Category Archives: Role of the Writer

When Our Delight Becomes a Task

24 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Role of the Writer, Writing Discipline

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We live in a fast-paced, routinely and deeply dissatisfying culture.
This is not news. We live it. It is the water. We are the fish.
In this state, it is too easy for the daily actions we undertake in the practice of our creative craft to become another set of tasks on our to-do-list. If we allow it, we can sit down to read or to write and find ourselves rushing to get done, pressed to get the other “tasks” on our list finished before the day ends.
But this work – this work of taking in the creative work of others and produce the same – must be handled differently. This work is an oasis. It brings us joy. It feeds a part of us that resides at our core. It is where we value producing over consuming. It is where we marvel in the doing, not rest in the done. It is part of our image-bearing as creations of the Creator. And so, for these reasons, this work must not obey the pace and intent of the many other daily tasks we undertake.
Pause and recognize the difference between tasks and intentional actions. Move your creative work out of the task column and into the intentional, thoughtful action column.
And if possible, hire someone to mow the grass. Only you can write your next short story.

A Pair of Metaphors

10 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Role of the Writer, Writing Discipline

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Some days the writing really works – it just pops and flows – but other days it feels like you’re in the center ring, in the cage with it, your chair in one sweaty-palmed hand and your whip in the other. Across from you the writing is crouched, staring you down, showing off its roar and its razor sharp teeth.

To pile on another metaphor, I have come to see the writer’s life like being invested in the stock market, in the blue chips. You’re in it for the long haul, the return that will come months if not years hence. You’re a fool if you let any single day cause you to stall and falter or to shout and celebrate. You’re best to quietly enjoy it when it’s good and just keep going when it’s not, trusting the investment you’re making as you build your writing portfolio.

[Don’t] Write What You Know

19 Wednesday Apr 2017

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“Write what you know.”
This is a very old bit of advice for fiction writers. The idea is that your life is far more interesting than you realize. You needn’t look toward the exotic or far-fetched to find material. You are an expert at many things. Your experience has gained you an edge. So, simply write what you know.
If this works for you, ride the wave. Quit reading this blog post here and get back to work.
Go on. We’ll wait while you leave.
OK, now that they’re gone…
If you find this advice leaves you flat, maybe even bored, try this bit instead.
“Write what you want to read.”
You were a reader before you were a writer. You have likely started writing because you want to create more literature like the writing you enjoy. Your reading has probably given you ideas. Ideas you want to explore. So, do it! Write the sort of book that you’d want to read.
Isn’t that refreshing? This approach will keep you engaged in your project, fuel your writing routine, and will take the focus off of you – putting it back on the work…which is always where your focus should be.

Westside Writer’s Workshop

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Role of the Writer, Writing Discipline

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There are six people who are now meeting once a month in Danville, Indiana, to talk about and get better at the craft of writing. The Westside Writer’s Workshop is Andrea, Roger, Jim, Rita, and Teresa. And I’m delighted to be facilitating these meetings.

There are some things you should know about these people. They are not rookies – at life or at producing a variety of creative work. They are not easily distracted. They’ve learned how to take risks. They also don’t have time to write. There are dozens of other things they could be doing. And likely a half-dozen other things that they should be doing. But they know that writing is a powerful way to process what is happening inside them – and in the worlds they inhabit.

Let me tell you how I know this.

At our first meeting I spread a stack of random portrait photos in front of them, photos I’d pulled down off Google images. I asked them to each choose one – whichever seemed to pull at them. They each leaned forward and chose one. I then asked them to write for five minutes about the person in the picture.
Within 15 seconds they had all started writing. Seven minutes later they were still writing.

The Westside Writer’s Workshop is a group of people who have things that they are driven to get down on paper. This has been obvious from the start.
And I intend to do all I can to help them get that done.

Working and Waiting

25 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Creative Process/Craft, Role of the Writer, Writing Discipline

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Here they are, the two central tasks of the craftsman – working and waiting.
These actions, one active and the other passive, are inseparable.
No one tells you as you learn your craft that, if you go to the marketplace, you’re in for some brutally long waiting, that most of the time it will appear that you’re working only for yourself.

