The Writing Life

V. S. Naipaul, who has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature, was quoted in today's New York Times:

"I've had a fantasy," he said, one that was fulfilled twice, when he was writing "Guerrillas" (1975) and "A Bend in the River" (1979), "A fantasy of beginning a book in the autmn and writing through the winter, day after day, day after day." He smiles at the thought. "For me," he said, "that means pure pleasure."

Yes! How wonderful to be able to concentrate on nothing but your work through the dark morning and the short day, the book growing in secret like winter wheat. Come the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, it's finished. Spend the summer editing it and wrangling with the publisher. Then spend the early fall taking time off, resting, getting ideas, until it's time to do the next one.

Not that many people can do one a year, though. So perhaps you write a book only every two winters. Even then, it would be wonderful.

I have a novel I've started, stopped, picked up again, laid aside, taken up again. Right now the last time I had any time to work on it was the spring of 2001. I finally finished "part 1" and am waiting for some more free time to start part 2. I've been working on the book this way, on and off, for two or three years. I guess it'll get finished someday.

My friend Katia and I are having opposite experiences. While I am enjoying being a published author, I haven't been able to finish my novel yet. Katia, on the other hand, has just finished a novel she's been working on for four years, and now is working to get an agent. Publishing my collections of erotica came easy to me. I didn't have an agent; it just sort of happened, which is the way I prefer things to happen. But my novel will need an agent, like hers.

I need to devote that kind of time to my novel, and all my writing -- writing more and more until it becomes your life, writing day after day.