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Of first, worst drafts

April 29, 2013 Leave a Comment

McPhee

McPhee

The New Yorker April 29 issue, with John McPhee’s piece “The Writing Life: Drft No. 4”  (subscription required) could not have arrived at a better time.

I’m only on Draft No. 2 of my sequel to Montana, still light years away from the growing certainty that accompanies a fourth draft – but light years ahead of the absolute torture that is the first. 

“There are psychological differences from phase to phase,” McPhee writes, “and the first is the phase of the pit and the pendulum. After that it seems as if a different person is taking over. Dread largely disappears. Problems become less threatening, more interesting.”

“Dread” is a perfect word to apply to first drafts.  “My animal sense of being hunted,” McPhee calls it, and that’s as good a description as any. I can almost picture slavering doubts eager to devour the plodding writer of  any first draft. In fact, when working on a first draft, I can spend hours conjuring pictures of such doubts rather than setting words down on the blank page.

Anne Lamott, in Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, her essential book on writing, talks about the necessity of “shitty first drafts.” Boy, do I ever have that part down cold.

Thing is, for years my standard answer to the standard job-interview question about writers I most admire was “John McPhee.” Now I find out that, even at the top of his game, he’s still a damn mess during his first drafts. Which means that my own process isn’t likely to get any easier – insult on top of the injury of knowing that I’ll never approach his level of mastery.

I could natter on like this for a while longer, but it’s just a cheap trick to put off getting back to work on that second draft. And I really need to finish that because the third will be easier and the fourth easier still. Onward.

(McPhee image: Macmillan)

Leave a Comment Tags: Writers, Writing

Write. Write. Write. (Got that?) Now write some more.

March 31, 2013 Leave a Comment

Here’s a great piece, short and very much to the point, on writing from Neil Gaiman that my running buddy Joni posted on Facebook yesterday.

Credit: SharedWorlds

I love the way it harkens back to that phase all of us go through, where our writing sounds like a pale and shaky version of whatever we’re reading at the moment.  I’m grateful to Gaiman for pointing out the value in that. No matter how timidly you’re writing, at least you’re doing it – and of course, the more you write, the more likely it is your own insistent voice will break through. I also love the link to the Hand in Hand project by Shared Worlds, with all manner of  writing advice scrawled upon writers’ hands.

Gaiman’s – “Write. Finish things. Keep Writing” – is spot on, especially the part about finishing things. And ya gotta love Patrick Rothfuss, with the best writing advice of all time, “Sit your ass down and write.”

(Photo from SharedWorlds)

Leave a Comment Tags: Writers, Writing

Seal good writing with a KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)

February 4, 2013 Leave a Comment

Writing guru Ben Yagoda used the Wall Street Journal’s WordCraft column for a reminder on the most basic rule of writing – well, along with the one about applying seat of pants to seat of chair.

His column is headlined “In Writing, First Do No Harm.” Amen to that. Yagoda, who teaches at my alma mater, the University of Delaware, shows what he means by getting right to the point.

YagodaMy students can’t really handle writing “well.” At this point in their writing lives, that goal is too ambitious. I propose a more modest aim: not writing badly.

Take this sentence, adapted from a restaurant review by a student who was roughly in the middle of the pack in terms of ability: “Walking in the front door of the cafe, the vestiges of domesticity are everywhere regardless of a recent renovation.”

In just 19 words, it provides an impressive selection of current widespread writing woes: dangling modifier (“vestiges” didn’t walk in the front door), poor word choice (“vestiges,” “domesticity,” “regardless”), excessive prepositions (four in all) and an underappreciated but pervasive ill, a weak sentence-subject (“vestiges”).

One of the great things about journalism is that it demands simple, declarative sentences. I’ve been a reporter for so long I can barely remember those early days, but I’m sure I resented that rule. Now, as I write fiction, I’m profoundly grateful for that lesson. Start with a bang. Get to the point. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

As Yagoda says:

Not writing badly isn’t a snap, but it can be done. Then you can start on the road to writing well.

