RUMINATIONS ON WRITING

There are times when writers of any genre get up in the morning, primed to write, go into their writerly lairs, turn on their computers and…and end up staring into space looking for the sun to appear and shine in their brains. On such occasions, many of us resort to writing about writing and feel mildly satisfied that we’ve been vigorous enough to produce a few sentences. 

Today is such a day, and I’m armed with tools I read about in a recent article concerning composing poetry. The poet said that he got first draft results from writing with a fountain pen — a good one — in a journal containing high quality paper and, sometimes, from using an old manual typewriter. So, a friend gave me a quality fountain pen (no, not a Mont Blanc, but a good pen) for my birthday, and I bought a moleskin journal a la Hemingway style with graph paper lines and for awhile, the fountain pen produced a fountain of language. I haven’t purchased an old Olivetti like the one I used in Iran when I wrote columns to send back to a newspaper in New Iberia, Louisiana, but this morning’s bout with writer’s block has inspired a search for the typewriter.

In the foreword to Strunk and White’s 4th edition of The Elements of Style, Roger Angell tells of E.B. White’s Tuesday morning battles with words for White’s “Notes and Comments” column that appeared in The New Yorker and how he was often silent and preoccupied at lunch time, excusing himself early to get back to working on this column. “He rarely seemed satisfied,” Angell writes. “It isn’t good enough,” White said at times. “I wish it were better.” I might add, would that any writer could compose such pithy, humorous, and wide-ranging topics once a week for fifty years!

Angell also says that although White’s prose was celebrated for its ease and clarity, he had to be eternally attentive to style to maintain that celebrated standard. Early White essays showcased what Rebeca M. Dale regarded as “life’s little adversities — short, frothy, witty, even sometimes flippant, articles,” but his later pieces became longer and more serious. In either case, White was a dedicated author who for more than fifty years, practiced his craft despite mornings when he felt dissatisfied with the finished product.

When I was writing Their Adventurous Will: Profiles of Memorable Louisiana Women, I interviewed Shirley Ann Grau, author of The Keepers of the House, a book that won a Pulitzer Prize, and she confessed that she often cooked to avoid beginning any writing. She further explained that writing was “making a structure,” an art that required work and honing of technique.

Oh well, my trouble with blank spaces this morning could be worse. E. B. White says that “life is apt to be translated more accurately by a person who sees it break through the mist at unexpected moments, a person who experiences sudden clear images…his eyes are poppy and tired, and his sensitized mind has become fogged by the frequent, half-stimuli of imagined sight…he knows he must invite his soul…” And, White quips, “especially when he has received a thousand dollar advance from a publishing house.” 

We writers should all have the latter problem! Meanwhile, I think about purchasing an Olivetti manual typewriter and walk out on the porch to ruminate on Sherwood Anderson’s words: “Writing is not an occupation.”