I have known very few writers, but those I have
known, and whom I respect, confess at once that
they have little idea where they are going when
they first set pen to paper. They have a character,
perhaps two; they are in that condition of eager
discomfort which passes for inspiration; all
admit radical changes of destination once the
journey has begun; one, to my certain knowledge,
spent nine months on a novel about Kashmir, then
reset the whole thing in the Scottish Highlands.
I never heard of anyone making a 'skeleton', as
we were taught at school. In the breaking and
remarking, in the timing, interweaving, beginning
afresh, the writer comes to discern things in
his material which were not consciously in mind
when he began. This organic process, often leading
to moments of extraordinary self-discovery,
is of an indescribable fascination. A blurred
image appears; he adds a brushstoke and another,
and it is gone; but something was there, and
he will not rest till he has captured it. Sometimes
the yeast within a writer outlives a book he
has written. I have heard of writers who read
nothing but their own books; like adolescents
they stand before the mirror, and still cannot
fathom the exact outline of the vision before
them. For the same reason, writers talk interminably
about their own books, winkling out hidden
meanings, super-imposing new ones, begging
response from those around them. Of course
a writer doing this is misunderstood: he might
as well try to explain a crime or a love affair.
He is also, incidentally, an unforgivable bore.
This temptation to cover the distance between
himself and the reader, to study his image
in sight of those who do not know him, can
be his undoing: he has begun to write to please.
A young English writer made the pertinent observation
a year or two back that the talent goes into
the first draft, and the art into the drafts
that follow. For this reason also the writer,
like any other artist, has no resting place,
no crowd or movement in which he may take comfort,
no judgment from outside which can replace
the judgment from within. A writer makes order
out of the anarchy of his heart; he submits
himself to a more ruthless discipline than any
critic dreamed of, and when he flirts with
fame, he is taking time off from living with
himself, from the search for what his world
contains at its inmost point.
JOHN LE CARRE What every writer wants from
Harper'serious