The fol­low­ing are some of Anton Chekhov’s words on the art of writ­ing, as first quoted in Francine Prose’s Read­ing Like a Writer:

In my opin­ion a true descrip­tion of nature should be very brief and have the char­ac­ter of rel­e­vance. Com­mon­places such as “the set­ting sun bathed the waves of the dark­en­ing sea, poured its pur­ple gold, etc.”—“the swal­lows fly­ing over the sur­face of the water tit­tered merrily”—such com­mon­places one ought to aban­don. In descrip­tions of nature one ought to seize upon the lit­tle par­tic­u­lars, group­ing them in such a way that, in read­ing, when you shut your eyes you get the picture.

For instance you will get the full effect of a moon­lit night if you write that on the mill­dam, a lit­tle glow­ing star­point flashed from the neck of a bro­ken bot­tle, and the round black shadow of a dog or a wolf emerged and ran, etc….

In the sphere of psy­chol­ogy, details are also the thing. God pre­serve us from com­mon­places. Best of all is to avoid depict­ing the hero’s state of mind; you ought to try to make it clear from the hero’s actions.

You under­stand it at once when I say, “The man sat on the grass.” You under­stand it because it is clear and makes no demands on the atten­tion. On the other hand it is not eas­ily under­stood if I write, “A tall, narrow-chested, middle-sized man, with a red beard, sat on the green grass, already tram­pled by pedes­tri­ans, sat silently, shyly, and timidly looked about him.” That is not imme­di­ately grasped by the mind, whereas good writ­ing should be grasped at once—in a second.

…

That the world “swarms with male and female scum” is per­fectly true. Human nature is imper­fect. But to think that the task of lit­er­a­ture is to gather the pure grain from the muck heap is to reject lit­er­a­ture itself. Artis­tic lit­er­a­ture is called so because it depicts life as it really is. Its aim is truth—unconditional and hon­est. A writer is not a con­fec­tioner, not a dealer in cos­met­ics, not an enter­tainer; he is a man bound under com­pul­sion, by the real­iza­tion of his duty and by his con­science. To a chemist, noth­ing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objec­tive as a chemist.

…

It seems to me that the writer should not try to solve such ques­tions as those of God, pes­simism, etc. His busi­ness is but to describe those who have been speak­ing or think­ing about God and pes­simism, how and under what cir­cum­stances. The artist should be not the judge of his char­ac­ters and their con­ver­sa­tions, but only an unbi­ased observer.

…

You are right in demand­ing that an artist should take an intel­li­gent atti­tude to his work, but you con­fuse two things: solv­ing a prob­lem and stat­ing a prob­lem cor­rectly. It is only the sec­ond that is oblig­a­tory for the artist.

…

You abuse me for objec­tiv­ity, call­ing it indif­fer­ence to good and evil, lack of ideas and ideals, and so on. You would have me, when I describe horse thieves, say: “Steal­ing horses is an evil.” But that has been known for ages with­out my say­ing so. Let the jury judge them; it’s my job sim­ply to show what sort of peo­ple they are. I write: you are deal­ing with horse thieves, so let me tell you that they are not beg­gars but well-fed peo­ple, that they are peo­ple of a spe­cial cult, and that horse steal­ing is not sim­ply theft but pas­sion. Of course it would be pleas­ant to com­bine art with a ser­mon, but for me per­son­ally it is impos­si­ble owing to the con­di­tions of tech­nique. You see, to depict horse thieves in 700 lines I must all the time speak and think in their tone and feel in their spirit. Oth­er­wise, the story will not be as com­pact as all short sto­ries out to be. When I write, I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for him­self the sub­jec­tive ele­ments that are lack­ing in the story.

…

It is time for writ­ers to admit that noth­ing in this world makes sense. Only fools and char­la­tans think they know and under­stand every­thing. The stu­pider they are, the wider they con­ceive their hori­zons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he under­stands noth­ing of what he sees—this in itself con­sti­tutes a con­sid­er­able char­ity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward.

Brief Fic­tion Example:

And with all her force brought it down straight on the skull of the cousin she hated. Matvey reeled, and in one instant his face became calm and indif­fer­ent. Yakov, breath­ing heav­ily, excited, and feel­ing plea­sure at the gur­gle the bot­tle had made, like a liv­ing thing, when it had struck the head, kept him from falling and sev­eral times (he remem­bered this very dis­tinctly) motioned Aglaia towards the iron with his fin­ger; and only when the blood began trick­ling through his hands and he heard Dashutka’s loud wail, and when the ironing-board fell with a crash, and Matvey rolled heav­ily on it, Yakov left off feel­ing anger and under­stood what had happened.

