I’m reading a book on the working habits and outputs of the lately deceased David Hockney. I’m not a great fan of his paintings to be honest, although I can see his talent through his drawings. What interested me was his capacity to lose himself in his art, hour after hour day after day. A more than decent financial return gave him that freedom of course. But it set me thinking about the habits and processes involved in writing. Of course they will vary from writer to writer, but I have often commented on my own preferences. Given freedom of choice I will opt for: (i) solitude in the guise of non-interference; (ii) a setting offering company and activity should I need temporary diversions (crowds and even noise okay); (iii) beverages on tap, coffee or wine; and (iv) an ongoing project, or at least one at the planning stage.
Since retirement writing has assumed a new salience for me. I can and do lose myself in it: the pure pleasure of trying to give verbal expression to an idea, theory or point of view. I can even get withdrawal symptoms. Blogs such as this one constitute ‘thinking aloud’ for me, an opportunity to play with a theme to see where it takes me. But there are constraints on sitting down with one’s laptop. First, there has to be something worth saying and communicating. As you get older the risk of simply repeating yourself grows. I try to avoid doing so, but would offer one qualification. You surely cannot assume that a reader will be familiar with all you’ve written or published before, so a recap is often necessary (that is, to provide a precis of previous writings without resorting to what is nowadays damned as self-plagiarism). There’s a balance I guess.
Second, there is a risk of traveling out of one’s area of interest, expertise and comfort zone. I’ve noticed quite a few academics turning their hands to fiction in retirement with various degrees of accomplishment. Nothing wrong with that of course. Sheila Hillier, to take one example, is an excellent poet. I have self-published a couple of selections of poetry and have in the last few days completed a draft of a short would-be thriller. But is this the best use of my time? Is it even sensible? Why not stick to what I’ve learned to do reasonably well? I agree this is a matter of personal choice. The question I address to myself is: do I continue to do what I’ve practised for several decades, exploring ways of ‘moving on’, or do I play around with other modes of communication?
Whatever the decision, third, there is a simple intrinsic pleasure in the solitary but never lonely process of writing itself: finding the optimum way of articulating whatever point is at issue. I’ve been told my writing is usually clear. I think it is, and I make no apology for rating clarity highly. There are many elegant writers who have little to say; and there are clumsy and pedantic writers who nevertheless deliver creative innovation. If I had to assess my own efforts I would say they are typically competently researched, clearly expressed and warrant communicating. I would not claim to be an original thinker but I read avidly around my subject matter and stick to my guns (it is not for nothing that I’ve been described/denigrated as suffering from ‘oppositional defiance disorder’. I would say most of my publications sit somewhere between empirical research on the one hand and social theory on the other. As I put it to Jamie Morgan when I was interviewed for the Journal of Critical Realism, I have been committed to building bridges between these two – only too often – discrete discourses. This has inevitably meant disappointing both empirical researchers and social theorists. But there you go. It has, I think, been a worthwhile project.
A fourth observation picks up on the changing nature of the writing process itself. When I started writing in the early 1970s it was using a bio and notebook. I recall contented hours in the long-gone Wimpy Bar on Waterloo Station with these apprentice tools of the trade. My first papers to see the light of day were written this way, if in multiple different cafes and bars, as was my contribution to the first edition of ‘Sociology As Applied to Medicine’, co-edited with Donald Patrick and published by Bailliere Tindall in 1982. More recently and for many years now I have of course used a laptop. I cannot envisage returning to paper and pen. The laptop means I write much more speedily, incorporating second thoughts, additional material and correcting errors as I go. Not that risks don’t crop up. I’m only too conscious that I’m not the only one to delete whole chunks of material – two whole chapters of a book in preparation once – by pressing the wrong key. Such losses can be irretrievable. But writing on my laptop has come to suit me. As for AI, I prefer not to think about it, and fortunately don’t have to deep in retirement!
One final comment on writing and ageing. I spend more time per week writing now than I did when I was ‘at work’. My productivity hasn’t dropped off, whatever that counts for (I don’t do metrics). Moreover my CV just doesn’t matter anymore. Writing is my retirement hobby, or as I’ve observed several times, possibly an addiction. But I find I tire more easily these days. I can convince myself that I can still read and think my way through philosophical, theoretical and empirical texts and studies, and that I can transpose my reading and – I hope, worthwhile – thinking onto typed pages. But when I ‘save’ and ‘close’ I find fatigue often takes over. In one’s mid- to late-70s mental tiredness can be as inhibiting as physical tiredness. But I’m not complaining. Too many of my friends and colleagues in and around academia have not reached my age or, if they have, have been confronted with far greater challenges than mine.
For better or worse I write on! I love it.