27Jan

Being a Novelist Isn’t a Job, It’s a Lifestyle

• Saved in: Chris Orcutt Books, Craft, Fiction Writing, Memoir, Pencils, Pens, Personal Essay, Process, Typewriters, Writers, Writing Experiences, Writing Life, Writing Tools
• by Chris Orcutt
• with Comments Off on Being a Novelist Isn’t a Job, It’s a Lifestyle

Back in Decem­ber, after hav­ing com­plet­ed the first draft of a 550,000-word, 1,600-page nov­el, I took a near­ly month-long vaca­tion (my first in years). For one week of the vaca­tion, my wife and I explored Que­bec, stayed at at a ski resort, and went cross-coun­try ski­ing, swim­ming and hot-tub­bing every day.

One after­noon in the hotel room, I watched a New Eng­land Patri­ots game, a game in which quar­ter­back Tom Brady, once again, led the Patri­ots from behind in the fourth quar­ter to win.

As a Patri­ots fan, I of course found the game excit­ing, but I was par­tic­u­lar­ly tak­en by some­thing one of the com­men­ta­tors said after the game. He remarked how Tom Brady had recent­ly revealed that the rea­son he was so successful—even now, at age 40 (ancient for NFL QBs)—was that he did­n’t approach his being a quar­ter­back as a mere job, but rather a lifestyle. Every­thing in his life, every deci­sion, is in ser­vice to his over­ar­ch­ing life goal: to become the best quar­ter­back he can be (which has arguably already made him the best in the his­to­ry of the game).

Brady’s state­ment real­ly res­onat­ed with me because about a year ago, I came to a sim­i­lar con­clu­sion about being a nov­el­ist. I real­ized that in order to become the best nov­el­ist I was capa­ble of becom­ing, I had to make every­thing else in my life sub­servient to, and in ser­vice of, my writ­ing.

The sum­mer before, in June 2016, dur­ing a 3‑week sojourn in the Green Moun­tains of Ver­mont, I had already decid­ed that, at age 46, I had to be a miser with my time; I now only had time for essen­tials. But last Feb­ru­ary I extend­ed and refined this think­ing to include oth­er aspects of my life, par­tic­u­lar­ly my nutri­tion and fit­ness. I began a strict veg­e­tar­i­an (some fish), no-sug­ar, no-alco­hol nutri­tion plan, and a fit­ness reg­i­men that includ­ed swim­ming, strength train­ing, car­dio, moun­tain climb­ing and cross-coun­try ski­ing. And for the entire year (save my vaca­tion in Decem­ber), I was reli­gious about this pro­gram.

But when I heard Tom Brady’s state­ment about how being a quar­ter­back is a lifestyle, and then when I saw him win his 8th AFC Cham­pi­onship last Sun­day, I knew that I now want to apply my own ver­sion of Brady’s TB12 lifestyle method to my life as a nov­el­ist, where every­thing in my life will be in ser­vice to my writ­ing. Put anoth­er way, any­thing that will hin­der my becom­ing the best nov­el­ist I can be will be cur­tailed or out­right elim­i­nat­ed from my life. Fol­low­ing are the 5 key areas in which I am mak­ing changes:

1. Health/Nutrition/Fitness. Writ­ing nov­els is a marathon (and in the case of my lat­est, epic-length work, super marathon) activ­i­ty. It requires bod­i­ly endurance to write 1,500–3,000 words a day for months and years on end. So with this in mind, I plan to con­tin­ue my nutri­tion and fit­ness pro­gram, adding to it this year improved den­tal care, increased dietary sup­ple­ments and more rest­ful sleep.

2. Low-tech writ­ing. For 25 years I’ve writ­ten the major­i­ty of my first drafts either on a type­writer or in long­hand, then re-typed them into a com­put­er. Last year, how­ev­er, because of the over­whelm­ing length of the epic nov­el, I wrote most of the first draft on my Mac­book Air. Con­se­quent­ly, I missed the calm­ing, med­i­ta­tive, rumi­na­tive ben­e­fits that come from my usu­al low-tech method of work­ing.

