Jack London was a famous American author who wrote such novels
as The Call of the Wild, White Fang and The Sea Wolf, and many
short stories like, To Build a Fire, An Odyssey of the North and A
Far Country. He often drew upon his own adventurous experiences in
developing plots and characters. He was a forerunner of the great Ernest
Hemingway and his stories often depicted man’s struggle against a cruel and unforgiving
natural environment and the savageness of his fellow humans.
But how did London become so successful at writing and---
How did he know what he wanted to do?
As a boy, London was raised by his mother and his stepfather
who adopted him after his own natural father rejected him by denying that he
was his son. In San Francisco, Jack dropped out of high school to work in a
cannery but soon left that dead-end employment to try his hand as an oyster
poacher. He then worked as a member of the fisheries enforcement, a sailor, and
a seal hunter in the Bearing Sea, which he described as a gruesome occupation.
In 1898, he was 21 and decided to join his brother-in-law on
a trip to Alaska to join him on the Klondike gold rush, where, Instead of
finding his fortune, he found the trip was a disaster and London claimed to
have discovered only $4.50 in gold dust. He was trapped in an Alaskan cabin,
while outside, in London’s own words---
“Winter froze everything to icey stillness”.
“Nothing stirred” he wrote,
“The Yukon slept under a coat of
ice three feet thick”
A diet of bacon,
beans and bread had given him scurvy. His gums bled, his teeth were loose, and
his joints ached. London decided that if he were to live, he would no longer
try to rise above poverty through physical labor. Instead, he would become a
writer. So, he carved into the table the words
Jack was determined to become a successful writer, but the
odds were stacked against him. Not only was he poor but he had no literary
background and no literary connections but within 5 years he became one of the
most successful writers in American Literature and his stories today are still
regarded as some of the most brilliant. He was such a triumph at writing that
by 1907 he was making the equivalent in today’s money of $250,000 a month.
He went from a poor, dejected, unskilled, laborer and in a
relatively short time, became a prosperous writer.
The question is, how did he do it?
The thing about the secret of success is that it’s no secret
because every time someone is successful, they tell everyone how they did it.
Jack London was no exception in this respect.
He granted interviews and wrote articles on how he started
and how he became a writer. Here are some of his suggestions:
1. Be Prolific
“I knew positively nothing about it. I
lived in California, far from the great publishing centers. I did not know what
an editor looked like. I did not know a soul who had ever published anything;
nor yet again, a soul, with the exception of my own, who had ever tried to
write anything, much less tried to publish it. I had no one to give me tips, no
one’s experience to profit by.”
London’s solution was to write
prolifically. And begin writing at different types of writing.
“I sat down and wrote in order to get an
experience of my own. I wrote everything-short stories, articles, anecdotes,
jokes, essays, sonnets, ballads, villanelles, triolets. Songs, light plays in
iambic tetrameter, and heavy tragedies in blank verse. These various creations
I stuck into envelopes, enclosed return postage, and dropped into the mail. Oh,
I was prolific.”
2. Don’t quit your day job
London, like many beginners with stars in
their eyes, thought he would make money quickly as a writer but soon found out
the opposite was true. Initially, instead of paychecks, he received hundreds of
rejection slips. Finally, he found someone who was willing to publish one of
his short stories, but it was for the contemptibly small amount of $5.
Finding his way in literature became so difficult
that after a time, he even considered returning to shoveling coal but thank God
for us, he didn’t. One day, shortly before giving up, a publisher offered him
$40 for a short story. This was the beginning of his literary achievements.
Out of this came his experience, and
advise, that it’s easier to reach success if you’re not always worried about
money. If one has money for financial support, it’s likely to mean that
creators won’t give up on their objectives as easily.
3. Stick to popular genres
"A good joke sells better than a good poem."
By this he meant if one were to stick to the popular genres then
his work would sell better to a mass audience.
“Avoid unhappy endings, the
harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the horrible.”
This is ironic advice coming from
London because he broke these rules in many of his stories. To Build a Fire
is one example of a catastrophic ending for the protagonist.
“In this connection,
don’t do as I do, but do as I say.”
4. Don’t wait for inspiration
“Don’t loaf and invite inspiration. Light
out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get
something remarkably like it. Set yourself a stint and do that stint each day.
You will have more words to your credit at the end of the year.”
If you set yourself a daily writing goal,
whether it’s mountainous, like 5000 words, or smaller such as 500 words, and
you follow through despite distractions, you will develop a good writing habit.
5. Study the craft
AAnother way London learned to write was by poring
over the works of great writers.
“Study the tricks of the writers who have
arrived. They have mastered the tools with which you are cutting your fingers.
They are doing things, and their work bears the internal evidence of how it’s
done. Don’t wait for some good Samaritan to tell you but dig it out for
yourself.”
The greatest writers give us a standard by
which to compare our own work. Reading them is a road map to creating our own
works of art.
6. Stay healthy
“See that your pores are open, and your
digestion is good. That is, I am confident, the most important rule of all”.
Writing is a sedentary job. Your brain is
attached to your body. and you can’t do your best work if you’re weak or in ill
health.
7. Keep a writer’s notebook
“Keep a notebook. Travel with it. Eat with
it. Sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain.
Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings
endure longer than memory.”
London wasn’t the only writer who kept a
notebook. All great writers do the same to collect ideas and help get them out
of creative ruts. Keeping a writer’s notebook is fundamental in creative
writing courses. To be a prolific writer you must get used to the idea and the
habit of writing down your thoughts in a notebook.
London’s suggestions on how to become a successful writer are
easily transferred to whatever a person decides to be prosperous at doing. The
above methods are the ones he put into practice to be able to write some of the
most gripping and unforgettable stories in literature. The final words of the
article are London’s own and probably the most important:
“Spell it out in capital letters. WORK. WORK all the time. Find
out about this Earth, this universe…and by this I mean WORK for a philosophy of
life…. The three great things are: GOOD HEALTH; WORK; and A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE….
With it you may cleave to greatness and sit among the giants.”
