Editor’s Note: Sonia Pilcer’s latest novel, “The Last Hotel: A Novel in Suites,” was serialized in The Edge (click here to read it). Pilcer will be reading from this novel at The Bookstore in Lenox, Friday, September 18, at 7 p.m.
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It’s a dangerous business. At my father’s dying bed, the nurse asked him what is your daughter’s job. Rising out of his delirium, he sat upright in bed. “She does nothing,” he spat the words.
Writers need deadlines. Deadlines are lifelines for all of us, but especially writers who live in the technicolor realm of possibility, unable to move forward. Many a deadline has saved my life as I wallowed in some murky zone, unable to write, furious at myself.
I finished my first novel by having a teacher, C.D.Bryan, hold up a carrot: 100 pages, he said, and he’d show my work to his agent. Then it was another hundred. Finish the book. Then I rewrote it several times under the aegis of CDB, the larger than life Carl D. Brandt. Teen Angel was published here and in English in 1978. I was young, in my twenties.
Almost immediately, I started teaching in a program my old friend, the poet Jason Shinder started at the 63rd St. Y– the Writers Voice, where Kurt Vonnegut and Isaac Bashevis Singer read. At first, I ran the workshop as I’d been taught. People brought in copies of what they’d been working on. It was read, critiqued. After a few weeks, the energy sapped out and everyone looked glum. “This isn’t working,” I said. “I don’t mean to infantilize anyone but how would you feel about being given weekly exercises?” There was a clamor. “Yes!” This became the Writers Workout, which I taught at the Chautauqua Institute for many years.
And that’s how I discovered the importance of weekly deadlines. Some suffered. Arrived bleary-eyed, still working on their pages. But they always brought something, often introducing their work with the sobriquet: “This really sucks.” There’d be some discussion, but not very much. Onto the next challenge. Many novels began this way in my classes. From simple exercises.
Without deadlines, we are helpless to our demons. Most writers have a few. So come get a lifeline and meet a few other struggling writers. Are there any other kind?
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LIFELINES begins on Thursday, September 24th, 5:30 – 7:30. Ten weeks, $125. Berkshire Community College, Main Street, Great Barrington. For information: 413-236-5202.
