The Writing Life Too

I woke this morning and in my dream was my Aunt Kathleen, who has been dead almost ten years from cancer. She was speaking to me as I awoke and I lay there for a long time thinking about what she told me. If you have problems remembering or hanging on to your dreams in the morning, it helps to stay in the same position as when you awoke. Meanwhile, sky is dusky colored and rain is predicted for the next few days. I still have lots of gardening chores to accomplish this fall so I’m hoping for a spate of drier weather.

Something odd has been happening with my body clock. I seem to be writing my new book in the middle of night. Wait a minute—that last sentence was imprecise. I’m writing much of my new book in the middle of the night. I’m typically a morning writer, but my body clock has spun off into an entirely different pattern and instead of fighting it, I’m sitting here, working away. And making progress. Planning on passing it along to my agent at the end of November.

File this under “I wish I would have said this.” It’s Margaret Atwood speaking at the Whiting Foundation which was honoring the new winners. Here are several paragraphs from this wise and witty writer:
“On this occasion it seems that I’m to act as a kind of symbolic dignitary – writers can’t be actual dignitaries, as they are by nature too undignified – and wield a virtual wand of blessing, like the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio, or wave a banner from a casement window as the young troops ride out to do battle. Gird on your word-swords, I must say to them! Buckle up those adjectives! Make sure your plots are tight, your epigrams sharp and pointed, your lyrical intervals lacking in bathos. Be vigilant – there are ambushes everywhere. On one side lurk the critics, getting ready to sneer and denounce, or worse, to praise for the wrong reasons; on the other side your parent figures, who always wanted you to be doctors, and who have furnished themselves with a list of writers such as Checkhov who were writers, yes, but doctors too: why can’t YOU do that? This is not helpful.

And on the third side is a stack of bills – bills for things like the rent – that whisper in their papery voices about the impossibility of making a living doing what you most wish to do. Alas, there is no inevitable connection, positive or negative, between talent and money. A bad book can make piles of money, a good book none. Or else a lot. It does happen. But nothing can be foreseen, because writing is among other things a form of gambling. You can win in one throw. You can lose disastrously. Fortune is a notoriously cruel goddess.

This is the moment for a bracing quote from Tennyson: “Doubt Not, Go Forward – If thou doubt’st, The Beasts will tear thee piecemeal.” Fare well, I will say to the anointed ten – the fate of our language is in your hands, and it is a crucial fate – for if these the future guardians of it should falter or disappear, and if even our human language should fail us –should it become a rusty and untrustworthy tool – where will that leave us?”

And by the way, Atwood’s newest book is Year of the Flood. Haven’t read it yet, but sounds intriguing.