|
Marlow, in the next bed, is at last trying to write with a pen again. He has it held in his hand by a kind of splint made by the hospital, like a pen-holder attached to his hand. A physiotherapist—a woman in a white coat—sits on the bed beside him, watching. MARLOW: It’s not very legible, and it hurts, but—I tell you one thing. For the first time in my life, I shall have to really think about the value of each and every little word. That’s dangerous, that is. (The Singing Detective, 225) |
The pen strapped to the fist makes a useful metaphor for writerly persistence. As a writer myself—albeit only an aspiring writer—I try to apply myself with a little of Dennis Potter’s bloody-minded persistence.
•
To write well is to test your determination. How determined are you to express your ideas clearly and artfully on the page? How determined are you to get it right, no matter how much revision that might take—and how determined are you to sit down and do it at all, when life puts up barriers, eats up your time, saps your energy? If you do finish something, how determined are you to get it published? Would we write differently, push to get published, if we wrote with urgency, like we had received a terminal diagnosis?
•
Potter died in 1994, of cancer that might have been caused by medications he took to mitigate his psoriatic arthropathy. After he received his terminal diagnosis, he resolved himself to finish two final scripts before his death. He achieved that goal, working with the help of precise pain management and driven by his own commitment to writing--what he called, very sincerely, his vocation.
In his last days, he found an unexpected serenity in the practice of his craft. In the introduction to the posthumously published edition of those two final plays, Potter described what he experienced as “now-ness,” the beauty and the immediacy in his every perception:
•
To write well is to test your determination. How determined are you to express your ideas clearly and artfully on the page? How determined are you to get it right, no matter how much revision that might take—and how determined are you to sit down and do it at all, when life puts up barriers, eats up your time, saps your energy? If you do finish something, how determined are you to get it published? Would we write differently, push to get published, if we wrote with urgency, like we had received a terminal diagnosis?
•
Potter died in 1994, of cancer that might have been caused by medications he took to mitigate his psoriatic arthropathy. After he received his terminal diagnosis, he resolved himself to finish two final scripts before his death. He achieved that goal, working with the help of precise pain management and driven by his own commitment to writing--what he called, very sincerely, his vocation.
In his last days, he found an unexpected serenity in the practice of his craft. In the introduction to the posthumously published edition of those two final plays, Potter described what he experienced as “now-ness,” the beauty and the immediacy in his every perception:
The rim of the coffee cup, the faint seagull-wing cusp made by a slant of light on top of the coffee…The hard edge of the continent that was my desk, the emptiness of the paper, the wonderful slithers and curls of letters and punctuation marks, and, above all, the curious little bite as the fine-tipped pen I work with made contact with the crisply waiting paper! I could of course go on and on, multiplying to distraction, but it didn’t come out as promiscuous multiplication at all, rather as division. A paring down to what was precisely here precisely now in the very present tense itself full stop. (Karaoke and Cold Lazarus, xii-xiii) |
Writing brought Dennis Potter through his illness; it let him recapture the dignity that his illness took away. As his death approached, the act of writing brought his appreciation of life itself into a crystalline, triumphant focus. I have often thought of him when I don’t feel well, in body or in mind, and I don’t want to sit down and do the work of putting each and every little word in order, of thinking about their value. His example helps me to take up my own pen—to be ready to strap it to my hand, if necessary—and go.
Archives
October 2023
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
June 2020
March 2020
November 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
Categories
All
Abstraction
Abstraction In Poetry
Ada Limon
Adrianne Kalfopoulou
Adrienne Rich
African-American
Allissa Hertz
Allissa Woodson
A Manual For Cleaning Women
American Beauty
Anais Nin
Andrea Rexilius
And Schuster
Annie Dillard
Anti-Semitism
Apartheid
Art
Associative Thoughts
Associative Writing
At The Inkwell
Bds
BIPOC
Black Lives Matter
Bluest Eye
Bluets
Books On Palestine
Boycott
Brenda Miller
CAConrad
Chapbook
Chip Livingston
Civil Rights
Collage
Color
Community
Concrete Imagery
Creativity
Cross-categorization
Danielle Ferrara
David Bowie
David Hicks
David Lazar
Deborah Shapiro
Democracy
Dennis Potter
Denver
Denver Events
Denver Writes
Diana Khoi Nguyen
Dikeou Pop-Up
Dorothea Lasky
E.C. Kelly
Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Hellstern
Erasures
Eric Baus
Estafania Munoz
Ethnocracy
Eudora Welty
Experimental Writing
Experimentation
FBOMB
Fiction
Film
Found Poetry
Frank O'Hara
Gabrielle Lessans
Gaza
Genocide
Genre
Ghost Of
Ginny Short
Humanity
Hybrid
Hybridity
Hybrid Writing
Identity
Iggy Pop
Imitation
Implicit Bias
“In Praise Of Abstraction"
Inverted Syntax
Islamaphobia
Israel
Issue Three
Issue Two
Jamie Mortara
Jesica Carson Davis
Kathryne Lim
Kathryn Winograd
Kathy Fish
Kevin Spacey
Launch
Letter
Liberation
Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop
Literary Citizen
Literary Events
Literary Journal
Literary Magazine
Lucia Berlin
Lucy Findley
Maggie Nelson
Manet
Mapping Subconscious
Meet The Mags Volume 2
Melanie Merle
Metaphor
#MeToo Movement
MFA
Mile High MFA
Mile-High MFA
Mile-High Review
Mule
Muriel Spark
Music
Natalie Goldberg
Nawal Nader French
Nawal Nader-French
New Years Letter
New York School Of Writers
No Justice: No Peace
Nonfiction
Nongenre
Occupation
Palestine
Palestinians
Performance
Personal Experience
Philip Metres
Pj Holliday
Poems In Programing Language
Poetry
Poetry Reading
Poetry Ritual
Political Poetry
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
Prose Sonnet
Publishing Industry
Publishing Practices
Punchapalooza
Punch Drunk Press
Punketry
Rachel Weaver
Ravi Shankar
Raw Fury
Reading
Reading Events
Readings
Redacted
Rejection
Resist
Review
Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers
Salon Des Refusés
Settler Colonialism
Sexuality
Shane McCrae
Soap Operas
Sophfronia Scott
Source Code Poetry
Stain'd
Submit
Submitting
Submitting Life
Suzanne Paola
Syntax Physic Opera
Ted Downum
Telepoem
Tell It Slant
The Singing Detective
Tom Phillips
Toni Morrison
Totalitarianism
Unmanageable
Wallace Stevens
Welcome
William S. Burroughs
Words Beyond Bars
Writers
Writing
Writing Advice
Writing Buddy
Writing Exercise
Writing Life
Writing Practice
Zionism