Webber told him that there would be.
“That’s the stuff,” he said. “Go to it and give ‘em people,” he said quietly. “You’ve got the feeling for ‘ern. You know how to make ‘em live. Go on and put ‘em in. You’ll hear a lot of bunk,” he went on. “You’ve probably heard it already. There’ll be a lot of bright young men who will tell you how to write, and tell you that what you do is wrong. They’ll tell you that you have no style, no sense of form. They’ll tell you that you don’t write like Virginia Woolf, or like Proust, or like Gertrude Stein, or like someone else that you ought to write like. Take it all in, as much of it as you can. Believe all of it that you’re able to believe. Try to get all the help from it you can, but if you know it’s not true, don’t pay too much attention to it.”
“Will you be able to know whether it’s true or not?”
“Oh, yes,” he said quietly. “You always know if it’s true. Christ, man, you’re a writer, you’re not a bright young man. If you were a bright young man you wouldn’t know whether it was true or not. You’d only say you did. But a writer always knows. The bright young men don’t think he does. That’s the reason they’re bright young men. They think a writer is too dumb or too pig-headed to listen to what they say, but the real truth of the matter is that the writer knows much more about it than they can ever know. Once in a while they say something that hits the nail on the head. But that’s only one time in a thousand. When they do, it hurts, but it’s worth listening to. It’s probably something that you knew about yourself, that you knew you’d have to look at finally, but that you’ve been trying to dodge and that you hoped no one else would discover. When they punch one of those raw nerves, listen to them, even though its hurts like hell. But usually you’ll find that you’ve known everything they say a long time before they say it, and that what they think is important doesn’t amount to a damn.”
“Then what’s a man to do?” Webber said. “It looks pretty much as if he’s got to be his own doctor, doesn’t it? It looks as if he’s got to find the answer for himself.”
“I never found any other way,” said McHarg. “I don’t think you will, either. So get going. Keep busy. For Christ’s sake, don’t freeze up. Don’t stall around. I’ve known a lot of young fellows who froze up after their first book, and it wasn’t because they had only that one book in them, either. That’s what the bright young men thought. That’s what they always think, but it just ain’t true. Good God, man, you’ve got a hundred books in you! You can keep on turning them out as long as you live. There’s no danger of your drying up. The only danger is of freezing up.”
“How do you mean? Why should a man freeze up?”
“Usually,” said McHarg, “because he loses his nerve. He listens to the bright young men. His first book gets him pretty good reviews. He takes them seriously. He begins to worry about every little bit of criticism that’s sandwiched in with the praise. He begins to wonder if he can do it again. His next book is really going to be ‘as good as his first, maybe better. He has been a natural slugger to begin with, with a one-ton punch. Now he begins to shadow-box. He listens to everything they tell him. How to jab and how to hook. How to counter with his right. How to keep out of the way. How to weave and how to bob. How to take care of his feet. He learns to skip the rope, but forgets to use that paralysing punch that he was born with, and the first thing you know some palooka comes along and knocks him for a row of ash-cans. For God’s sake, don’t let it happen to you. Learn all you can. Improve all you can. Take all the instruction you can absorb. But remember that no amount of instruction can ever take the place of the wallop in the old right hand. If you lose that, you may learn all the proper ways that other men have used to do the job, but you’ll have forgotten your own way. As a writer, you’ll be through. So for God’s sake, get going and keep going. Don’t let them slow you down. Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.”