How not to write: Advice from James Thurber

Courtesy of Lists of Note:

I have a special wariness of people who write opening sentences with nothing in mind, and then try to create a story around them. These sentences, usually easy to detect, go like this: "Mrs. Ponsonby had never put the dog in the oven before," "'I have a wine tree, if you would care to see it,' said Mr. Dillingworth," and "Jackson decided suddenly, for no reason, really, to buy his wife a tricycle." I have never traced the fortunes of such characters in the stories I receive beyond the opening sentence, but, like you, I have a fair notion of what happens, or doesn't happen, in "The Barking Oven," "The Burgundy Tree," and "A Tricycle for Mama."

Read the rest here.

I had to laugh at this because it's almost exactly what I'm doing with these random writing prompts -- jotting down a first line and then seeing where it goes. James Thurber would not approve. Oh well.

Those who have been checking in daily will have noticed by now that Week Three's writing challenge has taken somewhat longer than seven days. The truth is that the prompt is awful and I hate it, but I've also been unwilling to let myself write something I loathe just for the sake of finishing it and moving on. And most crippling, I also will not let myself skip a prompt just because I don't like it -- I fear that this would be a slippery slope; I might miss out on a really great story that I wouldn't have otherwise discovered, and the whole point of this challenge is to write no matter what. If I let myself pick and choose the prompts, chaos will ensue. I know it.

But of course I'm not doing myself any favors by sitting on this and pouting. So if you'll give me permission to lower my standards for one week, I will do the same. I promise to post Week Three's story by Sunday and then get on with this thing.

J.A. Konrath loves to write... But do I?

From A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, the always-interesting blog by J.A. Konrath, who is a very successful indie author and vigorous spokesman for the self-publishing ebook revolution going on right now:

I love writing. I loved it for the 12 years where I didn't sell a single thing, and I've loved it for the 12 years I've been a professional. I have all the conceits that every writer has. I think about my characters as if they're real people. I dream about scenes. I secretly believe my stories are the best in the world. I laugh at my own jokes, cry at the emotional parts, and often dislocate my elbow patting myself on the back after a good bit of dialog or a fun twist. Being a writer does more than define me; it isn't a job, it's a way of life. And when I put my life out there for the world to see, I want it to be the very best that I am capable of. I want readers to enjoy it as much as I have. I want every chapter, every scene, every sentence to be deliberate, to convey exactly what I want it to convey.

Read the rest here.

My heart sank a little when I read this paragraph. To be fair, I do think about everything the way a writer thinks: I'm always looking for connections between things and what that connection could mean. I can't stop trying to form a narrative for my life and even the lives of others. Being a writer does define me in some way.

But do I love writing? Sometimes I do, but that's only after I've muscled past the starting point and through all the mental roadblocks I invariably set for myself. I don't usually make it far enough to get to the part where it's fun and not really, really hard work.

Konrath writes mystery thrillers, and you get the sense that he loves the genre. I bet that helps. Maybe it's that I still haven't found the sweet spot, which is partly why I started this blog -- to rediscover why I wanted to be a writer so badly in the first place. 

Maybe I'll come to the end of this realizing that writing is no longer my passion. But you can't know until you try, and for the first time in a very long time, I'm actually trying.

Week Three: "What? You're afraid of homeless people?" "No, I just didn't want to disturb him."

I can just imagine my hyper-judgmental 19-year-old self overhearing this exchange and forming all kinds of uncharitable conclusions about the speakers. Scribbling their remarks down with puritan glee. Hoo boy.

My resolution this week is to write a story that's a mix of dialogue and prose. So: an actual short story. No idea where I'm going to go with this, but there's already a strong voice, so that should help to inform who the characters are.

As for what the story's about...? I guess we've learned by now that that comes later.

Reflections on Week Two

[Read the finished story here!]

That one felt like work.

Dialogue comes much easier to me than prose, so I cheated around my block by making the story in the voice of someone (the parental "we"). It helped a little, but I still spent the first half of each writing session staring numbly at my notebook, wondering why, if in fact writing is "my passion," isn't this more fun?

I talked a bit about fatigue last week, and that certainly contributed. I also set a nice trap for my perfectionist self by basing characters in the story on actual people with giant bodies of work. Again and again, I felt like I couldn't possibly write more until I had done more research. I would resolve to spend that evening reading random selections of Dante and Blake. And then I wouldn't. And then the next day I'd feel underprepared... etc. etc.

One of my teachers in grad school, Carlo Gébler, advised us to do the research after the first draft's done, because too much research at the start can turn into procrastination. He'd make note of the things he'd fudged or simply skipped to keep the story going, and afterwards he'd know exactly what research he needed to do. Until this past week, I'd always subscribed to the opposite theory: immerse yourself in research; take copious random notes; realize that you can't possibly start this story until you've found out about x, y, and z; become overwhelmed; admit defeat; ponder the futility of it all.

This time, though, as with last week, there was no time for my usual self-defeating processes -- I forced myself to work with what I knew (which wasn't much -- Dante wrote The Divine Comedy and Blake wrote Songs of Innocence and Experience, which included "The Tyger") and invent the rest. I also wanted to model the story on another I had read in college about Jesus as a small child in suburban America. Something about how he used to toss the halo around like a frisbee. I could not for the life of me find this story or figure out who wrote it, which was ultimately a good thing, since I had no choice but to let whatever I'd retained from that story inform this one without feeling influenced or intimidated by it.

