In her book, Making a Literary Life, Carolyn See offers advice for aspiring writers looking to connect with the greater literary world. She has an entire chapter dedicated to this advice called Charming Notes.  Her advice is this: In addition to writing 1,000 words a day (or two hours of revision) five days a week for the rest of your life, she recommends writing one charming note (“or a phone call that makes your hands sweat”), five days a week for the rest of your life. This note should be written to someone you admire, whether it’s a novelist, an editor, a painter, a journalist, even an agent.  She says this about the notes:

These notes are like paper airplanes sailing around the world, and they accomplish a number of things at once. They salute the writer (or editor or agent) in question. They say to him or her: Your work is good and admirable! You’re not laboring in a vacuum.  There are people out in the world who know what you do and respect it.

The notes also say: I exist, too. In the same world as you. Isn’t that amazing? They can also say: Want to play?

These notes are just notes. You don’t want to burden some poor wretch with the entire story of your life. You absolutely don’t want to ask them for a favor… Be gracious. You’re entering into an emotional and spiritual courtship with the literary world that will last the rest of your life.”

I’ll admit that when I first read this advice I felt terrified.  Many of us put writers up on pedestals. Authors are certainly my celebrities. You may have read my post about the time I saw Mary Gaitskill in a café and interrupted her dinner to babble on about what an inspiration she was. We all get nervous: a classmate of mine was riding an elevator with Wally Lamb once and she couldn’t stop talking. He must have thought I was crazy, she said. When I took a picture with Nicole Krauss this fall, I practically sat on the poor woman’s lap.  My friend Jessica just stared at her, until Krauss said: Um, Miss, do you have a pen for me to sign that book? Authors are our crushes. And don’t we risk something when we let out crush know how we really feel?

The truth is: it’s good to push ourselves to do the things we are afraid of. And so I forced myself to write those charming notes. I craved that connection and more importantly—I wanted those authors, who probably don’t hear it every day, to know just how good I thought they were. Carolyn See says, “Life is a matter of courtship and wooing, flirting and chatting. If you don’t know a soul in the literary world, you can choose to stay home and sulk until the cows come home.” And so I sent those paper airplanes into the world.

And what do you know? People wrote back. Big time authors wrote back. Sure, some simply wrote two words: Thank you. Others wrote more. One even wrote: Could you please write me everyday and tell me how much you like my work? No one wrote: You’re a complete freak, why are you writing me? One author even graciously agreed to read one of my stories.

It is surprising, even when you don’t ask for it, how many writers are willing to offer advice. The charming notes are, after all, meant for them. But they too crave connection just as much as we do and many are more than happy to offer help to fledgling writers. Some are just grateful for the correspondence. Much thanks for your good words, A. M. Homes wrote me, good luck in work and in life. I must say, that response was enough for me.  There are times, Carolyn See says, “Everybody’s life was changed for the better.”

“These are paper airplanes of affection.  They are the glue of human sweetness in literary society. What our mothers told us (if we were well brought up) is true: Manners and civility count for everything.”

-Carolyn See

Tuesday, November 03, 2009 7:00:48 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [1] 

Flannery O’Connor was the first great writer to be educated in an MFA program.  I learned this Wednesday night in my literature seminar (I passed in that 10 page paper, by the way. It ended up being 12). She studied at Iowa under the instruction of Paul Engle. In the introduction to The Complete Stories, it is noted that Engle, at their first meeting, was unable to understand a word of Flannery’s “native Georgian tongue.” He said, “Embarrassed, I asked her to write down what she had just said on a pad.” Flannery felt that journalism school was not right for her; she wanted to be in the writing program. Engle recalled, “… [Flannery’s]stories were quietly filled with insight, shrewd about human weakness, hard and compassionate…”  

A student once asked Flannery why she wrote. “Because I am good at it,” she responded.

Here are 5 Flannery O'Connor quotes on writing:

1.      The first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched.

2.      The peculiar problem of the short-story writer is how to make the action he describes reveal as much of the mystery of existence as possible. He has only a short space to do it in and he can’t do it by statement. He has to do it by showing, not by saying, and by showing the concrete….”

