Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

by Dani Shapiro

  When Family History—the most intricately structured of all my novels—was sent to me by the copy editor before its publication, she had carefully taken the book apart and noticed a structural aberration. Apparently the narrative moved between the past and the present in a complex pattern that I had strayed from once during the course of the book, and the copy editor wanted to point out this anomaly to me so that I could address it. The manuscript was covered by different colored Post-its: pink for past, green for present, yellow for what I needed to fix.

  Except . . . I couldn’t make sense of it. Seeing the structure of my book laid out like a map was confusing. How had I done this? I didn’t know. Did it even need fixing? I reread the book—employing every trick I knew. I read it as if I were my own benign best reader. But my book had been reduced to calculus, and I had never been very good at calculus. The structure wasn’t some sort of equation that needed to add up. Pulling it apart de-animated it, made it flat and incomprehensible. I knew what I was doing as I was doing it, but once the book was finished I no longer felt like its author but, rather, as mystified by it as I was by Jacob’s perfect ears. It seemed impossible to me that I’d had anything to do with its creation.

  This is why, when writers who are just starting out ask me when it gets easier, my answer is never. It never gets easier. I don’t want to scare them, so I rarely say more than that, but the truth is that, if anything, it gets harder. The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again. That everything we ever write will be flawed. We may have written one book, or many, but all we know—if we know anything at all—is how to write the book we’re writing. All novels are failures. Perfection itself would be a failure. All we can hope is that we will fail better. That we won’t succumb to fear of the unknown. That we will not fall prey to the easy enchantments of repeating what may have worked in the past. I try to remember that the job—as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy—of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it. To be birthed by it. Each time we come to the end of a piece of work, we have failed as we have leapt—spectacularly, brazenly—into the unknown.

  BUSINESS

  Fine, fine, you might be thinking. All well and good. Uncertainty, rejection, solitude, risk, pajamas all day—this is our lot. We’ve learned to keep good sentences in our ears. To protect our time, work regular hours. But what about the business? We hear that it’s important to go to book parties and writing conferences to make connections. To write a book that has a hook. And to have, you know, thousands of Facebook and Twitter followers. And Pinterest. Goodreads. A presence. A platform.

  Excuse me while I throw up a little. I don’t want to write about this. I really don’t, because like most writers I don’t like thinking about business, or talking about business, or being aware of business at all. Writing career is an oxymoronic phrase. Writers are notoriously pathetic when it comes to money. Have you ever watched a group of us try to divide up the check after dinner? All those credit cards and dollar bills piled in the middle of the table? The tipsy suggestion that the waiter (himself quite possibly a struggling writer) divide it by seven, except for the bar bill, which should only be divided by four, and then add a 20 percent tip?

  Also, platform is one of my all-time least favorite words, unless it’s attached to the sole of a very cool shoe. I’m not fond of networking, either. It seems a calculating and manipulative way of choosing who one hangs out with. And hooks? Hooks are for coats, and even then, only in winter.

  But the fact is that I have managed to support myself and my family as a writer for the past twenty years. Through a precarious and ever-evolving combination of book advances, foreign sales, movie options, royalties, screenwriting, speaking engagements, ghost writing, essays and journalism for magazines, book reviews, the odd corporate writing job, and teaching in academic institutions, retreat centers, as well as privately. Oh, yes, and I do have a Web site—though it doesn’t contribute financially—and a fair number of Facebook friends and followers on Twitter.

  It might seem to you that all this has been the result of a methodically carried-out plan. Or any plan at all. But I planned none of it. Almost everything that has happened in my writing life has been the result of keeping my head down and doing the work. My work led to publication. To teaching jobs. To magazine assignments. To whatever it is I’ve ever done—including founding a writers’ conference. If I had tried to plan any of it, none of it would have happened—of that I am quite certain. And I couldn’t have planned it because I couldn’t have envisioned it. I wasn’t thinking about a career. I was thinking about one book at a time.

  I often tell my students—especially the ones who are impatient—that good work will find its way. When the work is ready, everything else will fall into place. I know you’re sitting there, shaking your head. You don’t believe me. Someone named Bookalicious, whom you follow on Twitter, who has never published a word in her life, has shared her fourteen social media strategies for writers. You’re back to contemplating platforms and hooks again. You may imagine that there’s a magic key that will unlock the door and all the secrets of well-published writers will come tumbling out. But I’ll bet you that just about any contemporary writer you admire has never spent a single moment thinking about what their platform or hook might be.

