Everyday Canvas

The Writer as the Servant of His Book

Prompt: Madeleine L’Engle said: “Slowly, slowly, I am learning to listen to the book, in the same way I try to listen in prayer. If the book tells me to do something completely unexpected, I heed it; the book is usually right.” What do you think she meant?

-----------

Madeleine L’Engle has approached creative writing, both while talking about writing and in her novels, and in a deeply spiritual way. I have seen it first, when I read A Wrinkle in Time with my son, thirty years or so ago.

Aside from her exact spirituality, I believe that, in a nutshell, the author believes that writing is an art, and as such, it points us toward the truth. Her truth is not merely facts, but the truth of the human condition and the truth of the nature of the world. This kind of truth, the eternal truth, never changes; although the facts around it may change.

I think she also meant that true art will come to the artist, sometimes with a little prodding, but it will come, nevertheless. When it does, the artist will be the servant of the work and not the other way around. Sloppy novels happen when the writer rejects what the work leads him or her toward; in other words, we writers must pack up our egos and get out of the way of the work, and listen to what it is telling us. This listening to what the work tells us resembles contemplation, or if you will, prayer.

The way to do what L’Engle is telling us to do, I think, has to start with us writing down the questions the book is raising. Inside those questions, we can find many answers, different approaches to handling the plot and characters, and other aspects of the work, and possibly, we may even find new roads to explore. I am quite sure, if we find the courage and faith in ourselves to listen to the story without trying to control it, we will be giving the work the service it deserves.

In the same vein, I found two more quotes by Madeleine L’Engle, which I believe will be most helpful to us in improving our craft.

“I have advice for people who want to write. I don't care whether they're 5 or 500. There are three things that are important: First, if you want to write, you need to keep an honest, unpublishable journal that nobody reads, nobody but you. Where you just put down what you think about life, what you think about things, what you think is fair and what you think is unfair. And second, you need to read. You can't be a writer if you're not a reader. It's the great writers who teach us how to write. The third thing is to write. Just write a little bit every day. Even if it's for only half an hour — write, write, write.”


“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”

Madeleine L'Engle