Lillian Hellman and John Hersey played poker in the evenings after writing all day at their neighboring summer houses in Vineyard Haven. Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Joseph Lash spent decades of summers writing in a little shack behind his Menemsha house. When novelist William Styron’s children were young, they and their summer friends all knew that when Bill was writing, his Vineyard Haven property was a quiet zone, strictly enforced.
Martha’s Vineyard has long attracted writers, and in recent years, a whole new school of them has been lured here. A few live on the Island year-round, though many others come just in the summer months to work on books that they find more difficult to get to while living their “real” lives off-Island.
“I’ve written eight books on Martha’s Vineyard,” says thriller writer and former New York City sex-crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein. “I draw inspiration from the beauty and the peacefulness of the Island. I feel more creative when I’m here, and less distracted by city life and the compulsion to do chores and other city things.”
Harvard Business School professor and nonfiction writer Rosabeth Moss Kanter agrees. She finds it helpful to write someplace other than her regular, year-round office. “On Martha’s Vineyard,” she says, “I have a room of my own – a separate space where I can completely devote myself to whatever project I’m working on.” So far she’s written three books here, the latest of which, Confidence, will be published in September.
Novelist Ward Just, who has lived year-round on the Island for twelve years and written five novels and a play during that time, finds the winter to be particularly conducive to hunkering down at the typewriter. “Because there aren’t very many people here for most of the year,” he notes, “and because the weather is so wretched from Thanksgiving to Memorial Day, there’s scant reason to leave the house. This encourages writing.”
Yet, as those who live and work here all year know, it’s not always easy when summer comes and friends arrive with nothing on their dockets but play. They call with invitations for the writer to go out to Quansoo, or fish, or sail, and if you work at home and have a flexible schedule, it can be tough to turn them down and stay focused on work.
“The very things that provide peace and beauty here can be so tempting,” says Kanter. “You have to contend with the lure of nature.”
Fairstein likes to write seven days a week when she’s on the Island. “Writers understand that,” she says, “but house guests and people who work five-day-a-week jobs may not.” When she first started using the Vineyard as a place to write, she found it tough to discipline herself, especially in August, when she feels pressured to see all the friends she doesn’t see for the rest of the year. “In the beginning,” she says, “people would call and say, ‘Let’s go to the beach,’ or ‘There’s a flea market in Edgartown,’ and I’d close the laptop and jump in the car.”
But when writing is a job, writers usually find the discipline they need to do it, no matter how gorgeous the day might be. Clyde Phillips has written three thrillers on the Island, two during summers, and one during a winter he spent living here full-time. “In the summer,” he says, “I watch everyone load up their cars to go to the beach, and I get invited out on friends’ boats, but I turn everyone down. When they call me at home, they’re calling me at work. If I were a doctor, I’d be in an office or at a hospital, so how is this
different? It’s my job, my source of income.”
Richard North Patterson, also a thriller writer, has always taken off the summer months he spends on the Vineyard, finding that the time away from writing refreshed him for the winter’s work ahead. He had his first experience writing on the Island last winter, when he moved here year-round. “In September and early October,” he says, “I did find that I felt a little bit more ripped-off by not being able to be outside on Martha’s Vineyard, but writing is a discipline. It shouldn’t be environmentally sensitive. I think Martha’s Vineyard is a wonderful place, but not because it’s a wonderful place to write. It’s a fine place to write, but so is Paris.”
A fine place to write, but is it also a fine place to write about? Fairstein’s main character, like her creator, has a summer place on the Vineyard where she comes to take a break from the stress of her work. Of course, these being thrillers, the character’s time here doesn’t always turn out to be restful. In Fairstein’s most recent novel, The Kills, a hurricane hits the Island. Readers and critics alike have responded particularly positively to this scene, says Fairstein. “Ninety percent of my fan mail mentions it.”
Patterson has also used the Vineyard in some of his books. “It’s fun to put Martha’s Vineyard in,” he says, “because I really do like the place. But I use it for particular reasons that are not inconsistent with its reality. It’s more realistic to put a love affair here than a triple homicide.”
