Author's Profile: W. Ray Crozier <http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/frameset_whoswho/frameset_whoswho_staff.htm>
is Reader in Psychology in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University,
Wales, United Kingdom. He works in the fields of social psychology and
personality theory, with particular interests in shyness, blushing, psychological
aesthetics, and the social psychology of creative development. Crozier
has published in various journals in all of these areas. Among his publications
are Manufactured Pleasures: Psychological Approaches to Design (Manchester
UP, 1994),
Individual Learners (Routledge, 1997), Shyness: Development,
Consolidation and Change (Editor, Routledge, 2000), and Understanding
Shyness (Palsgrave, 2001). He contributed the entry on psychology of
art to the Groves Dictionary of Art (Macmillan, 1999). E-mail: <crozier@cardiff.ac.uk>.
Literary Careers: Breaks and Stalls
1. A telling feature of creative endeavour is that it can be sustained over a lifetime. It is rare for an artist to produce only a single work; more typically, one work follows another, or one or more works are in progress at any one time. This process can continue until interrupted by incapacity or death. However, despite a long history of psychological research into the personal characteristics of artists and the processes thought to be involved in the production of artworks (see Eysenck), the study of the life course of creative endeavour has received scant attention. Little is known about the course of artists' lives or about the factors that influence the production of work across the life span.
2.
There has been some research into productivity across the life span. W.
Dennis and Dean Keith Simonton have drawn upon aggregate data to provide
statistical analyses of rates of productivity in diverse scientific and
artistic domains, including the production of literary work (for Simonton,
see <http://psyweb.ucdavis.edu/simonton/>).
This research has drawn upon biographical material to demonstrate that
the production of works has a characteristic distribution, rising quickly
to a peak followed by a long and steady decline. It concentrates on artists
who have lived until they were eighty, arguing that this provides an estimate
of output unconstrained by premature death. It also focuses on the most
eminent within domains, relying upon expert judgments (e.g., made by art
historians, literary critics, and so on) to establish eminence.
3. Research of this nature deals with aggregate data
and general trends and it devotes little attention to individual cases
or to differences among artists. It focuses on what can be counted, for
example the output of writers at different stages in life. It pays no attention
to differences between works in quality, however defined. It also neglects
the magnitude of a work, for example, the word count of books. Nevertheless,
writers can work slowly on relatively short works (for example, Jean Rhys
and Antonia White, discussed below) whereas others produce enormous volumes
in quick succession (for example, John Cowper Powys: <http://home.iae.nl/users/tklijn/Index.htm>).
It might also be the case that some writers concentrate on producing a
small number of novels, each of which possibly requires years of work before
it is completed. Consider James Joyce who spent eight years on Ulysses
and 16 years on Finnegan’s Wake (see The International James
Joyce Foundation at <http://english.ohio-state.edu/organizations/ijjf/>).
4. Whereas there do seem to be systematic trends in
the relationship between age and productivity, there is also considerable
individual variation in productivity. I found this in an analysis of biographical
information on a sample of 191 twentieth-century British novelists (Crozier,
1999). There was a wide range in the number of works of fiction produced
by the writers in the sample (a range from 1 to 96 works). There was also
variation in a computed index of the annual rate of production, which ranges
from one negative value (Robert Tressell’s only book, The Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists, was published posthumously) to 2.80, with a mean of
0.50, i.e., an average of one work of fiction published every two years.
This index is defined in terms of writing career, that is the period between
the date of the writer's first published work and the date of death. If
length of life or of writing career is statistically controlled, or comparison
is made between writers of equivalent longevity, there is still evidence
of considerable individual differences.
5. How are these differences to be understood? Simonton
has explained age changes in productivity in terms of a two-step model.
