Who’s inspired by Virginia Woolf?

When I’m in the thick of writing, I like to read about other writers. Specifically, I like to read about how other writers write.

Stephen King’s On Writing is an excellent, most inspiring volume for any would-be writer. Hell, even published authors with a dozen books under their belt would be well advised to pick it up and give it a quick browse. It’s like crack for the writer’s mind — it sharpens your focus and reminds you again why writing is the best, most powerful activity in the world, if not the most agonizing.

Anyway, so I’m writing now and am occasionally dipping into the lives and work of other writers, hoping that some of their discipline and gift will bleed off the page and into my own pathetic little prose. It’s my way of communing with my heroes, from the aforementioned King to Somerset Maugham to Virginia Woolf to even that bastard of all writers, Hemingway.

I’ve finished Julia Briggs’ Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life, and will happily recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about the stuff under the hood, so to speak. I’ll admit to only having read one book by Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, but it was enough to pique my interest, both as a feminist and as a writer.

The book explores in greater depth Woolf’s tenacious approach to her craft, reminding us of the phenomenal discipline Woolf had at her disposal. The woman suffered through a number of physical ailments, for God’s sake, and yet still managed to turn out an impressive amount of books, essays, columns, book reviews, journal entries, and letters. It makes it impossible for me to make pathetic excuses for not having time to write, given Woolf’s own crippling (both figuratively and literally) obstacles to literary creation. Briggs describes the circumstances in Woolf’s life at the time she wrote certain books (including To The Lighthouse, among others), and breaks down in exquisite detail the writer’s own thoughts about the process via her meticulously written diaries.

I loved reading about how Virginia and her husband Leonard created Hogarth Press, which published the first editions of much of their work. It’s funny reading about it now, with all the controversy regarding self publishers and vanity publishers and the like in the book industry. Writers are notorious for their crippling self-doubt (I think I’m an awful writer myself, although such self-criticism is obviously a disservice to the many editors who’ve published my work and, shockingly, also paid me for it!), so it’s both refreshing and confounding when I read about someone as renowned and brilliant as Woolf having such unwavering belief in their own talent that they would invest their own funds and reputations in their own publishing company, created mostly to churn out their own work. I occasionally border on ulcer-inducing anxieties just clicking on the SEND button on my blog, for God’s sake. Creativity can be both exhilarating and soul-destroying, and writers and actors (but oddly enough, not visual artists and musicians) suffer so much unnecessary mental anguish for its sake.

It’s a recurring dream (although nightmare might be a more appropriate term) of mine to participate in the literary world not just as a writer but as a publisher as well. You know how we all occasionally engage in those flights of fancy where we fantasize about what we’d do with our millions should we ever win the lottery? I’ve already plotted out my entire post-lottery strategy, from the foundation I’d establish to fund scholarships for female students in developing countries to the independent publishing company I’d bankroll and administer that would seek out manuscripts, especially by women writers, that wouldn’t ordinarily be published by the Random Houses of the world. It would be like Seal Press or Coffee House Press or even (dare I dream?) Dave Eggers’ McSweeney’s, would probably make absolutely no money, but would be the love of my life (aside from the Love of My Life, aka B., bien sur). I might even use it to publish my own work, seeing as I have little faith that any “mainstream” publisher would have the slightest interest in publishing me and my scribblings (there she goes again, the bitchy antagonist of my writing dreams, telling me that I’m just a hack, and no, I’m not fishing for compliments here), but I would have to inure myself from the inevitable backlash from folks who believe that self-published writers are failures who couldn’t otherwise make it “legitimately.” (And I do have a well-connected friend in publishing who believes just that, so I’m not entirely off-base here.)

But at least I have Virginia Woolf’s legacy to spur me on. A book I shall review for tomorrow for My Inner French Girl (not the Woolf book, but another one) describes one character thus:

Like many French authors, she wrote in cafes, usually in some out-of-the-way bistro whose proprietor respected the privacy of his clients. Plunking herself down at a rear table, she would order a coffee and, oblivious to the noise, work for hours, chain-smoking and laboring over every word as she groped for the exact nuance.

I love the image the author evokes here of the diligent writer oblivious to all but her imagination and the notebook in front of her, but that does not, sadly, describe me and how I work. Apart from the fact that I don’t smoke, I also generally barrel my way through a manuscript, pausing only to correct a stray typo here and there but paying little attention to anything more than the details and facts of a story. I don’t allow style and nuance to interfere with getting in the way of the first draft. It’s only later that I go through the blasted thing with the proverbial fine-tooth comb, tweaking a verb here, discarding an adverb there, and rewriting entire chapters or even manuscripts if I have to. It’s a laborious process, but it works for me. I do work in cafes as often as I can, and I do keep to myself, and cafe staff always leave me alone, for which I’m grateful. Sometimes I get lazy and reach for a magazine or newspaper, but other times I dig in and stay put until I’ve laid down at least a few hundred words, if not fifteen hundred, and then I’m either vaguely dissatisfied or thoroughly disgusted, but at least I’m done. For the day, anyway.

I’m not quite the industrious writer that Woolf was, or the French writer described above. (You’ll find out to which book I’m referring in tomorrow’s review. Stay tuned!) But I do what I can. Like I said, writing can be such an agony. Not in the way that working in a slaughterhouse or in a landfill is, but laborious and painful in its own way. I can see why Woolf decided to publish her own work. Writing is hard enough; why prolong the frustration by surrendering that which you’ve slaved over to some capricious third-party who might reject it for reasons that have little to do with its own actual merit? Start your own publishing company and be done with it.

Now. If I can just win the damn lottery…

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