How Donna Tartt’s leisurely approach creates masterworks: On slowing down and enjoying the pleasure of our work
Sensing that we are falling behind in life can cause anxiety, not reaching a career milestone on time can throw us into a state of urgency, and in order to progress, one feels they must move quickly.
However stories from antiquity, which have been handed down to us, echo an alternative way. Rather than focus on speed, a slow, steady and constant stepping forward is offered as its better. In a Greek fable, the storyteller Aesop tells us about a slow and steady tortoise winning a race against a speedy, arrogant hare. We’ve all heard renditions of this story in childhood, how the tortoise in the beginning is far behind and yet slowly wins the race.
Though a fable often told to us as children, this lesson provides us with vocational insight on how one may approach creating masterworks in a way that they enjoy. We may experience the feeling of being behind, but we do not need to panic. If it takes us longer to reach the aims that others already have, this is okay. It is better to create excellent work in a way that is both enjoyable and meaningful to us than compromise for the sake of external achievement.
A slow and deliberate approach to our work opens up the path to reaching milestones that can only be arrived at through extended periods of time. What is missed in speedy attempts is gained in works that stand the testament of time.
Donna Tartt, one of the great novelists of our time, is a master of this approach.
Donna Tartt is an author who has written 3 books over the past 30 years
Donna Tartt has written three works of fiction over the past 30 years; The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002) and The Goldfinch (2013). Winning multiple awards, such as The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and majorly influencing the popular Dark Academia aesthetic. Her books have created a wonderfully obsessed readership that adores her writing, and even Donna’s decade long writing process has not deterred them. However, even if it did, it is unlikely that she would change as she respects the craft too much. Learning early on that if the work is not enjoyable, then one is not doing it right.
Slowdown, the work is meant to be enjoyable
Enjoyment is a crucial part of our work. How one experiences doing the work matters as much as the work that is created from the activity itself. This notion is a foreign concept to the modern world that places the focus on creation rather than the creator. Speed is expected and timelines are enforced. This pressure can cause deep, personal dissatisfaction with the work; rushing tasks, missing standards, worrying daily and tarnishing what could have been an object of high quality. This is why being told to produce at speed should be questioned.
Slowing down often makes sense as it allows one to breathe, dream and play. It gives one the space to pay attention to the smallest of details. Large scale works are able to unfold and emerge over time. Which is why Donna says again and again, when questioned about her pace, that if she wrote faster it wouldn’t be fun for her or the readers.
Donna has faced harsh judgement for the pace it takes to complete her novels. Even Stephen King, the acclaimed horror author, commented on it. In reviewing Donna’s novel, The Goldfinch, in a New York Times review, Stephen was full of praise and admiration for everything except her level of productivity, “But three books in 30 years?” However, Donna knows that working to produce more would feel like, “A horrible chore.” Emphasising the importance of enjoying her work and holding firm to the perspective that there is a way that works best for you. She even tried at one point to work fast but recognised quickly that it made it feel job-like.
What is hidden from view is that a crucial part of the exquisite storytelling that occurs in Donna’s novels happens because she slows down. Donna maintains a sensitivity to enjoyment of the work itself. Knowing that if she was to meet her aim of excellent work, wanting those who read her books to do so with glee, she must have fun creating them. This belief, that the experience she had creating the work will spill over into those who receive her work, opens us up to an ethical question.
Anyone pursuing their calling needs to ask themselves, “If not enjoying what I am creating is transmitted into the experience of the work itself, what am I pouring into this world?”
Speed can prevent great work from emerging
When the focus of one’s work is finishing it within a timeframe, the external pressure naturally affects the work. Whilst there are those who thrive under these conditions, others do not. To make certain works excellent, reaching beyond what one has reached before, longer timelines may be required. When the focus of an individual is on speed of production, finishing the work becomes more important than creating the best work one can do. This attitude can be harmful to the work itself, and is unfortunately a dominating perspective in the digital landscape where beliefs regularly focus on putting out work rather than improving at the craft itself. Creators are frequently told that, “Done is better than perfect”. This saying is useful for beginners who hope to use social media for their work, who do not have momentum.
However, this can lead to producing mass amounts of work without standards. Forgoing the opportunity to slow down and improve what is being done because they feel pressured to ‘deliver’. The consequence being that works which were still unfolding, unready and in a state of becoming, are published in an infantile state. Drafts that could have been masterpieces are lost to the world for the sake of quickly progressing towards one’s aim. The irony being that if one focuses on doing quality work, they still reach milestones that those churning out work at speed do, and they can also reach ones that those churning out work cannot. Knowing that time is a great equaliser, and there are certain things that cannot be done within short periods of time. It is no mistake that Leonardo Da Vinci is said to have worked on the Mona Lisa for 14 years, that James Joyce worked on Finnegans Wake for 17 years and Donna Tartt worked on The Goldfinch for 11 years.
Donna puts the work first no matter how long it takes, and this attitude has served her work incredibly well. Realising early on that she needed a solitary life away from the literary world, which has expectations on authors to produce books regularly at the pace of one book every 2-3 years. In finding herself repeatedly having to deal with questions of speed, this outside pressure which has pushed many authors to create in a particular way, did not have the same effect on her.
Instead of producing more books, she gave less interviews. She knew that this pressure emphasising speed would ruin her work, deciding instead to write in solitude and timeless calm. This has allowed her to do things other authors cannot, such as reworking a story four years into writing it with plenty of time to spare; which is what happened to The Secret History. If she had published it in year three before it had been reworked we would never have received the masterpiece that appeared in year nine. Publicity, as Tartt explains it, is, ‘...actively harmful. It draws attention away from the books. The books are the important thing.’ Instead of submitting to the benchmarks of her field, Donna lets the world know when she is ready. Rather than rushing her work to meet an industry standard, the work will tell her when it’s time.
Donna Tartt teaches us that, although the world offers us a timeline of when certain milestones need to be accomplished, we do not have to agree to its terms. If the vocation asks us to create great works, and those works need time, we do not have to rush them. That if the pressure of time morphs the work we love into a job we despise, it’s okay to slow down.
Her maxim, “If there's no fun for the writer, there's no fun for the reader” reminds us that our experience of doing the work matters as much as the work itself. Focusing on speed, output and productivity can hinder rather than aid one’s work. In learning from her path we can look at it like an Aesop fable, asking ourselves if we also went slowly, and focused on enjoying the process of our work as much as what is created, how much higher could we go?
dededos
prguitarman
kianamaiart
izzy806
tangentwithtanner