Sherwood Anderson’s ageless advice to rookie writers
Easy Read
Perhaps the only reason we’re blessed with writers like Hemingway, Faulkner, Stein, Bukowski, is because of Sherwood Anderson.
His hand and literary prowess hatched the short story as we know it. And as a byproduct — some of the greatest writers to ever grace the page with words.
Before Anderson, most writing was bound by tradition, formula, neat little packages wrapped and labeled to appease the critics and publishers.
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He thought this was a ‘betrayal of life’ and called such stories ‘snappy, entertaining, artificial things, forgotten completely an hour after it was read.’
So he ignored all the mechanics of tradition and revolted with substance, sincerity and simple takes of happenings. Things he observed and felt.
As such, he was revered.
Bukowski remembers him through poetry, Hemingway praises him through personal letters — ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am for you getting my stuff published. It means such a hell of a lot.’ — and Faulkner maintained that 'he has never been given his rightful place in American literature … He was the father of my generation of American writers.’
Thing about Anderson is, not only was he a genius writer, he was selfless in his teaching of the craft, too.
Anderson’s advice to any young-buck-writer looking to make a name for themselves.
Sherwood often thought he should prepare a book to be read by other and younger writers so they may learn from his experience. He never did. But there exists a collection of his views on the craft that acts as a guide for any writer at any stage.
Here are a few that stand out …
[Sherwood Anderson is writing now]
On what’s it’s like in the beginning,
for everyone:
“You begin, of course, being not yourself. We all do. There have been so many great ones. “If I could write as that man does.” There is, more than likely, some one man you follow slavishly. How magnificently his sentences march. It is like a field being plowed. You are thinking of the man’s style, his way of handling words and sentences.
You read everything the man has written, go from him to others. You read, read, read. You live in the world of books. It is only after a long time that you know that this is a special world, fed out of the world of reality, but not of the world of reality. You have yourself not yet brought anything up out of the real world into this special world, to make it live there.
And then, if you are ever to be a real writer, your moment comes.”
On the best way to write:
“I am interested only in what you give me, in how much you extend my own knowledge of life. You came from a different environment. You were born in a rich or a well-to-do family, while I came from a poor one.
What was the tone of life in your house? How did you feel? What made you what you are?
There are a thousand questions I want to ask you. Tell me in your work. Tell me. Tell me. The tales you tell, the way you tell them, the tone, color, form, all of these should reveal yourself to me. Give me a little of yourself. Extend a little my own knowledge, my own capacity for feeling, for understanding. I am a lustful man. I want everything.”
On getting published:
“And do bear in mind that publishers of books, of magazines, of newspapers are, first of all, businessmen. They are compelled to be.
And do not blame them when they do not buy your stories. Do not be romantic. There is no golden key that unlocks all doors. There is only the joy of living as richly as you can, always feeling more, absorbing more, and, if you are by nature a teller of tales, the realization that by faking, trying to give people what they think they want, you are in danger of dulling and in the end quite destroying what may be your own road into life.”
On enjoying the company of patience:
“There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for fifteen years before I produced anything with any solidity to it. For days, weeks, and months now I can't do it. You saw me in Paris this winter. I was in a dead blank time. You have to live through such times all your life. The thing, of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor. The point of being an artist is that you may live.”
The writers duty, then, is not to fake our words or to be well liked or seek acclaim. But to hang a semblance of reality, our semblance of our reality, around the work. To keep moving around and learning and listening and understanding if you can.
Not even understanding, just telling it in your truth as only you can.
That was Sherwood’s lesson.
That still is his lesson, long after his death.
And it gives us a fighting chance, no? Well that, and a spilling of luck.
Anyway.
By Ryan Heaney.