Each creator has a certain level of "creative potential" which is defined
in terms of the total number of works he or she could produce in their
lifetime in the absence of restricting factors, such as premature termination
of production or death. This potential is translated into "creative ideation"
and, in the second step, this is turned into novels, symphonies, paintings,
and so on. Eysenck has offered a critique of Simonton’s model of production
on the grounds that it cannot be tested empirically other than showing
that, if certain assumptions are made about the values of parameters, a
model incorporating creative potential, ideation and productions can predict
aggregate data on the distribution of output across the life span. Eysenck
argues that the model fits the data because the assumptions are arbitrarily
made to maximise fit; the assumptions, he alleges, are not based on theory.
6. Crozier (1997, 1999) has argued for analysing production
in terms of the concept of the "artistic career." A career is shaped by
individual talents, skills and preferences and also by social forces. It
comprises a series of "projects." Central to career in this sense is the
artist's relationship with his or her work, as the artist explores
his or her current preoccupations in a project. A project is defined as
a developing relationship between an artist and his or her work that is
characterised by exploration of a selection of themes, styles, materials
that is realised in sketches/designs/models/drafts. These are translated
into products that enter the public, critical and commercial domains. This
relationship seems to have two significant characteristics: First, it is
a dialogue between the artist and the work; second, the relationship seems
to have an objective or "third person" quality that has an existence outside
the artist (see Crozier and Greenhalgh).
7. The development of projects and transitions between
them are the key elements in a career and they are influenced by factors
that are inherent in the project or are extrinsic to it. Intrinsic factors
include the "rewardingness" of a project as perceived by the artist, i.e.,
the relationship is unrewarding, does not meet his or her needs, and so
on. Artists will abandon projects that are unrewarding unless no alternative
is available; they will be reluctant to do so to the extent that time and
effort have already been invested in the project. The difficulty of a project
is another factor, one that may delay the production of work, lead the
artist to abandon it for periods, and so on. The project is undertaken
within parameters set by its social context. The context can impact on
the project itself, by furnishing life experiences that can play a part
in the work. Or it can hinder the project by intruding upon it, by making
it difficult to sustain work. The difficulties can be practical, of time
or space, or they can be psychological, intruding in a more emotional way.
Extrinsic factors include disruptive life-events, availability of financial
support, availability of social/emotional support, access to critical feedback,
and pressures to produce work or meet deadlines. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
has examined the contribution of some of these factors, particularly social
support networks, to creative success (see <http://www.ccp.uchicago.edu/faculty/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi/html/>).
The distinction between extra-project factors and intra-project factors
may be a crude one since the dynamic interplay between these has to be
taken into account.
8. Writers who have very low rates of productivity
are of particular relevance to explanations in terms of "creative potential"
and "artistic career." Simonton's model implies that writers who have the
lowest rate of productivity and whose output has not been curtailed by
early death have had a low initial potential since the two translation
steps in the creative process are assumed to be a function of available
potential. An account in terms of career implies that there are breaks
in careers due to extra-project or intra-project factors. Careful reading
of biographical and bibliographical material should provide insight into
the nature of these "career breaks."
9. The writers are selected from the sample studied
by Crozier (1999). The original sample was subdivided into 79 eminent writers
and 112 less eminent writers on the basis of procedures set out by Simonton
that draw upon the frequency and extent of references in published surveys
of literature in order to identify the most eminent artists. A further
selection was made of those eminent writers who were octogenarians. Within
this sample of 27 writers there was also a wide range of published fiction,
from 5 to 89 works, and the annual rate of productivity ranged from 0.10
(Antonia White; one published work every ten years, on average) to 1.22
(P.G. Woodehouse, who produced more than one book every year). The least
productive writers fell below the 25th percentile of this small sample.
In the analysis, the data of the eight writers -- with details of the age
of their first novel, total works of fiction published, and their rate
of output -- result with ranges from 0.10 to 0.22 and can be compared with
rates between 0.54 and 1.22 among the most productive group. The question
addressed is why these writers -- who produced works that have received
critical attention and look likely to join the canon of English literature
-- produced so little relative to other writers, given their longevity.
