So You Want to Write Read online

  Basically there is little support in our culture for apprenticeship. Even in a relatively sophisticated movie such as Amadeus, the proof of Mozart’s genius is that he doesn’t correct, doesn’t hesitate, but the music gushes out of him almost too fast for him to write it down.

  In writing there is always more to read, study, learn, try out, master. The more you as a writer are open to understanding the United States and the world in which we live as richly and variously cultured, the more there is to learn, the more different strands of language and crafts to which you will apprentice yourself. It is not nearly sufficient to know and know thoroughly British and American literature, even if you throw in, as we increasingly must, Canadian and Australian authors. Who would strive to understand contemporary literature without Atwood, Munro, Keneally, White? But lacking a knowledge of Japanese literature, of French, Italian, Spanish, South American and Mexican literature, of Russian, Scandinavian, Greek, or contemporary African writing, all makes us stupider than we can afford to be if we mean to write. Most foreign literatures you will read in translation, although being in command of at least one foreign language helps a writer immensely in understanding her own.

  If you want to write a memoir, read memoirs. If you want to write science fiction, read science fiction. Often in workshops, participants will ask us to recommend a “how to write” book—like this one. But the truth is, the best books you can read on how to write are books that are in the genre in which you want to write. What we hope to teach you, in part, is to read like a writer: to read noticing craft. The books you don’t think work well may teach you as much as the ones that wring admiration from you. Whatever the author is doing, you want to ask how and look at the choices made.

  All of this notion of apprenticeship is at odds with the model of success in the arts so many young people bring to bear, mostly from the careers of rock musicians. You can make it as a rock musician with three or four chords and a gimmick, at least for one record, but you can also be a has-been at twenty-two. There are equivalents among writers, but not many. Basically you may publish an occasional poem or short story in college, usually in the college literary magazine, but few serious writers reach visibility before thirty to thirty-five.

  Giant conglomerates control the big media and own the New York publishing houses. They are run the same way as other large conglomerates, and in spite of the wishes of many dedicated editors, they would like to put out generic products like brands of toothpaste or breakfast cereal with an assured cut of a guaranteed market. As one delighted publishing CEO gushed in his company’s year-end report, “Fewer titles have translated into more attention for each book, greater publishing success and higher revenues.” Books, real books, are risky. Better financial projections can be obtained on the All Chocolate Eat Yourself Skinny Diet Book and thrillers that, like the movies Halloween 16 and Die Hard 56, offer exactly the same product in a slightly jazzier package—the romance, the success story. It no longer shocks people to hear that chain and the large on-line booksellers rent space to publishers the same way that supermarkets sell the most ideal shelves for corn chips and pretzels. Publishers can pay to have their titles stacked at the front table, or positioned face-out at the checkout counter and at the ends of aisles. Large publishers, of course, can better afford the thousands of dollars it may cost for a fifty-copy display or a large window sign. But of course they expect a return on their investment and the best chance of getting that return is with a product—or author—that got one before: one with name recognition. It’s not some evil plan, just a business plan. But these marketing strategies work against all writers just starting out or those who want to do original work.

  The inner and outer barriers interact because we tend to internalize rejection and lack of recognition, and because we are programmed by the media and our peers to believe that writers who are “successful” produce better work.

  Work in the arts requires your best energy. That means figuring out how, in the course of a life that usually includes another full-time job whether paid or unpaid, you can organize your time so that you write with your best energy, not your slackest. That may require getting up before everyone else in your house or your close circle; it may mean working after everyone else is in bed. It certainly means having time that is devoted to work, when you pull the phone out of its jack and do not answer the door. If you have children and thus cannot quite cut yourself off from interruption, you can attempt to make it clear that only an emergency is suitable for interrupting you. You may feel guilty setting boundaries, but what kind of adults will grow from never having learned that other people have boundaries that must not be crossed? Should they not rather learn what I hope you have realized, that work is precious and concentration is to be valued, to be sharpened, to be refined? We look more carefully at organizing time in the chapter “Work and Other Habits.”

  What I will return to again and again is the ability to use your mind mindfully and purposefully. To know when to go with the flow and when to turn on the cold critical eye. To know when to loose your imagination and when to keep it under control. Concentration is learned by practicing it, just as is any other form of exercise or excellence. Even when the focus of the concentration is something in the past of the writer or some nuance of feeling or precise tremor of the emotions, the writer at work is not the emotion. Work has its own exhilaration. You can be happy as a clam—precisely because you are not self-regarding at all, but doing your own tidal work—when you are writing a poem about how somebody was cruel and nasty to you. You can even have fun writing a story imagining your own suicide. You can experience joy writing a story about total nuclear destruction, because in that clear high place where concentration is fully engaged, there is no feeling of self. Learning to reach that state and prolong it is another apprenticeship we all undergo. You have to find the work more interesting than you find yourself, even if the work is created out of your own guts and what you are writing about is your own life.

