Tom Stoppard

For most of high school I planned on being either a cartographer or an environmental scientist who dabbled in writing. Then came Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and it all seemed like a lot of work; whereas writing was just natural. Still, I wasn't convinced and had no particular focus.

So it was as a weary and directionless teenager that I came upon Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, one of the texts for my HSC English course. It was then I knew what I wanted to do - write plays. I had no idea theatre could be so … well, nuts. Yes, I had been somewhat sheltered to come to that conclusion, something I've been well stripped of since, but that play remains one of the cleverest, wittiest and most entertaining I've encountered and if I had not read it at that point in my life I firmly believe I would not have followed the path I did. So it's not really exaggerating to say Tom Stoppard changed my life.

Imagine my excitement therefore on hearing he was going to be ‘in conversation' in Sydney - there is an event not to be missed! Going along with fellow cracked playwright and good friend Ash Walker, I waited with expectation for the man himself - same copy of Ros and Guil are Dead in my pocket on the off-chance I ran into him later for an autograph, I didn't.

From the seats we had his features were a blur and he appeared very small, nevertheless there he was; older than the photo in the back of the plays of his I have, but only in as much as his hair was grey. He was very much my idea of the English writer: casual suit, shock of hair, legs crossed in a slight slouch and hands poised for a good chat. He didn't disappoint, for the next hour and a half he conversed on a range of topics, directed somewhat by questions but mainly as starting points for things he wanted to relate. Years of experience and a keen, active and inquiring mind have led to someone who has a lot to say; the one trick he had was staying on topic and not forgetting his point in the meantime.

It would be ridiculous of me to try to recount what he said but there are some things which he raised that I want to relate, because they very much related to me as a writer. One of the encouraging things to hear was that he no longer believes in knowing everything there is to know about a play before writing it. For years I had it drummed into me that thinking such a thing was foolhardy arrogance and it could never possibly work; it's a true relief to hear such an accomplished writer say it could. Interestingly, that morning, while choosing which of his plays to ‘happen to have' in my pocket for my wished for accidental encounter, I read his introduction to a volume which opens with The Real Inspector Hound where he related the same story as he did in the conversation. It was his epiphany on the subject; since he found himself with an almost completed play that revolved around a corpse under the sofa, without knowing who it was. Suddenly it was obvious who it was, he finished the play and it remains a great success to this day over forty years later.

He seemed to have to reiterate that point several times, the question asker having trouble accepting that such intricate and clever plays could be written without being planned first. Then Tom mentioned feeling lucky when he did come up with the great line in question, and similar moments. "If you feel lucky it's good; if you feel clever you're stuffed." (not verbatim but essentially what he said). Of course he went on to say luck has nothing to do with it, the work is being down all the time in the subconscious. It just feels lucky when it suddenly spills out onto the page. This seems to relate to a fascinating aside about an historical character from his trilogy The Coasts of Utopia, which I sadly know little to nothing about. The character was a Russian literary critic during the time of Tsars, he said he had tried to be a poet but knew he never could be, because when he went to write a poem he put everything into being there writing a poem. When a poet writes, you watch them, the pen moves constantly - then it stops and the poet stares, then the pen moves again. There in that moment when the pen stopped, where did the poet go? Only artists know and that's what makes them artists. It would seem to me they go inward, to the subconscious where creation and dreams lie.

Talking about this figure also led to another of those moments where things strangely coalesce. You may recall in my last blog my off-handed question about how so much beautiful music could come from the oppression of Stalinist USSR. This critic insisted his success as a critic, and the success of the writers he critiqued, lay in the very repression of the Tsarist regime he lived under. Not long before his death he went to Paris to try to recover from tuberculosis, his fellow countrymen who were also there encouraged him to stay. He wouldn't even consider it; there anyone could publish whatever they liked. There was no pressure, no real scrutiny - and no lasting success, as everything written was soon buried under the next week's publications. How that view stands now, with anyone capable of putting out huge amounts whenever they want … well. Stoppard did say he didn't think the freedom we had would produce, comparatively, as many masterpieces as the days when being published took more effort.

I seem to be going on a lot too now, but there was so much to think about it's hard not to. One final point I'll talk about was his comment “I don't write drafts of plays, I write drafts of sentences.” This was a key part of his process I think. He'll write fifty copies of the first page, each barely distinguishable from the last, and continue doing this back and forth through the play so by the end there's only one way things can fall out. But a lot of decisions are made on the spot early on. He mentioned something in the second scene of Arcadia, it could have been this or that - he went one way, if he'd gone the other the whole play might have failed because everything that followed would've been completely different. He may even have abandoned the play. Which makes me feel better about plays I have abandoned too.

So with Stoppard the work lies in the writing and, as we're always told, the rewriting - but here there's not that much difference. It's not the same process as mine by any means, nor should it be, but it gives me confidence that mine is okay and however I arrive at the end result, if the work is in there - and I “trust the subconscious” - it'll be all right.