John McPhee on Writing

Although loyal readers will have noticed that this blogging business came to an abrupt halt not long after opening, I do have an excuse. I was away for a while up on one of the islands among the 30,000-or-so in Georgian Bay. Now that I am back I have to resume posting since, as you know, I am doing this largely for mental exercise and promised to attempt to write a few sentences on a daily basis. And very much like physical exercise, it is very easy to avoid doing it. While trying to think of what kind of exercise activities I will be avoiding I realized I now I also have to come up with subjects about which to write.  While I stall a bit longer I will provide some material so you don’t cancel your subscription. It is from a real writer who talks about how difficult writing can be, even though he has taught the subject for years at Princeton and produced a pile of books and essays. It is a taken from a long interview that is naturally very well done and which will be of special interest to those of you old enough to remember the Senator, Bill Bradley, and of even more interest to those still older who remember Bill Bradley the basketball player.

“It may sound like I’ve got some sort of formula by which I write. Hell, no! You’re out there completely on your own—all you’ve got to do is write. OK, it’s nine in the morning. All I’ve got to do is write. But I go hours before I’m able to write a word. I make tea. I mean, I used to make tea all day long. And exercise, I do that every other day. I sharpened pencils in the old days when pencils were sharpened. I just ran pencils down. Ten, eleven, twelve, one, two, three, four—this is every day. This is damn near every day. It’s four-thirty and I’m beginning to panic. It’s like a coiling spring. I’m really unhappy. I mean, you’re going to lose the day if you keep this up long enough. Five: I start to write. Seven: I go home. That happens over and over and over again. So why don’t I work at a bank and then come in at five and start writing? Because I need those seven hours of gonging around. I’m just not that disciplined. I don’t write in the morning—I just try to write.” Source: "John McPhee, The Art of Nonfiction, No.3, Interview by Peter Hessler, Paris Review, No.192, Spring, 2010.