Question
Compare how the writers of Text 1 and Text 2 present their
perspective and ideas about life as a writer.
‘Support your answer with detailed reference to the texts.
(14 marks)Text 1
Here is on extract from the diaries of John Steinbeck.
Lincoln’s Birthday. My first day of work in my new room. It is a
very pleasant room and | have a drafting table to work on
which | have always wanted — also a comfortable chair given
me by Elaine [his wife]. In fact | have never had it so good and
so comfortable. | have known such things to happen - the
perfect pointed pencil - the paper persuasive - the fantastic
chair and a good light and no writing. Surely a man is a most
treacherous animal full of his treasured contradictions. He
may not admit it but he loves his paradoxes
Now that | have everything, we shall see whether | have
conything. It is exactly that simple. Mark Twain used to write in
bed- so did our greatest poet. But | wonder how often they
wrote in bed - or whether they did it twice and the story took
hold. Such things happen. Also | would like to know what
things they wrote in bed and what things they wrote sitting
up. All of this has to do with comfort in writing and what its
value is. | should think that a comfortable body would let the
mind go freely to its gathering, But such is the human that he
might react in an opposite way. Remember my father’s story
about the man who did not dare be comfortable because he
went to sleep. That might be true of me too. Now| am
perfectly comfortable in body. | think my house is in order.
Elaine, my beloved, is taking care of all the outside details to
allow me the amount of free untroubled time every day to do
my work. | can’t think of anything else necessary to a writer
except a story and the ability to tell it.
John SteinbeckHere is an extract from Stephen King's advice book and memoir,
On Writing. He is talking about his writing desk
The last thing | want to tell you in this part is about my desk.
For years | dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab
that would dominate a room - no more child's desk in a trailer
laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rented house.
In 1981 | got the one | wanted and placed it in the middle of a
spacious, skylighted study (it's a converted stable loft at the
rear of the house). For six years | sat behind that desk either
drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship's captain in
charge of a voyage to nowhere.
A year or two after | sobered up, | got rid of that monstrosity
and put in a living-room suite where it had been, picking out
the pieces and a nice Turkish rug with my wife's help. In the
early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my
kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball
game or a movie and eat pizza. They usually left a boxful of
crusts behind when they moved on, but | didn't care. They
came, they seemed to enjoy being with me, and | know |
enjoyed being with them. | got another desk - it's handmade,
beautiful, and half the size of the T. Rex desk. | put it at the far
west end of the office, in a corner under the eave. That eave is
very like the one | slept under in Durham, but there are no
rats in the walls and no senile grandmother downstairs
yelling for someone to feed the horse. I'm sitting under it now,
a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no
hangover. I'm doing what | know how to do, and as well as |
know how to do it. | came through all the stuff | told you
about (and plenty more that | didn't), and now I'm going to.
tell you os much as | can about the job. As promised, it won't
take long.It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time
you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the
middle of the room. Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the
other way around.’
On Writing, Stephen King