Writing v. Having Written

I believe it was Dorothy Parker who said she hated writing but she loved having written. I am completely the opposite. I love writing and especially rewriting. But I don't like having written. I don't like the postpartum depression that frequently accompanies it. I don't like the intrusion of the marketplace that follows it. I don't like the baffling comments, pro and con, that some observers will say about the work. Even in the secure environment of playwright-in-residence, after the successful performance of a play I preferred escaping to a bar to hanging around to mix with an admiring audience. I can't think of a single social aspect of the literary arts, from critique groups to book clubs to readings, that I embrace. To me, both writing and reading/viewing are private, solitary, even existential, actions.

I love reading a good book. I love seeing a good play. But I don't like talking about them (as a teacher in class, of course, I often have to). I'd rather say Wow! or Too bad and let it go at that. "The proper response to poetry is not criticism but poetry." (Norman O. Brown) "Take what you can use and let the rest go by." (Ken Kesey)

This means I have little skill in an essential strand in the fabric of a literary career: networking. I've done damn little to promote my career. My career has advanced when someone got excited about my work and aggressively took it and me into their fold. Three artistic directors did this in the 80s, for example (Steve Smith, Gary O'Brien, Peter Fornara). It wasn't me, it was them. If they weren't around, or their equivalent, my work would have been invisible.

My joy has been writing itself. The work as its own reward. When it's done, I get depressed and the best cure is to rush into a new project. A serial monogamist, the current work always the most interesting.

A delightful exception to the rule: when I get a great deal of distance from my work, I often can go back, read something and admire it. It feels like it was written by a stranger. Wow, did I do that? It feels like I've been many different people in one way but in another that I've just been repeating the same story over and over again, in different forms, with different emphases, but the same human story, repeatedly, which no doubt is my story, the story dancing in my head, a story I keep trying to make sense of, and probably keep failing at, and so keep trying to get right. Over and over and over. I guess until the gods pull the plug.