can’t be cast away as I am cast away already… fetch me my viola…) and Ms Laverne asks me for advice for aspiring writers, I will say, go for a walk. I get my best inspiration out of doors. Out in the real world, you will find your subject matter. And if your idea is truly original, then you will find our way back to the writing desk. But you might take some unexpected diversions on the way. As John Lennon said, life is what happens to you, while you’re busy making other plans.
jamescalumcampbell 