Original subtitles

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I don't think the writing life is

like deciding you're going to be a lawyer or a dentist.

It's not that kind of a decision.

I think it's something that you already--

you're already on that path before you know it

and you discover it.

If you have to stand back and say should I be a writer

or should I not be a writer, if you're

doing that, then the answer is probably I should not be.

When I was starting to write, none of us

thought we were going to have careers.

We thought we were going to have vocations which

is quite a different thing.

So our idea of being a writer was not,

you know, a six figure contract.

you know, a six figure contract.

It was the garret in Paris with the absinthe

and the tuberculosis and being penniless and unknown

but dedicating yourself to your art.

That was our idea in that generation.

People get news of the occasional writer who

gets this fabulous contract.

And they think that that's the norm.

But it isn't.

The norm is that most writers don't make

The norm is that most writers don't make

a living out of their writing.

Don't forget that many well-known writers

had other jobs.

And I just always assumed I would have another job.

I didn't think I was going to have a career as a writer.

That did happen, but it wasn't anything I ever thought.

And there weren't any manuals of instruction

about how to manage your career challenges, because let's face

it.

It's not easy.

It's not an easy life.

It's not an easy life.

It's like people who want to be an actor.

Do they know how hard that is?

You have to really want it.

You can make writing into a business,

if what you want to write is cookie cutter books.

You can do that.

You can write certain kind of genre fiction

that has a template.

And the publishers of it will tell you how to do that.

And in that case, it's not a question of career challenges,

it's just a question of ticking the boxes.

it's just a question of ticking the boxes.

First kiss on page 32.

Having a tiff on page 57.

First sex scene on page--

and that's how those things are done.

But I'm assuming that's not necessarily the kind of writing

that you yourself want to do.

We're going to talk now about Lewis Hyde's book "The Gift,"

which is the only book I ever recommend to aspiring writers.

There are a lot of books that will tell you how to write.

There are a lot of books that will tell you

how that author has approached writing.

"The Gift" is not about that.

It's not even about writing in particular,

although it started because Lewis Hyde said to himself,

I'm a poet why aren't I rich.

I'm a poet why aren't I rich.

So he kicks off from that.

And he explores the idea--

which is true-- that there are two ways of exchanging

things in our society, but only one of them

is ever usually discussed.

And the one that is usually discussed

is the commercial one.

You give money, you get the commodity.

The other way is gift giving.

And the set of rules for gift giving are different.

So an artistic creation of any kind,

So an artistic creation of any kind,

whether it's a painting, whether it's music,

whether it's a book, they have to move through the commodity

economy that turns into a book that you buy in a store.

And then it moves into the gift economy

if the person loves the book.

So gifts are reciprocal.

And there are responsibilities that go with them.

You must either reciprocate it or pass it

along to the next person who then passes it along.

And then he situates artistic creation in the gift realm.

And then he situates artistic creation in the gift realm.

And that's why we say a person is gifted.

We don't say they are commercially endowed.

We say they're gifted.

Sometimes the artist is gifted by heredity and circumstances.

But in addition to that, the artist

is always gifted by other artists.

Whether those artists are-- as is often the case--

no longer living in the usual sense,

no longer living in the usual sense,

or whether those artists are older artists who are mentors,

you then have to work with the gift.

If you choose to do so, you have to do the labor of the gift.

You have to do the practicing.

You have to do the slogging work of learning your craft

and being able to fully utilize the gift that you

and being able to fully utilize the gift that you

have been given.

So with books, there are four possibilities--

good books that make money, bad books that make money,

good books that don't make money,

and bad books that don't make money.

And of those four, the one you really don't want

is the fourth.

You know, to write a bad book that doesn't make money that's

really, pretty horrifying.

really, pretty horrifying.

But a good book that does, a bad book that does, at least you

gets some compensation.

It's a bad book, but at least you made some money.

A good book that doesn't, at least

you know the book is good.

But there's no inevitability in the world of art.

It's all pretty risky.

You can be very talented.

You can be very gifted.

You can do all of the work.

You can make a wonderful thing.

And it disappears into the void.

And it disappears into the void.

Maybe later someone will discover it.

And this often happens, too.

For the artist, it has disappeared into a void.

But then later, somebody finds it, looks at its potential,

and receives it as a gift.

And after the artist's death--

look at the painter van Gogh, never made a penny,

never sold a painting, now universally appreciated.

never sold a painting, now universally appreciated.

So those things can happen, but nothing is inevitable.

Some extremely successful books were

rejected by numerous publishers before somebody finally

saw the beauty of them And one of those

was the Harry Potter series, which

was I think 20 publishers or something turned it down.

And another one was Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano."

And another one was Malcolm Lowry's "Under the Volcano."

This happens.

Not everybody can see immediately

that this is a wonderful thing to publish.

The Bronte sisters were very discouraged

originally with their collection of poems.

The reviewing history of "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights"

is very interesting.

So "Wuthering Heights," now universally

acknowledged as a work of genius,

acknowledged as a work of genius,

was scorned by many, especially when it turned out

that it had been written by a woman, which was then

considered very immoral.