“Let him rot….” Aglaia cried…still with the iron in her hand. The white blood­stained ker­chief slipped on to her shoul­ders and her grey hair fell in dis­or­der. “He’s got what he deserved!”

Every­thing was ter­ri­ble. Dashutka sat on the floor near the stove with the yarn in her hands, sob­bing, and con­tin­u­ally bow­ing down, utter­ing at each bow a gasp­ing sound. But noth­ing was so ter­ri­ble to Yakov as the potato in the blood, on which he was afraid of step­ping, and there was some­thing else ter­ri­ble which weighed upon him like a bad dream and seemed the worst dan­ger, though he could not take it in for a minute. This was the waiter, Sergey Nikanoritch, who was stand­ing in the door­way with the reck­on­ing beads in his hand, very pale, look­ing with hor­ror at what was hap­pen­ing in the kitchen.

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The fol­low­ing is from Dark­ness Absolute: The Stan­dards of Excel­lence in Hor­ror Fic­tion by Dou­glas E. Win­ter, a critic and biog­ra­pher of Stephen King and Clive Barker:

If you would excel in this field, remem­ber that a fun­da­men­tal mis­take is to strive to emu­late the com­mer­cial hor­ror novel or story. The bulk of this fic­tion is poorly writ­ten and itself imi­ta­tive; you will risk learn­ing your craft at the feet of medi­oc­rity. And even if you choose the field’s most orig­i­nal voices to guide your efforts, the dan­gers of pas­tiche should be obvious.

If you admire Stephen King or Peter Straub or Den­nis Etchi­son, fine; but save that admi­ra­tion for party con­ver­sa­tion. When it comes to com­mit­ting words to paper, you are the writer, and it must be your ambi­tion to bet­ter those you admire. If not, you are con­demn­ing your­self to be second-rate before you have even started.

Orig­i­nal­ity can­not be taught. But the task of find­ing your own voice will be eased if you stop read­ing what the mar­ket­place calls hor­ror fic­tion and join me in an impor­tant bit of heresy:

Hor­ror is not a genre. It is an emotion.

It can be found in all of great lit­er­a­ture, not sim­ply that with lurid dust jack­ets. Read Con­rad. Read Faulkner. Read Kozin­ski. Read Bal­lard, Cormier, Fuentes, McGuane, Stone, Whit­te­more. Read and read and read of the ways in which writ­ers relate hor­rors with­out the stric­tures of genre.

Then return to your writ­ing with a new per­spec­tive, unguided by the pub­lish­ers who pack­age their prod­ucts for mass con­sump­tion with labels such as “hor­ror.” Rec­og­nize that the fic­tion that we hold dear­est, the fic­tion that you are seek­ing to write, is not a kind of fic­tion, meant to be con­fined to the ghetto of a spe­cial book­store shelf like sci­ence fic­tion or the western.

It is any and all kinds of fiction.

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The fol­low­ing is from The Far­ther Reaches of Human Nature (Viking Press, 1971) by the psy­chol­o­gist Abra­ham H. Maslow, as quoted in Sex­ist Stereo­types and Arche­types: What to Do With Them/ What the Writ­ing Woman Can Hope For by Jean­nette M. Hopper:

“I have learned recently (through my stud­ies of peak expe­ri­ences) to look at women and to fem­i­nine cre­ative­ness as a good field of oper­a­tion for research, because it gets less involved in prod­ucts, less involved in achieve­ment, more involved with the process itself, with the going-on process rather than with the cli­max in obvi­ous tri­umph and success.”

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The fol­low­ing excerpts on the artist’s bat­tle­fied are from The War of Art by Steven Press­field, who wrote Gates of Fire (NYTimes Best­seller) and The Leg­end of Bag­ger Vance (NYTimes Bestseller).

(The bold on text is my own. )

A Pro­fes­sional

Some­one once asked Som­er­set Maugham if he wrote on a sched­ule or only when struck by inspi­ra­tion. “I write only when inspi­ra­tion strikes,” he replied. “For­tu­nately it strikes every morn­ing at nine o’clock sharp.”

That’s a pro.

