Type slowly

Writing a book, full time, takes between two and ten years, The long poem, John Berryman said, takes between five and ten years. Thomas Mann was a prodigy of production. Working full time, he wrote a page a day. That is 365 pages a year, for he did write every day - a good sized book a year. At a page a day, he was one of the most prolific writers who ever lived. Flaubert wrote steadily, with only the usual, appalling, strains. For twenty-five years he finished a big book ever five to seven years. My guess is that full time writers average a book every five years: seventy-three usable pages a year, or a usable fifth of a page a day. The years that biographers and other nonfiction writers spend amassing and mastering materials are well matched by the years novelists and short-story writers spend fabricating solid worlds that answer to immaterial truths. On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.

Octavio Paz cites the example of "Saint-Pol-Roux, who used to hang the inscription 'The poet is working' from his door while he slept."

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life 




Ah, Annie, you entertain and inspire me.  I suppose the biggest thing with writing is that you have to keep at it.

Haruki Murakami has recently published a big novel (called IQ84) of 1000 pages in three volumes, in two books. It took him three years - or about a page a day. He writes every morning and in the afternoon trains for marathons.

Writing a novel is another kind of marathon. Murakami says you need mental and physical strength to write (and the effect of exercise on the mind has been documented).

I'm writing every day now, but I need to exercise more.

I have not had one word from her

Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept

a great deal; she said to me, This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly.

I said, Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love

If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared

all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck

myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them

while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song...

--Translated by Mary Barnard

Sappho c 630BC

 Down below, in the cellar, and elsewhere in the house, controversy rages. But here in the attic we will quietly celebrate with a poem.

A corner of the artist's room

Reading: Gwen John: A Painter's Life, by Sue Roe


According to her brother Augustus, also a painter, Gwen John favoured basements and underground cellars: when she returned to London from Paris in 1899, she installed herself 'in a kind of dungeon ... into which no ray of sunlight could ever penetrate'.

But here is her attic room at 87 rue du Cherche-Midi, where she moved with her cat Edgar Quinet, in the midst of an affair with Rodin.

A Corner of the Artist's Room in Paris (With Open Window) c. 1907-09

And this, I presume, is Edgar Quinet, who was 'not very popular'. She had sprung a vicious attack on one of the visiting lady painters. Gwen was sure it wasn't personal,  just 'une affaire de nerfs'.

And update on Ms Quinet (bec of me being currently obsessed with Gwen John):  Gwen felt sorry for her sometimes, because the cat tried to understand so many things with her 'little, troubled soul'.

Young girl: Dawn Landes

From the album, Sweetheart Rodeo

The book I had to have

This was my first book by Gertrude Stein - I found it at Archives in Brisbane, a bookshop that is the archetypal secondhand bookshop - shelves stretching up to the high ceilings in an old building, ladders, a sense of hush, and absolutely packed to the gunnels with books.

In my opinion, Archives, you are also too expensive. I paid  $12.95 for this book, which fell to bits the moment I read it (note masking tape on the spine).

Still, it had provenance, having come from the Brooklyn Public Library ( WITHDRAWN FROM FREE USE IN CITY CULTURAL AND WELFARE INSTITUTIONS. MAY BE SOLD FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY ONLY   says the stamp inside the back cover).

And why did I have to have it?

It had a voice so confident and unusual that I thought I might learn something about writing from it. That is often my most compelling motive for buying a book.

For a brief while my writing was under the spell of Gertrude Stein, but fortunately, none of it (because it was a poor imitation) made its way into print.  Imitation of any sort is to be avoided (now stealing - that's another matter. 'Good artists imitate, great artists steal.')

James Herbert was often a very angry negro. He was fierce and serious, and he was very certain that he often had good reason to be angry with Melanctha, who knew so well how to be nasty, and to use her learning with a father who knew nothing.

From 'Melanctha', in 3 Lives, by Gertrude Stein


The other women she writes about are 'The Good Anna' and 'The Gentle Lena'.

"What's nurtured slowly grows well."

The novels - or fragments of novels really- Sumire wrote weren't as terrible as she thought. True, at times her style resembled a patchwork quilt sewn by a group of stubborn old ladies, each with her own tastes and complaints, working in grim silence. Add to this her somewhat manic-depressive personality, and things got occasionally out of control. As if this weren't enough, Sumire was dead-set on creating a  massive nineteenth-century-style Total Novel, a kind of portmanteau packed with every possible phenomenon in order to capture the soul and human destiny.

Having said that, Sumire's writing had a remarkable freshness about it, her attempt to honestly portray what was important to her. On the plus side she didn't try to imitate anyone else's style, and she didn't attempt to  distil everything into some precious, clever little pieces. That's what I most liked about her writing. I wouldn't have been right to pare down the direct power in her writing just so it could take on some pleasant, cosy form. There was no need to rush things. She still had plenty of time for detours. As the saying goes, "What's nurtured slowly grows well."

Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart (1999)

(I knew I'd sneak a man into the attic one day, when this was meant to be a women's writing space ...oh well, I make the rules, I break em. Just as long as he's out by 10 pm.)

I recently read this book for the second time. The narrator, K, is in love with Sumire, an unkempt aspiring writer who gets around in an old coat and boots, who isn't interested in love at all until she meets Miu, a glamorous woman 17 years her senior ... the book, being Murakami is full of domestic detail, philosophy, metaphysics and strange happenings.

I liked this quotation as it says so much about writing. And who would know if not Murakami?

Dry Grass and Shadows

Dry Grass and Shadows
There are things that I've seen in my head
While I'm sleeping in bed
That do not wither in the morning light

I’m taken back
Oh! I’m taken back
To the dry grass and the shadows

Thinking “I’d like to look at your teeth”
Lined up in perfect rows
A maze of children’s feet in orchard trees
Where the flat lands stretch inside your mouth
And when you laugh all the Star thistles stumble out
The flat lands stretch inside your mouth
And when you laugh all the Star thistles stumble out

The strong spines of valley hills, all over grown in gold
Look softer than a spool of old silk thread
But if we walked them with our feet,
I’d be pulling spines and barbs and foxtails from your skin
Oh if we walked them with our feet
I’d be pulling spines and barbs and foxtails from your skin

There are things that I’ve seen in my head
While I’m sleeping in bed
That do not wither in the morning light

I’m taken back
Oh! I’m taken back
To the dry grass and the shadows

Alela Diane, from the album To Be Still

Not mad, just wonderful. I listened to this album on the way home from a long trip, in the dark, as we approached Lismore, and this was just one song I particularly liked. 

Alela Diane. Comes from Nevada City, the same place that spawned Joanna Newsom. Must be something in the water, as they say.

(Thanks to Cath for seeking out the words and sending them to me.)