One of the worst things that happened to me was I

did write an early novel that never did get published.

It was "Before the Edible Woman" which

did eventually get published after some adventures.

So I wrote the novel and I typed it out

So I wrote the novel and I typed it out

on my little manual typewriter.

And then I gave it to somebody who can actually type

and they retyped it.

And I sent it out and nobody wanted to publish it.

Although one publisher did take me out for afternoon tea.

And he said, could I change the ending?

And the ending of this novel was ahead of its time.

It was 1964.

And the central female character was

And the central female character was

deciding whether to push the central male character

off a roof.

Very ahead of its time.

And I said, no, I didn't think I could change the ending.

And he leaned across the table and patted my hand and said,

is there anything we can do?

In other words, you're obviously quite crazy.

Maybe we can help you with that.

So that was an early publishing experience of mine,

So that was an early publishing experience of mine,

but nothing daunted.

I'd set out to write my next novel which

was quite different in tone and even more peculiar.

To know the story of how "Treasure Island" got written,

it's a wonderful story.

Robert Louis Stevenson was at the end of his tether.

He was broke.

He was broke.

He was ill.

He was living with his parents.

He had just gotten married.

And he had recently burned up his first three novels,

because he thought they weren't any good.

In the household, there was a 12-year-old boy

who liked to paint pictures.

So Robert Louis Stevenson, to keep him company,

was painting pictures with him.

And he painted a watercolor picture of an island.

He painted a map.

And because it looked like a tropical island,

he put some palm trees on it.

he put some palm trees on it.

And then he put some buried treasure.

And it was such a good map.

And they got so interested in it,

that he started to write a story about it.

And that's the first chapter of "Treasure Island."

It's this map that's in the sea chest in the Admiral Benbow

Inn.

And he started reading the story he was writing out

loud to his family group.

And they were quite interested in it.

And they wanted to know more.

And a friend of his, who was a publisher, came to visit him.

And a friend of his, who was a publisher, came to visit him.

And Robert Louis Stevenson showed him the manuscript.

And the publisher said this is wonderful,

I want to publish it.

And Robert Louis Stevenson got writer's block.

So then he had to get out of his writer's block.

He managed to do that and finished the book.

And he sent the manuscript off, including the map.

And the publisher lost the map.

But so firmly was it imprinted on his mind,

But so firmly was it imprinted on his mind,

that he recreated it.

So the map you see in "Treasure Island" is the second map.

It's not the originating map, the one that

kicked the whole thing off.

It's the remembered map.

Then he went on to become an international success.

Isn't that a good story?

What separates fiction writers from other kinds

of storytellers?

What separates written down stories from,

What separates written down stories from,

for instance, an opera, a ballet, a play, a painting?

Well, for one thing, with a written down story,

there's always a gap in time between the person writing

the story and the person receiving the story.

If it's, for instance, a play or an opera being performed live,

the performance and the recipient of the performance

the performance and the recipient of the performance

are in the same place at the same time.

So you get the critical response right away.

And that frequently means that the storyteller

will change the story to please the audience who

is right there.

However, if you're writing a bookie book, a bookety book,

in which the person is going to receive the book--

it's got all the pages in there already--

you can't do that.

you can't do that.

If you're writing a book, the time in which you're writing it

and the space in which you're writing it

are always different from the time and space in which

the reader is reading it.

As Emily Dickinson put it, this is my letter to the world.

It's a letter.

You write it.

You mail it.

Maybe somebody gets it at the other end.

So I recently did a project called

"The Future Library of Norway."

And this is a project by an artist called Katie Paterson.

And this is a project by an artist called Katie Paterson.

And it involves a forest of trees that

will grow for a hundred years.

And in each of those years, a writer

will submit a manuscript--

made of words, anything, novel, poem, play, memoir, letter,

a single word--

in a sealed box to "The Future Library of Norway."

And they will all accumulate for 100 years.

And in the hundredth year, all of the boxes will be opened.

And in the hundredth year, all of the boxes will be opened.

And enough trees will be cut from the forest that

has grown to print the anthology of "The Future

Library of Norway."

So I was the first writer for this.

And you get an invitation like that

and you either say, you're crazy, or you say, I'm in.

And people then say, well, why would you

write a book that nobody can read for 100 years?

For me, it's the great unknown.

But it's a very hopeful gesture that

But it's a very hopeful gesture that

means somewhere, in the future, there will still be readers.

There will still be people.

There will still be a forest in Norway.

There will still be a library.

And every act of writing assumes a future reader.

There is no such thing as readers en mass.

it's only ever a single reader.

it's only ever a single reader.

So you may have in mind the reader

that you want to interest.

That's your audience.

It's not a bunch of other people who say things

like I never read science fiction

or I only ever read books by a man or any of those things.

That's not your reader.

Your reader is someone that you hope will get the jokes,

be led along by the clues that you will have sprinkled here

and there, understand the depth of your character,

and there, understand the depth of your character,

be intrigued by the turns of fate

and circumstance in your book, and will

cry at the appropriate places, laugh at the others,

and come out of the book thinking, wow, what a book.

That's your reader.