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| Effort | 39% | 678 votes | Total: 1744 votes | |
| Insight | 61% | 1066 votes |
Effort
by Cyd Madsen
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Add to FavoritesIn the early years of the 20th Century, there was a young man inspired to write. So great was his inspiration that he often skipped classes at Stanford so he could write, write, write, write. He never graduated. So horrible were his writing efforts that two friends hung him from a second story window by the heels, threatening to let him fall next time if he forced them to read another one of his wretched short stories.
In the mid-19th Century, a young man was forced into writing for a living because he was poor and he had no choice but to be a reporter in Parliament. He began writing humorous essays that captured the attention of the public, and before he knew what happened, he became a celebrity of sorts. Then it all came crashing down when one of his first attempts at a true novel was not well-received by the public. From the depths of his despair, he decided to write a Christmas story. He approached the task with trepidation, writing to a friend, "The wrong kind of fire is burning in my head, and I don't think I *can* write: Nevertheless, I am trying." It was while writing his Christmas tale that he began to draw on the inspirations of his childhood. So enthralled was he with the progress of the story that his writing frenzy gained a new and better fire in his brain.
The first young man, the one who was such a horrible writer that his friends threatened him with bodily harm, was John Steinbeck, winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature, and the Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Grapes Of Wrath, a timeless story of the human spirit. The second young man was Charles Dickens.
Perhaps the most relevant sentence Dickens ever wrote, as it pertains to life and writing, is the opening of the book most heavily inspired by his own life, David Copperfield. He wrote: "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." And so it is with any writer. It begins with inspiration, which can only be realized through insights into the timeless nature of the human condition, and effort greater than most are capable of making.
Steinbeck was compelled to write by that mysterious force that captures us all at a young age and puts a fire in our belly. Obviously, fire isn't enough. Steinbeck proved to have razor sharp insight into the human condition and the cycles of history dictated by humanity, but that does nothing but scald and stew without the ability to communicate. In Steinbeck's case, he spent years writing drivel and clumsy prose before he perfected his craft. But honing one's craft to a razor's edge that will cut through centuries does not come from simply writing drivel until it goes away. No, it comes from the effort on top of the effort of facing the blank page to be honest with oneself, to brutally critique one's writing, to see your own writing with distant eyes, recognize its flaws, then sweat and work and pour out effort writing over and over and over again until you finally make it work.
Dickens had tremendous insight into the human condition, but he didn't become a whirling dervish of writing with an output of 10,000 words per week until his back was against the wall and he started digging into his own circumstance and applying the insights he gained there to the hundreds and hundreds of characters he created over the years. He saw past the window dressing of humanity, but it took a mighty effort communicating his insight through prose that entertained, created suspense, and with characters so alive they walked off the pages to live in the world for centuries.
In our contemporary world, one of our most prolific and bestselling authors is Stephen King. He began his working life toiling away at the thankless job of teaching English Literature in a public school. When the workday was done, he'd return home to the small corner of his house where he could concentrate, sat on an uncomfortable stool, and tapped away at a rickety old typewriter until he'd finished his first novel, Carrie. In that book, his insight took us into the angst of the outsider and fulfilled their dreams of vindication. But his insight never would have reached the public if King hadn't put in the effort of working beyond his taxing work day. He would not have gone on to write such timeless "great" novels such as The Shawshank Redemption, if he hadn't put in the effort to overcome his critics and the extraordinary hours required to keep writing and refining his skills. Is he a "great" writer? Time will tell that story, but our current times and the ever-growing size of his audience has prompted many to call him the Dickens of our time.
Without insight writers will write entertaining stories that are quickly forgotten. It is effort that makes a writer great. Constantly changing efforts across a broad range of obstacles much be faced and for the writer striving to earn the label of Great. Not only must they be brave enough to dig down past their defenses and facade to the universal that lies within them, they daily face the effort to overcome the blank page or monitor in front of them where are written in ghostly letters Dickens lament..."...I don't think I *can* write." Then effort must be put into minute by minute, day by day, with the effort to finish the rest of Dickens's lament:
"Nevertheless I try."
Learn more about this author, Cyd Madsen.
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Insight
Great writing is succinct and profound. Some simple quotes are more renowned and more valued than some of the longest books ever written. Effort is sadly not worth much of anything. Greatness in writing is the ability to perceive and express what others had the notion to say but not the verbal facility to place into words.
