Winston Churchill Said
By John Vorhaus | December 22, 2011 |
I keep this quote in my archives and refer to it often.
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.
— Winston Churchill
It kills me to think that Winston Churchill, Mr. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” himself, should have the same adversarial relationship with writing as the rest of us. Apart from the times it’s fun, it’s a struggle, and if you find that tautology a little too tight, think about your own process: the days of pure joy when the words come flying off the page and splatter all over everything; and then those endless slogs through thickets of story problems or research or rewrites or whichever part of the writing process makes your spirit sag. I have one friend who’s devastated by endings. She just can’t seem to write the climax, even when she knows she knows it exactly. Another friend hates rewrites like a cat hates baths. For me, it’s picking up again after a long layoff. I have a bear of a time getting back in the groove, getting that engine chugging again. Lost momentum, you could say, is the part of the process that’s my master.
Right now I’m thinking it would be a worthwhile exercise to break down ol’ Winnie’s quote and investigate which particular part of the writing process is my toy and amusement, my mistress, my master and so on. Play along at home; my writing insights won’t be half as valuable to you as yours.
Toy and amusement: Not long ago I hatched the harebrained scheme to create a thousand new words by Christmas. In the heady early days of the project, it was certainly my toy and amusement, quickly yielding such treasures as harasshole (an authority hard-on with petty power), panticlimax (a dry hump), hactivity (the entire oeuvre of Dan Brown), and what I thought must’ve been hundreds of others. Then I did a quick count. Ah, 23 down, 977 to go. Thank goodness I didn’t specify Christmas of which year, but in any case I have a feeling this project will be with me long after the amusement fades away. (You can track its progress through Facebook or my Twitter feed.)
Mistress: Of late I have been writing episodes of an original situation comedy, entirely on spec and fully as a labor of love. Having batted out six episodes in six weeks, I’m in the full first blush of a crush, where everything I look at or think about or hear of seems like a story to me. I know it won’t last, but right now I feel like I’m bedding down with Lady Creativity herself, and am determined to snuggle with her for as long as she will have me.
Master: As I’ve already said, lost momentum is my master, in the sense that it masters me, masters my best intentions. I wish it were my master in the sense that it would order me back up to speed. Maybe that’s how it was for Winston: His books commanded him to write and he wrote. Me, I find I perform better with a mistress, not a master. I’m not being flip. I just mean that I have no problem putting in the hours when I’m in love with the work and everything’s flowing free and easy. When I bog down, well, it’s not like I give up, but I certainly wish the hard problems weren’t so hard.
Tyrant: A friend called me up just now and suggested a round of disc golf. I said I couldn’t go – my boss wouldn’t let me. He said, “What boss? You have no boss.” But I do. My boss is my drive, my urgent need to write that transcends tired, transcends doubt, transcends story problems, plot problems, writer’s cramp, even the Lorelei-like temptation of disc golf. The part of me that says, “You must write now,” that’s my tyrant. Tyrannized though I may be, I would certainly be less well off without it.
Beast: I have no trouble killing the beast and flinging him to the public. When I get down to the point where I’m changing a phrase from, say, “couldn’t be bothered” to “could not be bothered” and then back again, I know it’s time to kill and fling. Look, the work’s not going to be perfect – no work ever is – and the typos I find in the printed book will drive me a little bit nuts. By and large, though, I don’t have much of a problem with the beast. I just turn my back.
So how about you? Can you correlate parts of your writing process with Churchill’s anthropomorphicreations? (New word! Huzzah!) Or even just list the parts of the writing process you like or hate, or find easy or hard. That alone should give you new food for insight into how you shape your days and conduct your practice of writing. It will show you where you need to spend more time (in the fun parts) and where you need to spend more effort (in the hard parts). And that’s what I mean when I say that apart from the fun parts it’s a struggle. Maybe it’s the other way around. Apart from the struggly bits, it’s all fun.
In closing, it’s worth noting that Winnie has nothing to say about defeat. Nowhere in this quote do we get the impression that he’s about to give up. Nor did he ever. Wikipedia (the agreed-upon source of consensus reality) says he wrote 43 books. And painted. And built. And still found time to win a war. Sometimes thinking about Winston Churchill bums me out. He accomplished so much. Me, I coined the word pluckworthy. Then I think, well, he did the best he could, I’m doing the best I can, and so are you. So in that sense, we’re all about equal. Anyway, comparisons are odious.
But 43 books. Sheesh.
John Vorhaus has written seven novels, including Lucy in the Sky, The California Roll, The Albuquerque Turkey and The Texas Twist, plus the Killer Poker series and (with Annie Duke) Decide to Play Great Poker. His books on writing include The Comic Toolbox, How to Write Good and Creativity Rules!
