One Woman's Writing Retreat: Interview
Ralph Keyes
Author of THE COURAGE TO WRITE and THE WRITER'S BOOK OF HOPE
by Jillian Leslie
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Ralph Keyes
By Jillian Leslie
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"You must do the things you think you cannot do."
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--Eleanor Roosevelt
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Remember the Bogeyman? Of course you do. When we were mere lads and
lasses, many of us believed we were haunted by a personal Bogeyman who
hid among our sneakers in the dark closet eager to pounce, moments after
our parents bade us sweet dreams and closed the bedroom door. But we
grew up. The Bogeyman faded into a bad memory. That's why it’s
distressing to learn our childhood demons can and do resurface, whether
we’re nine or ninety, the second we dip our quills into the inkwell.
This time, though, Mommy and Daddy aren't around to fend off the
monsters.
We begin our writing sessions with high hopes, having faith that by some miracle a muse will appear and whisper clever instructions in our ear, helping us to create Pulitzer worthy material. Often, though, the muse, a slippery creature, goes AWOL. So, instead of writing, we futz with
file folders, play endless Solitaire hands, and shoot rubber bands at
Dogbert’s rear end on our Dilbert wall calendars.
Of course, unproductive days never happen to writers like John
Steinbeck, Sue Grafton, or Pat Conroy. They, after all, have cranked out
acclaimed bestsellers. Do these writing aces quake with heebie-jeebies
before starting new writing projects? Why should they? They’re topnotch.
Seasoned. Confident. A blank screen is as foreign to them as on-stage
placidity is to Robin Williams. Anxiety’s reserved only for neophytes,
right? Absolutely wrong. Don't take my word for it, ask a writing pro
who knows all about fear: Ralph Keyes, a successful author, lecturer
and researcher, who's romanced the written word professionally for more
than a quarter century.
Keyes is endlessly fascinated with the human condition. As he'll tell
you, "I've always thought of myself as a general practitioner of a
writer--one who does every kind of social diagnosis."
Fear pestered Keyes from word one. He spent many wide-eyed nights
writing his first book, We the Lonely People: Searching for
Community. He wondered if he had the grit to write yet another book.
But Keyes is an intrepid sort. His determination to write overrode his
fear. To date, he has ten published books to his credit, on a wide
variety of topics, with more books on the way. His tenacity brought him a
fabulous perk: One of his books, Is There Life After High School?,
was turned into a Broadway musical, which went on to play throughout the
U.S. as well as in England.
Keyes's efforts aren’t limited to writing books. He's penned more than
60 published articles for top glossies. Swimming in other waters, he's
chatted with top talk show mavens on noted TV programs such as
Oprah, Donahue, Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and
20/20. In the radio world, he's spoken several times on the
acclaimed NPR program, All Things Considered. When he comes up for
air, this Ohio author and writing teacher, also makes time to help
develop affordable housing in his town of Yellow Springs. His first
priority, though, is his family. He revels in time spent with his
college sweetheart and wife of 35 years, Muriel, their sons David and
Scott, and shepherd mix, Tica.
You'd think with this writing experience Keyes would feel at ease with
all aspects of his chosen profession. He found, though, no matter how
many books or articles he had published, anxiety still mocked him. He
decided to use his researching skills (which he developed when he worked
as a newspaperman) to find out if others also suffered fear as their
unwelcome sidekick. The result? The birth of his acclaimed book, The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear.
Keyes won't offer any new age cures to banish your ghouls, no panacea,
no easy way out. "Anxiety," Keyes says, "is a normal, manageable, and
even a useful part of the writing process."
Throughout The Courage to Write, Keyes, who is delightfully
accessible and frank, gives us much to ponder by citing examples of his
own writing battles, "page fright" he calls it. To punctuate the point
about fear's universality, he liberally peppers his book with
surprisingly candid admissions from famous authors, who admit to their
own writing struggles and insecurities. For example, Fran Lebowitz
laments, "It's really scary just getting to the desk–-we're talking now
five hours. My mouth gets dry, my heart beats fast. I react
psychologically the way other people react when the plane loses an
engine."
Though Keyes contends there’s no abracadabra banishment for our fears,
he doesn't leave us dangling; instead, he empowers us with suggestions.