3.      Fiction writers who are not concerned with these concrete details are guilty of what Henry James called “weak specification.” The eyes will glide over their words while the attention goes to sleep. Ford Madox Ford taught that you can’t have a man appear long enough to sell a newspaper in a story unless you put him there with enough detail to make the reader see him.

4.      It’s always wrong of course to say that you can’t do this or you can’t do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.

5.      If a writer is any good, what he makes will have its source in a realm much larger than that which his conscious mind can encompass and will always be a greater surprise to him than it can ever be to his reader.

      All excerpts are taken from Mystery and Manners.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

“The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.”

-Flannery O’Connor

Friday, October 30, 2009 5:06:47 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [1] 

Rita Dove, an American poet and author said, “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”  I think, as fiction writers (or writers of any sort for that matter) it is important to ingest as much of this form as possible.  There's all this: the beauty of the language, the imagery, words meticulously chosen to create a moment, to create magic. Some of my favorite poets include: e.e. cummings, Pablo Neruda, and William Carlos Williams (and wow, get this: WCW wrote a poem for my husband’s grandparents called “For Eleanor and Bill Monahan.” He was also my husband’s father’s doctor. And his son, WCW Jr., was my husband’s doctor).

But my favorite poet of all time is Mary Oliver, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. My friend Katie and I visited Provincetown this summer and we had hoped more than anything to bump into her during one of her early morning walks along the bay. No such luck... But just being there, walking the streets she walks, visiting the book store she frequents, made us feel closer to her and the world she inhabits.

I Want to Write Something So Simply

I want to write something

so simply

about love

or about pain

that even

as you are reading

you feel it

and as you read

you keep feeling it

and though it be my story

it will be common,

though it be singular

it will be known to you

so that by the end

you will think—

no, you will realize—

that it was all the while

yourself arranging the words,

that it was all the time

words that you yourself,

out of your heart

had been saying.

*

Thursday, October 29, 2009 10:11:06 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [1] 

Yesterday was a rough day. A rough writing day. It was one of those days when you write a sentence, erase that sentence, write another sentence, erase that sentence, and on and on and on. I would begin a story, but I couldn’t move forward. I was stuck. It was as if my body, my mind, the whole of me was revolting against the particular story I was setting out to write.

A mentor once said to me: “Never write a story you don’t want to be writing.” This seems simple enough, but sometimes we think we do want to be writing a particular story.  We’re sure it’s a great idea, a great concept. And so we pursue it. But the question is: should we pursue ideas or should we let them pursue us?

I think what I am trying to say is this: stories are only worth investing in, spending time on, and bleeding over if we can’t not write them. We need to be obsessed. You know that moment: something passes over you—an image, the singular voice of a yet unknown character—and it absolutely haunts you. You can’t get the voice out of your head, you can’t stop seeing the image, you can’t stop imagining. You lie awake at night, the story beginning to write itself… more characters appear, a setting appears… You’ve been stung by the Muse.

Now, I know as writers we can’t always wait for inspiration. Someone once said, “If you wait for inspiration, you’re not a writer, but a waiter.” We do have to write even when the Muse is shy, even when the juices aren’t flowing, even when we’re tired, sick, and feel like perhaps we just aren’t cut out for this. It’s tough to differentiate. Just because we sometimes have to write in the absence of inspiration doesn’t mean we should write a story just to write it.  We must think hard about when to let a story go or when it’s the one that’s worth slashing our way through the forest for.

Raymond Carver once said, “The story chooses us, the image comes and then the emotional frame.  You don’t have a choice about writing the story. There’s a filter at work which says this is or is not a story… I think a story ideally comes to the writer; the writer shouldn’t be casting the net out, searching for something to write about.”

At the beginning of this semester, we were assigned a paper for my literature seminar. The paper had to grow out of something we’d read in class. This paper could lean towards a more critical review or we could take the creative route. I chose to write something creative, to work on my fiction, but here’s the thing: The paper could only be 10 pages long. So there were these stipulations, these rules. And so for the last few weeks I tried to force my story into a box. I pained myself over trying to write a complete, whole story that ended perfectly on page 10. But I’d never done this before. My stories tend to be on the longer side. And so I searched and went crazy trying to find an idea for a shorter story. This was counterproductive. It caused balls of paper to pile next to me. It caused a blank screen to stare at me. I was forcing myself to write a story that my filter was working overtime to sift out.