  In the ancient and very modern approach to spiritual energy and experience, the Kabbalah, which is my discipline, we speak of developing the adult mind. For a writer that is particularly important. The adult mind can decide not to fuss like an adolescent because our work and our persons have experienced rejection. The adult mind can put victories or defeats into perspective. The adult mind can choose not to allow interference from the worries of the day, not to give way to irrelevant fantasies when trying to craft a meaningful fantasy. The adult mind has learned to focus and to retain focus for a much longer period of time. We can all have bad days and we can all be distracted; it is a matter of degree and how often we can combat our idiotic and self-regarding tendencies.

  Beside my computer is a window and on the ledge of the window are twelve rocks. They have accumulated over the years. Each represents some place I found sacred or meaningful. When I need to focus and center my mind, I pick up the rocks and weigh them in my hands. Eventually I will settle upon a particular rock to contemplate: maybe the rock I picked up after I climbed the Acrocorinth from the ruins of the temple of Aphrodite there. Maybe one from the Oregon coast from a dawn when I experienced a strong vision. It does not really matter which stone I select. What matters is that to me these are meaningful and radiant objects that I can focus on to get rid of clutter and distraction. It is a matter of closing down the noise of the ego, of worry, of casual boredom, of gossip, of concern with what people may think, thoughts of who has not been sufficiently appreciative of my great virtues lately. It does not matter what particular pattern you use to bring yourself into sharp focus on what you are about to write. It is only necessary that you do so. For some people, their screen saver works in the same way—or a piece of meditative music. Whatever works for you, use it.

  Now, as a writer, one of the things which you learn to mine at will, to call up and to relinquish, is memory. Again it is a case of being able to focus on the present when that is required and appropriate, but also being able to focus on
a particular area of the past when you need that.

  One of the resources of the poet, the novelist, and the memoir writer alike is memory. Vladimir Nabokov called his memoir Speak, Memory; in Greek mythology, memory is the mother of the muses. You may say you have a good memory or a bad one. An eidetic memory I believe is inborn, but you can improve your memory as you can improve your tennis game or your aim.

  By practicing, you can recover pieces of your childhood that you were not aware you remembered at all. There are also false memories that are interesting to explore. We all remember scenes from our childhood that we never witnessed. I have distinct memories from before my birth. These came from hearing stories as a child and imagining them so vividly that they became my own experience. You can learn to have a vivid memory again. There are books and books on improving your memory, but what they are usually dealing with is the problem of remembering the name of the insurance salesman you just met or recalling vocabulary words. We all know simple mnemonics. Before I go on a trip, I always have last-minute chores I must remember to do in the morning. I invent an acronym for them. Let’s say COLACU. Feed CATS; OPEN hotbed; take LUNCH; turn on ANSWERING MACHINE; make thermos of COFFEE to go; UNPLUG computer.

  But the memory I am talking about is sensual memory; it is memory that comes like Proust’s, unbidden from a crumb of cake. It is memory that can be taught to come through patience and concentration. You can use what you do remember to move into what you have forgotten, by concentrating and extending your stroll through old rooms and old gardens and along half forgotten streets. Some of what you will remember you know is not so. I have memories from early childhood of enormous buildings that were not there. They only seemed enormous to me because I was so little standing and looking up at them.

  To a fiction writer or a poet, it does not much matter whether a memory is a true one—to the extent that any memory is “true” since five peoples’ memories of the same event are five different and quite distinct and often contradictory memories—or a fused memory or invented memory. If it has resonance, emotive content, meaning, then it is a useful memory to possess. Memories also change, of course. If we have grown angry with a friend, the past changes. What may once have seemed a wry sense of humor is now revealed, in light of our changed perspective, to be the mean and sarcastic streak they’ve always used to cut us down. We have become disillusioned and what appeared before as obvious virtues and good will are shadowed in retrospect. So we rewrite big and little history as we go.

  Indeed, if you are writing a memoir of your childhood and you talk with your siblings, you may find that every child grew up in a different family because each experienced that family at a different stage: the parents were older or younger, more or less affluent, getting on with each other well or badly, suffering from problems or having solved them. The world of the family is very different for the first born, the middle child, the youngest.

  An Exercise in Sensual Memory

  This is a simple exercise I have been using with writing workshops for twenty years. Sometimes, I use it myself. It’s almost a meditation, so it is best attempted in a comfortable position, whatever that may be for you, and in a quiet place, where you are not likely to be interrupted.

  I will ask you to return to some particular place that was important to you in your childhood. I suggest returning to between four and eight years old, but it’s your choice. In your imagination, walk down the block or the road leading to where you lived at that age, remembering you are small. If you pass a privet hedge, you do not look down into it, but you look sideways into its green density. When you come to the door, you may have to reach upward for the knob or buzzer. The door may be heavy for you and require effort to open.