The first step is to look more closely at the pattern of output of this
sample. The analysis of the data with intervals between books suggests
that there are periods in a writer's life when he/she is producing at a
rate comparable to peers. There are also long gaps, either between books
or between their last published book and death. The next section looks
in more detail at some of these "gaps" by considering each of the writers
in turn. It omits Hudson and Warner for whom I am as yet unable to find
sufficient biographical information. In each case discussion focuses on
lengthy gaps between successive publications and tries to understand these
in terms of intra-project and extra-project factors.
Case Studies
13. Rosamond Lehmann established a critical reputation
with four novels written between the ages of 26 and 35 and she continued
to publish work at regular intervals until she was devastated by the sudden
death in Indonesia of her daughter, when Lehmann was 57 and her daughter
was 24. Thereafter she was unable to work at fiction; her autobiographical
essay, The Swan in the Evening describes her inability to produce
another book, the "strangulating spiritual blockage" and the "well nigh
total seize-up in such powers of self-expression as I have" (89). The essay
provides an account of the researches she carried out into psychical and
mystical experiences and paranormal phenomena and which were to preoccupy
her for the rest of her life. This case seems to provide the clearest example
of the profound impact of an extra-project factor upon a writer’s work.
Nevertheless, Lehmann was unable or unwilling to turn this intense emotional
experience into a fictional project; rather, her psychical research became
the principal project of her life.
Jean Rhys (1890-1979)
14. After the publication of four novels between 1928
and 1939 Rhys did not produce another until 1966 with the publication of
Wide
Sargasso Sea. During and after the Second World War she lived in obscurity
and poverty, the incidents in her life including imprisonment, health problems,
and the death of two husbands. She lived in isolation from literary circles;
indeed, many in the literary world believed that she was dead. She eventually
finished Wide Sargasso Sea after she had been "rediscovered" in
1957 by Francis Wyndham whose support, encouragement, and critical feedback
and advice were crucial for its completion.
15. Rhys spent many years on the book and we can trace
its development through her letters (see Rhys). She claimed to have written
about half of the book in 1939 and again in 1945 (39). In 1957 she was
still working on it, stating that she could almost have dictated the whole
book as it had been in her mind for so many years (143). She expected to
submit the manuscript within six to nine months, definitely in 1958 (147-48,
151). In 1959 she believed it to be almost finished but her letters reveal
that this "first draft" had only the "skeleton" of the story and was "something
definite to go on" and that there were major problems with the draft that
had to be overcome (159). In 1961 she was promising Wyndham the first part
of the story and admitting the novel was incomplete; it was not to be completed
until 1966. We can trace the interplay between extraneous and intra-project
factors in her letters. The slow progress was due in part to external factors
-- her husband's illness, her financial problems, and the difficulties
of their life in a remote part of Cornwall, particularly the coldness in
winter (172). She wrote that she had received setbacks in the first year
of writing, when she had a good grasp of the book, which prevented her
from making progress at that time. She writes again and again that if she
could have just a short period of peace she could finish it (178). Yet
clearly this is not the whole story as she had also encountered adverse
life circumstances while she was working on her earlier novels. The letters
also reveal her problems with the project itself, of how it turned out
to be much more difficult than she had anticipated and required several
drafts (172). She expressed dissatisfaction with the material she had already
written (178). She was reluctant to release the manuscript even when it
was near completion and parts had already been published in a literary
magazine (Smith, xxvi).
16. Why did Rhys take so long to complete the book
from its inception and from the time she began to work seriously on it?
Clearly, many factors contribute to this, but her letters give the impression
that this was a more ambitious and difficult project than any of her previous
novels and it was the combination of this, her domestic circumstances,
and perhaps her distance from literary support that was crucial. Again
and again in her letters she acknowledges the crucial role of the feedback
she received from Wyndham. In terms of her artistic career Rhys was committed
to this particular project, she believed it was the most important project
she had embarked upon, and she did not consider any alternative. She pursued
this despite severe extra-project obstacles and problems with the work
itself that were aggravated by these obstacles. The problems with the project
related to its difficulties not to its rewardingness.
