Anne Tyler

"If I waited until I felt like writing, I'd never write at all."

— Anne Tyler

American Novelist

1941 -

Commentary

Many beginning writers feel that they can only write when the spirit strikes them.  They wait until they have the urge to write.  Unfortunately, they will write very little because the spirit is often on vacation.  Writers, artists and other creative leaders must develop the discipline and habit of working every day whether they are in the mood or not.  Somedays what they produce will be great and on other days it will be terrible.  The quality does not matter.  Just like there are bad hair days and good hair days, there are bad creative days and good creative days.  They will not always hit a home run or score the winning basket.

So what about you?  Do you wait until the spirit strikes?  Or are you up and at it every day?   Do you have the self-discipline to create something every day?  There is no boss looking over your shoulder or no parent coaxing you out of bed.  You have to be the one to get yourself up writing, painting or dancing.  No one can do it for you.

Creative Practice

Experts say it takes 21 days to form a habit.  So your assignment this week to choose a time every day when you will create.  Then for the next 21 days spend that time creating.  Begin now to form habits of a lifetime.  You are responsible for the life you live.

Background

Anne Tyler, the eldest of four children, was born in Minneapolis, MN.  Her father was a chemist and her mother a social worker.  Her youth was spent in several Quaker communities.  She did not attend public school until she was eleven. She graduated from Duke University and did graduate work in Russian studies.

Tyler has published 19 novels.  The first one, If Morning Ever Comes, was published in 1964.  She won the Pulitzer Prize for her 11th novel Breathing Lessons.

Tyler rarely gives face-to-face interviews.  In her first such interview in thirty-five years with Deirdre Donahue in 2012, she said: "I have to go to my writing room five days a week. I have to put in my time."  Donahue states that Tyler writes in longhand on unlined paper.

Pearl Buck

"I never look at the papers again.  My secretary types them out and my husband edits them.  I never had anything more to do with a book until it is published . . . . I cannot stand to read over anything I write.  My husband takes care of everything for me except the first draft.  He works in the other half of the house."

— Pearl Buck

American Novelist

1892 - 1973

I am fascinated by the work habits of writers and artists.  Each one is unique and different and brings a special insight to the creative process.  We all find ways to draw on the creative spirit when we need it.

Pearl Buck was American born, but raised in poverty-stricken rural China by missionary parents and her Chinese nanny.  Her father, Absalom, was always traveling, attempting to convert the Chinese with little success.  He had ten converts in ten years.  Her mother, Carie,  buried most of her children in China and filled Pearl's heart with stories of America.  Her nanny, Wang Amah, filled her mind with tales of demons, dragons and spirits.  Educated in an American college, Buck returned to China with her husband, John Lossing Buck, only to be abandon for months at a time by her traveling husband, much like her mother was.  Both her father and her husband were obsessed with work.  Her father wanted to spread the word of God and her husband was passionate about Chinese farming.

Pearl Buck began writing at age 35.  Always a storyteller, Buck's most famous second novel, The Good Earth, was published in 1931 when she was 39 and she was honored with a Pulitzer Prize.  In 1938 she became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature.  She published 38 novels, 16 collections of short stories, and 11 works of non-fiction between 1930 - 1974, sometimes as many as two books a year.

Hilary Spurling, in her biography, Pearl Buck in China, says: She spent every morning at her desk, emerging exhausted, dazed, and stupefied from these sessions with what she called her book people, or sometimes her real people.  She wrote longhand without revision or correction, seldom pausing, covering page after page at phenomenal speed in a small compact script, producing on average 2,500 words at a sitting."  She gave her manuscript to her second husband and publisher, Richard Walsh, who edited them for publication.

Every creative leader has different work habits.  What are yours?