I was thinking last night about my much-loved F. Scott Fitzgerald, and while I was browsing the Interwebs, overly concerned with something extremely unimportant, indeed, I was led to the following thought...
F. Scott Fitzgerald has always been a writer known for severe and lasting bouts of writer's block. This very characteristic is what makes me respect the man more than anything. I always hope that somehow, I have a genius waiting to get out on paper too. He and I have dealt with writer's block in much the same way, except he had a Gatsby, and several hundred other delightful tidbits to show for himself. Maybe someday, I could be even a tiny fraction as good...
"All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. " -- F.S.F.
But, what, dare I ask, would have happened to American literature if the Internet would have been around sooner? Would Hemingway have been too busy playing a FPS on his XBox360 and never written The Old Man and the Sea. Maybe he would have written The Old Man and the TV. Would Melville have been too busy playing FISH: the Flash Game to have ever written an actual novel about the subject? Would Dorothy Parker have been updating her blog once a day and never ACTUALLY written any stories? Fitzgerald sat around drinking highballs and writing lists in order to cope with his writer's block, but what if he had just written lists AND played Sims? What "great American novels" are WE failing to breathe into life because we have too many useless things to do and therefore too little time to do them all?
I have thought though...Oscar Wilde would have had a subscription to GQ, and would idolize Justin Timberlake.
This is the biggest worry we had about Fitzgerald...
"I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library." -- F.S.F.
All writers have suffered from writer's block, that looming and evil disease, but that fact makes me all the more encouraged when I hear it from them, in the shadow of their great works of art...
"One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily."
(Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
"People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently."
(Anna Quindlen)
"If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word."
(Margaret Atwood)
"Don't get it right, just get it written."
(James Thurber)
"Lower your standards and keep writing."
(William Stafford)
"I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning."
(William Faulkner)
"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule."
(Robert Parker)
