Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath
Throughout the writing of The Grapes of Wrath, which took John Steinbeck about five months of intense work to finish, he kept a journal in which he explored his self-doubts as a writer and lack of motivation. I’ve turned to it time and again as I’ve struggled with my own creative work. If Steinbeck can struggle, I reason, so can I.
. . .
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. And sometimes if he is very fortunate and if the time is right, a very little of what he is trying to do trickles through . . . A good writer always works at the impossible.
For the moment now the financial burdens have been removed. But it is not permanent. I was not made for success. I find myself now with a growing reputation. In many ways it is a terrible thing . . . . Among other things I feel that I have put something over. That this little success of mine is cheating.
- Steinbeck, in a 1936 entry in his Long Valley/Of Mice and Men journal.
Now it is Saturday and we got up early and I am to work early. I don’t see any reason for not doing a full day’s work. This is a huge job. Mustn’t think of its largeness but only of the little picture while I am working. Leave the large picture for planning time. If only I could do this book properly it would be one of the really fine books and a truly American book. But I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. I’ll just have to work from a background of these. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty it is all I can expect of my poor brain never temper a word to a reader’s prejudice, but bend it like putty for his understanding. If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time. Sometimes I seem to do a good little piece of work, but when it is done it slides into mediocrity.
- June 18, 1938
My many weaknesses are starting to show their heads. I simply must get this thing out of my system. I’m not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people. I wish I were. This success will ruin me as sure as hell. It probably won’t last, and that will be all right. I’ll try to go on with work now. Just a stint every day does it. I keep forgetting.
- August 16, 1938
Always I have been weak. Vacillating and miserable. I wish I wouldn’t. I wish I weren’t. I’m so lazy, so damned lazy. This year though I have made up for last year’s lay off. I really have batted out a lot of words. I would go through until winter if I could. But if I don’t lay off it will be done, and if I do lay off I’ll lose the thread. If am simply incapable of working any way but hard and fast. That is the only way I can make it. This is too bad. It is almost impossible in fact but I must get calm and quieted before I can go on. I mean that streak yesterday was curiously indecent. I don’t know why but it was. So many things. How impossible it is for me to think. Just writing words, but the thing is starting in my brain. I must get the tempo.
- August 23, 1938
My nerves are going fast. Getting into confusion of many particles – each one beatable, but in company pretty formidable. And I get a little crazy with all of them. Too bad. Just too many things. Must beat them off. I wish I could go to a furnished room some place where I knew no one and just disappear for a while. But I guess it is impossible. I guess it is. I must get back into the stride and sweep. It isn’t just noise and bustle, it’s all the shots in my direction. The wants, the demands, the dissatisfactions. They’re breaking me down, and every now and then my head goes spinning and that frightens me. Some time it might now stop spinning. Nowhere to turn. Nowhere. Can’t think of these things anymore. Where has my discipline gone? Have I lost control? Quite coldly we’ll see today. See whether life comes into the lives and the people move and talk. We’ll see. Got her, by God.
- August 24, 1938.
My work is no good, I think – I’m desperately upset about it. Have no discipline anymore. I must get back. An ordinary novel would be finished now, but this is not one. This one must be good. Very good. And I’m afraid it is not. . . . I so want this to be a good book. So much. I don’t know what to do. I’m slipping. I’ve been slipping all my life. Shouldn’t think of that. This is all laziness. I wonder? I must try to get ahead. Must try that. This week has been shot to hell. I’ve always had these travails. Never get used to them. Never. This place has become an absolute mad house – voice culture on one side, linemen shrinking on another, I don’t know what to do. I wish – Jesus!
- August 26, 1938
Here is the strange thing – almost like a secret . You start out putting words down and there are three things – you, the pen, and the page. Then gradually the three things merge until they are all one and you feel about the page as you do about your arm. Only you love it more than you love your arm. Someday I will be all alone and lonely -- either dead and alone or alive and alone, and what will I do then?
- September 29, 1940