The Spooky Art

While trying to make headway on a new book, I’ve been reading Norman Mailer’s book on writing, The Spooky Art. If there is anything that can help an author realize that s/he’s not totally neurotic or bordering on the insane, it’s reading something by a writer as famous, acclaimed, and well-established as Norman Mailer and discovering that he suffers the same pains with the process that the rest of us do.

I’m in a Dostoyevskian mood, all dark and Russian. Sometimes it almost takes more sheer will to sit down and write than I can muster. Almost. I do it anyway. I write in a void. Is what I’m doing any good? Mailer says that in his case, "there is always fear in trying to write a good book ... I’m always a little uneasy when my work comes to me without much effort. It seems better to have to forge the will to write on a given day. I find that on such occasions, if I do succeed in making progress against resistance in myself, the result is often good. As I only discover days or weeks later."

Whew!

I observe that sometimes too much thinking gets in the way. If I try too hard to figure it out, I become paralyzed. Is this better than that? Perhaps I should do this instead. I become Hamlet in drag, unable to take action. When I do enjoy myself, when I read what I’ve written and find it good, I have a strange feeling of dislocation, as though the words came from someone else. Mailer experiences the same phenomenon. "On happy days," he writes, "one is writing as if it’s all there, a gift. You don’t even seem to have much to do with it."

How does it come to other authors, I wonder? Is it such a spooky art for everyone? Mailer again : "The act of writing is a mystery, and the more you labor at it, the more you become aware after a lifetime of such activity that it is not anwers which are being offered so much as a greater appreciation of the literary mysteries."

Literary Lush Legends

Since alcohol figures highly in my Geneva Chase mysteries, I thought I’d devote a little time to booze and writers.

I’ve long heard the mythological tales of excessive drinking by writers, the literary lush legends. True? Not true?

All I know is there’s no possible way I can write of edit while consuming alcohol.

Let’s talk about some of the legends, though. In a 2002 article about Norman Mailer written by Oliver Burkeman for The Guardian, he says, “Drinking — like writing, fighting and womanizing — is a sport he (Mailer) has pursued with reckless force ever since he crashed on to the literary landscape at 25, and it has led to fistfights in the street, head-buttings of hostile reviewers, and a vicious clubbing from a policeman whose car he was trying to hail as a taxi. Well into his 60s, he stumbled drunk on to stages and television shows, all the time railing against feminism, friends and fellow writers.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald was another party legend (along with is wife, Zelda). It was said that Fitzgerald was partial to gin because it couldn’t be smelled on his breath. His quote on alcohol is, “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”

Reportedly, it took only a small portion of gin to get Fitzgerald drunk. There are tales about how he and his wife jumped into the fountain at the Plaza Hotel and stripped at the Follies. When asked to come to a “Come as you are” party, he and Zelda arrived in their pajamas. It didn’t take long for Zelda to take hers off and dance naked for the crowd.

Raymond Chandler offered this famous quote, “I think a man ought to get drunk at least twice a year just on principle, so he won’t let himself get snotty about it.” Legend has it that before Chandler had written a single line of The Blue Dahlia, Paramount Studios put the movie into production. Before he could write the ending, Chandler was stopped cold by a severe case of writer’s block. He told his director, John Houseman, that though he was a recovering alcoholic and had been on the wagon for a long time, the only way he could complete the script was if he started drinking again.

Houseman place six secretaries in his house around the clock to look after him, hired a doctor to give Chandler vitamin shots (he stopped eating when he drank), and cars waited at his door to rush pages to the studio as they were written.

Interesting sidebar, it wasn’t until Chandler’s character Philip Marlow introduced the Gimlet in The Long Goodbye that it became a popular cocktail in the United States.

Ernest Hemingway is a favorite literary lush legend. When asked if it was true if he took a pitcher of martinis to work every morning, he answered, “Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes-and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one. Besides, who in hell would mix more than one martini at a time?”

Part of the Hemingway legend is that his favorite cocktail was mojitos. The truth is his ‘go-to’ drink was a martini, made very cold. It’s said that he even froze his Spanish cocktail onions and bragged that he made his martinis so cold that you couldn’t hold it in your hand. “It sticks to the fingers.”

Interesting sidebar: Hemingway’s house in Key West was across the road from the Key West Lighthouse. He often said that it was convenient to live next to a lighthouse because it would guide him home from the bars when he was drunk.

So, what did other authors enjoy drinking?

Oscar Wilde- Absinthe

William Faulkner—Mint Julep

Dorothy Parker—Whiskey Sour

Edgar Allan Poe—Brandy Eggnog

Truman Capote—Screwdriver

Jack Kerouac—Margarita, of course.

I’m not any where near the ballpark as these writers, but personally, I like a nice glass of chardonnay, and I REALLY enjoy an occasional single malt scotch on ice.

Please raise your glasses. My third book, Graveyard Bay, is due out on September 10th. I know I’m going to celebrate. For more information, go to www.thomaskiesauthor.com.

The End Is Not Near

I'm having an existential crisis.  I'm coming down to the end of my ninth Alafair Tucker novel. I can see the finish line. Every day I come closer to the day that I write "The End". It's been a slog, but that doesn't surprise me. It's usually a slog for me. Sometimes it almost takes more sheer will to sit down and write than I can muster. Almost. I do it anyway.  Norman Mailer says, "there is always fear in trying to write a good book ... I’m always a little uneasy when my work comes to me without much effort. It seems better to have to forge the will to write on a given day. I find that on such occasions, if I do succeed in making progress against resistance in myself, the result is often good. As I only discover days or weeks later."

So I keep writing and try not to think about it too much. I observe that sometimes too much thinking gets in the way. If I try too hard to figure it out, I become Hamlet in drag, unable to take action. When I do enjoy myself, when I read what I’ve written and find it good, I have a strange feeling of dislocation, as though the words came from someone else.

So the new book is going right along as expected and I see that the end is near. Until last night. I went to bed late, and as I was drifting off it came to me like a lightning flash in the dark--I should go about it in a totally different way than I have been.

If I had a particular major event happen much earlier in the book, the whole story would be much better. It would make better sense, it would move much faster, it create more suspense. All in all it was an absolutely brilliant and instantaneous insight. I have to do it.

The only problem is that this brilliant alteration calls for a major rewrite. Suddenly the finish line is no longer in sight. Yes, I am excited to pursue the interesting twist that came to me out of the blue, I am also in a Dostoyevskian mood, all dark and Russian. The end is not near.