For years, I’ve carried around a quotation from Doris Lessing that gets at the heart of what writing is like, at least for me.
The version in my notebook was a mess: at least a couple of quotes fused together, with unmarked ellipses.
The source turned out to be an interview with Harvey Blume, who did pieces for the Ideas section of The Boston Globe. He interviewed Lessing when she was 88.
Blume asked her how someone who became famous for The Golden Notebook could then write The Cleft, which imagines the calamitous arrival of males into a world composed solely of women.
Lessing replied:
Listen, I feel — I'm sure I've said this before but I'll say it again — there's a kind of problem between critics and writers. A writer falls in love with an idea and gets carried away. A critic looks at the finished product and ignores the rush of a river that went into the writing, which has nothing to do with the kind of temperate thoughts you have about it.
If you can imagine the sheer bloody pleasure of having an idea and taking it! It's one of the great pleasures in my life. My god, an idea!
For some people, having an idea and working it out is just a wonderful thing to do.
That is writing.
I’ve always been astonished that some people think that writing is sitting in front of a keyboard with a vague notion that they’d like to publish something.
That kind of thing might lead to typing. But I don’t see how it could lead to sheer bloody pleasure.
• Source: Harvey Blume, “Q&A: Doris Lessing”; The Boston Globe, Aug. 5, 2007.
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