It makes him happy. Perhaps those pages were “lesser”—it doesn’t matter. Perhaps they were brilliant — it still doesn’t matter. He wrote those words and sentences once; he can write them again. He can write other words and sentences; he’s a writer. He goes back to work. (And, regrettably, throws away the bathrobe — that might work as a symbolic gesture, but I refuse to believe it was necessary. The bathrobe is still a legitimate perk.) He is a hero; he is a wonder boy; he is a writer who simply gets back to work. The pressure and promise of that make-it-even-more-glorious second novel — or the third, the fourth, or your first book of essays — is the dark side of the paint job; it’s the false lure of the beach house and the sable coat. It’s the tease of You did it once, you don’t have to do it again, and all this can still be yours. It’s all about being a Writer, and it doesn’t have anything to do with writing. Stop crying about it.
So, I’ve bought into the cinematic image of the Writer — the abbreviated moments of typing that magically create Art, and both the charmingly furrow-browed struggle and the illusion of ease. So perhaps the movies have soft-soaped me with all that crap. And it’s still hard to confess to the emotional investment — it’s too scary, you’re too easily exposed to Dash’s dismissal, to the lash of Nathan’s whip, to the banishment to an icy Siberian steppe. But the Real Writer, the Serious Writer, is simply the one who writes. Who keeps writing. Who keeps at it, beyond the montage — for whom the writing is the story, not the musical interlude.
And if it’s always going to be terrifying, I tell myself, if the faith of having been able to do it before so you can surely do it now gets wiped out like an Etch A Sketch each and every time you sit down to write, fine. That’s just the way it is, so stop crying about it. Or go stand on a rock. Or quit — no one will miss you.
And if you’re always going to feel like a fraud, crouched on the floor of your closet among the Mary Janes, no matter how published you get or however many nice reviews, fine. So go put on the lumpy cardigan or linen blouse, if it helps (it does); take a day trip to the beach, stroll the sand and furrow your own brow, go for drinks at the Algonquin the next time you get to New York. Put on some balalaika music and batten the door against wolves. Nothing wrong with keeping a newsreel of those alluring writer images flickering in front of you; go pin them up in the writing space of your mind.
And the writer’s job isn’t to save the world; it’s just to keep the faith, and to write. To be a humbled Sullivan and get back to work. The lily and love poems are indeed revolutionary — they make “just living” worth the fight; the story of your mother’s death becomes everyone’s story, a touchpoint for the universal experience of grief. And thank God for every moment of mindless joy we can get. And maybe it doesn’t even matter if the writing’s any good; in the true moment of writing, in the focused, absorbed, committed moment, there are no reviews, no audience, no paint job, no handsome or beautiful lovers fighting over me, no sable coat, no beach house, no being feted, no mountains to move. Who knows if the looming potential even exists, or ever did, or ever will be fulfilled? It doesn’t matter. In the moment of the writing, in the warp and weft and forging ahead of it, I’m earning the right to exist on the planet. For just that moment, I’m saving myself.
I hope Julia would approve.
98Julia (20th Century Fox, 1977): screenplay by Alvin Sargent, based on the memoir Pentimento by Lillian Hellman; directed by Fred Zinneman; with Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, and Jason Robards
99Reds (Paramount Pictures, 1981): written by Warren Beatty and Trevor Griffiths; directed by Warren Beatty; with Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, and Jack Nicholson
100The Shining (Warner Bros., 1980): screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Diane Johnson, based on the novel by Stephen King; directed by Stanley Kubrick; with Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall
101Rich and Famous (MGM, 1981): written by Gerald Ayres; directed by George Cukor; with Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen
102Doctor Zhivago (MGM, 1965): screenplay by Robert Bolt, based on the novel by Boris Pasternak; directed by David Lean; with Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, and Geraldine Chaplin
103Sophie’s Choice (Universal Pictures, 1982): screenplay by Alan J. Pakula, based on the novel by William Styron; directed by Alan J. Pakula; with Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Peter MacNicol
104The World According to Garp (Warner Bros., 1982): screenplay by Steven Tesich, based on the novel by John Irving; directed by George Roy Hill; with Robin Williams, Glenn Close, and Mary Beth Hurt
105The Big Picture (Columbia Pictures, 1989): written by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Michael Varhol; directed by Christopher Guest; with Kevin Bacon and Martin Short
106Sunset Boulevard (Paramount Pictures, 1950): written by Charles Brackett, D. M. Marshman Jr., and Billy Wilder; directed by Billy Wilder; with William Holden and Gloria Swanson
107Barton Fink (20th Century Fox, 1991): written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen; with John Turturro
108Sullivan’s Travels (Paramount Pictures, 1942): written and directed by Preston Sturges; with Joel McCrea
109Wonder Boys (Paramount Pictures, 2000): screenplay by Steven Kloves, based on the novel by Michael Chabon; directed by Curtis Hanson; with Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am enormously grateful to the friends, family, and colleagues who have provided keen-eyed editorial assistance, offered endless and critical feedback, reminisced, brainstormed, shared all those tubs of popcorn, and given me the aisle seat, especially: Bernadette Murphy, Tina-Marie Gauthier, Emily Rapp, Dylan Landis, Cyndi Menegaz, Michelle Nordon, Mary Vincent, Neil Landau, Michelle Henkin, Leslye Kasoff, Barbara DeLucia, Ellen Svaco, Lorie Sears Warnock, Marylee MacDonald, Joe Bogdanovic, Colleen Rooney, and, always, Eloise Klein Healy. And to Dan Smetanka, the wisest, dearest, most true-believing editor ever: Thank you.
I am also grateful to those dreamers of dreams: The screenwriters, novelists, filmmakers, and actors who challenge and inspire us to linger, briefly but essentially, in that luminous space between the imagined story and the real world.