The Process Delivered Again

15 Wednesday Aug 2012

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I came upstairs after work this evening and sat down to write at the dining room table. I had my notebooks, a pile of drafts and notes, and that nagging anxiety of the unknown. I knew I needed to write a key patch of dialogue, a critical patch where two main characters meet for the first time. I had yet to “hear” the characters and had only a vague idea of what they might want to say. I had nothing on paper. I imagined how great it would feel to have some raw material down.

So I did what I’ve learned to do – that only thing over which I have any control – I put my butt in a chair for an hour and a half. I began by writing what I knew, and by the end I had just what I needed. I had a perfect mess – a draft covered with scribbles, two pages of fresh edits, and a pseudo-code of what each character wanted, what they might want to get across to the other. I had traversed the anxious, winding path through the forest to the next draft. This is all any of us needs, it is all we can ask – line of sight to the next draft. The process delivered again. What was my part in it? I simply showed up and brought what I can, time in the chair.

Make Your Life Hard, Not Harder

01 Wednesday Aug 2012

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Life is hard; it’s harder if you’re stupid.   – John Wayne

So, I don’t know what the context was under which Wayne said this, or if he said it at all, but the truth of it is evident a dozen times each day. You don’t have to look much beyond the tip of your nose to see Wayne’s axiom played out in bold, brutal detail by people you know and by people you don’t.

But, when you are working to refine a craft, ignorance (if you’ll allow me to use this word as well) is the shoe lace, the missed step in the flight, the stubbed toe which leads to all manner of frustration, anger, cursing, and sometimes quitting.

It is hard work for accomplished, professional, highly skilled writers to write. And, when you are none of these things – when you have been at your craft for a couple of weeks or a couple of years – your empty head only makes matters worse.

So – buckle up, here comes the point – if you are trying to practice a craft, get some sort of an education. Don’t make life as hard as it can possibly be. Get hooked in to a good writers group (make sure it is one lead by someone for whom life is only hard, not harder), read some well respected instruction on the craft*, or go take a class at the local university. Take some decisive steps toward removing your ignorance and your risk of stupidity. Do something to make your life hard, not harder. Then proceed. Write every day. Know that you’ve done all you can.

*For recommendations see my 14 March 2012 posting. If you’ve read that one, read Lamott’s “Bird by Bird”.  If you’ve read that one go directly to the second to last sentence of this post. If you are doing that then point me to your blog so that I can learn from you.

All Manner of Travesties

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

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There is no way of achieving true form without opening possibilities of all manner of travesties.

– Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg

One does not typically go to a theological text looking for writing advice. It’s no secret that such texts are not easy reading and are not concerned with creative craft. Both are true for Zornberg. This quote is from her book about Genesis. She makes it while discussing God’s acts of creation. But, when I read it I was stunned by its application to the craft of writing, its encouragement of first drafts – of first drafts of first paragraphs.

In fact, this may be the best principle, the best guidance for a first draft that I have ever read. It is critical that a writer get his or her head around the truth of this statement.

Anne Lamott* refers to the value of really crappy first drafts. Same thing. The first draft, the “opening possibilities” is the first step toward writing what readers will joyfully read. It is the only first step. There is no other starting place – not thinking, not talking about it, not reading, not plot outlining, not research – “true form” will result from none of these.

“All manner of travesties” are in store for the craftsman. This is good news. This means he has started, the dust unsettled.

 

*Assuming you have read “The War of Art” by Pressfield, you should now read “Bird by Bird” by Lamott. By ‘now’ I don’t mean this week or next, I mean as soon as possible after you read this last word.

Aligning the Hand-Made Cogs of an Imagined Machine

04 Wednesday Jul 2012

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I am alone. I am here at my PC, on the shady patio around the back of the house, at the outdoor dining set, with the birds at the feeder and the tomatoes in their pots, but I am alone. I am learning how to be alone well. As I write each day, I learn a bit more about how to labor alone, few people having any idea that I am spending this time chiseling away at this block of marble, finding the rights words and putting them in the right order. It is a bizarre notion, to write a book. One spends countless hours working to get it right, aligning the hand-made cogs of an imagined machine, exposing what he’s doing once in a while, getting feedback – some supportive, some brutal – and going back to re-align or perhaps to build entirely new cogs.

