Somehow its possible, though I reserve judgement, to write during any sort of physical or mental difficulties. There's the dim cloud of a headache drifting over my consciousness today and its threatening to bring the whole parade down. How a person is supposed to ignore this fact and continue on with the process is a stunning feat to consider. The act is beyond comprehension to me, mainly because I am in the throes of it. Perhaps if I were beyond this, and into the next day when, I hope, all this nastiness as worn off, then I would see a little more clearly how it could be possible.
But then, what would be the point really? I'd wouldn't have a headache anymore and I could write just as though it were any other day, mostly for the fact that it WOULD BE any other day. But today, yeech. I can feel the sick throbbing building up like a tantrums of some hideous beast in my skull. There's filth in my brain, rubbing around in a disgusting friction. That's a headache to me. Its not even a migraine. Imagine if it were.
Last night was an interesting revelation. I watched the Charlie Rose Show as I occasionally do and on the screen was a friendly looking chap in a sharp tweed jacket (is there such a thing?) talking in the most casual of tones how wonderful his life was. I'm always intrigued to hear how other people live, how they manage a day, how they relax, what they need to get through it. He seemed like a genuinely happy, contented, well grounded, successful man and I wondered just who in the hell he was. As it turned out, he was John Grisham. Now, I will admit, I have always held some small air of contempt for the name. Why, I can't say exactly. I'm sure it stems from jealousy. The man's written 21 novels, all of them wildly successful. Not a single bomb amidst them even when he's ventured outside of his standard genre of the legal thriller.
I have a hard time admitting it, but maybe I simply feel the same way about any popular novelist. Not that I'm a literary snob, though my college years, looking back on them, did seem to cultivate in my mentality some kind of foolish sanctimony about the practice of writing. Well, my introduction to John Grisham last night dispelled all of that in one single stroke. And I'm grateful for it. That man is just such a genuine person, I can't help but like him. And more to the point, he and I have a lot in common. Mainly that we are both supremely lazy and make no bones about it.
When asked by Charlie, how it is that he can manage to be consistently prolific, Grisham quipped that there's really nothing all that difficult about it. He takes every precaution to prevent his writing from becoming work, which is only second nature when you regard work, as I do, as the Great Satan of our time. He said he cranks out a book a year as a matter of practice and will never waiver form that schedule. He holds fast to deadlines, which is what propelled him into the favor of publishers. But more importantly, he sticks to about a 5 to 7 page range per day. Not a heavy work load, particularly when you're as practiced as he is. He lives in Charlotte, Virginia, which I've visited in my distant past. A reasonable place for a writer to live, I always thought, especially if you own a horse ranch, as Grisham does. His wife is his primary editor and unlike many writers of his stature, he willfully submits his manuscripts to the harshest scrutiny of his editors, both professional and wedded. "I make too many mistakes," he said.
Now that I've come around to liking the guy, I've begun to reconsider my stance on his writing style and his books in general. I might just give them another try, particularly his new one, "The Appeal." Its a fascinating concept that drives to the heart of one of our biggest problems in American today: the corruption of our judicial system by big business interests. While I'm not typically into the legal thriller genre, I have grown more and more politically minded as I get older and the idea is becoming more attractive to me. Its clear, too, that Grisham is doing precisely what I'd like to be doing: illuminating the problems of our day by entertaining the readers with them.
--Oh, and if you've been wondering what I've been doing in my absent time, see my other blog here on blogspot, via my profile.
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