[…] Maugham reckoned…that by per­for­maing the mun­dane phys­i­cal act of sit­ting down, start­ing to work, he set in motion a mys­te­ri­ous but infal­li­ble sequence of events that would pro­duce inspi­ra­tion, as surely as if the [muse] had syn­chro­nized her watch with his.

Ibid. p 64

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We’re All Pros Already

All of us are pros in one area: our jobs.

We get a pay­check. We work for money. We are professionals.

Now: Are there prin­ci­ples we can take from what we’re already suc­cess­fully doing in our worka­day life and apply to our artis­tic aspi­ra­tions? What exactly are the qual­i­ties that define us as professionals?

1. We show up every day. We might do it only because we have to, to keep from get­ting fired. But we do it. We show up every day.

2. We show up no mat­ter what. In sick­ness and in health…we stag­ger in to the fac­tory. We might do it only so as not to let down our co-workers, or for other, less noble rea­sons. But we do it. We show up no mat­ter what.

3. We stay on the job all day. Our minds may wan­der, but our bod­ies remain at the wheel. We pick up the phone when it rings, we assist the cus­tomer when he seeks our help. We don’t go home till the whis­tle blows.

4. We are com­mit­ted over the long haul. Next year we may go to another job, another com­pany, another coun­try. But we’ll still be work­ing. Until we hit the lot­tery, we are part of the labor force.

5. The stakes for us are high and real. This is about sur­vival, feed­ing our fam­i­lies, edu­cat­ing our chil­dren. It’s about eating.

6. We accept remu­ner­a­tion for our labor. We’re not here for fun. We work for money.

7. We do not overi­den­tify with our jobs. We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on week­ends, but we rec­og­nize that we are not our job descrip­tions. The ama­teur, on the other hand, overi­den­ti­fies with his avo­ca­tion, his artis­tic aspi­ra­tion. He defines him­self by it. He is a musi­cian, a painter, a play­wright. Resis­tance [,the force which dis­suades the artis­tic aspi­rant,] loves this. Resis­tance knows that the ama­teur com­poser will never write his sym­phony because he is overly invested in its suc­cess and overt­er­ri­fied of its fail­ure. The ama­teur takes it so seri­ously it par­a­lyzes him.

8. We mas­ter the tech­nique of our jobs.

9. We have a sense of humor about our jobs.

10. We receive praise or blame in the real world.

Now con­sider the ama­teur: the aspir­ing painter, the wannabe play­wright. How does he pur­sue his calling?

One, he doesn’t show up every day. Two, he doesn’t show up no mat­ter what. Three, he doesn’t stay on the job all day. He is not com­mit­ted over the long haul; the stakes for him are illu­sory and fake. He does not get money. And he overi­den­ti­fies with his art. He does not have a sense of humor about fail­ure. You don’t hear him bitch­ing, “This fuck­ing tril­ogy is killing me!” Instead, he doesn’t write his tril­ogy at all.

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The ama­teur has not mas­tered the tech­niques of his art. Nor does he expose him­self to judg­ment in the real world. If we show our poem to our friend and our friend says, “It’s won­der­ful, I love it,” that’s not real-world feed­back, that’s our friend being nice to us. Noth­ing is as empow­er­ing as real-world val­i­da­tion, even if it’s for failure.

The first pro­fes­sional writ­ing job I ever had, after sev­en­teen years of try­ing, was on a movie called King Kong Lives. I and my partner-at-the-time, Ron Shusett ( a bril­liant writer and pro­ducer who also did Alien and Total Recall) ham­mered out the screen­play for Dino DeLau­ren­tiis. We loved it; we were sure we had a hit. Even after we’d seen the fin­ished hilm, we were cer­tain it was a block­buster. We invited every­one we knew to the pre­miere, even rented out the joint next door for a post-triumph blowout. Get there early, we warned our friends, the place’ll be mobbed.

Nobody showed. There was only one guy in line besides our guests and he was mut­ter­ing some­thing about spare change. In the the­ater, our friends endured the movie in mute stu­pe­fac­tion. When the lights came up, they fled like cock­roaches into the night.

Next day came the review in Vari­ety: “…Ronald Shusett and Steven Press­field; we hope these are not their real names, for their par­ents’ sake.” When the first week’s grosses came in, the flick barely reg­is­tered. Still I clung to hope. Maybe it’s only tank­ing in urban areas, maybe it’s play­ing bet­ter in the burbs. I motored to an Edge city mul­ti­plex. A youth manned the pop­corn booth. “How’s King Kong Lives?” I asked. He flashed thumbs-down. “Miss it, man. It sucks.”