Craftsmen frequently work alone. They will something to be and go to work making it so. Success comes to some of them, but it is the passion for the craft that fuels. Success is not the reward. If this were the case, there would be many one book-authors, one-term presidents, and one-healthy-patient doctors. Yes, I am learning to be alone, but the love I am developing for the craft keeps me company. The characters come and sit with me and tell me what they are thinking. I delight in time with my wife, my kids, my friends, but the alone time is time I am learning to delight in too.

Slow, But That’s OK

20 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by in Contract with the Reader

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I spent most of an hour one morning earlier this week re-keying two pages of my current manuscript. Two pages – double spaced Arial ten font. I am always surprised how, once I’ve worked for a while, I look back and see so little on the page…two pages after 60 minutes at the keys. And here’s the thing, the thing every writer has to deal with: what I’ve spent an hour on (much, much more if you include past drafts, editing, and rewriting), my reader will spend one minute – maybe two if they are slow like me – reading.

I like to think the human mind is powerful and will pick up on, in that one or two minutes, mistakes made over those hours of labor. I also like to think that when I have done the writing especially well, the mind of my reader will take notice and the words will fly – as I have intended – like arrows off my bow, lodging deep in their experience. But the fact is that my reader, bless them for it, will zip over these hand-crafted sentences like a beagle after a squirrel. They will notice only the most course characteristics of the terrain under their paws.

Writing is an intricate and slow, very slow, craft. In this fact of my reader’s speed over my own, I think I may have finished coming to grips with this innate slowness. My readers will not pour over my writing like I have. But, they will read it! Some of them will read it and a few may even see some of the more difficult moves I’ve made. If they think upon any of it for even that minute or two, what more can I dare to ask?

What Delete Can Do For You

06 Wednesday Jun 2012

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I recently completed a collection of nine poems that roughly cover my daughters’ lives from birth through high school. The project took about four months to complete. My vision was that theseI recently completed a collection of nine

I recently completed a collection of nine poems that roughly cover my daughters’ lives from birth through high school. The project took about four months to complete.

My vision was that these poems be ordered chronologically1. I wanted each poem to give a different perspective, build on the one before, carry the reader though the girls’ lives. But, the final draft of the last poem turned so nostalgic and emotionally sweet, that I ground to a halt. The collection had turned into a struggle and was now ending in an overworked cliché. So, I did what I have learned to do any time a bit of writing turns into a slog – I cut it, just as I had several poems before it.  Only then did the lights come on and a door open that I had not seen. Now, with the ending gone, I saw my freedom. I printed all the poems and laid them out on the ping-pong table where I write and I reordered them, an order which allowed them to breath and find their own space. Once I made this decision, the collection fell2 into place.

Writing is like this. As writers we can come to see that what we thought was useful structure is really self-imposed constraint that does nothing toward producing or realizing the final piece. Like all epiphanies of the craft, once this is spotted, nothing can happen until the structure (or whatever it is we’ve imagined) is thrown out. Also, like other realizations, once the thing is resolved, the piece is released, progress gushes and the writer has trouble keeping up. The piece jumps ahead toward the finish and you are off, bounding along again.

1An artificial constraint which once appeared attractive and helpful.

2 Normally “fell” would suggest effortlessness. Never true in writing. By “fell” I mean the next steps became rather obvious and natural and the piece (rather than I) regained control.

How the Work is Done

23 Wednesday May 2012

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I want to tell you about the one thing I’ve been taught* in the past three years that has been the single most important learning in my writing life. Actually, I don’t want to tell you, I feel compelled to tell you. Like an evangelist with the gospel or a scientist with the cure, I feel like this one thing can actually save your creative life. Here it is.

Thirty minutes a day.

Whatever it is you are trying to do, there is a lot I don’t know that could really help you. However, if you are trying to write something of lasting value, start spending 30 minutes each day with your butt in a chair putting words on paper.

At first you might simply stare off into space, unsure what to write. This is fine. It is good. It is profitable. Once you have done this for a few minutes, your mind will be quiet and your pace slowed. Now, write the first thing that comes to your mind, then the second, then the third. Do this for thirty minutes for the first day. Come back the next day and do this again. Once you have something on paper that you are legitimately interested in, focus on that the following day.

