Just a few days ago I was able to see a production (the opening night, actually) of “Waiting for Godot” at the American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin. It was a stellar interpretation of one of my favorite plays, and nothing of their work disappointed what parts of the play still held in my memory from when I last read it a few years ago. I would heartily suggest that anyone in the area take in the show.
But Beckett’s play got me thinking all over again, which (in my opinion) is no better compliment to a piece of art. It got me thinking about the way I (or anyone) tries to write, and how it’s difficult to overcome the drowning white noise, as it were, that springs up on every level of creation. To read “Waiting for Godot,” and especially to see it performed live, makes incredibly vivid the importance of human interaction, and suggests that the post-WWII dissolution is nothing less than an apocalypse for the art of communication. Didi and Gogo fail to communicate with one anther on very basic levels, much less with the other characters they encounter (all three of them) throughout the play. And at the same time, Beckett fails to concretely communicate anything to the audience among the chaos.
As you can see, I haven’t forgotten my college years studying and analyzing literature. My apologies.
The parallel between “Godot” and writing is actually fairly simple: writers struggle for a great many days, months, years — all in search and in waiting for a positive change. I don’t mean to be facetious here when I draw such a simple connection, because the difficulty young writers face is anything but. A Pozzo usually emerges in the form of an editor or critic of some sort, which usually leaves the writer buzzing in the possibility and inevitability of failure. For a writer who is generally consistent in practicing their craft, the days to tend to converge, as they do for Didi and Gogo, and each night ends somewhere between a third glass of red wine and the disappointment that “Godot” hasn’t yet arrived in the form of an acceptance to a literary journal here, or an MFA program there.
I cringe as I write this, simply because it is so elementary. I have a little more, though. As an (unpublished) young writer myself, this write-up arrives with a seal of resentment, if you will. Perhaps it’s a little smudged, as I’m becoming more aware that the world of writing is not simple nor easy nor glamorous. And “Waiting for Godot” does not offer a hand to the disillusioned. So why would I suggest seeing, or at least reading, Beckett’s play? It’s a proper form of motivation.
If your days of writing are fundamentally the same, you’re doing something wrong. Yes, a writer should sit down every day and produce x words. Yes, a writer should be consistent and persistent. But if what you wrote yesterday seems as distant as what you wrote a month ago, take a look around: is the future of what you’re writing as bleak as the bogs in which Didi and Gogo spend their nights?
In “Waiting for Godot,” Didi and Gogo find moments of humanity, communication, and accomplishment on the back of experimentation. Writers should be no different. Because one thing is certain: unless you’re heavily published right now, whatever you did yesterday, and a month ago, just isn’t quite working.
Is that Godot? (Also known as: go back to my main thought.)