According to The Writer’s Almanac, today is Toni Morrison’s birthday. Toni Morrison was born Chloe Wofford in Lorain, Ohio (1931). Lorain was a steel town. Her father worked at the steel mill and in construction, and her mother raised the kids. Morrison said about her mother:
When an eviction notice was put on our house, she tore it off. If there were maggots in our flour, she wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt. My mother believed something should be done about inhuman situations.
Morrison went to college, got interested in theater and traveled around in an acting troupe, then went on to get a master’s in English. She loved to read, but had never been a writer except for a few stories in high school. But after she got married and had two children, her marriage started to dissolve, and she needed an escape. She said,
It was as though I had nothing left but my imagination. I wrote like someone with a dirty habit. Secretly. Compulsively. Slyly.
She joined a writing group, but after she had workshopped her stories from high school, she was out of things to share, so she wrote a story about a black girl who wanted blue eyes. And then she started to expand it into a novel called, The Bluest Eye (1969). She went on to write eight more novels, including Song of Solomon (1977), Beloved (1987), and most recently, A Mercy (2008). And she was the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature.
Do you write secretly, compulsively, slyly? If not, I recommend it. Sometimes secrets are good, especially if there are critics nearby or you can be easily influenced. Part of the task of being a writer is to protect your new creations. Some of you may do things totally differently, but I know that if I start sharing too soon, the piece loses energy. So I don’t talk about or share anything I’m writing until I have completed an entire first draft.
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Great post! I find I am somewhat the opposite. I must tell at least *some* people about what I am doing and see some sort of feedback–positive or negative–or I risk losing interest myself. My own worst enemy (in anything) is the inability to sustain interest in it alone, without input from others. I guess I need that external validation.
At the same time, I don’t tell everybody. When I am finished this, my third draft of my novel, I already have plans to show it to one friend for feedback. That one friend is carefully chosen for insight, intelligence and a balanced perspective. And it’s not even my wife. She will have to buy a copy like everyone else, I’m afraid.
Hi John,
I think whatever works for you is great. I am a major introvert so I tend to keep things closer to my chest. I also choose my first reader(s) very carefully and try to hold on to my artistic integrity, too, making my own decisions about the work. The greatest weight goes to my agent, who I figure knows what will sell books, so her feedback is key.