Читать книгу You Can Be a Winning Writer - Joan Gelfand - Страница 13
ОглавлениеCrafting a Great Piece of Writing
“Anyone who is an inspired storyteller…knows that the essence of good storytelling is not assembling a heap of facts but having the imagination to leap through an arc of bright truths to create a great arc of invention. A story is a constellation of stars, a recognizable shape made from shining bits of fact that may exist empirically at different levels and different spatial depth.”
—Adam Gopnik, on the author Romain Gary, The New Yorker, January 2018
While Gopnik describes writing, he himself crafts an impressive piece of journalistic prose. By using imagery (an arc of bright truths), analogy (a story is a constellation of stars), and metaphor (the story exists empirically at different levels and different spatial depths), Gopnik crafts a sentence that you want to read over and over. You might like to contemplate “a constellation of stars” or how a story exists at different levels and different spatial depths.
By using basic tools of craft, he creates a memorable paragraph, as well as an excellent argument.
When I taught poetry to school-aged children, we broke down teaching into five basic elements:
•Imagery—draw a picture with words.
•Sound—use words to clash, rhyme and accentuate each other.
•Repetition—use the same words to make your piece memorable and incantational.
•Analogy and metaphor.
•By using the five senses—sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—your writing will come alive with the specifics of the world.
It is common knowledge that many poets have become novelists of extraordinary success.
Michael Ondaatje and Alice Walker are just two examples. Because poetry is a kind of shorthand, an unforgiving and compact form (no wasteful words, no unsubstantiated arguments or theses), writers who start as poets quickly learn the beauty of the economy of words. Other writers who wrote poetry and fiction were Jorge Luis Borges, Agatha Christie, and Kingsley Amis.
About writer Reed Farrel Coleman: “Poetry was RFC’s first calling, and it also brought him to crime fiction: ‘I heard the poetry in the language of Chandler and Hammett, listened to the meter behind their words, and thought that I wanted to try my hand at it,’ he writes on his website. ‘The truth is, I knew I could do it. I realized, at last, that all those poetry writing classes and the classes I’d taken in Renaissance, Romantic, Victorian, and modern poetry had been more than fascinating wastes of my time.’ ”1
“A book has to smell. You have to hold it in your hand and breathe it in.”
—Ray Bradbury
So how long should your book be? Two hundred pages? Three hundred? Seven hundred? How much is enough, and how much is too much? On the importance of the economy of language, novelist Ethan Canin taught: “Could you write in three words what you just wrote in ten?”
This teaching could not be of more importance now. Now that we receive a virtual tidal wave of information, readers read quickly; they want to get the point, and get it fast.
Oh, and what we also taught children? Don’t be afraid of humor!
And, always let your imagination run loose. Have fun. (Remember Dr. Seuss? Whimsical, nonsensical, and so beloved!)
Poet Stephen Kopel, San Francisco writer, radio host, and organizer of the Word Dancer literary series, sees himself as a thorough craftsperson in shaping stacks of words into something beautiful, thoughtful, comical and pleasurable to both readers and listeners.
Kopel begins with concept. “My journey into the world of language…is fraught with possibilities…thank goodness. My principal interest is having as much fun in both concept and composition as I can muster toward that end. I first start with a composition of lines in which associative values, a dose of punnery, and the breaking apart of multisyllabic nouns can be expanded into two or more words.”
For the reader’s continued pleasure, here is an example of two lines from “Prankster” by Stephen Kopel:
“the
Wind”
please put on a summer show, a carnival of shrieks,
skinny sounds or fat.
Adam Gopnik, above, spoke of a story as existing “at different levels and different spatial depths.”
Poet Mary Mackey, author of fourteen novels and seven volumes of poetry, and the winner of the Josephine Miles award from PEN, taught creative writing at Sacramento State University for over thirty years. She calls it “layering,” but it is the same concept. By using language creatively, you can take a reader from one level of experience to another in just a few words.