I was crushed. Here I was, forty-two years old, divorced, child­less, hav­ing given up all nor­mal human pur­suits to chase the dream of being a writer; now I’ve finally got my name on a big-time Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion star­ring Linda Hamil­ton, and what hap­pens? I’m a loser, a phony; my life is worth­less, and so am I

My friend Tony Kep­pel­man snapped me out of it by ask­ing if I was gonna quit. Hell, no! “Then be happy. You’re where you wanted to be, aren’t you? So you’re tak­ing a few blows. That’s the price for being in the arena and not on the side­lines. Stop com­plain­ing and be grateful.”

That was when I real­ized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a suc­cess. But I had had a real failure.

Ibid. pg 69–71

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The Magic of Mak­ing a Start

Con­cern­ing all acts of ini­tia­tive (and cre­ation) there is one ele­men­tary truth, the igno­rance of which kills count­less ideas and splen­did plans: that the moment one def­i­nitely com­mits one­self, then prov­i­dence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not oth­er­wise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the deci­sion, rais­ing in one’s favour all man­ner of unfore­seen inci­dents and meet­ings and mate­r­ial assis­tance which no man would have dreamed would come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s cou­plets: “What­ever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Bold­ness has genius, magic , and power in it. Begin it now.”

W.H. Mur­ray, The Scot­tish Himalayan Expe­di­tion (as quoted in The War of Art by Steven Press­field, p 122)

The Artist’s Life

Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a sci­en­tist, an apos­tle of peace? In the end the ques­tion can only be answered by action.

Do it or don’t do it.

It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure can­cer or write a sym­phony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt your­self, even destroy your­self. You hurt your chil­dren. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.

[…]Cre­ative work is not a self­ish act or a bid for atten­tion on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your con­tri­bu­tion. Give us what you’ve got.

Ibid. p 165

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The Magic of Keep­ing Going

When I fin­ish a day’s work, I head up into the hills for a hike. I take a pocket tape recorder because I know that as my sur­face mind emp­ties with the walk, another part of me will chime in and start talking.

The word “leer” on page 342… it should be “ogle.”

You repeated your­self in Chap­ter 21. The last sen­tence is just that one in the mid­dle of Chap­ter 7.

That’s the kind of stuff that comes. It comes to all of us, every day, every minute. These para­graphs I’m writ­ing now were dic­tated to me yes­ter­day; they replace a prior, weaker open­ing to this chap­ter. I’m unspool­ing the new improved ver­sion now, right off the recorder.

This process of self-revision and self-correction is so com­mon we don’t even notice. But it’s a mir­a­cle. And its impli­ca­tions are staggering.

Ibid. p 124

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It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.

Tela­mon of Arca­dia, mer­ce­nary of the fifth cen­tury B.C. (as quoted in The War of Art by Steven Pressfield)

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The fol­low­ing is from the adver­tise­ment Elsie Poncher put on eBay sell­ing her husband’s bur­ial plot above Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s.

“Here is a once in a life­time and into eter­nity oppor­tu­nity to spend your eter­nal days directly above Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe,” says the advertisement.

“In fact the per­son occu­py­ing the address right now is look­ing face down on her.”

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From an Inter­view of Haruki Murakami by salon.com:

You remem­ber that scene in the mys­te­ri­ous hotel? I like the story of Orpheus, his descend­ing, and this is based on that. The world of death and you enter there at your own risk. I think that I am a writer, and I can do that. I am tak­ing my own risk. I have con­fi­dence that I can do it.

But it takes time. When I started to write this book and I was writ­ing and writ­ing every day, then when that dark­ness came, I was ready to enter it. It took time before that, to reach that stage. You can’t do that by start­ing to write today and then tomor­row enter­ing that kind of world. You have to endure and labor every day. You have to have the abil­ity to con­cen­trate. I think that’s the most impor­tant ingre­di­ent to the writer. For that I was train­ing every day. Phys­i­cal power is essen­tial. Many authors don’t respect that. [Laughs] They drink too much and smoke too much. I don’t crit­i­cize them, but to me, strength is crit­i­cal. Peo­ple don’t believe that I’m a writer because I’m jog­ging and swim­ming every day. They say, “He’s not a writer.”