Yesterday was the final straw. Yesterday, I looked at my files and I counted 5 half baked stories. 5 intellectually thought up stories. 5 so called “good ideas.”  Some stories were a paragraph long and some were up to seven pages. It was ridiculous. They all bored me. Meanwhile, every time I took a break from the assignment, I chose to work on another story, a story that’s been in my heart for years.  When I worked on this story, the vessel opened, the writing flowed, and the filter said THIS IS A STORY.

I just wasn’t paying attention.

As for the 10 page assignment, I still don’t know what will come of it (did I mention its due Wednesday? As in tomorrow?)  But I do know this: the next time I get stuck, really stuck, I will at least ask myself: Did you choose this story or did it choose you?

“Writing is love, a mission, and a calling, and how and where and why you write are very crucial issues.”

-Lynn Sharon Schwartz

 

 

 

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 6:50:24 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)    Comments [2] 

Here are 5 musts from Brenda Ueland’s If You Want To Write:

1.       Know that you have talent, are original and have something important to say.

2.       Don’t be afraid of writing bad stories. To discover what is wrong with a story write two new ones and then go back to it.

3.       If you are never satisfied with what you write, that is a good sign.  It means your vision can see so far that it is hard to come up to it.  Again, I say, the only unfortunate people are the glib ones, immediately satisfied with their work.  To them the ocean is only knee-deep.

4.       Don’t be afraid of yourself when you write. Don’t check-rein yourself.  If you are afraid of being sentimental, say, for heaven’s sake be as sentimental as you can or feel like being! Then you will probably pass through to the other side and slough off sentimentality because you understand it at last and really don’t care about it.

5.       When discouraged, remember what Van Gogh said: “If you hear a voice within you saying: You are no painter, then paint by all means, lad, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working.”

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

“I have everything I need. A square of sky, a piece of stone, a page, a pen, and memory raining down on me in sleeves.”

-Harriet Doerr

Friday, October 23, 2009 5:49:10 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0] 

It is said that Kurt Vonnegut used his hardwood floor as his desk.  He worked from his lap with everything—papers, notes, drafts—spread out around him.  I’ve read that many authors’ lock themselves away into as small a place as possible.  No windows. No outside light. Nothing to distract them from the world that is inside their head, the one they’re creating.

I love learning about the different writing spaces and writing rituals of authors. I recently bought How I Write, The Secret Life of Authors, a bit of a splurge, but so worth it. The books is delicious-- full of pictures, the secrets of how, where, when, and for how long writers’ write. Beg your husband/ wife/ girlfriend/mother/brother to get it for you as a gift.

Jonathan Franzen has had the same old squeaky chair for years.  The chair is taped up, almost bandaged. I imagine he can’t bear to part with it.  Nicole Krauss is inspired by a black and white photograph she found at the Chelsea flea market; she keeps it hanging over her desk.  Will Self has a wall of post it notes. He says, “I write ideas, tropes, images, observations, snippers of dialogue… on these Post-it notes and put them in relevant zones on the wall. Then I organize them into scrapbooks, then I turn them into books.” This reminds me of a time, per a professor’s advice, that I printed out an entire story and then cut it up with scissors. I then used my living room floor to sort through the scenes to see if maybe, possibly, magically, the scenes fit together in a different, more perfect way. Then, I taped the whole story back together in the newly imagined way.

My favorite writer, A.M Homes, says this in How I Write: “…A tree; I cannot write without the view of tree. And light, I cannot write without natural light.” Audrey Niffenegger relies on small plaster head that sits on her desk beside her computer. (When you get the book, flip to page 153, and there it is staring up at you) She says the face “accepts serene patience…She reminds me to believe the words will come out right.”

And isn’t that we want: to get the words to come out right?  Isn’t that our goal when we set up our desks or search for the perfect writing space outside of our home-- whether it’s in a busy café, an old library, a bar, or a friend’s office?  The space facilitates the words coming out right. Kafka is quoted at the beginning of How I Write as saying, “I had a close look at my desk just now and realized that it just wasn’t designed for quality writing.” Our writing space is important. We wouldn’t dare run without proper running shoes. Why choose a space that isn’t designed for quality writing?

