Column:
Writing from the Real World
Title: Time to Write
Author: Victor D.
Infante
I think--and please, correct me if I’m
wrong--it was Truman Capote who wrote that the “art of writing is the art of
attaching the seat of one’s pants to the seat of one’s chair.” I was reminded of
this last night while speaking to an old friend of mine, who was “going back to
writing.” I love this guy, and he’s a very talented writer, but it baffles me
that anyone can go months, sometimes even years, between writing. For me--and, I
imagine, for most of you--writing is a compulsion. To borrow a metaphor from the
poet Tom Foster, my muse is a whip-wielding dominatrix Hell-bent on keeping me
tied to this idiot keyboard to the neglect off all other
things.
Oh, but it’s the little things that throw you
off, isn’t it? You’re sitting there, in the writing groove, trudging a
radioactive dinosaur through Tokyo or whatever it is you do, and then the phone
rings. Or your spouse threatens to hang you from the balcony by your toenails if
you don’t do the dishes. Or the ferret’s gotten caught in the bedspring
again.
And BAM! You’re concentration’s gone faster
than “Harsh Realm” got taken off the air. You fend off the telemarketer, you do
the dishes, you free the ferret from its predicament, and you come back to the
keyboard.
And…nothing. It’s a damn
blank.
Now, back in the day, this would have been
problematic, but you’d deal with it by sitting there and staring at it until
somethinga poem, a love letter, an episode of Full Houseanything that can be
hashed out quickly came out, and that would usually burst the dam. This trick
works equally well on the typewriter’s modern counterpart, the computer, except
for one thing: the computer comes with SO many more distractions. One imagines
that Shakespeare, writing “Hamlet” today on a PC, would have gone something like
this:
To be,
or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to
suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms
against a sea of troubles,
[Bard stops to check e-mail. Plays three
rounds of solitaire to “clear his head.]
And by opposing end them? To
die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and
the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a
consummation
[Bard stops. Walks outside for a cigarette. Returns to
desk and proceeds to natter about “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” online for the next
fifteen minutes.]
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To
sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
[Bard stops to peruse
Neil Gaiman’s online blog, plays two rounds of Magic: the Gathering on
the computer and downloads the entire new Springsteen album.]
Perhaps
this is why so many movies like “Dumb and Dumber” are made these days, and so
few like “Citizen Kane.” The contemporary writer, prone to distraction from
shiny objects like the aforementioned trapped ferret, is no longer secluded with
his work, but rather handed a direct line to a pool of stimulus. Today’s writer
must be resolute in their discipline, near-heroic in their focus and stoic in
their denial of online pornography. Only then, ONLY THEN, will they find the
much-needed time and space to finish their work. Which they’ll do. Right after
they respond to this e-mail.
Visit Victor's Web Site at http://www.quantumredhead.com/victor
"He drifted
into environmental activism... drawn by a genuine concern for the planet but
also--he tried to be honest about this point--by an antisocial streak that badly
needed an outlet... there was nothing quite so satisfying as a morally justified
act of vandalism." -Matt Ruff, "Sewer, Gas & Electric"
(c)
Victor D. Infante 2002
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