On Writing

After my sixtieth reunion at what is now Portsmouth Abbey School (in '44 it was merely a priory) I was asked if I would write a brief essay for its magazine. It is posted here because it may be of more general interest.  -KB

Awl, rut, jot; bag, beg, big ,bog, bug; sap, sep, sip, sop, sup. Three-letter words. If you know what the first three mean, do you know how they came to be? Are there other sets of five using all the vowels and the same sets of consonants? (There are.) I didn't think there was such a word as ‘sep', but there is. It's an old word for a sheep. Writers have a curiosity about language, about languages. Not just the languages we speak or write in, but the languages of music or mathematics.

From the age of three to eight I was largely confined to bed. I had been badly burned with a linseed oil poultice, because when linseed oil is stale it turns into an acid. But few of you have ever seen a poultice (a warm mass of cloth… for medicinal purposes). I nearly died from one. As a result, for those five or six years there was little I could do but read. Words were the building blocks of my world. When a book said, ‘not one jot or tittle', I tried to see a jot and a tittle. I jotted down words, but that's not the same ‘jot', as in ‘to jot down', and I have yet to encounter a tittle (a dot in printing), though I hear a lot of tittle-tattle.

You get the idea. When one begins to find words seductive, one is already a writer.

Everyone has to write, which is speaking through words that are written down. Writing is often easier than speaking. To your beloved you can write what you do not say: ‘Darling, much as I love you, I… ' Contrariwise, there is nothing you cannot write that you, or others, have said. My journals, intermittently kept, begin before I ever went to school. Alas! They deal, as most young peoples' journals do, with how I felt: the state of my soul. Would that in all those years, from seven to thirty, I had written down what others – teachers, writers, painters, musicians – had said, things that were so much more interesting than what I had to say!

Starting in England, I was brought up in Benedictine schools, where the discipline of writing is well-taught and scholarship respected. Scripture means what is written down. Beware of getting God's word wrong. Monks have a deep respect for words; they chant them so that the words stick in their heads. Edent pauperes et saturabuntur. Sixty years later I still mutter those words before eating.

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Writing is not just about words. Looking back – as someone who has made his living from writing and languages – I would have changed a number of things in my apprenticeship. What follows is an elementary guide to my own development which may (or may not) be useful for others.

I – As a young, published writer in my twenties, I thought of myself as a literary figure. That was presumptuous. Writing is craft and an art. Craft calls for art, and art for craft. Others are better judges of what you write than you are. It is unwise to accord yourself a status you have not earned.

II – It takes a long time to develop a voice of one's own. Meanwhile you are moved by other writers. There is nothing wrong in imitation (indeed, it is good practice), so long as you can find your way home.

III – There is no right way to write, though there are many wrong ways and, worse, ignorance and incorrection. No teacher has taught me writing, but many have corrected my mistakes. Usually by just pointing them out.

IV – I found editing myself difficult and being edited by others humiliating. I got around this by editing others with generosity and re-writing with humility.

V – Literature is but one form of writing. With a raft of children to feed, I had to consider how I could earn a living at the ‘trade' end of it. From that I learned that anything can be interesting if it interests you – even a business report or a legal opinion. Your interest will make you interesting. To learn this lesson and earn your pay, you need practice. You get that by writing constantly. Just as, if you want to play the piano well, you do five-finger exercises every day. Writing, too, has its five-finger exercises: notes, journals, common-place books (what you read and want to remember, and especially translation, the supreme exercise of mastering someone else's style.

VI – I was lucky enough to stumble into journalism: in sport, gastronomy, profiles, obituaries, columns, etc. I learned from this craft: the importance of deadlines, how to relinquish a text when it was needed, and therefore how to write faster, think faster and respond immediately and to length and requirements.

VII – I also learned that for every text there is an audience (a great joy for a literary writer, who has no such assurance) and that I had to address that audience, not myself. Brevity is a hard master. My best editor told the story of the writer who said to him, ‘If only I had more time I could make this shorter.' The writing of good, clear English (or any language) is a matter of considering that audience. As my dear friend Saul Bellow put it to me, ‘Take the Reader by the hand, Keith, and he will follow you anywhere.' Or as I tell my students, ‘You are not writing for me, but for the world. Or at least for your Aunt Nelly in Boise, Idaho.'

VIII – The secret of writing for an audience is simplicity. I have not entirely mastered this, so I have on my desk a reminder, which reads, starkly, ‘SIMPLIFY'.

None of this deals with the riches of literature, and life. I don't think there is such a thing as a good, immature (young) writer. A young writer shows talent, he shows promise, he displays his skills. Really good writers have to know everything, and for that they need the time to grow up, to stop thinking about themselves. Mature writers know how to connect the most disparate ideas. They are interested in everything: the speech and habits of barbers as much as the compactness of poets.

IX – For this kind of richness, wide reading is necessary, and so are languages. Unless you want just one voice in your ear. What and how Catullus writes is important to a writer. ‘I hate and I love' is not the same thing as odi et amo. Curiosity about others voices is what gives you something to say. Learning how to listen. Asking questions. Asking your grandfather how life was, as you will one day ask your grandchildren how life is.

X – All writers require tenacity. They have to understand that writing is not always inspired, that one may have bad days and good, and that it may take (up to) twenty or thirty attempts to get what you want to say right. As a writer, I am often asked, ‘How does one become a writer?' To which my unvarying answer is, ‘by writing.' To which I should add – but seldom do, as it is dispiriting to those who think writing is a trade you can learn at a Writing School – that writing of the best kind is for those who would feel bereft if they weren't doing so. In other words, for the poor sod who can't help himself.