I imagine a lot of people, when they think about how artists create, or when they think that perhaps they will become artists themselves, have an image of the creative genius living on the edge in some garret in Paris or a rundown cottage in the country, slaving over a masterpiece, forgetting to eat—or not having enough money to buy food—sacrificing all for art. Like Van Gogh, but without the maiming and suicide. I suppose there are successful artists, like Van Gogh, who have lived—do live—like this. I don’t know any of them. I have, however, over my more than thirty years of working in publishing, known a lot of writers.
The writers I know create in solitude. They may occasionally go to a coffee shop, armed with laptop or notebook, and write. J. K. Rowling wrote much of her first Harry Potter book in a few different cafés in Edinburgh. They may, as a friend of mine does every year, rent a house with another writer and spend a week writing together. They may go to a writers’ workshop, such as the one my mother began in Maine or that I taught at for a few years, in which mornings are devoted to writing and afternoons to learning and critiquing one another’s work. (The evenings were always devoted to food and wine.) Still, creativity is invariably linked to solitude.
However, just as a character in a book would be immensely boring if he were the only character in the book—even Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man had the sea, and the fish, and the sharks—so too a writer who never comes out of solitude to share his work may create something that is good, but not necessarily as good as it could be. For a work of art to be accessible to the public, to be meaningful to the public, it should first be shared with someone, or several someones, to see if it does, in fact, work. Is that character poignant or merely pathetic? Is the reader kept guessing who done it until the end, or did she figure it out in chapter four? Does the dialogue sparkle or fizzle? Is the writing style poetic or incomprehensible?
Writers might create in solitude, but they will recreate (and revise and rewrite and tear down and start again) if they have the good sense to share their work when it is still young—though not brand new and liable to melt away at the first hint of criticism—and not yet cast in concrete in their minds, so that they resist any suggestion that changes are needed. And the work should be shared with people who know something about writing. They don’t have to be writers themselves, but they must be readers, people who love the written word and have read widely and are not afraid to say that something really isn’t all that good.
So create in solitude; share judiciously; go back to the solitude to create more. Repeat as necessary.
That’s a wonderful photo of your cat sitting on the autumn leaves where the sun has landed.
It’s been a long time since I created in solitude. I had just written in my journal that I thought my imagination might have died. I scratched that sentence. Instead, I wrote, “My imagination needs perking up.” Then I turned to your website.
I must find the time, as I’ve done in the past, to create in solitude. In the quotes you’ve provided, those great and wise artists speak the truth about creative solitude.
My most creative writing occurs when I’m alone. At writing workshops, I’d wake at three in the morning to write. I’d surprise myself with the words I put on paper. Then I’d go back to sleep and write again during the morning writing hours. Later, after the workshop session, I joined the other writers at “happy hour.” We’d sit around the table on the patio facing the garden where we’d share wine, cheese and crackers, conversation and laughter. Sure those happy hours wouldn’t have been quite as happy if we hadn’t done the earlier work, if we hadn’t had our hours of creative solitude. We were happy because we’d done the work.
In my life outside of my job, I have love and contentment. In my job, I have no joy or creativity. During the work day, this drags me down until I leave and then I forget about my job. I go home and enjoy life.
I think my job wouldn’t drag me down so much, if I found some time outside of it for creative solitude, to do the work I really want to do, rather than work for the paycheck. I don’t need a reason to enjoy life, to savor that glass of wine, to laugh and eat and play. But if I give myself that creative solitude, my imagination will not die. How much lighter my day might be, how much happier the happy hours, knowing my imagination is not dead, but there to flourish, in the moments of creative solitude.
Thank you for this post, Bett. It got me through the afternoon!