J.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
17. J.R. Tolkien began The Silmarillion in
1917 before either of his best-known works
The Hobbit and The
Lord of the Rings. He struggled with this project for the rest of his
life and it was only completed after his death (by his son) some 56 years
after its genesis and published posthumously. He had submitted it to his
publishers after the commercial success of The Hobbit, but they
were unhappy about proceeding with it, as they wanted a book that would
aim at the children's market and build on the success of The Hobbit.
Even when he switched publishers in 1950, the new publisher was sceptical
about The Silmarillion. When he tried to devote time to it after
his retirement from academic life he was faced with extensive commitments
arising from the success of his earlier publications. This gave rise to
discontinuities and "a breaking of threads in his work which delayed achievement
and frustrated him more and more" (Carpenter, 240). He found it difficult
to concentrate on his writing and missed the company of those who had previously
provided a critical audience for his work (the "inklings," C.S. Lewis and
others who met regularly in the Eagle and Child public house in Oxford).
When he did manage to spend time on the work he found it difficult to make
progress not least because the book had been so long in the writing, for
example there existed several different and inconsistent versions of each
chapter. Eventually, the death of his wife and his own infirmity made it
impossible for him to complete the book. Despite his previous critical
and commercial success in publication and the working conditions that seemed
to favour his work, Tolkien spent many years in an unsuccessful attempt
to complete a project that was very important to him, more important than
the books that established his reputation. In part this was due to the
lukewarm reaction of publishers, in part to external pressure. Eventually
a combination of his working methods and the inability to find the conditions
in which to write brought about his failure.
Rebecca West (1892-1983)
18. There is a gap in fiction writing of 21 years
before Rebecca West published the novel that has proved her most popular,
The
Fountain Overflows (1956), the first of three autobiographical novels,
the final two being published posthumously. However, this gap is explicable
in the context of West’s lifelong interests in philosophy and politics,
and she published extensively in literary criticism and journalism as well
as on historical and philosophical themes. During this period she wrote
an acclaimed two-volume 500,000-word historical and political study of
Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (a work she described as
"a preternatural event in my life" [Scott, 169] and considered by some
her masterpiece [see, e.g., Hynes]). That she was able to pursue her interests
in Yugoslavia and devote so much time to "the great financial sacrifice"
of such a large non-commercial venture was due to the financial security
she had achieved by writing columns for national newspapers in Britain
and the US. In the same period she wrote a highly regarded study of treason,
The
Meaning of Treason (1947). It would seem that she turned away from
the project of the novel to a more rewarding non-fictional one. Nevertheless,
some difficulties clearly surrounded The Fountain Overflows. West
described in a letter of 1955 how what was intended to be a long short
story grew into a project of 400,000 words (Scott, 290). It appeared ten
years after it was promised to the publishers and the intended sequels
never appeared in the remaining 27 years of her life (two novels based
on her manuscripts were published posthumously). According to her biographer
the sequel was virtually finished the following year but she did not send
the manuscript to the publisher (Glendenning, 207). West attributed the
delays to "domestic interruptions" (Scott, 304), to illness and anxieties
about the contents of a book published by her son. In a later letter (Scott,
351) she mentioned the technical difficulties posed by the unfinished novel
(This Real Night). She did subsequently publish a non-autobiographical
novel about treachery,
The Birds Fall Down, begun by 1945 and published
in 1966, which was also the focus of her journalism at the time and less
autobiographical than the uncompleted novels.
19. The gap in West's fiction output seems due to
a complex set of factors. Although the time spent on Black Lamb and
Grey Falcon was productive, fiction was important to her and she returned
to it with a sense of what the nature of the project should be, the exploration
of themes connected with childhood. Her failure to complete the work may
be due to difficulties with extensive commitments she faced, many of them
arising from her political interests and journalism, and from the success
of the book on Yugoslavia. Her case resembles that of Tolkien in terms
of pressures that interfere with the production of fiction.
