John Steinbeck (1902 - 1968), remembered as one of America’s preeminent writers, was a prolific author of fiction and nonfiction books, articles, short stories, screenplays, and newspaper columns.
People often lose sight of Steinbeck as a Western writer. Born in California, half of his published books take place in his native state or in Mexico. Some feature the theme of Westering – traveling toward the goal of California.
His writing earned him California’s Gold Medal Twice (Tortilla Flat and In Dubious Battle), A New York Drama Critics Award (Of Mice and Men), Norway’s King Haakon’ Liberty Cross (The Moon is Down), and the Pulitzer Prize (The Grapes of Wrath). In 1962 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
One would think with such success and popularity Steinbeck reveled in the attention of others.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
He disliked being photographed especially for book covers, and requests for biographical information. “Please feel free to make up your own facts about me as you need them,” he replied to one request. “I can’t remember how much of me really happened and how much I invented.”
Neither was he easy with reporters, as evidenced in a post-Nobel Prize interview.
Reporter: “How do you go about writing?”
Steinbeck: “With a pencil.”
Reporter: “Do you give advice to young writers?”
Steinbeck: “No.”
His second response isn’t accurate since on at least two occasions he passed on advice to his friend, author, and stage and screen writer, Robert Wallsten.
In 1960 Steinbeck wrote to him, “I hear via a couple of attractive grapevines, that you are having trouble writing…. [W]rite poetry – not for selling – not even for seeing – poetry to throw away. For poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music. And it is also the best therapy because sometimes the troubles come tumbling out.”
He added, “I only offer this if your dryness goes on too long and makes you too miserable. You may come out of it any day. I have. The words are fighting each other to get out…. I know the pain and bewilderment of the thing.”
Two years later, almost to the day, Steinbeck advised him again, in answer to a letter concerning Wallsten’s fright about starting a biographical work.
Steinbeck wrote, “Now let me give you the benefit of my experience in facing 400 pages of blank stock – the appalling stuff that must be filled,” as a list of, “Things I have had to do to keep from going nuts.”
1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when you are finished, you are always surprised.
2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with the flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.
3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death, and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person – a real person you know or an imagined person and write to that one.
4. If one scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it – bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there.
5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer that the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.
6. If you are using dialogue – say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.
He tended to be more playful with advice to his sons.
When Thom Steinbeck asked him to critique a high school summer writing assignment, his father gave him a copy of Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger.
Thom came away with a feeling of “Great empathy for [the] characters,” and, “[Twain’s] observations of the human condition were made without critical prejudice.” However, he needed something more concrete to complete the assignment and kept after his father.
Steinbeck advised him to “Do what I always do.”
With the secret of great writing about to be revealed, the boy asked, “What’s that?”
“Get up real early and go to bed real late,” Steinbeck replied.
“That’s it?” Thom asked.
“No, buy yourself a two-pound eraser and a box of sharp pencils.”
William Groneman can be reached at wgroneman@yahoo.com