John, thanks for this post. I definitely can relate to what Churchill was saying. FYI, not to be snarky, but it was FDR who said, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself “
Beat me to it. Yes, it was FDR.
I must be lucky that I’ve yet for my work to become a Tyrant or a Beast, but that may just be my own writing process at work. I’m one of those “I’ll write when Inspiration Hits” writers, so I guess you could call me the mistress in my writing experience. Waiting around for the word to call and tell me to get to work!
Churchill is a wonderful source for insightul quotes. I share your Master but not your ability to ignore the beast. Might have to give it a try!!
Merry Christmas
Yes, it is definitely “an adventure”– a misleading word in and of itself because it alludes to galavanting around and discovering amazing new worlds, without including all the hoary details that always accompany an adventure.
Here’s how Churchill’s quote breaks down for me:
Toy and an Amusement= when the idea first HITS– I’m driving or waiting in line somewhere and an elusive thought begins tugging at my mind and I indulge it out of curiosity… later, I kick it around over coffee or drinks with my friends, and in the process of pitching it to them I become truly intrigued.
Mistress: I find myself thinking about the story all the time, wanting to develop it and willingly sacrifice other things in my life to have more time to work on it. Everything makes me think of it, and is somehow related, causing me to be forever scratching notes on the backs of receipts or napkins.
Master: Now that I’ve become so emotionally involved and so completely convinced that this project is worthwhile, I cannot pursue any other creative endeavors until it is complete. I begin making to do lists and schedules and a sense of dread mingles with my former elation.
Tyrant: It’s all I talk about, it’s all I think about. I become quite convinced that if I don’t complete it, I will meet some tragic end, and not really mind.
Now… I’m hoping and waiting for his last sentence to finally kick in.
Egg on my face. In this day of instant access to all information, you’d think I would have checked the provenance of the “fear” quote. I can only imagine that it’s so deeply etched into my brain as a Churchill quote that I never felt the need to confirm. That said, for someone who has a fetish about getting his facts straight (while willfully making up every dang thing else) I should have done diligence; diligence was due. By way of atonement I offer up this brand new stuntword, coined by me some three minutes ago:
NATIVITUDE. What you give your in-laws when the invade at Christmas.
Have a ‘tude-free Yule, y’all. -jv
Churchill is certainly an inspiring individual.
Eggs all cleaned up by now, your post did get me thinking about how this leader rallied his people even though he had to struggle with his own governmental peers at first. His “We shall fight….” speech is a rallying call to continue to the end. Churchill struggled, as well, with depression. He was an artist in his own right, along with being an author and historian. Phew!
Right now I’m cheating on my tyrant with my mistress. There’s also a project I toy with, when my tyrant lets me. I’m desperately hoping my mistress doesn’t get jealous of my toy!
I say on my blog: If artists—poets, painters, composers—could express their inner-most thoughts and feelings in a few simple words, they would do so. But sometimes a particular feeling or idea cannot be addressed in a just a few words or in words at all. What they really want to say can only be articulated through their art.
Creativity is not always easy, but it’s important.
Winston Churchill was a great man. I haven’t even attempted to write a book. if I can keep my blog up up to date I’m happy..now onto winning that war..ha!:)
43 books? Really? Didn’t know that about old WC. Anyone here ever read any of them?
And I’m so with you on the lost momentum bit. I feel like I’m constantly playing catch up with myself these days.
Helpful — and humorous. I so want to appropriate your new words, John!
But you’re welcome to them, Daniel. I am on a crusade to change the language; how can I do that without help? -jv
I like “pluckworthy.”
My works are not simply monsters, they are The Beasts That Ate My Life; but that’s okay. I’d rather have Monsters and Beasts than Ghosts of Manuscripts never written.
Thanks, John, for a great post. Btw, whenever I see one of your posts here I remember the great guest speaking gig you did with your mother for AWG, some years ago.
Love that quote, thanks for sharing!
Personally, I find the most difficult parts of writing to be developing an unique and interesting story, as well as finding a way to express it creatively without cliches.
I think challenges are natural though. In fact, facing and overcoming difficulties are integral to self-improvement and skill development. In fact, many writers and other talented people actually deliberately challenged themselves with tasks in order to overcome weaknesses.
A great quote and an inspirational life. 43!! Thanks for the bio and the parallels to your own writing process. I think I’m best with the “middles” — I tend to get stuck before I dive in and after I swim out. The middle — lovely.
43 books makes me think much of the process was completed in the “mistress” phase. From “blood, toil, tears and sweat” to “their finest hour” to the “iron curtain” Churchill certainly loved words and made them do his bidding.