Author Greg Bottoms has published four prose books in the past decade. But he says that publishing success is not what keeps him writing.
“I don’t really feel that prolific at all,” says Bottoms, whose most recent book is The Colorful Apocalypse: Journeys in Outsider Art. “I think the feeling of actually writing as a profession is largely one of failure. What I remember are all the things that didn’t work out, mostly.”
However, he adds: “I write a lot. I write for myself. I write out of some need I have to do it. It’s my way of engaging with the world and kind of making sense of it.”
Bottoms isn’t alone in this view. Major Jackson, poetry editor of The Harvard Review and author of the poetry collections Hoops, Leaving Saturn and the upcoming Holding Company, also says that writing helps him to better understand his world.
“Writing poetry becomes that occasion where I take a breather from my very busy life and contemplate the world as I am experiencing it,” Jackson says. “Sometimes that contemplation will lead me back to a particular memory from childhood.
“Writing becomes the occasion by which we do contemplate, take a pause, slow down with our lives. Any sort of art-making allows us to do that, I’d say.”
Exercise the Need to Write
Poet Tina Escaja, author of the collection Caída Libre, or Free Fall, goes a step further. The need to write, she says, is intrinsic.
“You have to exercise that need,” she says. “It’s very important. It’s the core of who you are. You have to make that step, beyond what you’ve learned. Beyond what you read. Keep reading, of course, keep learning. But just keep expressing yourself.
“It’s a liberating act. It’s an important act. Make it, keep it alive, and keep going, keep going, keep going, regardless of what people say, regardless of the promise of publishing, which is a huge promise. It’s not easy, it’s hard. And there are lots of limitations that are beyond you, beyond the quality of your work. Just keep doing it.”
Now Think About Publishing
Of course, many writers want to succeed beyond the level of the diary or journal: they want to be published. Author Tony Magistrale says that writers interested in publishing and, perhaps, professorship, likely need to make concessions to the career-minded world. His writing includes poetry, such as the 2008 collection What She Says About Love, but he is best known in some circles for his academic work, particularly his writing about Stephen King.
It is this academic work, however, that allows Magistrale to spend time writing–and publishing–his poetry.
“I started writing about other things, academic things, because I had to,” says Magistrale, who is also head of the English Department at The University of Vermont. “This is how you get a job in this profession. This was also something I was very interested in, particularly writing about Stephen King. I was really one of the first people to pay attention to him as a serious writer.”
But, he says, “The poetry started first. I was writing poetry when I was in high school, probably using it as a kind of salve for broken hearts and other hormonal things when I was that age. The poetry has been the consistent thing that has stayed true.”
Chris Evans - In a previous life, Chris Evans wrote for daily newspapers, large and tiny, in Kansas, California, Florida and Missouri. Today, he ...
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