Q: You don't have any trouble with the writing coming. You have trouble shutting it off, when you have a job. Combining writing and working full-time, at a job you have to produce at. Show work-product for.
A: Yes. That's a better problem for a writer to have.
Q: How did you develop your work habits?
A: Just lucky, I guess.
Q: You're joking-right?
A: Yes.
There was no luck involved.
I worked at it.
My work habits were an extension of my study habits, in college, and my study habits
were an extension of the work ethic I learned in the military and from high school
coaches, scoutmasters, Sunday School teachers, and civics teachers.
I can't
take credit for that.
Maybe it was luck.
Q: It must have been scary, though. To make the great leap of faith.
A: It was.
I knew I was going to be a writer in 1957. But I didn't
start writing until September 1, 1971.
Q: What were you doing for that time.
A: Psyching myself up to try.
Getting myself ready, psychologically.
Also, I had a checklist of things I thought I should do before I started. Like complete
my education, get married. Prepare myself to take a job outside of writing. That
is, have a trade to fall back on.
Q: What was your trade?
A: Technical writer. I was an electronics technician in the service, I was in a mobile installation squadron, I wrote installation-engineering plans, at GEEIA Region, and I was a computer tester at RCA/EDP, the Barking Dog Company, so I knew how digital computers worked. I had worked on them. I worked on mainframes and I worked on printers and card readers and card punch machines.
Q: But why then? Why September 1, 1971?
A: I had a three-year fellowship to graduate school, in anthropology, at
Tulane University, in New Orleans.
I signed up for Thesis, to draw my stipend,
stayed at home, and wrote.
I stole the last year of my NDEA fellowship.
I gave myself a one-year, do-it-yourself (DIY) fellowship.
I was a DIY Fellow.
I saw the opportunity and took it.
Q: What's NDEA?
A: National Defense Education Act.
Q: Did you have to sneak? To lie?
A: Yes. I had to lie and sneak.
I had to pretend to be writing
a thesis.
Q: Did you feel guilty about it?
A: No. They had reneged on their end of the bargain.
They weren't
going to give me a PhD.
Or not an accelerated PhD. A PhD in three years.
Besides, by this time I had seen what a college teaching job entailed, and didn't
want to do it.
Q: So you had a year to see if you could write.
A: To develop my work habits. To teach myself to write. By writing.
I rolled a sheet of bond paper, a sheet of carbon paper, and a yellow second sheet
into my Olympia portable typewriter and started writing.
I made the leap.
Lester Leaps In. Little Willie Leaps.
Saltatorial, like the bullfrog.
A saltation is a quantum leap.
I went from not being a writer to being a
writer. By an act of will. By a decision.
Of course, I backed it up with
work.
Q: You went at it as a job of work.
A: Yes. Writing was my job.
I worked at it.
Assiduously.
The same way Hemingway did.
Brenda and I ate together, made love, saw the
sights, visited friends, went to movies and concerts and art exhibits, plays, restaurants--New
Orleans is almost as good a food city as Paris--I bought exotic ingredients on my
bicycle and cooked gourmet meals at home. I had the house to myself all day to write.
Brenda worked.
When she got home I'd have supper fixed.
I walked
in to the campus and ate lunch with her. Leftovers. She worked in the university
library, mending books.
We could go to the coast.
We were rich.
On her minimum-wage income and my fellowship stipend.
We didn't own anything
except a portable sewing machine and a belly TV set.
She had a Gibson guitar
and I had my Olympia portable typewriter.
She owned a Willey (1949). Archaeology
of the Florida Gulf Coast.
Also we had a Miranda 35mm single-lens-reflex
camera Dr. Dailey sold us for $50.
Q: What did you write? Short stories? Poems?
A: I wanted to be a novelist. I wrote novels.
I finished two and
started a third. In my year.
Q: I guess you did put your year to good use.
A: Yes. I developed my rhythm. Found my seat.
At the end of that
year I was a writer.
Q: "Art Brew went out to the charcuterie for forcemeats."
A: "On his bicycle."