Liquid Inspiration

A lot of my writer pals use various stimuli to kick-start (or maintain) the writing process. Some just concentrate and the magic flows easily. But a lot of the writers I have met drink before and during the writing work. Everything from wine to to beer to whiskey. I've tried drinking alcohol to get the engine sparked, but it just has never worked for me.

What I do consume when I working on a story or a novel is coffee. Not tons of it. But I will go through two or three cups of hot coffee when I write in the afternoon to early evening. It keeps me sharp and helps prod my imagination.

I once read a brief biography of a writer who would retreat to his office on a Friday with a percolator and write and consume vast amounts of coffee until emerging a few days later with a completed novel. Forgive me, but I have forgotten the writer. I want to say he was a Frenchman, but the thing that struck me most was holing up in the room with gallons of coffee and not quitting until the book was ready. (I've read that the late George Simenon similarly survived on coffee as he produced each chapter of his novels.)

And don't laugh. Some writers can do things like churn out an entire pulp novel over the course of a weekend. The late Lester Dent was famous for that. He'd begin a book on Friday afternoon and by Monday morning there it would be: a 60,000-word novel of crime or fantasy or cowboys & Indians.

There was another guy I read about: he had to have sex with a woman every day to inspire his muse. His wife got tired of his demands, but not for the book contracts. So she helped him arrange the arrival of one prostitute or another every day to fire his mojo. Again, I'm terrible about recalling the stories but not the subjects, so don't ask me who this cat was.

So, here I sit. My coffee is steaming in its insulated container. The wordprocessor is open and working. And so am I.
 

"Workworkworkwork."

Don't be a Blockhead.

Dent

During my time as a writer, I've suffered only a few bouts of writers block. It has never been a consuming issue with me, but when it did arise it was generally due to some mild depression on my part. Recently I did struggle with writers block and couldn't figure out what was keeping me from finishing a project. Finally, I recognized the problem and have been working through it to finish the job. I won't get into the details, but as soon as I came to grips with the issue I was able to start working again.

One of the things that I did was to set the problematic project aside as the main focus of my work and tackle the second part of a contractual obligation for which I have a lot of enthusiasm that was not tinged by the problems that was causing me to balk on the other one. By doing that I went from producing anywhere from zero to a few hundred words per day to working at a fine clip that has me ending my writing day with anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 words.

For me, 5,000 words of fiction is a very good day. I've been doing that often as I labor on the new

Simenon

book. But compared to some writers, that's a rather anemic output. I always like to tell young writers about Lester Dent. He was one of the great pulp writers of his day, and could produce an entire 60,000 to 70,000-word novel over the course of a weekend. Similarly, Georges Simenon could churn out exceptionally fine detective novels at a clip equal to that.

I don't see myself ever being on a par with fellows like Dent or Simenon in the production of fiction. These men were both driven and had a strange form of devotion and discipline to their work ethic. I'd like to be able to achieve that level of writing, but all I can do is try.

There are some writers these days who match the output of guys like Dent and Simenon. These fellows are products of the self-publishing fad. The more successful of them have no talent at writing fiction, but seem quite adept at marketing and salesmanship. They're  like the more odious of the shysters and Amway crooks, and nothing at all like the honest working class writers such as the gentlemen I've cited.

Hack

A lot of people use the term "hack writer" as a pejorative. I once knew (online only) a writer who referred to HP Lovecraft as a "hack" because he sold his stories to the pulps. This same writer went on to write comic books for Vertigo. Now would be a good time to actually use LOL!

In fact, "hack" writing is merely writing to order. It's writing as a task, generally per order. It's a job.

I admire the so-called hack writers who entertained me in my youth. Anyone who wrote work on contract were, essentially, hack writers. There's nothing wrong with being a hack. The same author who called Lovecraft a hack was wrong on that take. As far as I know, HP Lovecraft only contracted to write a single story, that one for Weird Tales which was ghosted for Harry Houdini. Other than that one instance, HPL wrote all of his work as he felt the inspiration. This is the exact opposite of a hack. And it generally leads to starvation.

Writing as a job is nothing to be sneered at or belittled. Many writers do that. Fellows such as Lester Dent made quite a good living being hack writers. It was a job, and those who did it well earned good money at it.

A few years ago when I was desperate to sell a novel, I began looking around for a job as a hack writer. I'd already written for the comic book series CLIVE BARKER'S HELLRAISER, so I know what it was like to produce fiction by formula. Pretty much all mainstream comics work is hack work. Whether it's for a continuing Vertigo series or for Archie Comics. If you write stories for titles created by others, then you're a hack.

I'd given up trying to get back into comics. The doors were just sealed up too tight. So I looked around for paperback series that I might be able to crack. I settled on THE EXECUTIONER and related titles being published by Gold Eagle. Somewhere along the way I'd gleaned the names of a couple of the top editors there and started inquiring about the possibility of working for them. And I kept writing to them, sending my resume' of published works, emphasizing the comics work. For a long time they ignored me.

Finally, one day I received an email reply from the editor-in-chief there. He told me to work up some plot outlines and to submit them.

So--it had been a long time since I'd seen any of their books--I went out and bought a stack of second-hand copies of their adventure titles. I was, quite frankly, horrified. There was a powerful gun-crazy right wing tilt to the books. Yeah, yeah. I know. What the hell did I expect? I'm not quite sure what I expected, but I did know that I did not want to write fiction that promoted reactionary gun-mad politics. I'd just forgotten the titles from my days as a bookseller.

I sat down and tried to brainstorm my way into it. I kept coming up with outlines and fleshing them out and they would always end up being...well...right wing rants. And I'm not into that whole scene. The guns. The knives. The subtle racism. The killing. Gods, the killing.

And, in the end, I just let it all slide. I got rid of the books and forgot about the whole scheme.

I just ain't got what it takes to be a hack.