I spent the afternoon and evening of November 5th at Tomandy Gallery in Frederick, Maryland. My friend Alan Clingan designs and builds custom furniture – gorgeous, artful stuff, often from reclaimed materials. He has four major pieces for sale in this tastefully stocked gallery. For several hours I hung out and watched him present his work to people.
The rejection was staggering.
Over and over he talked about what went into each piece and how he conceived each design. Over and over people told him how wonderful his work is, in gushing terms of awe. They pointed and caressed and huddled close around it – – and then left. They simply walked away.
The next morning Alan and I talked about this. The conclusion we drew is that in the end, the work must sell itself. It is up to the work – the object.

As producers of craft we can overwhelm ourselves with the calculus of placement and presentation (selling) but in the end there will be one buyer in a million. Buyers (publishers and thoughtful readers in my case) are staggeringly rare. Whether it is a vintage oak cabinet or a literary short story, the great masses will walk past, pointing in wonder and delight. But our work cares not for them, it awaits the Buyer – that person who will not only observe and fall helplessly in love, but consume the work. Who will make it their own.
This transaction is between the work and the consumer. We must remove ourselves from it. We must step away and let it happen. For we control only one thing. Producing. We do the work. And this is not easy. We must develop the ability to know well our work and determine truthfully its quality, even to recognize when it is done. This is very, very difficult work. But we must tend solely and diligently to the doing of the work because no one else can.

Simon Says Avoid Teleology

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Contract with the Reader, Qualities of Good Fiction, Role of the Writer

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In the preface to his book Jerusalem, Simon Sebag Montefiore states, “I have tried to avoid teleology – writing history as if every event were inevitable.”
My second novel-in-progress deals with the life of a historic character. Under the form that I’ve given it, it is essentially historical fiction. Montefiore’s callout was an epiphany for me. It is precisely the concern I’ve been struggling with – ensuring that at no point in my story does the narrative seem to anticipate a particular outcome or be aware, even subconsciously, of what comes next.
Isn’t this the concern of every writer of fiction? The story must not seem canned. It must not seem preconceived. The story must seem to be unfolding organically, containing nothing preset – nothing engineered.
This is difficult. It is difficult because we writers of fiction become convinced. We become very, very sure of the plot of our story (even (especially?) when it’s not based on history). And while we build our story toward the plot turn that we’ve conceived, the rules of good character demand that we not create androids but that we allow characters to appear to walk of their own free will toward the cliff.
To know the ending is a curse, but it’s the price the story-teller pays to occupy his office.

A Writer Looking for a Story

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Ian McEwan, Role of the Writer, Starting a Novel

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Ian McEwan recently told The Guardian his motivation for writing novels. “Ah, the dopamine moment is finishing them. It’s, you know, when you’re thinking you’ve got it to where you want it to be.”

You’ll never hear anyone say this about starting a novel. If finishing a novel is like reaching a blazing summit, then starting a novel is like groping about in the pitch dark of a cave.

My last post ended with the following phrase: Oh…and I’ve started writing my second novel.

That sounds easy, flippant even. I need to dispel that notion.

You know that feeling you have when you finish reading a novel you’ve loved? That feeling of melancholy, of waking from the dream knowing you’ll never again read those words for the first time?

Starting to write a novel is this on steroids – minus the sweet tang of melancholy.

A new project requires conjuring an existence in a new universe, new constructs – new approaches and outlines, new research into a foreign body of knowledge resounding with new voices and customs. It is like entering a room in a new city and beginning the long process of determining which of the characters milling about will form into your circle of friends, and which you should avoid.

At first it is only the other writers who have written about the worlds you wish to explore. They are your first guides in this place. You hope that characters will begin to form as you read (and write), and that those characters will be kind enough to show you the story in what, for now, looks like a barren, forsaken, and foreign land.

This is what it is to be a writer looking for a story.

Alignment, Not Agreement

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Contract with the Reader, Joyce Cary, Qualities of Good Fiction, Role of the Writer

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What are we trying to do as writers of story, especially long-form story? I recently read an interview Joyce Cary gave to The Paris Review in 1954*. Here is a bit of what he said in that interview.

“I don’t care for philosophers in books. They are always bores. A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.”

