Writing for Publication-Writing Journal

September 17, 2006

I just finished reading, On Becoming a Novelist, by John Gardner and would highly recommend it. The author talks about the writer's nature, his/her training, education and the need to have faith in yourself to be able to write.

A novelist gets his ideas from life's experiences that are kept as symbols in memory. The noblest originality isn't stylistic, but visionary and intellectual, the writer's accurate presentation of what he, himself, has seen, heard, thought, and felt. Detail is the lifeblood of fiction. The novelist develops an acute eye, sometimes bordering on the psychic, for human feelings and behaviour, tastes and habitats, pleasure and sufferings. An aesthetically successful story will contain a sense of life's strangeness, however humdrum its makings.

"Does the study of creative writing and literature help a writer to be better at their craft." His answer is. "Generally yes." "Will the study of it improve a student's chances of supporting myself?" "Possibly. The world has far more writing teachers than it needs, and as a rule it is publication, not degrees, that impress employers. He later on gives an estimate of how much a professional writer makes." It's $4,000-$6,000/annual. That figure does mean most writers shouldn't rely on writing as their primary source of income.

If writing workshops are attended, they need to have standards for good fiction--creation of a vivid and continuous dream, authorial generosity, intellectual and emotional significance, elegance and efficiency, and strangeness. For young writers they need to be positive experiences. They should not teach or encourage writing formulas.

Senior studies in a broad range of interests provide tools that writers can employ. It isn't necessary for all writers to have University diplomas, but not having them, does narrow the number of tools a writer has exposure to which causes limitations to the work that is produced.

What the book stresses most is that a true novelist is not so much of a profession as a yoga, or "way," an alternative to ordinary life-in-the-world. Its benefits are quasi-religious--a changed quality of mind and heart, satisfactions no non-novelist can understand--and its rigors generally bring no profit except to the spirit.