Anyway, despite all of this (or perhaps because of all this), I think the story turned out well, and with a punchy ending that makes me smile. But please, please, let Week Three be easier...

Week Two: Victorious!

Last week was almost entirely dialogue, so this time I thought I'd try prose. However, the prose turned into a monologue of sorts -- which, if you think about it, is a lot like dialogue except the other person is you.

Anyway. Read it here!

I'll post reflections and Week Three's challenge tomorrow. 

It's a weird one.

Two spoonfuls of Sugar

The Rumpus's Dear Sugar column is one of my favorite things on the internet right now, and if you're not fanatically reading and re-reading these columns then do I have a treat for you.

The first concerns writing vs. being an author:

If you are a writer, it’s the writing that matters and no amount of battery acid in your stomach over who got what for what book they wrote is going to help you in your cause. Your cause is to write a great book and then to write another great book and to keep writing them for as long as you can. That is your only cause. It is not to get a six figure book deal. I’m talking about the difference between art and money; creation and commerce. It’s a beautiful and important thing to be paid to make art. Publishers who deliver our books to readers are a vital part of what we do. But what we do—you and I—is write books. Which may garner six figure book deals for the reasons I outlined above. Or not.

Read the rest here.

The second is from my absolute favorite Sugar column. It devastates me every time I read it (in a good way). It's about pushing yourself to be more than what you think you are:

I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.

Read the rest here. (And you ready should, though perhaps not at work...)

Sugar recently came out as Cheryl Strayed, author of Torch and the upcoming memoir Wild. I'm reading Torch right now and it's just as good as her columns.

John Steinbeck, after finishing East of Eden

Again, from the wonderful Letters of Note:

A book is like a man—clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.

Read the rest here.

Fatigue

These have been my mornings lately: Tired, coffee, work, 2pm doldrums, more coffee, second job, exhausted, go to bed early... CANNOT SLEEP! CAFFEINE REMEMBERS YOU!

Next morning: very tired, more coffee... etc.

I skipped my writing hour this morning. I know, I know. But caffeine held me in its anxious embrace until half past midnight last night. When the alarm went off at 6:30am, I think I actually said aloud "Oh god no" and then hit snooze until it was time to get ready for the day job.

Later, I tried an experiment wherein I chugged all the coffee I would typically have over the course of a day before 10am. It made for an eye-spasmy morning, a kind-of buzzed lunchtime, and a fatigued evening. Now there will be sleep. And then writing. Yes. Sweet, sweet writing...

I made a little progress on Week Two's challenge before my second job tonight. I decided that it's going to be a short prose piece, not a poem (this is for the best), and will feature Dante and Blake as fictional characters. So poets 500 years apart rather than 1300, but it's the spirit of the thing that counts, right?

Week Two: Poets 1300 years apart being compared.

Dear god. What...?

I think I remember where this came from. It must have been during David Daniel's Introduction to Literature class, and though I forget exactly which poets we were comparing, I remember thinking how strange it was to tear writers away from their place in history and compare the words they'd written on the merits of their words alone. 

I mean, how many words did Shakespeare invent? Even 700 years ago, Dante didn't have access to "pious" or "radiance."

(Or "multitudinous," but I guess you don't often find opportunity to use that one.)

Anyway. I have no idea what to do with this. Quite the "inauspicious" start...

Reflections on Week One

[Read the finished play here!]

That was the first work of creative fiction I've started and finished since December 2009 (a little over two years).

Leaving myself to my own devices clearly wasn't working. I think I needed a create a public challenge like this for myself so that I would feel accountable and make writing a priority. 

I've read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird probably 5-6 times, and though I've believed with all my heart that the only way to get the work done is to give yourself permission to (in her words) "write shitty first drafts," I have actually never allowed myself to do that. Stephen King (in his memoir/how-to book On Writing) also recommends writing to see where the story goes. He doesn't outline first -- he just writes and writes. I like to think of myself as a fairly easygoing guy, but the thought of writing without any thought as to what I'm writing makes my left eyelid twitch uncontrollably. 

(Whatever my writerly output these past years, the discerning reader will have no doubt noticed that I've spent lots and lots of time at least reading about the act of writing...)

In any case, probably because I assigned myself a lot of work and a near-impossible amount of time in which to do it, for Week One's challenge I was able to suppress the inner critic and just write to see what would happen next. I didn't really intend to write a play, but that's what came out. And by the way, whenever I read that an author was completely surprised by the form their story took, I would always cry bullshit. I mean, really. You had no control? Who's driving here? But I am here to tell you that it's real. It could even happen to you.

Lastly, how the play was written is also significant. I mentioned in an earlier post that I was starting to write it longhand in a small notebook during my commute to my second job. Saturday afternoon I carved out for myself a few hours to finish the story, which involved first transcribing everything I had written longhand into a blank Word document. This sounds rote and uncreative, but I found myself tweaking small things as I typed them out. I think it woke up the creative brain enough that, once everything I'd already written was in place, I had no trouble continuing where I had left off. 

What writer has not experienced the terror of the blank Word document? Here, my friends, is a possible cure: start your story longhand, give yourself small assignments in short amounts of time, and don't take it to your computer until you've built up some steam.

And then immediately start your next story.