  If you work hard—with focus, diligence, integrity, honesty, optimism, and courage—on your own tiny corner of the tapestry, you just might produce something good. And if you produce something good, other writers will help you. They’ll call their agents, their editors. They’ll write letters on your behalf. Your teacher will lift you up on her shoulders. She will hold you aloft so that you can catch hold, so you can have the same chance she’s had. Believe me. Nothing will make her happier.

  NEXT

  Coming to the end of writing a book is bittersweet. It must be a bit like seeing your kid off to college. You want your kid to go to college. You’re pleased that you’ve raised an independent person. You marvel that this tall, complex creature is what’s become of that lima-bean-sized blur you first saw on a sonogram eighteen years earlier. The printout from that sonogram is still tucked in the back of your bedside table. How have eighteen years gone by? You pack boxes, cart computer and stereo equipment, help set up a dorm room, and then you get into your car, put your head on the steering wheel, and weep.

  If you have done your job—as a parent, as a writer—you’ve thrown your whole heart into this. And now your job is done. And you are bereft. A writer who has finished a book is an empty nester. What now? Whenever I have found myself in this condition, I always promise myself that this time, this time, I will do what Anthony Trollope did each time he finished a novel. He drew a line across the page beneath his final sentence—and then he started a new one. No time to think. No time to mull over all the reasons why not. He just simply . . . kept going.

  But I never do. That was Trollope’s rhythm, not mine. Many of us need time between books whether we like it or not. When I finish a book, I’m depleted. All the concerns that I kept at bay while working on the book now march back into my consciousness. Remember us? A mild depression settles in, surprising me. It surrounds me like a fine mist and before I know it the world is unapprehendable. At precisely the moment that I am free to go back into civilization and stay a while, I feel, instead, more isolated than I do when I spend days and days speaking to no one. Once again, I feel trapped inside myself, as if someone has pressed the mute button. What do I feel? What do I think? When I’m not writing, I don’t know.

  I’ve tried many remedies for this between-books funk. I tell myself that I should use this time to relax, think, catch up on paperwork, give myself time off. But the only remedy—the only cure—for the writer is writing. It isn’t about the project, it’s about the practice. Whether in the midst of a serious piece of work or just taking notes, the page is where we come to meet ourselves. Most of us can’t tolera
te extended breaks. We are reminded how lousy, how out of touch we feel when we’re away from the page. So as you come to the end, promise yourself—as I am promising myself—that you will sit down tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. Not to start something new. Not with the expectations or fantasies of what you might (or might not) accomplish. But to stay engaged with the practice of writing.

  For eighty years, Pablo Casals, one of the greatest cellists who ever lived, began his day in the same manner. “I go to the piano and I play two Preludes and Fugues of Bach. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, and with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.”

  STILL WRITING

  My friend Mark, a sculptor whose large-scale works in granite and marble have been commissioned by Stanford University and Penn State, whose pieces are in some of the most prominent art collections in the country, and who is a well-respected professor at the New York Academy of Art, pulled me aside at a dinner party.

  “Somebody just asked me if I was still doing my sculpture thing,” he said.

  I laughed.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “How was I supposed to respond? ‘Are you still doing that brain surgery thing?’”

  I thought of all the times that I’ve been asked if I’m still writing. I’ve been asked this by acquaintances and strangers, even by fans, readers of mine. Still writing? It always felt, to me, like a shameful thing that I was being asked this—that surely if I had written more books, won more awards, made more money, was better known, I wouldn’t be dealing with this question. Still writing? Over the years, I’ve assumed there must be a point at which this would cease to be asked. After two books? Five? Seven? After being interviewed on NPR? The Today Show? Oprah, for gods sake? Though I felt protective of my friend, it was a relief—ridiculous though it was—to hear that he had to deal with the same question. As if he might have outgrown it. Changed course. Gone into law—or opened a fish store—instead.

  I’ve asked around, and discovered that every artist and writer I know contends with a version of this question. It’s asked of writers who are household names. It’s asked of photographers whose work hangs in the Museum of Modern Art. It’s asked of stage actors who have won Tonys. Of poets whose work is regularly published in the finest journals. No one who spends her life creating things seems exempt from it. Still writing? Oh, and I’m pretty sure that the person asking it means no harm. It’s just an awkward stab at social chitchat. But best to stick with the weather, or the miseries of the college admissions process, or the deliciousness of the soup.