Make this thirty minutes sacred. Make it the most critical thing you do each day. Soon you will find that it is the foundation. Soon you’ll be telling someone else about it just like I’m doing. Trust the process. If you do this you’ll find that one day you will have more ideas, more potential projects than you could produce in a lifetime. You’ll expand your time to an hour, then an hour and a half.

This is how the work is done.

 

*Thank you, Dan Barden, for bringing me to the crossroads.

Time Away

09 Wednesday May 2012

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Over the last three months I have been off taking a class, mostly writing Midrashim and other poetry instead of working on my book. It has been a good winter. But now, in anticipation of a summer of focus, I am coming back to the main project. Over the next couple of weeks I will re-familiarize myself with the files, hardcopy and soft, that contain the manuscript. It will take me a couple of weeks to do this, but I will figure out where I left off, my plans for draft four, and my new most recent opening chapters. I will look at the notes I left for my future self, decipher the breadcrumbs, and make a start again. It is not the first time I have done this, as other shorter work filters in and out, but it is not an easy or comfortable process.

I can only imagine it is like meeting up for lunch on a weekday afternoon with an old lover. You arrive early at the old café where you used to hang out and anxiously scan the thinly populated dining room. You look for the one who’s every detail you once knew so well and by which you mapped your course. Finally you see her, sitting alone. She appears new, at first unfamiliar in the faint light. You approach slowly, taken by beauty marks and scars you don’t remember.  As she looks up and you sit down, it is her, again. You say hello. She smiles, but it takes a great deal of faith that the conversation can be picked back up, that the common, well-trod paths can be trimmed back, re-established and reclaimed. It takes a deeply plumbed confidence that both parties will find the experience amiable, for both have changed much since the last meeting. You have hope, though. You know that the old spark, the dim glowing coal, must surely be there somewhere. You ask to see pictures of her kids… dm

One Recent Evening

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Reading as a Writer

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I haven’t read a lot of fiction (of my choosing) since the beginning of the year, so one recent evening was rare. I sat down on the couch and read for almost an hour. I allowed time to pass unnoticed as I waded in, giving lamplight to the words of Dan Barden’s first novel, “John Wayne”. I like to read one novel with at least one other lying close by. There is something comforting – it is a sort of company to have more than one book gathered close about you. It is like a litter of puppies. One is nice, more than one is simply a delight. So while I was reading Barden I had a collection of short stories by Chris Offutt lying in my lap.

So why was this reading such an oasis? I have heard one theory which I think is true.

We skim though life, mostly reading only closely packed snippets and bits. The constant barrage of information requires that we become proficient at making decisions and forming opinions on barely enough information to coat the head of a pin.

What novels do is allow us to dive deep. They are the only printed medium available to us where we can allow ourselves to get lost. Their value cannot be overstated. They are utterly unique. They are all that is left of the great foundational oral traditions on which our cultures were formed. They are the only medium keeping interactive story-telling alive in our mainstream culture. What will come of those of us who never read for more than 2 minutes at a time? Whatever the fate, I think I was starting to feel it until one recent evening. dm

Finger and Moon

11 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Faith and Writing, Quote and Comment

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There is a Zen Buddhist proverb which I remember having seen a long time ago. Here is the way I remember it. “There is a finger pointing at the moon. Don’t mistake the finger for the moon.”

I write stories based on the Bible. I take scriptural narratives, or parts of them, from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and I work to creatively fill in the gaps and details that are not there. Over the last couple of weeks I have come to see in this proverb a direct application to my creative work.

I think there is a risk. A risk that what I write could be mistaken for the Moon – especially if I happen to turn out good writing with well-developed characters and a strong emotional core, ad majorem dei gloriam. Anytime a writer creatively explores the Word of God (and many, many have), there is a risk that instead of their craft reflecting scripture and pointing readers back to The Source, their work could come to be seen as something more than simply the work of a human mind. It could come to be seen as more gratifying or more true to experience than the Moon. The risk is real. Mankind has proven its ability to realize this risk. Worship of the creation instead of the Creator is as old as man himself. I’ll do the best work I can and I’ll mention the risk every once in a while. This is my plan for mitigation. dm