Antonia White (1899-1979)
20. Antonia White has an interval of 17 years before
her first and second novels and did not produce any in the last 26 years
of her life. She illustrates most clearly the difficulty with a project
that is commonly known as "writer's block." Despite her continuing efforts
she was unsuccessful in bringing work to completion. She was unable to
write, even when she did find the time and space to do so; she describes
in her diaries spending over five hours trying, without success, to improve
two sentences, and reported that this happened over and over again (Dunn,
372). Dunn reports that White's desk could be covered with up to fifteen
versions of a first paragraph, each crossed out and re-written over and
over (410). We can contrast this with the feverish and goal-directed activity
of her translation work at the same time. She strove tirelessly to meet
deadlines, resorting to barbiturates to complete the task. Indeed, she
found this activity a respite from the difficulties she experienced with
her creative work particularly as it assuaged her sense of guilt about
failing to write, since she approached her writing almost as a religious
duty.
21. Dunn offers an explanation of White's "block,"
relating it to the strong autobiographical themes of the novels. White
believed that she was unable to invent, but had to draw directly upon her
own experience. Her emotional life was a disturbed one and she suffered
from psychological illness for most of her life including a spell in a
mental hospital when she was 22 years old (this was the topic of her most
regarded novel, Beyond the Glass). Her emotional life was dominated
by her intense and erotically charged relationship with her father. Entries
in her autobiography, as well as her diaries, letters, and fiction indicate
her awareness of the erotic dimension of the relationship, and this preoccupied
her long after her father's death. It is the principal theme of her novel
The
Lost Traveller, which took 13 years to write, and where the central
character is on the verge of adulthood and is unable to find fulfilment
in her first adult relationship. Dunn suggests that White was unable to
deal with autobiographical material dealing with her adult life. She points
out that this was the theme that White attempted unsuccessfully to address
in her work. She also presents as evidence in support of this thesis that
White was unable to find sexual fulfilment with any of her three husbands
or many lovers, and she argues that this too was connected with the influence
of her father. Whether or not this particular explanation is accepted,
the gaps in White’s oeuvre do seem to be related to the difficulties posed
by an established project.
Discussion
22. The first point to be acknowledged about this
analysis is that it is based on a tiny sample of writers. This is too small
to permit meaningful parameter estimation and model fitting of the kind
advocated by Simonton. In terms of investigation of artistic careers, it
runs the risk of finding that there are entirely unconnected reasons for
their low rate of publication within this group of writers. It is possible
that writing was terminated by infirmity rather than by factors to do with
creativity in itself. The sample is also a biased one. It was drawn from
a handbook of twentieth century writers (Parker) that was intended to include
all those writers of fiction who had been born or resident in Britain.
This source is biased towards the artistic "canon," and under-represents
more "popular" writers. The basis for admitting writers to this canon is
perhaps an arbitrary one, and Peter Swirski has argued that we should be
alert to high quality writing whether it is highbrow or popular (see <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb99-4/swirski99.html>).
23. Notwithstanding these limitations of the sample,
there are patterns in the data. It does not seem to be the case that these
writers are characterised by a slow working rate or that a lengthy gap
necessarily signals a waning of abilities. For example, West was prolific
in many styles of writing throughout her long life and in the gap in her
fiction writing she produced a highly original piece of non-fiction, drawing
upon different genres to produce something innovative, a work that is considered
by many as her masterpiece. Furthermore, the lengthy gap heralded what
some commentators regard as the most creative period in her fiction writing,
one that shows difficulty in bringing work to fruition but no decline in
its eventual quality. Although Tolkien, Forster, White, West, and Lehmann
all turned away from the novel for long periods of time they remained active
in other forms of writing, whether this was scholarly work, criticism,
journalism, or translation.