  Still writing? I usually nod and smile, then quickly change the subject. But here is what I would like to put down my fork and say: Yes, yes, I am. I will write until the day I die, or until I am robbed of my capacity to reason. Even if my fingers were to clench and wither, even if I were to grow deaf or blind, even if I were unable to move a muscle in my body save for the blink of one eye, I would still write. Writing saved my life. Writing has been my window—flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence—my way of interpreting everything within my grasp. Writing has extended that grasp by pushing me beyond comfort, beyond safety, past my self-perceived limits. It has softened my heart and hardened my intellect. It has been a privilege. It has whipped my ass. It has burned into me a valuable clarity. It has made me think about suffering, randomness, good will, luck, memory, responsibility, and kindness, on a daily basis—whether I feel like it or not. It has insisted that I grow up. That I evolve. It has pushed me to get better, to be better. It is my disease and my cure. It has allowed me not only to withstand the losses in my life but to alter those losses—to chip away at my own bewilderment until I find the pattern in it. Once in a great while, I look up at the sky and think that, if my father were alive, maybe he would be proud of me. That if my mother were alive, I might have come up with the words to make her understand. That I am changing what I can. I am reaching a hand out to the dead and to the living and the not yet born. So yes. Yes. Still writing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Teaching creative writing has sustained me in countless ways. It has taught me the art of close reading. It has shown me that a group of serious students around a workshop table can become its own kind of sacred community. It has forced me to show up on time in grown-up clothes. For taking a chance on a young writer way back when, my gratitude to Alan Zeigler at Columbia University, who gave me my first job. Thanks too, to E. L. Doctorow at NYU and Robert Polito at The New School. To all of my students, past and present, but particularly those in my long-standing private workshop. To my former student and dear friend and coconspirator Hannah Tinti, who helped create The Sirenland Writers’ Conference. To Antonio and Carla Sersale, who allow us to hold the conference each year in their magical hotel, Le Sirenuse. To Jim and Karen Shepard, John Burnham Schwartz, Ron Carlson, Peter Cameron, Susan Orlean, and Karen Russell, who are the world’s best colleagues. To my wonderful agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, and to Elisabeth Schmitz, extraordinary editor, my deepest appreciation. And finally, everything begins and ends with my husband, Michael Maren, and our son, Jacob. Loves of my life.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  STILL WRITING

  Also by Dani Shapiro

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  STILL WRITING

  INTRODUCTION

  BEGINNINGS

  SCARS

  RIDING THE WAVE

  INNER CENSOR

  CORNER

  A SHORT BAD BOOK

  A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN

  TRACTION

  SHIMMER

  PERMISSION

  READING

  TOEHOLD

  SEEDS

  THE BLANK PAGE

  OUTSIDER

  HABIT

  BIG IDEAS

  GETTING TO WORK

  AUDIENCE OF ONE

  SMITH CORONA

  BEING PRESENT

  AMBITION

  FOG

  LUCK

  GUIDES

  WHAT YOU KNOW?

  PIANO

  FIVE SENSES

  BAD DAYS

  MESS

  WRITING IN THE DARK

  MIDDLES

  BUILDING THE BOAT

  COURAGE

  MUSES

  TRUST

  RHYTHM

  COMPOSING

  CHANGE

  BEGINNING AGAIN

  TICS

  STRUCTURE

  CHANNEL

  SECOND ACTS

  ORDINARY LIFE

  SECRETS

  PRACTICE

  INHERITANCE

  NOT ALWAYS SO

  GRAVY

  THE CAVE

  CONTROL

  READING YOURSELF

  DUMB

  BREAKING THE RULES

  SPIT

  CIGARETTE BREAK

  CHARACTER

  DISTANCE

  EDGES

  MONDAYS

  FLOW

  ENDS

  THE BEST PART

  EXPOSURE

  RISK

  ON HAVING THE LAST WORD

  TRIBE

  PATIENCE

  WHAT IS YOURS

  ECHO

  BREAK

  DANCE

  BETRAYAL

  LOST FINGERS

  STEWARD

  WORKSHOP

  ASTONISHMENT

  ENVY

  UNCERTAINTY

  BUSINESS

  NEXT

  STILL WRITING

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

 

 

 
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