RogerBW's Blog

1934 non-fiction, a short look at the writing mindset and how to set oneself to work.

This is unlike most writing books, in that it has nothing to say about grammar; or about the shape of a story; or even about how to sell your work. Rather, it's about the psychology of taking writing seriously.

That basis of discontent was that the difficulties of the average student or amateur writer begin long before he has come to the place where he can benefit by technical instruction in story writing. He himself is in no position to suspect that truth. If he were able to discover for himself the reasons for his aridity the chances are that he would never be found enrolled in any class at all.

But he only vaguely knows that successful writers have overcome the difficulties which seem almost insuperable to him; he believes that accepted authors have some magic, or at the very lowest, some trade secret, which, if he is alert and attentive, he may surprise. He suspects, further, that the teacher who offers his services knows that magic, and may drop a word about it which will prove an Open Sesame to him. In the hope of hearing it, or surprising it, he will sit doggedly through a series of instructions in story types and plot forming and technical problems which have no relation to his own dilemma. He will buy or borrow every book with "fiction" in the title; he will read any symposium by authors in which they tell their methods of work.

In almost every case he will be disappointed.

Several of the elements here are familiar from later writing about writing; specifically, the business of separating the composing-mind from the editing-mind (Brande, under the influence of Freud, identifies these with the unconscious and the conscious), and tricks to get oneself to do the hard work of simply sitting down to write and not be distracted. Brande goes on to develop theory of a third mode of thinking, which she calls "genius", and uses principles more familiar to me from meditation exercises in order to trick it into becoming active.

Many of the examples, while clearly fresh and contemporary in 1934, are now largely forgotten. It can be interesting to see which ones aren't.

Whether it will cause me to get off my arse and do something is an open question. But it's definitely more interesting than most books about writing.