24. In terms of artistic careers a low level of creativity
would correspond to an artist's inability to find, develop or sustain a
suitable project, for example by working in well-established channels and
conventions without being able to challenge or develop these into something
richer, or simply by running out of things to say, repeating oneself or
relying on hitherto successful formulae. This is not true of the writers
discussed here. There is no doubt that personal qualities and training
are necessary for a creative career but they are not sufficient; other
conditions have to be met. The task of psychological theory is to understand
the complex interactions between these qualities and conditions. Often
a metaphor is helpful for grasping complex issues, and it is our contention
that the notion of a "career" defined in terms of projects captures the
goal-directed nature of artistic work while suggesting questions to ask
about creative activity.
25. The picture that emerges in these case studies
is of writers who are highly committed to literary careers and who have
spells when they are just as productive as more prolific writers. This
progress is disrupted in various ways, sometimes for many years or, in
the case of Forster, for the rest of his life. In some cases, this process
can be understood in terms of the satisfaction gained from the project,
its rewardingness. Artists do change direction, styles, or media. Forster
abandoned the novel because he could not address the issues that were important
to him. West turned to non-fiction in order to explore philosophical issues
that had concerned her all her adult life. Lehmann's fictional output was
brought to a halt by a devastating emotional experience, but she did not
stop writing or researching; she could not address the issues she wished
through fiction, and in this sense her career shares something with that
of Forster. On the other hand, West returned to fiction when she found
a project in an autobiographical exploration of her life, and consequently
a small-scale project turned into a large one.
26. In other cases, the writer has a clear sense of
what the project is to be, but has difficulties in working on it. White
provides a clear example of this, believing herself unable to write on
non-autobiographical matters but facing an emotional block in dealing with
post-childhood personal material. Dunn offers a plausible explanation of
this in terms of White's relationship with her father. Although extrinsic
conditions were in place and White was able to produce other kinds of writing,
she was unable to complete her project and unwilling to change it. Rhys
and Tolkien struggled over many years with technical aspects of their projects;
these were much more difficult than they anticipated. In both cases these
difficulties were augmented by extra-project factors, poverty, illness,
and demanding personal relationships in the case of Rhys and the burden
of other types of work in Tolkien’s case. Both writers exemplify the point
about supportive relationships made by Csikszentmihalyi. In later life
Tolkien lacked the critical support offered by fellow ‘inklings’ that had
meant so much to him while writing
Lord of the Rings and The
Hobbit. Rhys was able to bring
Wide Sargasso Sea to completion
with the constructive critical support offered by Wyndham.
27. What is the relationship between factors intrinsic
and extrinsic to the project? We have noted examples of poverty (Rhys)
and physical illness (Rhys, Tolkien) and mental illness (White) interrupting
work. One could argue that the legal position of gay men at the time, an
extrinsic factor, affected Forster’s development as a writer, since publication
of Maurice might have produced conditions conducive to his developing
a project. However, it seems to be true of this tiny sample that intrinsic
factors outweigh extrinsic ones, even in the case of Rhys who suffered
most deprivation in her life. This reflects the strong commitment to art
demonstrated by all the writers. None turned their back on exploring experience
through writing, even if this were to take the form of literary criticism
(Forster), or works of philosophy and political ideas (West) or mysticism
and spiritualism (Lehmann). Many of these works have proved of lasting
interest, for example Lehmann's late autobiographical essay The Swan
in the Evening has been reprinted five times since its first paperback
publication in 1982.
28. I suggest that this small set of case studies
illustrates the value of thinking of creative writing across the life span
in terms of an artistic career with its contingencies and turning points
rather than in terms of notions of slowing down or the "using up" of some
fixed amount of creative potential. Each of the careers demonstrates gaps
in fiction writing rather than a slow rate of production, and inspection
of these gaps is informative about the factors that influence creative
writing.
Works Cited
Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. London: Allen and Unwin, 1977.