Odd Type Writers

by Celia Blue Johnson

  Capote wrote his first two drafts in pencil and didn’t get up to type the third round. He placed a typewriter on his knees and, despite the uneven surface, still managed to transcribe his work onto yellow paper at the impressive rate of one hundred words a minute. The manuscript was then set aside. Capote decided the fate of the work with fresh eyes sometime later. If he wanted to submit the piece for publication, he typed it once more on white paper.

  With each round of revision, Capote evaluated his prose with the eye of a master craftsman. He considered every little detail, right down to the punctuation marks. From the inner workings of a sentence to the framework of the story, Capote staged each part of his manuscript with great care. Early in his career, he used detailed outlines, though eventually he found there was no need for that step; a good idea would stick in his mind. “I’ve always had the illusion that a story or a novel springs into my mind in toto—plot, characters, scenes, dialog, everything—in one long rush,” he noted. Still, he did prefer to write the final pages before he was well under way. The ending, like a cardinal point, helped guide him to the final destination.

  Capote warned, “We must be on guard against that feverish state called inspiration, which is often a matter of nerves rather than muscle. Everything should be done coldly, with poise.” And yet it seems that an unexpected burst of creativity—the “one long rush”—was an essential counterbalance to Capote’s orderly procedure. Some of his best books were set into motion with a great big spark. And he was fully aware of the importance of being steered, to a degree, by a wave of inspiration.

  During the winter of 1944, Capote was midway through his first novel when he decided to abandon it. He was walking through the wilderness in Monroeville, Alabama, when the idea for a new novel struck. The creative flash was so disorienting that he had trouble finding his way home. When he did get back, he raced upstairs, and began to work “with pathetic optimism.” The result was his New York Times bestselling debut, Other Voices, Other Rooms.

  While in Monroeville, Capote adopted a routine of working in bed in the middle of the night. He was living with his aunts at the time. They questioned his schedule in a caring yet overbearing way. He recalled their criticism: “But you’ve got everything turned upside down. You’re ruining your health.” Their constant watch drove Capote to move to New Orleans, where he could work wherever and whenever he pleased. But, after only a few months, he moved up to Manhattan to live with his mother, Nina, and stepfather, Joe Capote. He remained an “upside-down” author in each place, composing his scenes from around 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., while most people slept.

  Like his debut, Capote’s “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood also began with a sudden jolt of inspiration. In November 1959, Capote was flipping through the New York Times when he stumbled across a brief article. With spare detail, it told of a ruthless murder in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas. Capote was hooked immediately. He promptly contacted an editor at the New Yorker to pitch a piece about the crime. Capote got the assignment, raced out to the Midwest, and began to work on an article that would evolve into an epic book.

  By the time he wrote In Cold Blood, Capote had shifted to writing in the daytime. His schedule would certainly have met his aunts’ approval, though one can only imagine their response to his cycle of coffee, tea, sherry, and martinis. And, despite the fact that this new routine could be described by his relatives as “right side up,” Capote, true to his character, still deviated from the norm by writing while lying down.

  Off the Recorder

  A tape recording can help or, according to a couple of renowned writers, hinder the creative process. Truman Capote never brought a tape recorder to the countless interviews he conducted for In Cold Blood. He didn’t even carry a notebook. Capote asserted, “If you erect any kind of mechanical barrier, it destroys the mood and inhibits people from talking freely.” The writer relied on a photographic memory to retain the facts, which were promptly recorded on paper post-interview. His childhood friend Harper Lee also lent a hand with the interviews, and they compared notes to confirm details.

  William S. Burroughs used tape recorders for literary experiments, but he thought dictation was an unnecessary, painstaking process. He noted, “I never used a tape recorder to compose onto it—it’s a waste of time. It’s more trouble to take it off a tape recorder than it is to put it on a typewriter to begin with.”

  Gay Talese blamed the downfall of journalism on the tape recorder. He condemned the device as “number one the worst thing that ever happened to serious non-fiction writing.” Talese believed tape recorders reduced interviews to questions and answers. He preferred to follow his subjects from place to place, and even outdoors, in order to assemble complex portraits.

  Early to Write

  FLANNERY O’CONNOR

  1925–1964

  If I waited for inspiration, I’d still be waiting.

  —Flannery O’Connor, on her daily writing habit, in an interview for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine, October 1959

  A schedule is nothing new in the writing world. It’s important to find the best time to work, whether that means juggling a hectic lifestyle or pinpointing the hour one is most creative. But few people are able to stick with the same time slot for most of their lives, even fewer on a daily basis. Flannery O’Connor set aside three hours every morning to write and almost never skipped a day. Her ritual was woven so tightly into her life that it was as natural and necessary as eating a meal or taking a next breath.

  During the 1950s, O’Connor lived in a white farmhouse a few miles outside Milledgeville, Georgia. The house was located at the end of a dirt road, where peacocks often roamed (see page 49). Brick steps led to a wide front porch, which was lined with rocking chairs. Through a screen door and to the left was O’Connor’s bedroom. Every morning, every single day of the week, the slender author with striking blue eyes would sit down in that room and write.

