I quit my day job, to write, back in the summer of 1993, not more than a few days after seeing Robert Olen Butler give a lecture at the summer writing workshop in Iowa City (I was not signed up; I sneaked away from my desk at the hospital across the river, short-timer that I was, and sat in). During that talk, delivered shortly after he'd won the Pulitzer Prize for Good Scent, he spoke of writing four novels that never saw the light of day. I was stunned. Four novels! I doubted that I would live long enough to write four novels, and then to have them end up in recycling—
As the years (many of them) went on, that knowledge of Mr. Butler's preparatory "dreck" proved a tonic for my soul as I amassed my own dreck.
When, in 2006, I met my agent (she had called me after reading an excerpt from my novel, published in this magazine weeks earlier) for the first time, for lunch, at a place on Broadway in New York that was showing La Dolce Vita on the wall, she asked me (while I caught a glance at Anita Ekburg, in the Trevi Fountain, soaking wet) how long I had been working on my book. I told her that it had been around ten years, give or take. I added that rather than writing four novels that never saw the light of day, as the great Robert Olen Butler had, I managed to do my time on just this one: one heap of material, one book that had lasted through numerous resuscitations and through many transmutations. In this way I attempted to make an embarrassment, what I feared in my many moments of profound self-doubt was an outrageous waste of time, into something more or less heroic. And it more or less worked. Anyway, she liked what she'd seen so far and signed me.
A year and few months later, in October of 2007, the novel having yet to see the light of day, I ran into Mr. Butler again at a fundraiser in Santa Fe. I told him what I had told my agent and he kindly gave me his card, told me to call him when my book was done. I keep the card pinned to my wall, along with my 100+ rejection slips, my author-agency agreement, and a photocopy of my only check for a piece of fiction, sixteen years after quitting my job to write.
I slept poorly last night and woke up depressed and feeling hateful toward a wide range of people and circumstances. The artist in me felt like the Siamese twin that is going to have to die if the other stronger more plausible one is to live. Still, after two cups of coffee and staring at the paper, I left my wife, a newly graduated nurse still looking for work, as I will be soon once I'm a newly graduated nurse, and my young son, who survived cancer and will probably survive the swine flu, too, who is home from school in any case, and went to keys, with no hope at all of getting off the beach of where I am with the work at the moment. And then, as a further stall, I checked my email, and there was Mr. Butler, with Ms. Birden, whose words, together, brought into focus again that elusive, quite possibly heroic thread, meaning, hope . . . that's kept me going, that keeps us all going, for better or for worse.
For the work I might get done now, and otherwise wouldn't, thank you. And Bob, look for a call before too long. :-)
Two years ago I was studying with the Arvon Foundation in Devon in the UK. I thought I was okay and that my writing was progressing nicely. Then, during the course, a light went on. I realised that the tutors on the course weren't just trying to teach us how to write, but were trying to articulate how we should reach deep within ourselves to create work that was something more than just superficial writing, something that had more depth and more meaning.
At first I found it extremely difficult to recreate, especially away from the Arvon environment, but now, sometimes with the help of meditation, I find that I can reach into my subconscious/unconscious, call it what you will, and write work that is truly satisfying.
Thank you for re-affirming that with this article.
This is wonderful advice to a young writer. Sometimes I think you just have to live a long time in order to collect enough grit in your craw to give your passion substance. Then, I think some young people have lived more than some older people, at least in the heart, where it counts.
I think I might be able to make use of Mr. Butler's suggestion if he suggested how to access my unconscious and then how to recognize if my work is indeed "generating . . . from [that] place where I dream."
Because I admire Robert Olen Butler’s writing, I would never presume to second-guess the approach he takes to his work. Urging others to take that same approach is another matter.
Over the years, many have heard Mr. Butler make the case for writers submitting themselves to the promptings of the unconscious. But is granting special status to the unconscious a good idea? Instead of pitting head against heart, why doesn’t Butler just demonstrate how, to the degree any writing lacks passion, it is less alive, less inspired? Maybe the reason is that focusing on unconscious pools of “yearning” has a powerful, romantic appeal for students. Most of us encounter ample evidence that we aren’t geniuses, but Butler’s students are encouraged to believe in deep, unconscious wellsprings waiting to be tapped.
