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Writers Dreaming, Writers Musing
In her essay in Naomi Epel’s Writers Dreaming, Gloria Naylor said that writers are a work’s first audience. The idea stuck with me, and I’ve been thinking it over. I think it may be true. It feels true at least, and that’s not the worst test.
I know some writers get huffy when other writers say that their characters take over, have no idea where ideas come from, that they are just along for the ride, etc. — abdicating responsibility for their work with what sounds like a projected false humility.
The writers that get mad about these statements resent members of the tribe going out and making light of our work. Writing as work is frequently minimized, unacknowledged, even denied. Who wouldn’t be mad about that?
Roger Angell, an editor at Holiday Magazine, proposed to his step-father E. B. White that he should revisit New York City, “have fun” and write about his old haunts. E. B. White replied, “Writing is never fun.”
But I think I see what Naylor was saying in her essay. We open the taps of creative flow, and like a kid playing in the rainwater rolling toward a gutter, we put in little sticks and leaves and watch them go. We pull up clumps of…
