One of my favorite writer bios is:
“Becoming Dr. Seuss”
About… Dr. Seuss.
There are all kinds of lessons for the writer and/or content creator inside. So many I lost count half way through when first reading it, and am about to go in for a second reading soon. One of many such lessons is how much he sweated, battled with the blank page, and I would argue suffered for his work.
Here are a few of my notes from the book:
* He dismissed people calling him a genius by saying, “If I were a genius, why do I have to sweat so hard at my work?”
* He once said, “I know my stuff always looks like it was rattled off in twenty-three seconds, but every word is a struggle and every sentence is like the pangs of birth.”
* He wasn’t chasing leisure or fleeing from hard work – he embraced it, leaned into it, learned to love it. He told a journalist: “…retirement’s not for me! For me, success means doing work that you love, regardless of how much you make. I go into my office almost every day and give it eight hours – though every day isn’t productive, of course.”
* If he wasn’t having a productive day and nothing was happening he would start going through his giant pile of history or “classy junk” reading to get ideas flowing.
* He had a very blue collar workday where he’d work for 8 hours, no matter what, even if it was just sitting there staring at the wall… after which he’d go have cocktails with his wife, swim, do some gardening, have a beer, etc.
* He limited himself to using a narrow list of 350 words for his stories which both infuriated him as well as helped him write his most memorable stories… i.e., his creativity was enhance by barriers & a framework he forced himself to work within, even if it felt like it stifled it.
* His stories did not come from thinking alone, but lots and lots and lots of writing, playing with words, getting frustrated, developing the “scar tissue” of patience, making discoveries, doing experiments, seeing what worked, starting over, taking what did work, mixing with some new ideas, and so on, and so forth, constantly moving
And so it is.
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Ben Settle
