John McGroarty
Glasgow-born John is the author of a novel, a long short story and a short story collection, all of which can be viewed on McVoices.
I had never really thought about why I write, I always just took it as a given, something about me, a force of my nature. I wrote stories for thirty-five years before I even tried to publish one. I have lost whole notebooks and jotters full of stories and ideas and half-finished things. I remember writing a story when I was nine or ten about a killer snake; it was called “Coils”, no psychoanalysis please! I also remember writing lots of vampire and ghost stuff when I was eleven or twelve, if only I could do that again I might make some money. I had a period of poetry when I was in my late teens but stopped as it was so bad. I have recycled some of it in my stories. I never consciously think about what I am doing when I write beyond a certain idea I try to get down on paper. I do revise and work hard once it takes form, and not all of the things I write do take on a shape, possibly only thirty percent. I have never written with the idea of becoming famous or of becoming a “writer”. When I see things in the press with people talking about becoming a writer, gushing, all cockle-hearty warming, you know how it goes, it’s what they’ve always wanted to do, etc. I always laugh as I don’t think you can choose to be a writer. I’ve said it before but I believe that someone somewhere chooses you. Why? Who knows? But God help you if you really have been chosen. If it doesn’t come bursting out of you, don’t do it, says Bukowski. If you’re doing it for fame or for money, don’t do it. If you have to sit there and rewrite and rewrite it again and again, don’t do it. In fact there are times when I don’t want to write, when it makes me unhappy. When something really sad gets in my head and won’t let me rest. I often think that writing may be the sign of illness, as is thinking according to Bertrand Russell. I can’t say that I write for enjoyment either though my sense of the absurd does give me great pleasure though my conscience sometimes makes me feel bad afterwards. I imagine that a lot of other people write for similar reasons, there is so much talent out there and then again so much trash that the good stuff very often gets lost and never found but then maybe it’s not meant to be, it has some other purpose. In writing I like passion and feeling over planning and plodding. I’m with Dostoevsky against Nabokov, Blake against the Academy, Capote against Vidal, Murphy against the pot poets. I think that great writing is a sublimation of feeling, deep feeling and pain, that imperfection is the best, that the most illiterate badly-spelt writing as long as it’s honest and from the well of the soul is the real thing. It’s a compensation for something. A back-handed gift. When the world has slapped you hard and set you apart. William James says in his Varieties of Religious Experience that the life of the saints are always boring, always the same process. I think that’s the way of all true literature too. The setting apart, the looking for answers, the anger, the disgust, the hatred, the search for something more, the coming back in, the resurrection of the spirit. I’m not much of a blogger so I don’t have much else to add. Bukowski again: there is no other way, and there never was. I think that’s over five hundred words. I haven’t been counting. And neither should you.
John McGroarty Glasgow-born John is the author of a novel, a long short story and a short story collection, all of which can be viewed on McVoices.
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The McRenegadesWe're a bunch of Scottish writers who have some things in common. We write for pleasure, not money. We eschew fame and success. And we don't aspire to be mainstream or traditional. We're literary renegades. We're the McRenegades. Categories
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