I love the beach. I love writing anywhere close to it when I visit the area. I love sitting in my parents’ small office and peeking out the window to see the ocean. I love sitting in a beach chair at the edge of the lawn and smelling the salt air. But, of course, what I love best, is actually writing on it. You don’t need much: a pen, a notebook, a blanket maybe.

Since I can’t always be close to the beach, I still try to write outside. Anywhere. The park. An outdoor café.  Or, when I need to be at home, when it gets too cold, I like to create a feeling. I’m a sucker for ambience. And so there’s this: candles. This: music, preferably classical. And usually there are a few writing quotes scattered around on the coffee table (there is also the pillow for the knees). And my pen cup. On it: the word Believe.

And you? Where do you write? What rituals do you have?

 “The requirement of any writing space is that is disappear from the mind’s eye of the inhabitant.”

-John Updike

Thursday, October 22, 2009 7:05:57 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [7] 

We are half way through the week. You would think that the week would feel shorter because of the holiday on Monday, but I think that day just threw me off… It’s been a long few days—illness, a wake, lots of work. Tonight is my Literature Seminar. We’re discussing The Stories of John Cheever. I just finished reading “The Country Husband” and can’t get over how brilliant Cheever is, how well he depicts the crooked world of suburbia. My professor says Cheever writes about the precariously bourgeois, the “have mores, but have not enoughs.”  I’ll tell you, being from Boston’s South Shore myself, I can relate to the culture he writes about in many of his stories. 

In the preface, Cheever admits to loving some stories best, especially the ones that took less than a week to write and that he composed aloud. The famous ending of “Goodbye My Brother” was apparently spoken aloud in front of his doormen. “I watched the naked women walk out of the sea!” Cheever exclaimed. He recounts his doorman politely saying, “You’re talking to yourself Mr. Cheever.”

I’ve heard of people who compose their work aloud. I wonder how that would feel, if it would simply be more organic to tell the story that way. I suppose it would as it goes back to something primitive, the origin of story telling. Professors always recommend reading work aloud, as we catch things when they’re spoken that we can’t otherwise. Often things just sound off. I love hearing the rhythm of the piece come to life as it’s spoken. This, by the way, is one of my most favorite things: getting the rhythm right.

This weekend I’m off to the beach in Massachusetts (Cheever’s birth place!) to spend some time with the family. I hope to get some writing done and I’m sure I will as there is no place like the beach to lull you into that peaceful vibe. And don’t we all write better when we’re relaxed? An old teacher of mine used to say she took baths and lit candles before she dove into her writing.

As promised, here is some writing advice from readers… some inspiration to push us through to the weeked. Have a good day, everyone!

“Self deprecation is not allowed.  We are all here because we possess a talent for language. It would serve us all well to be confident in our skills and not to be scared to share our writing with our peers, our friends, and the world." –from Beauty Blogger, advice she received from a professor

“Don’t be afraid to kill your “babies.” Your babies being sentences or scenes you think are particularly brilliant. Are your babies brilliant, or are they merely ego?” –from Bonnie

“Climb the mountain (Sarah Dunn). And write what something is, not what something is like (Erica Wagner).” –Jessica shares advice from two different authors

“My professor said… to make sure our writing was clear, concise, and compelling.” –from Monica

“Everything we learn to write is a stepping stone for the next level of conversation we are capable of having with ourselves.”

-Christina Baldwin

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 6:57:45 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [1] 

Revision is tough. But you hear it all the time: writing is revising. And I know this is true. Some people love rewriting, writer Bernard Malamud called revising “one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.” And then there is the rest of us (some of you may love it, too?). It’s not that I detest the process-- I know that through revision the heart of the story beats stronger, the characters become real and specific, the structure becomes seamless, the themes deepen--it’s just that I just don’t think I’ve found a good method yet, a good plan of attack. I’ve tried many ways. I’ve tried retyping the whole story from beginning to end, revising while I do this. I’ve also tried side writing from a different POV, or free writing with the chance that I’ll stumble across something new and alive.  The list goes on… I actually asked my teacher, no, begged him for some revision advice recently and he said, Hmm, I don’t even really know how I revise, I’ll have to pay attention next time. What is it that I do? I think this speaks to something.  Perhaps revision is so specific to each individual, so mysterious, so multi-layered that it’s difficult to even explain, to teach. It’s something you have to learn on your own; we all approach the craft differently, why wouldn’t we approach revision differently? There’s also this: revise a story too much and you drain it of its blood; you lose its raw energy. Or, you end up with something different, not something better. And when the heck do we know we’re done? 

