Since I started the Ph.D. three years ago, I’ve had this quote tacked to the bulletin board above the desk in my study. It’s from a 8/2/92 interview that Susan Sontag did with the New York Times:

SS: And compared to the standards I was setting myself, I didn’t think I was so smart. I thought that I cared more than other people. If they cared as much, they could do what I was doing. I didn’t think I was a genius. ...

The essays were a tremendous struggle. Each of the large ones took nine months to a year. I’ve had thousands of pages for a 30 page essay — 30 or 40 drafts of every page. “On Photography,” which is six essays, took five years. And I mean working every single day.

NYT: When you say working, are you looking things up, checking references?

SS: No, no, I don’t look anything up until after I’ve finished and I’m checking. No, it’s just writing. I’d get started, and then I’d run into a ditch, and then I would start again — and again.

It’s been heartening to look up and see this as I’ve pounded away at papers and briefs and book reviews and, now, the dissertation. I’m no Sontag and never will be, both for good and for bad, but it’s helpful see that someone like this didn’t necessarily think of herself as brilliant, and that hard work and investment can indeed accomplish quite a lot. I’ve never gone through that sort of writing process, but it reminds me that writing is hard for everybody, and that I am not unusual or stupid for finding it difficult.

Then, today, Debbie Hawhee posted a quote from Malcolm Cowley’s 2/28/52 letter to Kenneth Burke. It’s joined the Sontag on my bulletin board. Debbie’s nicely summarized the background over there, so look at it first before you read this:

Also there’s something I’ve told you before and am telling you again and this time you had better listen while the hand is laid gently on your shoulder and before the hand takes you by the collar. Set finite and measurable limits now to the “on Human Relations” and stick to those limits and finish the book. Otherwise you will have so projected yourself into the book that it becomes your life and can’t be finished for fear of ending your life. And furthermore it won’t be as good a book as if you held it at a little distance and worked on it as an object or organism outside of yourself, because large parts of it will be too subjective and obsessional. It’s not you after all, but only something that you’re making, and the you has other sides that also have a right to be made clear.

It seems to me that if one can wrap one’s head around both of these concepts at once, quite a lot of progress can be made. They appear mutually exclusive, but I don’t think they really are — surely one can care deeply about one’s subject while still maintaining some separation from it. Our topics are fascinating and the writing is difficult and the words are hard-won, but they’re still just words, and the article or book or whatever is just something you’re building. It’s just a thing, like needlepoint or a handmade table or a home brewed beer, and the point is to do it as well as you can with as much passion as you can muster in the time allotted to it — and then be done with it.