He breaks the elements of fear into understandable morsels. Then, he
offers techniques to apply to our writing, practical ideas such as
writing our truths, at any cost; taking creative risks, and seeking
support from other like souls.
By the time you finish the book (a book you won’t want to end), you'll
feel comforted to realize you're in distinguished company. The knowledge
that page fright happens to Pulitzer prize winners as well as to newbies
will give you the resolve to press on.
We don't need our parents anymore to eradicate the Bogeyman. We have
Ralph Keyes to help us.
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JL: Over the years, you’ve written books and articles on a wide variety of
fascinating topics. What attracted you to the topic of helping writers
transcend fear?
RK: My own anxiety about writing, first and foremost. Then I began to
notice how anxious so many other writers were, not just aspiring writers
and students of writing but published writers, too. This subject is
ubiquitous within the head of every writer. The only place where it's
rare is in books about writing. It's almost as if there's a conspiracy
of silence about writing anxiety, leaving anyone who wants to write but
is scared by the prospect to consider this their own embarrassing little
secret. In The Courage to Write I tried to pull this subject out
of the closet; expose it to a little air and light. By showing readers
how alone they were not with their writing fears, I hoped to encourage
them to write anyway. The thought to which I keep returning is this: If
you're not scared, you're not writing. Nothing of consequence, anyway.
The things most worth writing about are the things to terrify us. Our
fear tells us when we've hit the mother lode.
JL: You quote from many famous, well-seasoned writers, like E.B. White and
Pat Conroy, who freely acknowledge their own writing insecurities. With
their vast experience and publishing success, why do they seem as
insecure about their writing as fledgling writers?
RK: As we see in the case of experienced, successful writers such as E.B.
White and Pat Conroy, experience and success are no antidote to writing
fears. If anything, publishing success can ratchet up our fears rather
than calm them down. There's so much more at stake now. That's why
there are so many one-book wonders. Publishing a book can give you more
things to be afraid of, not less. (Can I pull it off again? Have the
critics sharpened their knives for me? Do I have more than one book in
me? Will my Aunt Edna be looking for my next book now that she knows
I've published one? etc., etc.) There's no way around it. Writing's
scary, whether we've published or not. We just have to write anyway;
find the courage to write.
JL: Let's personalize this a bit: In The Courage to Write, you
discussed feeling insecure before starting your second book project.
After you completed your first book, We the Lonely People: Searching
for Community, what caused your own fears to resurface? What gave you
the courage to write the second book?
RK: Writing my first book was very hard. At the time I would have told you
it was just an incredibly demanding and harrowing experience in the same
sense that building a house might be, or trekking the Appalachian Trail.
Only later did I realize that it was the fear of writing a bad book that
made this experience so demanding and harrowing. At the time I wasn't
sure I wanted to write a second book. But I went on to write nine
more. This was for several reasons. 1) It's my vocation. Writing books
is the work I do just like a plumber fixes pipes and a teacher teaches
school. 2) I'm compelled to write. I don't feel comfortable if I'm not
in the midst of a writing project, preferably a book. 3) Once you've
climbed the mountain of book writing, it's hard to return to the
foothills of writing articles, or essays, or letters to the editor. I
still write articles, essays, and letters to the editor, but writing
books gives me the most satisfaction. Plowing into my fears to write a
book is never fun, but the process wouldn't be so satisfying without
that challenge, would it?
JL: What is "Page fright"?
RK: "Page fright" is the jittery feeling we all get when confronting a blank
piece of paper. Will we be able to put any words on that paper? Will
they amount to anything? Or will this be the time we simply seize up
altogether, never to write another word? Every writer experiences page
fright, regardless of how often they've published, and how successful
they've been. "Blank pages inspire me with terror," said Margaret
Atwood. And Gabriel Garcia Marquez: "All my life I've been frightened at
the moment I sit down to write."
JL: In The Courage to Write, you say that writing fears are seldom discussed openly. Why is this?
RK: I'm not sure why it is that writing fears are seldom discussed openly.
Among men it's part of a broader macho self-protection, the fear of
being less than Ernest Hemingway (who was himself a very frightened
person, though not one who admitted easily to having so many fears).
