Exile, reclusion and the yoke of being a "writer"

I have always wondered how much of being a good / exceptional / great writer is about the actual output of work and how much of it is the attitude / approach / philosophy of the writer.

After all, there are those who write reams and reams of what is barely passable without more or less any effort apart from what goes into a job, with drudgery that is routine; and then there are those who approach their writing as the acme of their very existence -- slogging it out mentally (and physically) on rewrite after rewrite to come up with one (in their own standards) "passable" page or paragraph.

Then again, there are those who are so enmeshed in and haunted by the very idea of writing something exceptional that they never get down to the routine or work at making the routine better :-) When not brooding with Heathcliffian miens or intent on drunken ruin like the painter in "The Last Leaf" such people make for great literary conversationalists and are most of the time voracious readers -- the type who will vitriolically tear apart any writing that is not "great". Speaking of readers, I personally am of the opinion that a "great" reader is just a "great" writer who decided to be lazy (for life?) and also couldn't deal with the "this is getting too personal" stage when it came to splattering everything out in ink...

Or for that matter, when it comes to shaping the writer, moulding that mettle, what matters the most? Pain, suffering, dispossession, identity crises, which of this is the truest of the crucibles :-) ?

I am not being rhetorical but neither do I have the answer. Roberto Bolano seems to make a really strong case for Exile, read it all here

I liked this bit a lot; maybe because I keep thinking of getting away from it all, even now and write as if I was condemned to it :-)

"What does a politician do in prison? What does a lawyer do in the hospital? Anything but work. What, on the other hand, does a writer do in prison or in the hospital? He works. Sometimes he even works a lot. And that’s not even to mention poets. Of course the claim can be made that in prison the libraries are no good and that in hospitals there are often are no libraries. It can be argued that in most cases exile means the loss of the writer’s books, among other material losses, and in some cases even the loss of his papers, unfinished manuscripts, projects, letters. It doesn’t matter. Better to lose manuscripts than to lose your life. In any case, the point is that the writer works wherever he is, even while he sleeps, which isn’t true of those in other professions. Actors, it can be said, are always working, but it isn’t the same: the writer writes and is conscious of writing, whereas the actor, under great duress, only howls. Policemen are always policemen, but that isn’t the same either, because it’s one thing to be and another to work. The writer is and works in any situation. The policeman only is. The same is true of the professional assassin, the soldier, the banker. Whores, perhaps, come closest in the exercise of their profession to the practice of literature."


And oh yes, don't miss the poetry!

"In one fragment, Archilochus doesn’t hesitate to admit that in the midst of battle, probably a skirmish, he drops his arms and goes running, which for the Greeks was undoubtedly the greatest mark of shame, let alone for a soldier who has to earn his daily bread by his courage in combat. Archilochus says:

Some Saian mountaineer
Struts today with my shield.
I threw it down behind a bush and ran
When the fighting got hot.
Life seemed somehow more precious.
It was a beautiful shield.
I know where I can buy another
Exactly like it, just as round."

Oh, to be born an island! Or in an age when there was far more time and far less things that needed to be done