Many months ago I wrote about the following quote from Edith Wharton’s craft book, The Writing of Fiction:
The answer is that he [the writer] will never do his best till he ceases altogether to think of his readers (and his editor and his publisher) and begins to write, not for himself, but for that other self with whom the creative artist is always in correspondence, and who, happily, has an objective existence somewhere, and will some day receive the message sent to him, though the sender may never know it. As to experience, intellectual and moral, the creative imagination can make a little go a long way, provided it remains long enough in the mind and is sufficiently brooded upon. One good heart-break will furnish the poet with many songs, and the novelist with a considerable number of novels. But they must have hearts that can break.
I split the quote into two parts. The entry from May 2021 covers the first part. Now I’m finally getting around to the second. Let’s isolate it:
As to experience, intellectual and moral, the creative imagination can make a little go a long way, provided it remains long enough in the mind and is sufficiently brooded upon. One good heart-break will furnish the poet with many songs, and the novelist with a considerable number of novels. But they must have hearts that can break.
This makes me smile every time. Have you ever read such a lovely endorsement of sensitive types? In three sentences, Edith Wharton releases us from two fears: that we are too boring to be writers, and that our hearts are too soft to be writers. What a relief that my very normal life is not irredeemably dull! And my breakable heart is not a liability; it’s a necessity!
“Experience” is a common and complicated topic for writers. Must you live what you write, or can you make it up? For some reason the “interesting life” fallacy still persists, despite the enormous amount of work done trying to tell people that many productive artists had orderly, predictable, perhaps even boring, daily routines.
If I describe my life in the simplest way, it is not very interesting. I have worked a regular full-time job since the day after I graduated from college. I have one long-term partner. My peak hours of activity are between 10 AM and 3 PM—I am neither a frenetic morning person, subsisting on coffee and cigarettes to achieve my daily output; nor a haunted night owl, subsisting on booze and cigarettes to achieve my daily output. In fact, my body is pretty sensitive to what I put into it (I guess that’s growing up), so I have to be judicious if I want to feel good. I know I won’t write if I don’t feel good, so I try to feel good most of the time. I work best when I appear regularly at my desk or in a cafe and blab a little in a notebook, especially if there is good food to look forward to when my session is done. If I’m lucky, it occasionally turns into something more than blabber.
Women artists are the best at reminding us that an “interesting” life is not a requirement for art (since “interesting” often secretly means “not a woman’s life”). Turns out, things that are labeled uninteresting are the foundational things I need to do my work at all. A reasonably tidy, secure home; consistent sleep; predictable lunch; reliable friends. Earthly demands do not preclude a creative life. Ursula K. Le Guin has several great essays that touch on this topic, but I’ll link just one here.
But this isn’t the interesting part! The real question is: If writers don’t need interesting lives, then what do we need?
Wharton has the answer:
…they must have hearts that can break.
Before we take this answer for granted, we should remember that having a heart that can break is not always easy or intuitive. Often, our intuition tells us to shield our hearts from breaking; to love a little less, to swallow our tears, to temper our desires so we won't be disappointed. The message is that heartbreak should always be avoided. If you were silly enough to allow your heart to break, you did not properly protect yourself.
For much of my life I was proud to say that I never cried. Not even The Notebook, the tearjerker of my youth, could move me. The flip side to not crying is a deep familiarity with the feeling of trying not to cry (the tightening in your throat; biting of lip or tongue; pinching yourself) as well as the feeling of crying quietly (the holding of breath; letting it out in short, silent bursts; the humidity under the covers, where you are hiding your face). Straining against release.
Something changed when I was about twenty-three. Suddenly everything could bring tears. The wrong song playing at Starbucks could do it. A video of a dog playing with a baby. The trailer for the live-action Jungle Book made me cry. (The trailer!) Having been on both sides of the road, I can say with confidence that trying not to cry is much more uncomfortable than crying.
Other people have said that there’s a cultural imperative to be happy, but I’d also read it as an imperative to be consistent. To keep going, in the same way, as fast as you can. Having a broken heart tends to make you inconsistent. Inconsistency is bad for business.
Perhaps this is the crux of the argument about interestingness: instability of circumstance is confused for the expression of a range of emotions. A predictable, routine-based life has been equated—unfairly—with emotional flatlining. Anyone who has cried on the way home from a Christmas celebration knows that the smallest rituals of human life can be devastating.
But I see why this has happened, in a world where emotional expression has been deadened and made shameful. People are looking for outlets, and notice rightly that following the standard path for life does not provide or endorse very many.
We’ll have to endorse our emotions ourselves. When I was that young person who refused to cry, I also did not allow myself to call any of my feelings “love,” because my emotions didn’t seem worthy of the word. Crying more led to loving more. I started to name it without shame. I started telling my friends I loved them. Then I noticed a new inclination to sign off phone calls in a way previously reserved only for my parents and my partner: Love you. Bye. Loving more led to loving more.
“Interesting” is debatable, but loving more, feeling my heart break, also led to a more nourishing writing practice. Things that used to be problems no longer seemed like problems. In writing, I didn’t care about much except release, discovery, and routine. Even though I demanded less from my work, I somehow got more.
Let’s pull a quote from that Ursula K. Le Guin essay. Le Guin is quoting a German painter named Käthe Kollwitz, discussing whether or not she is more productive as an artist now that her kids are older:
''Perhaps in reality I accomplish a little more,'' Kollwitz continues. ''The hands work and work, and the head imagines it's producing God knows what, and yet, formerly, when my working time was so wretchedly limited, I was more productive, because I was more sensual; I lived as a human being must live, passionately interested in everything. . . . Potency, potency is diminishing.''
We must have hearts that can break. We must live, passionately interested in everything, allowing the potency to hurt us. Look a little closer. Are you bored, or are you holding back your tears?