  O’Connor began each day by attending an early mass. Then she would retreat to a sanctuary of a different sort. O’Connor’s small bedroom doubled as a study. It contained two large windows, but she opted to face away from the glass. O’Connor planted her desk directly behind an armoire. When the devout writer looked up from her work, the view was plain and static. The blank panels of wood were a constant, as opposed to the shifting landscape of the farm.

  O’Connor’s desk was a makeshift piece of furniture, which she described in a letter to her close friend Betty Hester. (An insightful fan letter from Hester was the catalyst for their lifelong friendship.) O’Connor wrote, “I have a large ugly brown desk, one of those that a typewriter sits in a depression in the middle of and on either side are drawers. In front I have a stained mahogany orange crate with the bottom knocked out and a cartridge shell box that I have sat up there to lend height.” A plank of wood connected the improvised shelves. Scattered all over the desk were papers, notes, and articles that offered inspiration.

  It may seem surprising that O’Connor’s work space did not fall into the same order as her strict schedule, but she was not at all rigid when it came to the act of writing. Her stories evolved rather than adhering to a careful outline. She observed, “I just kind of feel [the story] out like a hound-dog. I follow the scent.” Inspiration was not something she could plan, which is precisely why she needed her daily ritual. O’Connor had to be ready, fingers near the typewriter. That way she could be certain, she noted, “if anything comes I am there waiting to receive it.”

  O’Connor worked slowly rather than in large bursts. Every morning, during her unvarying appointment, she inched forward line by line, fell back several pages, and crept forward again. She wrote about three pages per sitting, sometimes less, and often discarded her work the following day. O’Connor valued each page, whether it was tossed or kept, as an important part of the creative process. In a letter to Cecil Dawkins, she wrote, “Sometimes I work for months and have to throw everything away, but I don’t think any of that was time
wasted. Something goes on that makes it easier when it does come well. And the fact is that if you don’t sit there every day, the day it would come well, you won’t be sitting there.”

  O’Connor kept to that same regimen every day, even on weekends, for the majority of her adult life. And yet she did not fall into it with ease. She admitted, “The discipline doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’ve had to develop it.” There was a turning point, when O’Connor decided to adopt the strict schedule, or at least work toward it, and she was far from her home state when it took place.

  Twenty-year-old O’Connor arrived at the University of Iowa as a graduate student intending to study journalism. It quickly became apparent that she was far better suited to creative writing, and she changed her major accordingly. O’Connor did not adapt well to the northern environment. Cold winters were a shock to the Georgia native, and she felt desperately homesick. Her Southern twang was incomprehensible to students and professors alike. When asked to read one of her stories aloud, O’Connor would hand the piece to a fellow student—preferably, to maintain a sense of her voice, another Southerner—but one with a less powerful drawl.

  Despite her outsider status, O’Connor developed significantly as a writer in Iowa. It was there she learned one of the most important—and perhaps simplest and most straightforward—lessons of her life. It was a nugget of wisdom passed along by her Imaginative Writing professor, Paul Horgan. He advised her to pick a time and place to write every day, and she decided to adopt this simple practice.

  O’Connor mastered her daily schedule as a graduate and postgraduate student at the University of Iowa. Every morning, when many other students slept in, she went to mass and then returned to her bedroom to write. During this time, she developed several short stories, including “The Geranium” and “The Train.” It may not have been easy at first, but eventually the routine became a daily habit that stayed with her wherever she went, from city to city, through sickness and health.

  After she left Iowa, O’Connor spent almost a year at Yaddo, an artist’s colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. She then followed her friend and writing advocate Robert Lowell to New York City, the epicenter of the publishing world. The metropolis was bustling and chaotic, but O’Connor did not let it interfere with her schedule: first mass, then a stretch of writing, as she plugged away at her debut novel, Wise Blood. After six months in the city, O’Connor moved to rural Connecticut to live with Robert and Sally Fitzgerald.

  O’Connor’s room was perched above the Fitzgeralds’ garage. It was a peaceful location and the rent was cheap. Every morning O’Connor attended mass with Sally or Robert, who were also devout Catholics, and then she wrote, with her attention fixed on the developing novel. All she had to do in exchange for the ideal setup was babysit in the afternoons, and by that time, she was already done writing for the day. Finally, O’Connor had settled into a place that felt like home, but her cozy life up north was short-lived. After a year and a half with the Fitzgeralds, she was forced to move back to Georgia.

  When she was twenty-five, O’Connor was diagnosed with lupus. The degenerative disease had killed her father in his forties and it would now alter the course of her life. She battled sickness (which, at first, she did not know was lupus) for more than a year, planning to move back to Connecticut once she regained her strength. Unfortunately, it became clear that O’Connor would need help to survive. The young writer moved onto a dairy farm with her mother, Regina. She dubbed the place Andalusia and lived there for the rest of her life.

  O’Connor was forced to use aluminum crutches as the disease worsened. Lupus targeted her hips, making it difficult to walk, but it did not weaken her fierce spirit. In an interview for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine, O’Connor stated, “The disease is of no consequence to my writing, since for that I use my head and not my feet.” She maintained her routine despite the chronic pain that came with lupus.

