HOME The Wrong Write

It's a sad fact that good writers don't always produce good writing. Most of this bad writing will be produced early in the writer's life, when the writer is learning and some of it when he is old and has lost the interest. Still, some of it occurs in between these two ages and is the result of pressure, either by the publisher on the writer, or by the writer on himself. Having learned the craft, most writers will have found by then, that craft will only take you a short distance along the road. Unless you have something meaningful, or thought-provoking, to say, the reader will soon become bored and, what is more unfortunate, start to associate that feeling with good writing. If they come upon too much of this rarefied writing without the proteins, then they will quickly abandon it for the junk food of the pulps.  It is very unlikely that early reading of the pulp type ever provided anything worth remembering in later life. There can be nothing of lasting value (or, even of transitory value) - apart from a good night's sleep - in the Formula Stories, written to a standard set of rules, which put a halter on the imagination, and whose players have the two-dimensional personalities of cartoon characters. We know in our hearts and souls that such people cannot exist in reality, not even in America. What we want to hear about is real people leading strange and exciting lives. In unreal people leading unreal lives, we can have no interest at all.  Of course, people can write badly without being paid to do so. If you're lazy about any job, you'll do it badly, but when non-lazy writers produce banal work, it is because they are not giving themselves enough time. Writing is different from other art forms, it that it requires more mental effort. Writer's Block is just a phrase for mental exhaustion. Your brain is not some spiritual extension of yourself, it is a physical entity, and it is crying out to you, "Let me rest." If you ignore this and push ahead, then what your brain dredges up is what it has rejected before, as being unfit for readers consumption.  But, of course, the successful writer is under the pressure of popular expectation (as well as under pressure from publishers, who have no qualms about flogging a dead writer, as long as the public pay them money for the product.) So, of course, he writes, even when he cannot write well, even, sadly, when he has nothing to write about.  Another factor that comes into play here, is the syndrome of The Emperor's New Clothes. There is a hard core of the book-buying public, who think of themselves as literary gurus, (critics, to simple people like you and me), and who will hail any new production, no matter how poor, by a poet of standing, and pretend to see, in the mindless drivel, great thoughts and reflections on human life. Is the great poet then going to say, to the people who persuade the public to buy him, "Oh, no, I'm just writing rubbish at the moment, but if people want to buy, I have to write." This is, indeed, the tail wagging the dog.  So what is the solution? While the love of money and pride are considered the two most important virtues on earth, there isn't any. Diamonds will continue to be dug from the slag, but there will always be more slag than diamonds. Perhaps, it's as well. Could we really live in a world of diamonds? We'll never have the chance to find out.