As we pay tribute to Toni Morrison, it is so clarifying to understand the position she held as a working writer:
“I have an ideal writing routine that I’ve never experienced, which is to have, say, nine uninterrupted days when I wouldn’t have to leave the house or take phone calls. And to have the space—a space where I have huge tables. I end up with this much space [she indicates a small square spot on her desk] everywhere I am, and I can’t beat my way out of it. I am reminded of that tiny desk that Emily Dickinson wrote on and I chuckle when I think, Sweet thing, there she was. But that is all any of us have: just this small space and no matter what the filing system or how often you clear it out—life, documents, letters, requests, invitations, invoices just keep going back in. I am not able to write regularly. I have never been able to do that—mostly because I have always had a nine-to-five job. I had to write either in between those hours, hurriedly, or spend a lot of weekend and predawn time. . . .
I’ve tried to overcome not having orderly spaces by substituting compulsion for discipline, so that when something is urgently there, urgently seen or understood, or the metaphor was powerful enough, then I would move everything aside and write for sustained periods of time.”
–from a 1993 interview with Elissa Schappell in The Paris Review
I’m reminded of another writer, Gustave Flaubert, whose organizational credo I live by, daily, otherwise not one word would get written:
“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
Thanks so much to Sherri Machlin, at the New York Public Library, for this great link to a selection of Toni Morrison’s quotes on her writing process.
https://lithub.com/you-dont-know-anything-and-other-writing-advice-from-toni-morrison/