In any case, establishing this idea is good for business—that is, the MFA business, the summer writers’ conference business. I don’t think Mr. Butler holds this cynical view: he believes what he says. But selling the notion of creative fuel located deep below consciousness does serve to reassure students that each of them is sitting on a potential gusher.
In replying to a former student, Butler says he wrote umpteen plays, stories and novels that were rejected—and deserved to be—before he finally tapped his creative core. Are we supposed to believe all the preliminary seismic testing and drilling served only to bring him to an awareness of the primacy of the unconscious? I am sure Butler’s early work served him in the same way running thousands of pass patterns in college serves a future NFL wide receiver, or a million lay ups and three-point jumpers a future NBA forward. What that hard work eventually accomplished was to free Butler from having to think about craft. Once he internalized that, his unconscious sources of inspiration were liberated and made available to his conscious mind.
As a simple fact of life, something else—not romantic but realistic--deserves mention: After college, how many conscientious, hard-working players end up watching their sport instead of playing it professionally? Butler claims self-deception prevented him from seeing his true path to the unconscious. I would argue that for most writers, the real risk of self-deception occurs in the conscious confrontation with self over abilities and limits. That is, assuming the encounter takes place at all.
It might serve you well to read Butler's From Where You Dream. Or you might check out Florida State's Writing Program website. There is a link there (and perhaps on Butler's own website) to a streaming video program broadcast from that URL a number of years back: a daily documentation of the writing of his short story "This is Earl Sandt." He speaks a lot on dreaming, re-dreaming, and white-hot-centers. I believe it's still there.
Trouble too comes not from the head, but the heart, and can, if we're willing, serve as the foundation for our stories. I don't know how much of my writing comes from my unconscious mind, but I do know it took a long time to learn that my best stories come from a place of candid (and almost always painful) introspection. There's a balance, I think, between telling the truth and devastating the people we love with that truth, but with practice and revision (and then, yes, a little more practice and revision) we'll find that place -- that white-hot center -- and create stories our readers love.
I quit my day job, to write, back in the summer of 1993, not more than a few days after seeing Robert Olen Butler give a lecture at the summer writing workshop in Iowa City (I was not signed up; I sneaked away from my desk at the hospital across the river, short-timer that I was, and sat in). During that talk, delivered shortly after he'd won the Pulitzer Prize for Good Scent, he spoke of writing four novels that never saw the light of day. I was stunned. Four novels! I doubted that I would live long enough to write four novels, and then to have them end up in recycling—
As the years (many of them) went on, that knowledge of Mr. Butler's preparatory "dreck" proved a tonic for my soul as I amassed my own dreck.
When, in 2006, I met my agent (she had called me after reading an excerpt from my novel, published in this magazine weeks earlier) for the first time, for lunch, at a place on Broadway in New York that was showing La Dolce Vita on the wall, she asked me (while I caught a glance at Anita Ekburg, in the Trevi Fountain, soaking wet) how long I had been working on my book. I told her that it had been around ten years, give or take. I added that rather than writing four novels that never saw the light of day, as the great Robert Olen Butler had, I managed to do my time on just this one: one heap of material, one book that had lasted through numerous resuscitations and through many transmutations. In this way I attempted to make an embarrassment, what I feared in my many moments of profound self-doubt was an outrageous waste of time, into something more or less heroic. And it more or less worked. Anyway, she liked what she'd seen so far and signed me.
A year and few months later, in October of 2007, the novel having yet to see the light of day, I ran into Mr. Butler again at a fundraiser in Santa Fe. I told him what I had told my agent and he kindly gave me his card, told me to call him when my book was done. I keep the card pinned to my wall, along with my 100+ rejection slips, my author-agency agreement, and a photocopy of my only check for a piece of fiction, sixteen years after quitting my job to write.