  Soon after she arrived at Andalusia, O’Connor secured a publisher (Harcourt, Brace&Company) for Wise Blood. The novel was published in 1952 without widespread fanfare, but it marked a positive shift in her career. She would, from that point on, be regarded not only as a short story writer, but a novelist, too. Over the years, she produced another novel and two short story collections, and her morning routine charted the steady heartbeat of this literary life. With each thrum, she inched forward, slowly and meticulously creating a body of work that was by no means prolific and yet, since its publication, has received much critical attention.

  When O’Connor was thirty-nine, she was admitted to a hospital. The lupus had grown worse. Though her body had started to fail her, O’Connor’s mind was alive and spirited. All she wanted was to write. O’Connor informed a friend, “The doctor says I mustn’t do any work. But he says it’s all right for me to write a little fiction.” So the stubborn author hid a notebook under her pillow, gleefully extracting it when the nurses were out of sight. That way, she was able to sneak in extra work, along with letters to friends. There was no way she was able to stick with her cherished routine during those days, which proved to be her last. Still, rather than letting go, she forged ahead. The literary thrum that was once a series of steady mornings became a flutter: erratic, stolen moments that allowed her to, in her own way, exist.

  Sweet Teeth

  Flannery O’Connor did not smoke while clacking on typewriter keys, though many of her contemporaries did. The Southern writer preferred to indulge her sweet tooth. According to Jean Williams, a friend from the University of Iowa, O’Connor “nibbled on cookies while she wrote.” Vanilla wafers to be exact.

  Unlike O’Connor, short story master Raymond Carver suffered from common literary vices. He smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol for decades (finally giving up drinking in his late thirties). But he shared with O’Connor a penchant for sweet food. He devoured Fiddle Faddle (candy-coated popcorn with nuts), along with doughnuts, brownies, and cookies. And to drink? Coca-Cola and ginger ale.

  Ray Bradbury’s self-prescribed treatment for nerves was ice cream. During the proof stages of his novel Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury began to question elements of the book. Stanley Kauffmann, his editor at the time, flew from New York to Los Angeles to help the panicked author in person. They holed up in Kauffmann’s hotel room, worked through the proofs, and ate a lot of ice cream. Kauffmann recalled, “Well, I couldn’t let him eat alone, so we both put on weight. I felt as if I were dealing with a giant of enthusiasm streaked with doubt that was subdued by ice cream, which I forced myself to eat in order to help him.”

  Acknowledgments

  As I wrote a book about odd writers, I developed a habit of thinking about the oddities that, in part, define the people I care about most. After all, oddities aren’t negative unless you cast them that way. In fact, the nuances that set us apart from one another are often our most superb attributes. For this book, I relied on a number of marvelously odd traits from the people around me.

  Maria Gagliano, my friend, colleague, and constant advocate, is amazingly fierce and kind. She championed Odd Type Writers from the outset and paved a place for it on Perigee’s list. My editor, Meg Leder, helped shape this book with extraordinary insight and patience. She offered support throughout the editorial process. I can’t thank Maria and Meg enough for all of their efforts.

  Nikki Van Noy, another dear friend and talented writer, took time to read my first draft. Her enthusiasm helped buoy me through revisions. I sincerely appreciate her willingness to lend a hand, no matter what time of day or day of the week it might be.

  I wrote this book in the midst of a significant life change. I was midway through the manuscript when my husband, Ian, and I suddenly decided to pick up and move from Brooklyn to Maine. Ian and my daughter, Patricia, who was one at the time, both demonstrated tremendous patience as I danced between the computer screen and half-full boxes. Ian somehow managed to make a whirlwind move feel almost effortless. And, throughout it all, Patricia always made life fun, whethe
r she was demanding to “read-a-booka” or to stomp in a pile of leaves outside.

  We spent our first months in Maine living with my in-laws, Marsha and Scott McConnell. I am thankful to them for welcoming us into their home, which was a lovely writing retreat. My desk faced a window that looked out to row after row of tall deciduous trees. So, while my fingers raced across the computer keys, I could still look up and watch the seasons progress.

  There’s one person I have to thank above all: my mum. Trish Johnson is the most remarkable person I know. She helped me through this book in so many ways, it’s impossible to pinpoint each one. Her inimitable sense of humor was a tremendous support. She can always elicit a laugh from me, with jokes that hinge on the truth rather than avoiding it. It turns out that a good chuckle is a fine cure for just about everything.

  And, since I’m in an odd mood, I’d like to thank a few people who had virtually nothing to do with this book. But, in their own way, they kind of did. My brothers, C.J., Colin, and Christian, and my dad, Carl. We’re so different, the members of my family, but we’re a tight-knit group. Each one of those people helped make this book happen, simply by believing I could do it before I ever did.

  Sources

  Rotten Ideas: Friedrich Schiller

  Carlyle, Thomas. The Life of Friedrich Schiller. London: Chapman and Hall, 1885.

  Eckermann, Johann Peter. Conversations of Goethe. New York: Da Capo Press, 1998.

  Nevinson, Henry Woodd, and John Parker Anderson. Life of Friedrich Schiller. London: Walter Scott, 1889.