The Trouble With Writing

by Dennis Green

I have a real problem with writing. Not my own, actually, as I’m a very accomplished writer. Published. Made my living as a writer from the age of 33 on, still get articles published in the local newspapers and blogs, publish novels, short stories, poetry online…love it more than life itself. I write somewhere between 20-50 pages a day, and keep about ten percent of those, do three or four re-writes, and post or publish only the things that meet my own very high standards.

Also taught English Lit, Composition and Bonehead English for ten years, including the works of the greatest writers — Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Flaubert, Melville, Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Hemingway. I also took a keen interest in the “New Journalists” — guys like Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer’s non-fiction.

Everyday, I read a lot, newspapers and magazines, online research articles, books on my Kindle, emails and blogs. But I don’t read a lot of contemporary prose. And I can race through the Sunday paper in only a few minutes. Primarily because the writing is so poor. Flat, predictable, uninteresting, without any verve or voice or personality. No style.

We seem to live in an age of “Anti-Style,” where all that matters is having an opinion, a position, a “take” on things. The problem with this is that so few contemporary writers have ideas that are interesting enough, compelling enough, to hold our attention. And then they blame us for having Attention Deficit Disorder…

One of the few exceptions is Bay Area writer Mick LaSalle, who reviews movies for the San Francisco Chronicle. He is as knowledgeable as Pauline Kael, and a better writer. I had a lively, fun exchange with him via email recently. I took him to task for not knowing about the servant Gerasim from Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illych, as a possible inspiration for a character in a new movie about Tolstoy.

“You need to get out more,” I told him. And then I referred to that other great work of Tolstoy’s, The Cherry Orchard. Ooops! Realizing my error the next morning, I sent him a correx to that end. And then, after another email, I got from him the following:

You had me salivating the other day, when you wrote to tell me how stupid I am -- and then confused Chekhov for Tolstoy. That was a belt high fastball over the plate . . . and you had to spoil it by realizing your mistake.

MICK

So I told him, “Yeah, but I have an excuse, pushing 70. My pals tell me that if I have a senior moment, just wait, and it’ll pass. And sometimes they do.” Some excuse. I wouldn’t buy it either.

But the opportunity for such a lively exchange is rare, and I’m not sure why. I suspect that what’s deceptive is the volume of “content” that gets pushed our way. Let’s face it, really good writing hooked up to a quick and lively mind is not all that common to begin with. Think of all those creative writing classes you took, or writers groups you participated in.

So inevitably, there’s a lot of wasted paper and a lot of wasted ink, (or pixels), and it shouldn’t be surprising. Writing is both a gift, and very hard work. You hone it, your voice, your sense of the craft, but you also work from both a hunger and a spark. You can’t NOT write. If you don’t, you wither inside and die.

And the spark is an ember you have to blow on to make a blaze, like that story by Jack London about the man trying to light a campfire in the snow with just one match. And is it true that the best writers are also failed talkers..? Well, I dunno. Sometimes we have a pretty good gift of gab. Just ask the ladies…

©2010 Dennis Green