I slept poorly last night and woke up depressed and feeling hateful toward a wide range of people and circumstances. The artist in me felt like the Siamese twin that is going to have to die if the other stronger more plausible one is to live. Still, after two cups of coffee and staring at the paper, I left my wife, a newly graduated nurse still looking for work, as I will be soon once I'm a newly graduated nurse, and my young son, who survived cancer and will probably survive the swine flu, too, who is home from school in any case, and went to keys, with no hope at all of getting off the beach of where I am with the work at the moment. And then, as a further stall, I checked my email, and there was Mr. Butler, with Ms. Birden, whose words, together, brought into focus again that elusive, quite possibly heroic thread, meaning, hope . . . that's kept me going, that keeps us all going, for better or for worse.
For the work I might get done now, and otherwise wouldn't, thank you. And Bob, look for a call before too long. :-)
Mr. Butler, you are spot on.
Two years ago I was studying with the Arvon Foundation in Devon in the UK. I thought I was okay and that my writing was progressing nicely. Then, during the course, a light went on. I realised that the tutors on the course weren't just trying to teach us how to write, but were trying to articulate how we should reach deep within ourselves to create work that was something more than just superficial writing, something that had more depth and more meaning.
At first I found it extremely difficult to recreate, especially away from the Arvon environment, but now, sometimes with the help of meditation, I find that I can reach into my subconscious/unconscious, call it what you will, and write work that is truly satisfying.
Thank you for re-affirming that with this article.
This is wonderful advice to a young writer. Sometimes I think you just have to live a long time in order to collect enough grit in your craw to give your passion substance. Then, I think some young people have lived more than some older people, at least in the heart, where it counts.
Debra, that reminds me of Dylan: "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."
I think I might be able to make use of Mr. Butler's suggestion if he suggested how to access my unconscious and then how to recognize if my work is indeed "generating . . . from [that] place where I dream."
Because I admire Robert Olen Butler’s writing, I would never presume to second-guess the approach he takes to his work. Urging others to take that same approach is another matter.
Over the years, many have heard Mr. Butler make the case for writers submitting themselves to the promptings of the unconscious. But is granting special status to the unconscious a good idea? Instead of pitting head against heart, why doesn’t Butler just demonstrate how, to the degree any writing lacks passion, it is less alive, less inspired? Maybe the reason is that focusing on unconscious pools of “yearning” has a powerful, romantic appeal for students. Most of us encounter ample evidence that we aren’t geniuses, but Butler’s students are encouraged to believe in deep, unconscious wellsprings waiting to be tapped.
In any case, establishing this idea is good for business—that is, the MFA business, the summer writers’ conference business. I don’t think Mr. Butler holds this cynical view: he believes what he says. But selling the notion of creative fuel located deep below consciousness does serve to reassure students that each of them is sitting on a potential gusher.
In replying to a former student, Butler says he wrote umpteen plays, stories and novels that were rejected—and deserved to be—before he finally tapped his creative core. Are we supposed to believe all the preliminary seismic testing and drilling served only to bring him to an awareness of the primacy of the unconscious? I am sure Butler’s early work served him in the same way running thousands of pass patterns in college serves a future NFL wide receiver, or a million lay ups and three-point jumpers a future NBA forward. What that hard work eventually accomplished was to free Butler from having to think about craft. Once he internalized that, his unconscious sources of inspiration were liberated and made available to his conscious mind.
As a simple fact of life, something else—not romantic but realistic--deserves mention: After college, how many conscientious, hard-working players end up watching their sport instead of playing it professionally? Butler claims self-deception prevented him from seeing his true path to the unconscious. I would argue that for most writers, the real risk of self-deception occurs in the conscious confrontation with self over abilities and limits. That is, assuming the encounter takes place at all.
Hilary,
It might serve you well to read Butler's From Where You Dream. Or you might check out Florida State's Writing Program website. There is a link there (and perhaps on Butler's own website) to a streaming video program broadcast from that URL a number of years back: a daily documentation of the writing of his short story "This is Earl Sandt." He speaks a lot on dreaming, re-dreaming, and white-hot-centers. I believe it's still there.
Trouble too comes not from the head, but the heart, and can, if we're willing, serve as the foundation for our stories. I don't know how much of my writing comes from my unconscious mind, but I do know it took a long time to learn that my best stories come from a place of candid (and almost always painful) introspection. There's a balance, I think, between telling the truth and devastating the people we love with that truth, but with practice and revision (and then, yes, a little more practice and revision) we'll find that place -- that white-hot center -- and create stories our readers love.