Over the break I read Louse DeSalvo’s excellent On Moving, where she writes about her own life and the domestic habits and geographical excursions of writers like Virginia Woolf (who loved looking at houses, and even flipped a few in her day); Percy Bysshe Shelley (who lived somewhere cursed and paid the price; D.H Lawrence (who was on an endless quest for a “domestic eden”) and Vita Sackville West (who created Sissinghurst from ruins, and fashioned it to suit her unconventional lifestyle. I loved reading this. I was introduced to DeSalvo’s work through Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives (1999). Then I remembered she had a writing blog, which thankfully is still online (see links below). Her blog overfloweth with wisdom especially for life writers, with mini-essays on craft, experiments, reflection and recommendations. There are 100+ posts. I read them like feverish stalker over a week, and it was like having an intense mentorship. I felt like I knew her a little and I felt sad that she is no longer around. DeSalvo died in 2018. Her NYT obituary is here.
BONUS LINKS!
For DeSalvo’s list of what makes a good memoir, go here.
For a post on the twin terrors of book writing, Labor & Management, go here
And read on for some smart stuff about protecting your creative self:
DESALVO: “Early in my writing life, I was given a superb piece of advice from a mentor which I pass on: if you want to write, you have to make a sacrifice, you have to give up something; often, you have to give up a great deal. In my experience, what you have to give up is often not worth doing anyway.
What I don’t have in my life, what I don’t do: meaningless telephone conversations; lunches with people I don’t love; meetings that don’t have a clear-cut agenda; face book, twitter, net surfing; shopping for the sake of shopping (I buy what I absolutely need, mostly online); boozy nights out on the town that would rob me of my next day’s work; friendships with people who take and don’t give; television watching (except for planned film watching); virtually all parties (I don’t like parties; I like small, intimate gatherings); writers’ readings (I can’t process writing when it’s read; I have to see it). There’s more, but you get the idea. The guiding principle behind this is self-protection: I can’t be rushed; I can’t be stressed; I can’t be overworked. If I am, I can’t do my best teaching, my best writing. So I spend some time in a kind of cost/benefit analysis for most of what I can/what I’m asked to do. What will it cost me? What will I gain from it? If the cost outweighs the gain, I don’t do it.”