Among writers of both genders I think there's a sense that anxiety is
for wimpy amateurs. Oddly enough, I've found that some of our most
noted writers--Cynthia Ozick, John Steinbeck, Rita Dove, Margaret
Atwood, Anthony Burgess, Joan Didion, Rosellen Brown (to name just a
few)--have been fairly open about their writing anxieties. After The
Courage to Write was published, Sue Grafton told me, "I guarantee you
that every time I sit down to write I'm scared to death."
JL: Why you feel that anxiety is an essential part of the writing
experience?
RK: Anxiety is an essential part of the writing process because it puts us
on edge, makes us concentrate, lends intensity to what we write.
Excitement is the flip side of fear, and I like to read writers who are
excited about what they're writing. When we're not scared enough we grow
complacent, and complacent writing can be awfully tedious to read.
JL: Can writers inadvertently become too comfortable with page fright, to
the point where they subconsciously use it as a way to avoid putting
forth their best effort?
RK: When page fright becomes an excuse not to write we're in the grips of
writer's block. At worst this is a terminal condition (literarily
speaking). But it can be deceptive. In other words, we don't
necessarily think "I'm too scared to write today." More often we tell
ourselves, "As soon as I get the garage straightened and the dishes
washed, I'm gonna get some writing done." Except we never do. This is
the "As soon as" syndrome. It's a product of fear, unacknowledged fear,
which can be the most toxic kind of all.
JL: In your chapter, "A Little Help from Friends," you included a
provocative comment from Vladimir Nabokov. To quote you: “Vladimir
Nabokov thought circulating early drafts of one’s work was like passing
around samples of sputum.” To show or not to show? Writers are deeply
divided on this subject. In your opinion, do people who let others read
their unfinished work truly want constructive criticism, or do they
crave only ego stroking? Can negative feedback from peers or loved ones
cause writers to lose their courage?
RK: Too often when we show our work to others it's with the unstated
command: "Praise only, please." I know writers who only let others look
at their work if they agree in advance not to give them any
"discouraging" feedback. This is worse than not showing one's work at
all. If we let someone else read our work, it should be on condition
that they can give us the full range of their reaction--as an editor
will, and a reviewer. If we're as self-confident as a Nabokov, we might
not want to show our work at all. I'm not. I get invaluable reactions
from readers of my work-in-progress, critical reactions especially.
Better to hear it from a kindly friend than a vicious critic, I figure.
Soliciting only positive, supportive responses to our work makes
critical ones doubly shattering when they arrive--as they will--after
we've published.
JL: What do you think of using subliminal tapes to help banish fear?
RK: I don't think fear can or should be banished. It's too valuable a tool
in the writing process. Remember what Toni Morrison said: "When you
stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The
stuff is important. The fear itself is information." None of this is to
say that meditation or subliminal tapes or the like aren't helpful to
writers. But in the long run I think confronting one's fear is more
useful than trying to find a way around it.
JL: What surprised you the most, as you probed the subject of writing with
courage?
RK: The number of people who said "You too? I thought I was the only one who found writing scary." And the number of noted writers I read about who admitted their own fear of writing.
JL: As we all know, e-publishing is booming. Do you plan to use this type of
exposure for your own books and articles? Do you think new writers
should try to publish online as opposed to submitting to the paper
world?
RK: I think e-publishing offers wonderful new opportunities to get our words
in print. It's an especially great place to get started. I expect that
in the not-too-distant future I'll publish some of my writing on the
Net, though I'm sure I'll continue to publish primarily on paper.
Personally, I like the look of print on paper, and the feel of a book in
my hand. My kids don't, however. They'd rather sit in front of a
computer screen, and I'm sure would be just as happy to read a cyber
book as a real one. If I ignore this reality, I ignore lots of potential
readers.
JL: What’s the most important piece of advice you can offer writers who need
a shot of courage?
RK: Welcome to the club. Fear is where writing begins. All writers need a
shot of courage. Every one of us.
Relevant Links:
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Copyright (c) by Jillian
Leslie, 2010.
Jillian Leslie's articles have appeared in Family Circle
Magazine, Bed and Breakfast Journal, Oregon Coast Magazine,
Oregon Parks Magazine and Northwest Travel Magazine. She is the
webmaster of EverydayWarriors.com. Read more about her here.
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