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Mh yeah well
Under the subheading Did Not Need To Hear, Neil Gaiman is reading Samuel Delaney on writing. He says,
Delaney is of his generation and his generation is-- half a generation ahead of mine, as it turns out, and hence even more prone to accepting the romantic concept of suffering writer. Err- also male, which is relevant, I think. Male writers, like male anythings now-I-think-of-it, start young, blaze early, and then slow. Female writers start slow and build up steam. It's perfectly possible for a woman writer to /begin/ writing in her forties and fifties and go chugging along happily thereafter, without grieving that she isn't blazing with the same brilliance as when she was seventeen.
Now, the idea of The Silence chills me as much as anyone. There's a nightmare-for-me moment in a Dick Francis thriller, incidental as far as the plot is concerned, where the narrator's poet sister, not an especially nice woman, lets him know that she can't write poetry any more. Low-key and throwaway, something like him asking When's your next book coming out and her saying It's not, and him realizing what that means- it's gone, it's not coming back.
But I always feel that the male idea of life is this remorseless descent from the physical peak of adolescence. (I had a 21 year old friend mourning that he'd passed his best and it was all downhill from there.) They may know better, but it probably *feels* like that, body and bones. Damn few men say Thank god I'm not twenty any more; a lot of women do. Thirty-five is the age I'd have stopped at, though forty-five was just as good, and god knows age has its physical compensations for a woman. No more cramps, no more hormonal migraines, no more bloating-- the list is endless.
So, yeah. I don't see this inevitable oncroaching of Silence accompanying the twinging knees and aching feet. Summer cicadas, more, that sing louder the closer they get to ending.
I was just struck by this paragraph from one of the letters -- to someone who wishes he or she was a writer, but probably isn't. And I thought, I should put it up here for all the people who write to me convinced that they would be happy if only they were writers.
A new art film: I Even Met Happy Writers."Writers are people who write. By and large, they are not happy people. They're not good at relationships. Often they're drunks. And writing -- good writing -- does not get easier and easier with practice. It gets harder and harder -- so eventually the writer must stall out into silence.The silence that waits for every writer and that, inevitably, if only with death (if we're lucky the two may happen at the same time: but they are still two, and their coincidence is rare), the writer must fall into is angst-ridden and terrifying - and often drives us mad. (In a letter to Allen Tate, the poet Hart Crane once described writing as "dancing on dynamite.") So if you're not a writer, consider yourself fortunate."
Delaney is of his generation and his generation is-- half a generation ahead of mine, as it turns out, and hence even more prone to accepting the romantic concept of suffering writer. Err- also male, which is relevant, I think. Male writers, like male anythings now-I-think-of-it, start young, blaze early, and then slow. Female writers start slow and build up steam. It's perfectly possible for a woman writer to /begin/ writing in her forties and fifties and go chugging along happily thereafter, without grieving that she isn't blazing with the same brilliance as when she was seventeen.
Now, the idea of The Silence chills me as much as anyone. There's a nightmare-for-me moment in a Dick Francis thriller, incidental as far as the plot is concerned, where the narrator's poet sister, not an especially nice woman, lets him know that she can't write poetry any more. Low-key and throwaway, something like him asking When's your next book coming out and her saying It's not, and him realizing what that means- it's gone, it's not coming back.
But I always feel that the male idea of life is this remorseless descent from the physical peak of adolescence. (I had a 21 year old friend mourning that he'd passed his best and it was all downhill from there.) They may know better, but it probably *feels* like that, body and bones. Damn few men say Thank god I'm not twenty any more; a lot of women do. Thirty-five is the age I'd have stopped at, though forty-five was just as good, and god knows age has its physical compensations for a woman. No more cramps, no more hormonal migraines, no more bloating-- the list is endless.
So, yeah. I don't see this inevitable oncroaching of Silence accompanying the twinging knees and aching feet. Summer cicadas, more, that sing louder the closer they get to ending.
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Can those poor critters help it? Mother Nature has a keen sense of humor.
Actually the peak age is 18, or so I heard (I testify that 22 is definitely over the hill).
Of course I am referring to the only thing men are good for (aside from cleaning my kitchen).no subject
And what *I* hear is that even a 21-year-old woman can't keep up with the insatiable horniness of an 18-year-old male, and you want them to hit 30 so they'll actually take some *time* over the activity. Not up-in-down in 90 seconds, repeat ad nauseam until she says Look can we get some *sleep* now?
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As in writing (or other arts), women are late bloomers. So the 18-year old male is wasted on the 21-year old female. (heh)
35 is a good age to stop. Self-hate phases aside, during the last one year, I've been liking the me now better than, say, the me 9 years ago.
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(I apologise but I had to indicate that I found this very funny!) ^__^
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I agree with your observations about men. And the notion of the suffering writer or starving artist has never appealed to me. I'd rather be the hardworking artist/writer who consistently produces. It might not all be brilliant but at least it's out there.
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Leaving aside the whole snake pit of See, this *proves* you have no talent for writing why do you even try etc etc.
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I spent a lot of my free time over the last year worrying that the lack of writing time I had due to long work hours meant that I was going to lose whatever gift for writing I had and that I would wake up at 30 and realise it was gone forever (Peter Keating-epiphany style). *embarassed*
Anyway, due to changes in my life, it looks like the long hours are going to continue for the forseeable future, so it makes me feel a bit better to think that I could still become a better writer later on in life.
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Um, well. I stopped writing at 19 because it was all such crap, and started again at 43 with almost no difficulty at all. And produced stuff I still think is good, fifteen years after that. So, no, I don't think it goes away. Just matures.
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Men kind of do have a tendency to collapse into despair under the weight of not having achieved greatness even once in the last three days. I think we have an unfair advantage there.