Writing for profit and pleasure

Why do people write? Novels, I mean. Short stories. Plays. Poetry. It’s hard, unremitting and – with some much-publicised exceptions – financially unrewarding work. You get up each day, and are faced with a blank page – or screen – which you have to cover with words. Those words have to hang together, not only grammatically, but thematically. They have – in some shape or form – to convey a meaning. Even the most seemingly abstract and fragmented works – a Waste Land, say, or a Finnegans Wake – have to tell a story; even if it is just the ‘story’ of the writing process.

For those writing in a more realist mode than either T S Eliot or James Joyce, the struggles are not just those of perfecting a style, but of trying to convey the nuances of character, and the details of place and time; of revealing plot development through dialogue and description; of making the whole thing work. When I taught Creative Writing a few years ago, I used to break all this down into a week-by-week analysis of various writers’ literary methods. One week, we’d look at the way Charles Dickens creates mood through descriptive writing in the opening passages of Bleak House; the next, we’d focus on the use of dialogue to build suspense in Graham Greene’s The Human Factor – and so on.

Not only was this a good way of getting students to think about their own writing, and how to improve it, but it helped all of us as writers to identify what was actually going on beneath the apparently seamless surface of the narrative. Deconstructing the complex framework of tiny episodes that together went to build the first chapter of a novel, or seeing how other writers went about conveying the intricacies of character, offered salutary insights into the sheer effort involved in creating a work of fiction. Because – despite the popular notion of its being the product of ‘inspiration’ – writing is actually more about hard graft.

Even when you’ve established your theme, and decided on your setting, and created your characters, and given them things to say and do that express what you’re trying to convey – it’s by no means certain that your novel or play or short story will ever see the light of day. You still have the dispiriting business ahead of you of finding an agent (not an easy business in these times) and – having found one – of waiting in an agony of suspense while your precious novel/ play/ short story does the rounds of all the publishers…before being turned down, with a dismissive email (‘Not for us, I’m afraid…’) or a gushingly appreciative one (‘It is with enormous regret that we have to say “no” to this exquisitely written and remarkable work…’).

No, being a writer isn’t a job for the over-sensitive.

So why do it? Surely there’s enough heartbreak in the world, without deliberately seeking it out? There are certainly more than enough novels, plays and short stories. Why on earth do people put themselves through such misery?

Speaking for myself, I can only say that I can’t imagine a life without writing – or without reading. Stories, and the telling of them, have been part of my existence since I can remember. Even before I could read, I already had a serious addiction to books – the legacy of a mother who had taught herself to read by spelling out the words in Alice in Wonderland, at the age of four. Since that hazy, far-off time, I don’t think there’ve been many days when I haven’t read – or written – something. There’s something almost terrifying about the thought of all those hours spent with one’s nose in a book – one’s own or other people’s. But there it is: I don’t think I could stop, even if I wanted to.

Of course I’m aware that there’s something a bit Obsessive- Compulsive about this – as indeed there is about a lot of creative endeavour, whether it’s painting, music-making or computer-programming. But in my own defence, I’ll say that I think that an addiction to fiction (within limits) is a harmless one. In fact, I’ll go further and say that I think writing books/ plays/ poems etc for other people to enjoy can be positively beneficial – not only (one hopes) for one’s readers but also for one’s own state of mind. We spend our whole lives making stories out of the material of our existence – stories that will give a structure to, and perhaps provide some understanding of, the complex mass of information that surrounds us from the moment we’re born. We’re story-telling animals, after all. Our brains are adapted to constructing – and interpreting – stories. To making connections, as E M Forster famously said.

So I make no apology for writing. It’s often frustrating, and occasionally heartbreaking, but it’s also one of the most enjoyable forms of human activity there is – and that, surely, is the real ‘profit’ to be gained from it. Because whatever disappointments and distractions prevail in one’s life, writing can always offer a respite. Through writing, one can impose an order on chaos, or inject excitement into dull routine. One need never be bored, or unhappy, or unfulfilled, ever again. And that’s probably the crux of the matter. Writing is fun. It’s a form of (highly organised and recondite) play. And if you can spend your life playing, that seems like a good way of spending it, to me.