And here’s another by Metropolis:

“I’ve been writ­ing nov­els for 20 years, but I haven’t been very ambi­tious,” he says, set­ting down his tea mug and rub­bing his chin. He refuses to read any of his ear­lier novels-“I’m totally dis­sat­is­fied with my ear­lier work; I was unhappy, like a lost boy”-and he shifts uncom­fort­ably when I bring up var­i­ous scenes from them, fre­quently say­ing that he has no idea what a given book or story might be about.

[Ital­ics are my own]

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The fol­low­ing excerpt is from the remark­able essay The Ser­ial Killer as a Type of Per­son by Mark Seltzer, a pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish at Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity. (The high­light­ing is my own.)

Obey your thirst!

There is an empty cir­cu­lar­ity in the notion of the kind of per­son called the ser­ial killer lift­ing itself by its own boot­straps: the con­cep­tion that there is noth­ing more to the sub­ject than what he makes of him­self. There is an empty cir­cu­lar­ity, too, in the notion of the social con­struc­tion of the social: the strictly ‘his­tori­cist’ con­cep­tion that there is noth­ing more to the social order than its struc­tur­ing of itself by itself. These two notions are not merely par­al­lel con­struc­tions: they are at once rad­i­cally insep­a­ra­ble and rad­i­cally incom­pat­i­ble. The expe­ri­ence of social con­struc­tion at the level of the subject–to the very extent that it is expe­ri­enced as a social man­date: ‘be your self’–in effect evac­u­ates the sub­ject it man­dates. The law of self-realization is a law that aborts itself. The injunc­tion to real­ize your­self, to desire your­self into being–to enjoy your self–is at the same time imposed as an injunc­tion from with­out. If the for­mula of the first is ‘be your­self,’ the for­mula of the sec­ond is ‘Obey your thirst!’ (Sprite) or ‘Enjoy your symp­tom!’ (Slavoj). ‘Lift­ing one­self up by one’s own boot­straps’ is the logic of the self-made man and the logic of addic­tion both. The thirst of the self-made man to real­ize him­self is at the same time his obe­di­ence to the com­mand: ‘thirst.’ On the addic­tive loop of user and used, substance-abuse and self-abuse, the self-made sub­ject is sub­jected to an end­less drill in self-making that becomes indis­tin­guish­able from a repeated self-evacuation.

Toc­queville antic­i­pated this drill in enjoy­ment of the self-made man (the man who gives birth to him­sef) in the self-legitimated demo­c­ra­tic state (the notion that gives birth to itself) in Democ­racy in America:

The type of oppres­sion which threat­ens democ­racics is dif­fer­ent from any­thing there has ever been in the world before.…It likes to see its cit­i­zens enjoy them­selves, pro­vided they think of noth­ing but this enjoy­ment. It gladly works for their hap­pi­ness but wants to be the sole agent and judge of it. It pro­vides for their secu­rity, fore­sees and sup­plies their neces­si­ties, facil­i­tates their plea­sures, man­ages their prin­ci­pal con­cerns, directs their indus­try, makes rules for their tes­ta­ments, and divides their inher­i­tances. Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trou­ble of think­ing and all the cares of living?

The threat of a total­i­tar­ian con­for­mity of desire and thought in mass cul­ture (oppres­sive enjoy­ment, repres­sive desub­li­ma­tion) has by now become one of the com­mon­places of mass cul­ture (the emperor reveals that he has no clothes — so much for demystification!).

It is pos­si­ble pro­vi­sion­ally to set out a basic impli­ca­tion of this bor­der­ing of the social on the psy­chi­atric, this social­ity bound to pathol­ogy. In the most gen­eral terms, we can detect here one of the con­si­tu­tive ‘psycho-social’ para­doxes of lib­eral soci­ety: a para­dox­i­cal sit­u­at­ed­ness within power (social con­struc­tion) that is at the same time a require­ment of rad­i­cal auton­omy (self-construction). It is the unre­lieved inhab­it­ing of this para­dox that casts the lib­eral sub­ject into fail­ure: ‘the fail­ure to make itself in the con­text of a dis­course in which self-making is assumed, indeed, is its assumed nature.’ This fail­ure inten­si­fies in ‘late mod­ern sec­u­lar soci­ety, in which indi­vid­u­als are buf­feted and con­trolled by global con­fig­u­ra­tions of dis­ci­pli­nary and cap­i­tal­ist power of extra­or­di­nary pro­por­tions, and are at the same time nakedly indi­vid­u­ated, stripped of reprieve from relent­less expo­sure and account­abil­ity for them­selves’ (Bacon: 1995, 67).

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