Excerpt from letter of Tennessee Williams to his agent Audrey Wood:
Hotel Rembrandt, Tangier
10/14/53…Just before I sailed for Europe this time, Bill Inge said to me, Tenn, don’t you feel that you are blocked as a writer? I told him that I had always been blocked as a writer but that my desire to write had always been so strong that it broke through the block. But this summer I’m afraid the block has been stronger than I am and the break-through hasn’t occured. The situation is much plainer than the solution. There is a mysterious weakness and fatigue in my work now, the morning energy expires in about half an hour, or an hour. I pick it up, artificially, with a stiff drink or two but this sort of “forced” energy is reflected in forced writing, which is often off-key and leaves me each day a little more depleted than the day before. I can’t help thinking that there is something physiological at the root of this, some organize trouble that is sapping the physical vitality that I need for good work.
I am most struck by his reply to William Inge – that he had “always been blocked as a writer”. But that his “desire to write had always been so strong that it broke through the block”. Wow. Such self-knowledge, first of all. But also, quite a new thought, in terms of Tennessee Williams – whose output (in retrospect) was so phenomenal. Reading his letters and journals show me a man who had to face his demons every day, when he sat down at his desk – and it’s also showing me that writing is a long-distance sport. You have to pace yourself. There will be brief spurts of energy, surging forward, but the rest of the time, you just need to have the fortitude to keep going, realizing that you will not be inspired at all times … but to stop is to die. I guess I’m really inspired by the thought that someone like Tennessee Williams felt he was blocked as a writer. I have no desire to argue with him, or point to all of his great work, because – well, first of all, he’s dead – but second of all: I choose to trust his own assessment of his process, rather than have some kneejerk response to it, like, “He may have THOUGHT he had writer’s block – but look at this play, and that play, and how much he did …” A boring response that would have more to do with me than any critical assessment of Williams’ work. The whole blocked-as-a-writer conversation pushes a button in me, it sure does … I recognize that, I take it personally … and it’s a gift to realize that he always felt that he was blocked. Always.
Food for thought … definitely food for thought.
As a writer, I can say with considerable certainty that it is an inspirational process. What is in the mind seems as if it were prose (assuming that is what one does) until one begins to try and set it down and finds how short one will fail in comparison. And that is an awfully galling failure, to all writers, because it is so obvious and it is such a manifest failure that only the writer knows the full gravity of because it exists only in that writerâs mind. All art is a coming to an approximation of this inspiration. A lot of artists (and writers, for some reason, seem to be some of the worst at risk) try and grease this troublesome connection with alcohol and drugs, which ruins oneâs brain but somehow justifies itself as the only way to accomplish this. I think a great deal of the problems many writers have had was primarily from this. They were going in the wrong direction. Practice and a clearing away of the self is the only way to make that inspiration truer. Both these things take a great deal of selfcontrol, sobriety and effort, at the desk and in life as well. It takes daily practice, when the mood is on or not.
The problem with most writers is they are a rather lazy bunch. The simple act of writing (and rewriting, so much the worse) is a profoundly unappealing (and I know of no writer who did not hate the blank page with a sort of burning passion reserved for the most venal of evils) task. When the flow of inspiration is good, it is a satisfying activity (it had better be or no books would ever be written) but the beginning of every day is a dread at sitting down and starting work and anything that can smooth that over (like a drink or eight) begins to look extraordinarily good. Something, like a great many things, such as any possible distraction in evidence, that should be avoided. The world is a-glitter with temptation. Especially in the face of a trying job. For most writers, to expect anything more from themselves than to drag their carcasses to the paper, and worse, only when the infrequent muse has come is asking a little much.
There is also a great danger for those writers who have convinced themselves that writing is an autobiographical process. Certainly Williams was one of these. These people spend their free time (and take up too much of their writing time as well) getting themselves into interesting problems so they will have something to write about, but the ruin they bring upon themselves is not only a fatal concern, but it is just as bad for the writing process. It is also bad for Art in general; it makes everything about Them.
DB Little –
Wow! Are you aware of how condescending you sound? I was going to post a reply but honestly, it’s not worth it. You lecture down from some lofty height but that’s such a tiresome thing to do – especially when you do not know me – why are you lecturing? You say you talk with “considerable certainty” but that’s retarded because you are also just writing from subjective experience. I’m a writer, too – and have my own thoughts and my own process – and struggle with my own demons – but you take such a snotty know-it-all stance that it’s off-putting.
Try to come down off your lecture box and hang with us slobs in the trenches before you bloviate on and on about how “lazy” writers are. I’m interested in a deeper kind of conversation.
It had certainly never been my intention to come off like that and I do apologize. And it never occurred to me that anything I was saying had anything in the world to do with you (as you said, I do not know you,) other than a very very general way regarding the potential pitfalls that writers face. And none of those notions are peculiar to me; I either suffered them myself or saw what they had done to others.
Once again, if took any offense it was to be sure not personal and again, I do apologize.
Thanks for the apology.
I’m not sure if you’re new to the blogging world and such – but it’s often better to take a more conversational tone, rather than pontificate – which sometimes leads to generalizations (a discouragement to true conversation)
Your ‘dis of Tennessee Williams and your broadside against writers who write autobiographically is something I totally disagree with, and strongly – but because of your tone I didn’t even feel like getting into it with you, because your tone was one of “This Is The Truth”, as opposed to, “This is my opinion …”
Anyway, just something to keep in mind.
The interesting thing for me was Inge’s question, because if I am remembering correctly, Inge committed suicide in the mid-60s. Was he suffering from writer’s block? (Forgive my going completely off-topic.)
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa! Sorry for the repeat posts.
Mary – no worries – my site does that sometimes, it drives me crazy!! I deleted the extra ones.
He did commit suicide, you’re right – he was kind of a tragic guy. Nobody was bigger than him in the 50s (well, Williams was, and Arthur Miller) – but he was a huge success – his plays – Picnic, Bus Stop, Dark at the top of the stairs, Come Back Little Sheba were enormous hits, he was huge. But his popularity did not really last beyond the 50s – To me, he seems to be THE playwright of sexual repression in the 50s – Now, he was gay, so he didn’t write about that, obviously – as Williams rarely did either – but the repression of the sexual impulse was something they understood, so Inge wrote these intense plays about sexual repression – How could I have left off Splendor in the Grass!!
Despite his success (and he won an Oscar for Splendor in the Grass) the man was tormented – gay, couldn’t express it, alcoholic, and once his plays stopped being produced – it’s like he lost everything.
Really sad. I love his writing. His stuff is really dated now, in a way that Williams’ isn’t – but wonderful American plays, I think.
“I seem to have lost all sense of style and yet I am haunted, mercilessly haunted by the necessity of style.
Wow: Amazing letter from Joseph Conrad to Edward Garnett. I sit down religiously every morning, I sit down for eight hours every day–and the sitting down is all. In the course of that working day of 8 hours I write…