  I want you to enter the house or cabin or apartment you lived in at that time. I want you to pass through to a place that held some emotional resonance, some emotional importance for you at that time. Perhaps you were happy there; perhaps you felt safe; perhaps you were frightened there; perhaps you felt conflicted or uneasy. I want you to enter that room or place and experience it fully. Look at everything carefully, remembering your size and the angle from which you see the furniture. The underside of a table may be as important as the bearing surface to a young child. I want you to look at the ceiling; at the walls; at the floor. What covers the floor? I want you to touch everything. How does it feel? Is it rough, smooth, tacky, damp? I want you to use your sense of smell. Do you smell cooking odors, flowers from outside the open window, mustiness, your father’s or mother’s cigarette smoke, perfume, disinfectant? What do you hear? Are there windows and are they open or shut? Do you hear voices through the walls, the ceiling? Are the voices talking, singing, arguing? I want you to spend a period of time going over every inch of the room or place (I say “place” since it might be a basement, an attic, a root cellar, a garage, a hallway) and recall in full sensual detail as much as you can. Then I suggest you write down what you remember, trying to give not only the details but a sense of their resonance for you. Be extremely concrete and explicit about the details. Style is not what you are after here but emotional resonance.

  I learned to do this when I was just starting out as a novelist. When I wrote a full-length memoir, I did a great deal of it in order to recover pieces of my childhood I had forgotten, and to render more vivid the parts I did recall.

  Writing a memoir, of course, is the intersection of memory, intent and language. Both fiction and memoir are built out of words. You use words every day to order lunch, to answer the telephone, to greet and discuss, indicating friendliness (or the lack of it if you are shrugging off unwanted attentions), passing time, exchanging information, giving advice or asking for sympathy. But when you write, you are using language in an even more purposeful way. Language is the stuff of your craft as acrylic and canvas might be that of a painter. You make out of words portraits, actions, everything that does and doesn’t happen on the page and therefore in the mind of the reader. Yes, we all use language, but casually, often sloppily. Writing fiction or a memoir is not the same as writing a memo, a letter, a journal entry, or an essay question.

  You must become aware of the attributes of your medium: language. Language is a shaping of the air, the breath, into sounds and silences, in order to convey meaning and often, to convey emotion. The nature of those sounds and the lengths of those silences can be used to create effects that further the intent of the writing.

  Language contains in it attitude. Slender and skinny, svelte and bony are all used to describe a person of the same weight. You meet a dedicated seer. I meet a fanatic. Or the familiar conjugation of the verb: I am firm, you are stubborn, he is a pig-headed mule. I have a strong sense of justice and the courage to speak up; you are an irritable zealot who flares up at nothing. Attitude is built into language. Scientific language attempts to be neutral, but as physics tells us, we change what we observe. The history of science, as Stephen Jay Gould has so frequently described to us, is the history of attitude. What we perceive is colored by our culture, shaped by it. In the chapter on description, we will return to the practical application of those attributes of language.

  As Gershom Sholem wrote about the Kabbalah long ago, much in the mystical experience is constant across culture but the forms it takes are culturally determined. Jews are more apt to hear voices uttering prophecy or see words than Christians, who usually see images. A Buddhist will not see the Virgin Mary; a Catholic mystic will not be vouchsafed a vision of Krishna or the Great Grandmother of Us All. We are all imbedded and imbued, dyed through and through with our culture.

  Trying to get rid of attitude and culture merely impoverishes you. One human being isolated and alone is not a human being. We are social animals and we are artifacts of our culture. Being aware is not the same as trying to be without. We can become aware of our attitudes and our prejudices and our predispositions and choose which of them to foster and which of them to fight. But in other cultures, we are always a bit like tourists, going to
the great cultural flea market and buying a great necklace or a headdress or a musical instrument to play. Until you have lived for a time in a foreign culture, immersed in its daily life, you have no idea at all how American you are.

  In writing, much of this becomes important not in first draft, the early stages of creation, but in the critical stage of that process. After we have honed and practiced our concentration to the max and produced something, then we must break that oneness. We must step back mentally or even physically, by putting the work aside for a time, and then exercising the cold critical eye on it that says, of what I intended, what have I actually wrought? Maybe all, in two percent of cases. Maybe twenty percent of what I imagined is on paper. Maybe fifty percent. That is the time for putting in and taking out, for altering and stretching and chopping, for rethinking choices that may have been the wrong ones for that particular work. It is time for making conscious choices about form that may have been made instinctively in first draft, rightly or wrongly. One thing that workshops and books like this one can teach is a set of questions to ask of the work after the first draft, when it is not what we want it to be. What can we do now to make the thing come out right?