Here are two interesting links.
1) “Stephen King: Can a Novelist Be Too Productive?“
It always seems werd to me that people dismiss writers who write “too much.”
Picasso painted a lot of paintings, plus drawings and some other stuff, too. People seem to think he was pretty good.
Bach, too. He composed a lot.
But writing, no, writing is the difficult one, and you’re weird if you do too much of it.
As my father said, there is only one rule in writing: write well. As long as you’re writing well, write as much or as little as you want.
Speaking of which:
2) I don’t care about track and field, and I never have. But this piece caught my attention: “The Most Awesome Female Runner in the World“
Why did it catch my attention? Because it’s written well. Despite my complete lack of interest in, or knowledge of, the topic, it was really gripping (and completely comprehensible).
Well, this is why I still subscribe to The New Yorker after all these years (and on paper, but that’s a different question).
Not that everything is gold or anything like that, but there are these moments — as with Joan Acocella’s writing about dance, which I always read despite not giving a damn about dance.
I think that’s because the stereotypical image of the author (or artist) is someone who painfully brings forth only one or two great masterpieces in his lifetime, whereas the productive author (or artist) can produce only inferior art because there is apparently no pain and agony of bringing a masterpiece into the world after many years of creative block. Being productive doesn’t necessarily mean that the writing is effortless.
Also, many people (writers and non-writers) like to emphasize and romanticize the struggle and suffering and blood and sweat and so on of writing — but that stuff doesn’t matter. Some people do all that suffering and sweating and so on, and they produce junk. The point is the end result, and some people apparently find the process of producing art easier than others. That’s one of the complexities of life. (Also, just because you spend ten years between novels, you may not have spent the whole ten years struggling at the keyboard. You may have spent nine years and change partying, and then crammed out the novel in the last eight months. 🙂 )
That’s an excellent writing rule to live by. 🙂
I was just reading a post on another blog by a writer who worries that “everybody else” seems to write more than she does — which a lot of people do worry about — and this occured to me:
If you’re reading a book, and maybe you’re really into that book (or maybe you’re not), how much of a factor is it whether the author was or is prolific? Not at all, I would guess. Each book stands on its own.