For now, I’ve gone back to some writing books for advice. The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop, by Stephen Koch, offers these basic suggestions for rewriting:

1.       Do not polish a mess—polishing can’t give your story shape. It can’t show you what action you need, or reveal characters’ roles.

2.       Revise for Structure—redrafting should begin with solving the problem of sequence.

3.       Develop the Undeveloped—your second encounter with your own prose should make you see more, not less. Everything needs to be more vivid, more coherent, more powerful.

4.       Revise for Plot—find and get down the exact ways the events in your stories happen, and how those changes drive your story forward.

5.       Revision for Clarity—the single most destructive force dooming most first fiction is simple unreadability. It is impossible to be too clear. Always, always make your writing a little more clear than you think it needs to be.

I write these suggestions down for myself as much as I do for you… It’s a starting place, at least. Come to think of it, I did once get some important advice about revision, but it was more advice concerning an attitude towards the process. A mentor once said to me: “Think of it as adding power to power.” I like that. It reminds me that this is about creating, about art. That there is no real science here. We can only do our best, adding power to what we’ve already richly imagined.

 “You aim for what you want and if you don’t get it, you don’t get it, but if you don’t aim, you don’t get anything.”

-Francine Prose

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 4:17:25 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [2] 

I’ll be writing a lot this weekend. My second submission for my fiction workshop is due on Monday.  This time, I plan to submit a revision, rather than something brand new. It’s a story I’ve been working on and I just feel done with it…. I read somewhere that when revisions stop improving a story and just make the story different, you know it’s time to bid the story farewell. You’ve done your best with it. The thing is: sometimes our best isn’t enough. I’ve realized this lately, that not all stories will see the light of day, will be published. That some are just part of the practice, stepping stones towards better, deeper, truer work. So, I shall give this story its final workshop, a sort of tribute to it, the final improvement and then I’ll send it out into the world. And I’ll move on.

To get into the writing groove this weekend, to get my revision on, I plan to warm up with a lot of writing exercises. Not only do these exercises really stretch my writing muscles, but they also nudge my imagination, slowly waking it up; they allow you to you sort of hitch into your unconscious. Here are two good ones:

1.      This comes from Julia Cameron, from her book The Right to Write.  (Please note that I’m paraphrasing here) Pick 5 objects in your home and describe them in a nonsensical manner, just write whatever comes to you. Write what the objects remind you of; the first words or phrases you think of. Don’t think too hard about it… For example, I chose bird chime and what I wrote was: reminds me of a vortex, the country, a piece of art. I want to play with it. THEN, choose 5 different objects and describe them with meaning, apply nostalgia to them. The goal is to get to the heart of things, to make a true connection. I chose beach rock and wrote this: I think of the girls, their stringy blond hair hard with salt. I think of their laughter and innocence. I think of home, true home, where life always seems blue sky, postcard good. This is a great exercise. It helps me connect to that deeper place… you think a lot about diction, language, about metaphor, simile, images...

2.      Okay, second exercise: Fold a piece of paper in half. Write VERBS on the top of one side, NOUNS on the other. Next, choose two different professions. I chose cook and carpenter.  Under the verb column, write verbs that associate with one profession (cook). Do the same for the noun column with the second profession (carpenter).  After you have a list of 10 verbs & 10 nouns, you must write a sentence including a verb and noun from the same column. (Make sure you don’t look at the other column when you’re originally writing the list out). This is a great exercise, too, makes you think about word choice, originality, strong verbs, sentence structure, rhythm, and much more.

Happy writing, everyone and have a great weekend!  Oh, and if there's any more "best writing advice I've received," drop it in the comments section. I want to add some more to the collection before posting them next week.

“I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write.  I make no plan; it just comes, and I don’t know where it comes from.”

-D.H. Lawrence

Friday, October 09, 2009 4:04:37 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [4]