Thomas Wolfe is a writer who is considered to have put monumental effort into writing but never seemed to write anything considerably profound. Thus, Wolfe takes a backseat to more capable writers.
The difference between effort and insight is portrayed quite beautifully between Hemingway and Faulkner. With much less effort Hemingway rivals the significance of Faulkner. In fact one of Hemingway's quotes expresses this difference in writing style.
"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use." (Ernest Hemingway)
It has once been quipped that Faulkner must have been exhausted for having written in the way that he did. And with all that effort, all that passion, all that bleeding of his soul upon the page, "A Farewell to Arms" is a better known work than say, "The Sound and the Fury."
In fact part of Faulkner's brilliance is not attributed to his writing style, but for his clever creation of a fictitious county, Yoknapatawpha. This fictitious creation gives us insights into the mentality of the south, whereas Hemingway set out to be a writer of the world for the world. Faulkner was quite content with recording the intricacies of the South in vivid verbosity. Thus, it is Faulkner's insight into the South AND his unique style that we value. Faulkner is also considered brilliant for his use of stream of consciousness which by its very nature is an effortless endeavor, for the writer is not editing his think, but merely thinking freely. Thus, his understanding that one could write as he thinks has had a profound influence upon literature, but the method's nature is effortless.
Effort itself may be counter productive to the writer for the amount of time spent upon each sentence, turn of phrase, and expression of sentiment may dilute the amount of insights that he is able to place upon the page. Should the writer spend ten hours perfecting a thousand words, we would be deprived of the other articles he could have written in that time, yet should he write too quickly, or too sparsely upon certain topics we would be deprived of depth.
This is often expressed of Stephen Crane, that he interestingly, and artistically portrayed the visual of a scene but then left the scene quickly and moved off to write about something else. Even the opening scene of 'The Red Badge of Courage,' is claimed to hold this flaw. He beautifully opens the scene and them moves quickly in only a few lines to characters running and moving about.
There is also the concept that form and content cannot be separated. Thus, form and content eventually meet. If the content is about action and violence, Hemingway's truncated sentences are appropriate, yet if the content concerns psychology and stream of thought Faulkner's sweeping style is useful.
Let us move one step forward from this and claim that we must determine what is meant by effort and what of insight. Effort can mean the amount of time pondering word choice, or amount of time constructing grammatically complex sentences. Yet, effort can also be expressed as the amount of words written per subject matter. Thus, a Shakespeare sonnet expresses few words on love, yet the amount of time choosing each word may have taken a lot of time. Thus, eventually enough effort becomes insight. Enough thinking, enough pondering, manifests itself as insight. This is traditionally what created the Greek Philosophers. Those that sat about all day arguing points (a large amount of effort) eventually came to brilliant insights, such as Plato's definition of the obligation of the philosopher: to take humanity out of its caves of thought to show humanity the light of brighter ideas.
Furthermore, the grandeur of Einstein is defined by being rather succinct and to the point. Of course, Einstein came to this theory only after about sixteen years of dedication to teaching himself scientific concepts. Thus, sixteen years of effort led to an insight that could be expressed briefly.
The grandeur of a writer is defined by the writer able to express the most insights, but these insights come only after a life time of effort. Again this concept was expressed by Hemingway.
"There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly in the only heritage he has to leave." - Ernest Hemingway
Here we can see that Hemingway's effort was exerted in the living of life, of being blown up in World War I, of boxing, of traveling, of being adventurous behavior; whereas, inversely, Faulkner's effort, Dickinson's effort, Einstein's effort was exerted in front of the page, either reading or writing.
Thus, the summarizing principle is this: Insight only comes from great effort, whether that effort is exerted in living, in studying, or in polishing sentences. No insight exists but from effort. And effort which does not yield insight is meaningless. Effort without insight is shooting at the target but missing.
Even one of Einstein's greatest quotes expresses this: "Imagination is more important than knowledge." Thus, the mind that can formulate a new insight is superior to that mind that has merely filled itself with knowledge. Einstein himself exemplifies this fact. With the same accessibility to books as another man, Einstein used the sum of human knowledge to establish his insightful equation. Had Einstein merely filled his mind with books of knowledge but never reached the moment of new insight, we would never have heard of Einstein. We do not adore Einstein for his effort alone but for the product of his effort, his profound insight.
Effort is the fuel, insight is the objective.
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