« There’s nothing that leads to more wasteful expenditure of the creative energy than to depend on the verdict of others. » Thornton Wilder
Today, April 17, is the birthday of the amazing author Thornton Wilder; he was born in 1897. He is the only writer to win Pulitzers for both fiction and drama. He won three of them—for his novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, and for his plays, Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth.
Here, I’ve gathered some telling comments from his collected letters. I hope you’ll mine them for the gold they may offer you!
On the mystery of the creative process:
“I distrust bringing upward to the conscious analytical level, in myself (in relation to my own works) the various processes and influences which enter my novels and plays. I have always assumed that every artist is a tireless critic–a selector, a rejector, a discriminator–but that those operations take place–as it were–“in the dark.” The practice of writing seems to me to be the gradual acquisition of ever increased experience, in the organization of such thought and material—an experience which frees him from the consciousness of “fabrication” and opens his mind more and more to the appearance of spontaneous and ‘lyric’ expression.
“Hence, I do not look back on my works: do not re-read them. I even become ill at ease when I recall them. “Forward!” “Let’s make another.”
On where “good ideas” come from:
“You are still haunted by some notion that each good idea is a haphazard descent form the skies–yes, it is also that–but in addition to gratitude to the skies one has the legitimate expectation that all the dedicated work of one’s previous years are also there as support and incitement. This is the popular misunderstanding of the word ‘inspiration’: all work is breath from without, but it is also the reward of being ready–for years–for hundreds of previous inbreathings.”
On “failures” on the public front:
“I was contracted to A and C. Bond for a second novel: They almost turned it down because they felt it was written ‘for a small over-cultivated circle of readers,’ i.e., The Bridge of San Luis Rey.
“On tryout the manager cancelled the second week in Boston because the reviews were so bad. Our Town.
“The Lunts ‘liked’ Skin of Our Teeth but would not consider playing it because it was so defeatist. It reached New York and never was there a play ‘where so many people walked out at the end of the first act’
Merchant of Yonkers failed in New York–with not more than 100 words altered in it ran three years as The Matchmaker. Edinburgh–London–New York–to Los Angeles….
“There’s nothing that leads to more wasteful expenditure of the creative energy than to depend on the verdict of others.”
As Gertrude Stein said, …”the business of life is to create a solitude that is not a loneliness.’
Don’t you love it—what came to be Thornton Wilder’s biggest successes were panned by both critics and audiences. How right he is—it’s a waste of creative energy to “depend on the verdict of others.” So let’s march to the beat of our own drummers as we all write on!