Chapter 1 - Why Write?

It’s evidently not for money or fame or family therapy. In Writer's Mind by Richard Cohen © 1995, he suggests that people who write do so because it is part of their character; it is who they are. Cohen describes writing as a process that gives life to what is written. He uses a vivid metaphor: writers move “crabwise” from paper to life and life to paper. In this process, writers come alive and create themselves.

In considering my reasons to write, I am deeply affected by Marcel Proust’s reasons for writing his series In Search of Lost Time. He wanted to reclaim tender, personal memories that were lost to him simply through living. His memory of being served Madeline cookies dipped in tea is perhaps the most famous of them, but he shares other memories, as well, as they startle to the surface from a misplaced past.

These memories, the way he experienced them, the emotions he felt, his consciousness of them, were as much as part of what it meant to be Proust as his body or his thoughts or other people’s knowledge of him. He seemed to sense that these memories, the particular conscious experience he brought to the world, soon would expire bodily with him; in fact, he died before finishing the editing and revising of the final books of In Search of Lost Time. Reclaiming memories, and the promise of preserving one’s conscious experience of them, beyond one’s own death, seems an important reason to write.

The bookshelf for this chapter is:

• Writing Life by Annie Dillard
  
• The Courage to Create by Rollo May
  
• Ake: Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka
  
• Self-Consciousness: Memoirs by John Updike
  
• One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty
  
• Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf
  
• and the poem, “Prelude,” by William Wordsworth.

Reading this works, I’ll consider what responses these writers might give to these questions (and what responses I have):

• Why write?
  
• What’s the writing experience like? Physically? Emotionally?
  
• What are a writer's spiritual and emotional sources?
  
• How can one overcome the anxiety over creating something?
  
• What does it mean to come to the consciousness that one is a writer?
  
• What uses are the uses of writing?
  

Introduction

Four years ago I bought Writer’s Mind: Crafting Fiction by Richard Cohen © 1995. I was immediately impressed by the quality of information about writing and writers, and saw ways to improve my reading of literature by better understanding the writing experience. Cohen follows each chapter with hands-on questions for writers learning to write and an extensive list of literature to read to compliment the chapter, which he called the “Writer’s Bookshelf.” This is an ambitious project. The nearly 100 books on my list from the Writer’s Bookshelf constitute over 40,000 pages.

Some of the books on the bookshelf I recognized as classic, college level literature. Others were among the most memorable and significant books that I had read. Many I had never heard of, but Cohen seemed to know what he was talking about in the text, and I appreciated his insights into the books he listed; so, I thought I’d trust his judgment and give it a go with all the books on his list.

I intend to read Writer’s Mind by chapter. At the end of each chapter, I will read the works on the “Writer’s Bookshelf,” keeping in mind the questions posed by the author of Writer’s Mind to better understand the work and the writing techniques and methods. For now, I’m stopping at chapter 17, skipping chapters 18, 19, 20, and 21, which seem focused on publishing and the logistics of having a career in writing. On this blog I will respond to the questions posed by Cohen based on the books that deal with the craft of fiction through examples of fiction.

I expect to learn more about the writing process, to improve my own writing, and to deepen my appreciation of literature and the writer's experience. I will also be exposed to a variety of difficult literature that I might have not been willing to tackle before. I’m especially interested in the unique works that Cohen has placed on the Writer’s Bookshelf, such as John Ruskin’s Modern Painters. Finally, I’ll be introduced to modern writers I hadn’t discovered, such as Ann Beattie and Iris Murdock.

Let's get going; I've got a lot of reading to do!