Be Like Cormac?
“I hear people talking about going on a vacation or something and I think, what is that about? I have no desire to go on a trip. My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That’s heaven. That’s gold and anything else is just a waste of time.”
The late Cormac McCarthy, via Dan Rather’s Substack
I’m sure you’ve heard the news that Cormac McCarthy died on Tuesday. He was considered one of our finest authors, penning such classics as Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, and No Country for Old Men. I was not a fan, though I appreciated his artistry. I read All the Pretty Horses for the first semester of my MFA program, at the suggestion of my mentor. While I saw the value in the way in studying how he wrote I could not handle his dark themes and the pervasive violence.
But I’ve always been fascinated by the man himself. He wrote twelve novels, five screenplays and three short stories, “spanning the Western and post apocalyptic genres,” according to Wikipedia. McCarthy enjoyed a rabid following. One of my son’s friends named his dog Cormac. Creativity dude Austin Kleon was a fan, and described him like this: “To me, he was a great mashup artist, like if you put Hemingway, Faulkner, Moby-Dick, and The King James Bible in a blender.”
And yet, he never went on book tours and rarely gave interviews. (The New York Times ran an article mining some bits from interviews he gave to local newspapers early in his career.) He had his own office at the Santa Fe Institute, a scientific think-tank. (The website says they are devoted to studying complex systems.) And he looked the part of a learned scholar slash author.
As a female writer who has struggled to balance my writing with the responsibilities of raising children and the dreaded domestic work so many male writers sneer at, I was also fascinated to read some of the personal anecdotes in this Washington Post article, which I think is the best obit I’ve read. His first wife filed for divorce from him when he asked her to get a job so he could write, despite the fact that she was already caring for their baby. And another wife told the story that they were so poor they bathed in a lake, yet when McCarthy was offered $2,000 to speak he refused.
I’m not interested in wading into gender wars or pontificating about the ethics of such choices. But all of these anecdotes buttress the quote that begins this article. When it came to writing, McCarthy was an all-or-nothing kind of guy. And clearly he put his writing above all else. Which is nice work if you can get it, right?
And partly, that appeals to me: the romance of the dedicated, obsessed writer who is so true to his one passion that it’s all he can do, all he can focus on. I still sometimes fall for the idea of this. I remember reading an autobiographical article by Norwegian author Jo Nesbo in which he told how his first novel was written. He got the idea on a 30-hour plane flight from Norway to Australia while taking a leave from his stressful day job and evening gig as a rock star. When he got there he holed up in his hotel room and just wrote and wrote. And then, “I just wrote and wrote and was irritated by disturbances like hunger and the need for sleep. These were the best weeks of my life.” (You can read the story here and I recommend it, it’s quite entertaining and touching, too.)
And then, he sent the manuscript off on a lark and of course a publisher picked it up right away. No offense against Nesbo, I actually quite like him. And these were extraordinary circumstances, I’ll grant you that. But for most of us, for me, that doesn’t quite work. For one thing there are the afore-mentioned children to raise and domestic chores to complete. And then, oh yeah, the j-o-b thing. And there’s also this: I have other interests. Insert shocked emoji.
Writing is my passion. I’ve been doing it in one form or another since I was a kid. It’s the one thing that never bores me. There’s always something new to learn, a new technique to practice. I can’t imagine ever quitting. But, as noted, I do have other interests. Such as knitting, quilting stitching (yes, those dreaded domestic pursuits). And gardening. And reading. And, sorry Cormac, but travel. I do like to go on vacations. (Though I will admit I always take my laptop.)
I always felt vaguely guilty about this until I read The Artist’s Way, in which Julia Cameron expounds on the idea that creativity begets creativity. The more creativity you let into your life, the more creative you become. It was a relief to me to read this. I could enjoy all my passions with gusto. And I do. And guess what? None of them have taken away from my writing. Quite the contrary. As Julia says, they have enhanced it.
I’m also all for taking a writing retreat if you can swing it. In March, 2018, I and four other writers went to Céret, France for a month to write. It was heaven. We wrote all morning and then lunched, walked around town, wrote some more or did whatever, and then gathered for Happy Hour and dinner and writerly talk. (We attempted to repeat this in March of 2020, but partway through our stay the pandemic lockdown happened and we had to get home as fast as we could.)
But those times are anomalies. Most days I, like you, struggle to find the balance between my writing, my work, and my family and friends. My life is not arranged in a way to encourage such dedication to writing and to tell the truth, I am fine with that.
RIP, Cormac
And I’d love to hear your thoughts. Are you an all-or-nothing writer? Or one, like me, who balances multiple interests?
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