To rem­e­dy this, I recent­ly ordered a new man­u­al type­writer, a 1968 Olivet­ti Let­tera 32 (reput­ed­ly the fastest man­u­al type­writer ever made), and I’m going to write all of my first drafts on it, or in long­hand. Inci­den­tal­ly, the Let­tera 32 was also the cho­sen type­writer of two writ­ers I’ve long admired, Cor­mac McCarthy and John Cheev­er.

3. Social media and the Inter­net in gen­er­al. Last Octo­ber, after a sol­id 6–7 months away from it, I returned to social media to pro­mote my lat­est book, Per­pet­u­at­ing Trou­ble. I spent most of Octo­ber through Decem­ber active­ly “engag­ing with” SM and adver­tis­ing the book using what I thought was a clever, atten­tion-get­ting cam­paign. I came to the con­clu­sion once and for all that, if you’re a seri­ous writer, SM is a com­plete waste of time. In the future, I decid­ed, I will be putting my time toward improv­ing my writ­ing.

I also dis­cov­ered that weeks of expo­sure to SM and the Inter­net in gen­er­al had made me irri­ta­ble and had wast­ed count­less hours of my time. I resolved that from now on I would only post on SM if I had major news to report, or if I was releas­ing a new book. And I would only go on the Inter­net once a week or so to check email and to research items from a list I’d be keep­ing dur­ing my writ­ing ses­sions.

Inter­est­ing­ly, about a week ago I start­ed reread­ing Hen­ry David Thore­au’s Walden for the tenth time in my life, and I came upon this quote: “Our inven­tions are wont to be pret­ty toys, which dis­tract our atten­tion from seri­ous things.” He wrote that in 1845 regard­ing the then-new inven­tion of the tele­graph, but he could just as eas­i­ly have writ­ten it last year, regard­ing SM and smart­phones.

4. More iso­la­tion. Ear­ly in Jan­u­ary 2018, I saw the recent doc­u­men­tary Cal­i­for­nia Type­writer. In it, the late, great play­wright Sam Shep­ard said some­thing that made me rethink an aspect of the writ­ing life that I’ve found myself dis­con­tent­ed with on and off over the years.

Shep­ard said,  “I feel my great strength as a writer is being alone. Alone­ness is a con­di­tion of writ­ing. You look at all the writ­ers that have come up with some­thing worth its own salt, and they’re utter­ly alone.”

When he said this, I real­ized that the lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion I feel on a dai­ly basis are a strength, and that they’re the gant­let I have to be will­ing to pass through in order to write some­thing great. I also not­ed that Shep­ard joked that he did­n’t even know how to use the “new tech­nol­o­gy,” like SM or smart­phones. “Here,” I said to myself, “is a Pulitzer-win­ning play­wright who sim­ply wrote and did­n’t allow him­self to be dis­tract­ed or derailed by the next ‘shiny thing’—a new ‘time-sav­ing’ app or online any­thing.”

5. Leisure time and media con­sump­tion. In both of these areas, my new ques­tion to myself is, “Will spend­ing my leisure time doing this activ­i­ty, read­ing this book or watch­ing this film/TV show help me to become the best writer I can be? Or is it going to be a waste­ful dis­trac­tion?”

To some, my plan to make every­thing in my life sub­servient to my writ­ing might seem dra­con­ian, but I’ve been writ­ing for 25 years, and I’ve learned what works for me and what does­n’t. The plan might not work for oth­er writ­ers (par­tic­u­lar­ly aspir­ing ones), but I know I pos­sess the self-dis­ci­pline nec­es­sary to put a plan like this into place. Next year, I’ll write a fol­low-up entry to eval­u­ate how my new plan went.

Tagged: California Typewriter, Chris Orcutt, low-tech, Olivetti Lettera 32, Orcutt, process, Sam Shepard, social media, TB12, Thoreau, Tom Brady, typewriter, Walden, writer's life, writers, writing, writing process

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