Leave a Comment Tags: Writing

Writers’ workshops, and why they work

December 7, 2012 Leave a Comment

Talking to James Rahn makes me happy, even though it happens far too infrequently these days. Rahn leads Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Writers’ Group, quite possibly the country’s longest-running independent writing workshop.  For years, once a week in eight-week segments,  RWG was the high point of my life. I tiptoed into it in the early 1990s, dreadful fiction in hand, with an idea that RWG would help me make it less dreadful. And bless my fellow workshop participants — along with Rahn’s constant exhortations to “push it, push it,” to home in on the uncomfortable, queasy-making stuff — that’s just what happened.

Rittenhouse Writers’ Group

rittenouse

When I left Philly and headed West, RWG ranked right up there with my family in terms of the things I missed most. (OK, and those Tony Luke’s roast pork sandwiches.) Fortunately, Missoula offers The 406 Writers’ Workshop, with sessions in novel writing, poetry, short fiction, nonfiction, and screenwriting offered by the city’s wealth of writers — and populated, just like RWG, with folks who are determined enough to reject descriptions of their writing as a “hobby.”

406writersIn chatting with James this week, I got to hear about the road to publication for his book, Bloodnight, a brutal and gorgeous collection released this year about growing up more or less wild in Atlantic City. Also this year, David Allan Cates – who leads the 406 novel-writing workshops, and who gently steered my own novel away from many a literary cliff – published Ben Armstrong’s Strange Trip Home, which is indeed strange and also gorgeous.

Talking to David makes me happy, too, as does talking with the other 406 workshop leaders, not to mention my fellow participants – we got so much from the workshops that we met on our beyond them. It’s energizing to hear about other people’s work, to find the common problems and work through them, and especially to celebrate the successes.

Writing is tough stuff, and other people tend to dismiss it if you’re not cranking out bestsellers and working movie deals. Workshops shut that nonsense out, and force you to take your own, and one another’s, work as the serious business it is. How can it help but get better?

Leave a Comment Tags: workshops, Writers, Writing

What’s your writing music?

October 15, 2012 Leave a Comment

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9F_XHb81N0]

In the Wall Street Journal’s most excellent Word Craft column a couple of weeks back, Mark Helprin opined about the best conditions for writing. Skip cafes, he recommended, as my flesh began to crawl. (What? No more Break Espresso?) And he wrote approvingly of the silent, empty room:

Handel wrote his “Messiah” cooped up in his room for two weeks. No one saw him, and his meals were allegedly slipped under the door. (Either it was a very strange door or he survived on fruit leather and matzah.)

Well, bully for geniuses. Me, I need music. Lately, I’ve been proofing, so the more mindlessly upbeat the better, to keep me awake during the endless tapping of the delete key. Gaga does the trick.

For real writing, I’ve got a playlist that I’m always adding to. Paperback Writer, of course. The Decemberists’ shout-out to Myla Goldberg, bless their literary hearts. Brandon McGovern’s Charles Bukowski and Bob Hillman’s Tolstoy. And those sly Canadians, Moxy Fruvous. I’m always on the lookout for more. Suggestions?

 

Leave a Comment Tags: Writing

Wow! (Wao?) Some genius reading suggestions from MacArthur winner Junot Diaz

October 3, 2012 Leave a Comment

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oQRomfan_8&w=560&h=315]

My favorite take on the news about this year’s MacArthur Fellowships comes from the New York Observer, headlined “Junot Diaz is a ‘F$%ing’ Genius” – mostly, because I’d just read last week’s New York Times interview with Diaz about his writing.

That piece warned that it had been “edited lightly for clarity and with all of Díaz’s frequent swearwords removed.” OK, it’s the Times. But it was nice to see Diaz’s personality shine through in the Observer.

That said, the pre-genius Times story offered its own golden ticket, with Diaz rattling off a list of short-story collections he admires. Michael Martone’s “Fort Wayne is Seventh on Hitler’s List.” Dagoberto Gilb’s collection, “The Magic of Blood.” Matt Klam, with “Sam the Cat.”

One of the great frustrations of writing around the day job is that the writing cuts into precious reading time — much like when my kids were little, and life was an exercise in sleep deprivation. Then, as now, it took me forever to read a novel in snatches of stolen time. So I turned to short stories. I remember a fat Cheever collection that got me all the way through potty training.

This time around, Diaz’s suggestions seem like good ones to start with. After all, the guy’s a f$%ing genius.

Leave a Comment Tags: Writing

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