This is the entire point of fiction. As soon as a story begins to tell the reader what they should think – beyond expecting them to accept the story that is being told – the story becomes a treatise.
Of course we must allow characters to speak and even say things that demand us to consider our beliefs. But the craft concern is for the writer not to step onto the page. We must never sense that we are reading the author’s perspective or thoughts. Characters will say things, but we shouldn’t feel, as readers, that we are being expected to accept such things as statements of argument for a cause.

Our goal as writers of fiction is not intellectual truth. Our goal is to write emotional truth. We are not seeking agreement with our reader, we are seeking something else. We are seeking alignment. We are seeking a mutual recognition of the truth that is driven out of the human experience – good, bad, or somewhere in-between. Let the philosophers, lobbyists, and activists do their work and let’s do ours.
Let’s tell stories that throw light on the condition of the human heart.

* http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5071/the-art-of-fiction-no-7-joyce-cary

About the Blurred Line

04 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by in Qualities of Good Fiction, Role of the Writer

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I’m going to get a bit academic on you here. Bear with me. The post is only 433 words (including the footnotes and the title), so I suppose I’ll not try your patience too greatly.

Like you, I am often amazed at the length and breadth of a novel. Take a book like “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr. What a sweeping achievement. The characters, the great sense of place, the language – as readers we are in awe that the author has written such a wonderful, super-long story.

But this is an illusion.

As practicing writers we know something about such a book that the average reader doesn’t realize. This novel is not a single super-long story. It is a collection of related short-stories that are strung together, crafted in such a way that they read within one massive arc.
In fact no novel is one long story. A novel is always a litter of small pieces joined together so that they stand as a whole.

It is for this reason that there is so much discussion (in writing circles, of course, not in the real world) about the blurred line between a collection of short stories and a novel. Take a look at “Jesus’ Son” by Dennis Johnson, or “Kentucky Straight” by Chris Offutt, or “American Salvage” by Bonnie Jo Campbell. These are commonly considered short story collections. However, the case can easily be made that these are novels. The stories in each carry a similar weight, the setting is in focus throughout, and the voice is distinctive*. We soon see that such distinctions serve the Marketing Department far more than the reader.

Here’s the take-away. Don’t get caught up in a tug-o-war with yourself or anyone else about whether you’re writing a novel or a collection of short-stories. Focus on the writing. Let the material on the page decide what it will be.
And if you’re really successful the Marketing Team will argue the point for you.

*The trend toward short chapters in long books – even the titling of each chapter – as Doerr has done, continues to fuel the fire of this distinction. Other than the character development spanning the entire book (although this is seen in “short-story collections” too – see Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”), this book is perhaps the best example I’ve seen recently of the blurring between these two genres from a traditional novel perspective.

Note: This post is again the result of a conversation with Ben H. Winters, at LePeeps, of 71st St. in Indianapolis, 10 March 2016.

Then Lorin Stein Said

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in Role of the Writer

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Lorin Stein recently wrote the following in the New York Times Book Review: “There is a sound I hear in lots of ‘literary’ stories and novels today, not just the ones that come to me on submission, but published work too. It’s the sound of fingers on a keyboard. When I’m supposed to hear the voice of a narrator, or see a family around a dinner table, what I’m actually aware of is the author pushing a product, specifically, the image of the writer at work, doing his/her best to shock and charm.”

The writer should get out of the way and let the story reign. I sure hope I’m doing this in my work.

Here’s another quote from Stein from the same article: “Method actors like to talk about something called “public solitude” – that is, the ability to seem alone onstage. Really, to be alone, without wondering how you look to the audience. They will tell you this is the basis of naturalistic acting: to forget about the audience. Only then can you build a character, pay attention to others on stage and act out a scene.”

Certainly the writer is present. There would be no story if he wasn’t. But he must work; he must build the story as if no one is reading, as if no one ever will. Good writers work for the realization of the story. Like the actor, the writer slips into the story and vanishes in plain sight. They let the story have the day. The power is not in their wittiness, their ability to conjure and devise some sweet-scented wonder. The power of the narrative is solely in how the characters respond to the world that has risen up around them.

Thank you, Lorin Stein. Well said.

Stein’s article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/books/review/words-unwired.html