Lunatics, authors, and getting black on white

I RECENTLY WAS AN INSTRUCTOR at a writers' conference. Like most authors who are not named Stephen King, I need a day job. That would be teaching film theory and history, at Ball State University, although I do the occasional writers" conference, too, as I enjoy lecturing on the subject.

Whether one scribbles screenplays, biographies, or haiku poetry, there ,are certain commonalities which go with all forms of writing. For example, I start these talks with a quote from novelist Kurt Vonnegut, most famous for the dark comedy classic, Slaughterhouse Five: "This is what I find encouraging about the writing trades: They allow mediocre people who are patient and industrious to revise their stupidity, to edit themselves into something like intelligence. They also allow lunatics to seem saner than some."

As Vonnegut suggests, the craft of writing really is all about rewriting, or editing. Short story author Guy de Maupassant is credited with the axiom, "Get black on white." This simply means, commit something to paper. Then the magic of editing oneself "into something like intelligence" occurs.

Of course, the blank page can be the most intimidating of challenges. Several have likened it to being "no more difficult than opening a vein." Thus, many people relate to the Robert Lewis Stevenson crack, "I dislike writing, but I enjoy having written." There are, of course, modern variations on the same sentiment, such as, "I love being a writer, what I can't stand is the paperwork."

For all the sacrifice of a job well-done, however I cannot help thinking there is a certain false note in the Stevenson line, too. That is, real writers enjoy mucking around in their scribbling, scrambling for just the right word and cadence. Authorship is a love affair with language. Like my passion for motion pictures, I cannot get enough of this phenomenon called writing--and I never have met an author who did not feel the same way.

Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite

Still, it all comes back to editing. James Thurber would put his inspired essays through eight to 10 rewrites. Yet, the secret lies in continuing to write, because, as several authors have suggested, "How we spend our days is how we spend our lives." Ernest Hemingway's goal was a mere 250 words a day--roughly one typed page. Yet, at the end of the year, one has a book, or three screenplays. If an author's writing obsession is strong enough, there also is the added "bonus" of productive guilt. For instance, John Updike once said, "A day when I have produced nothing printable, when I have not gotten any words out, is a day lost and damned." (Did I mention writers sometimes can be a challenge to live with?)

To make the dally writing habit more palatable, I advise nay students to find a work area they enjoy. To illustrate, Mark Twain, and later, Woody Allen, did their best composing in bed. The nearly seven-foot-tall Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up ... using the top of his refrigerator as a desk. Though not nearly so tall, the restless Hemingway enjoyed typing while standing up.

An honorable profession

Regardless of where one creates, writing is the most honorable of professions--that rare career which, even if you do not make money at it, people almost never consider you ridiculous ... other than the occasional relative. However, a writer's ultimate status depends upon his or her home country. Geoffrey Cotterell maintained that, in America, only the successful writer is important; in France, all writers are; in England, no writer is; and, in Australia, you have to explain what a writer is.

The self-discipline needed also involves maximizing every waking moment. Agatha Christie believed, "The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes." Along related fines. I often get ideas during workouts. (It also takes my mind off aching muscles.) Most important, though, the writing life is best fueled by reading. As Thomas Carlyle wrote, "The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity."

Be forewarned, however, that regardless of the type of literature one reads, or attempts to create, writing is an autobiographical form of therapy. My clown biographies and books on various comedy genres all are based in a childhood immersed in humor. Thanks to my dad and both grandfathers (and a tendency to be the class clown), film comedy took precedence over everything. But because my family was not analytical about it, I had a need to explore these subjects in my later books. Consequently, while clowns and comedy comfort us in our short lives with their resilience, returning to this childhood humor also is a way for me to relive warm insights of my youth.

Of course, this necessitates blocking out all those trips to the principal's office. The authority figure behind the desk seldom grasped that I merely was undertaking "applied research" for a future of scribbling film-related books. Go figure.