“Purity”
By Billy Collins
My favorite time to write is in the late afternoon,
weekdays, particularly Wednesdays.
This is how I get about it:
I take a fresh pot of tea into my study and close the door.
Then I remove my clothes and leave them in a pile
as if I had melted to death and my legacy consisted of only
a white shirt, a pair of pants and a pot of cold tea.
Then I remove my flesh and hang it over a chair.
I slide it off my bones like a silken garment.
I do this so that what I write will be pure,
completely rinsed of the carnal,
uncontaminated by the preoccupations of the body.
Finally I remove each of my organs and arrange them
on a small table near the window.
I do not want to hear their ancient rhythms
when I am trying to tap out my own drumbeat.
Now I sit down at the desk, ready to begin.
I am entirely pure: nothing but a skeleton at a typewriter.
Take the line “as if I had melted to death and my legacy consisted only/of a white shirt, a pair of pants and a pot of cold tea.”
The words “melted to death” bring us from the world of a poet sitting at his desk, to an imaginary world, a world of fantasy and dream.
“I remove my flesh and hang it over a chair.” Now we are in the place of poetry. We are in that multidimensional space where the poet has left his physical surroundings to enter the world of creativity.
This poem is an excellent example of the use of imagination, metaphor and imagery that makes this beloved poem memorable.
From poet and author Mary Mackey:
“A great poem expands beyond the obvious, transcending logic and time, reaching into the lyrical, metaphorical depths of language and binding together the conscious and unconscious. It doesn’t just state an idea. It exists in multilayered realms, unique, ever expanding in the mind of the reader. To create these layers, you need to write a first draft and then enrich it by making sure each line moves in a seamless rhythm and each word has powerful associations. Don’t settle for the first thing that comes out of your head. Revise. Revise. There are probably twenty better words for ‘walk,’ not all of them synonyms. Don’t have your ‘rough beast, its hour come around at last,’ walk towards Bethlehem. Have it ‘slouch.’”
“Writing is not just words on a page,” Tom Parker, Pulitzer Prize nominee for the novel Anna, Ann, Annie and author of Small Business, advises. Parker echoes Gopnik: “Writing is not just assembling a heap of facts.”
At the same time, for many of us, our first drafts are just that. Words on a page. A heap of facts. It is an important part of your writing process and one which we will discuss later in this chapter under the heading “You Wrote It. Now, Revise.”
Writing that important first draft without prejudging, without the “critical voice,” is how we get started. I can say with confidence that not one author ever published a first draft. I’ll bet even Adam Gopnik drafted his stellar piece on writing at least several times as well.
Mary Hayes, author of nine novels—including the Time and Life bestseller Amethyst, her latest novel What She Had to Do, and two political thrillers co-authored with Senator Barbara Boxer—says: “We write to discover who we are.”
I became a writer because there seemed nothing else I could do.
I’d supported myself, since age seventeen, with a string of unrelated jobs (librarian, fashion model, medical tech) in various countries, knowing a little about a lot but expert in nothing, with no degree or qualification. By thirty-three, as a mother of two young children, I decided to get serious and find a career I could be passionate about. By process of elimination, the professions and sciences seemed closed to me (such long, expensive training to be a doctor, lawyer, or astrophysicist, and could I be passionate enough?), and I was too old to launch myself into the arts—except, perhaps, as a writer.
I’d grown up in a bohemian British family of writers and artists, so it was in my genes. I’d always enjoyed telling stories. Writing was cheap; all I needed was paper and a typewriter. So, for three mornings a week, during the two hours when my three-year old was at nursery school and the baby took a nap, I’d ruthlessly churn out at least 2,500 words, butt glued to my seat, no interruptions allowed. I told all my friends about my book so they’d ask how it was going and I’d be forced to finish it out of pride.
It wasn’t published (although it would be later), but I didn’t give up. I couldn’t; by then I’d developed such a strong work habit I’d be restless and anxious if I wasn’t at my desk between 10 a.m. and noon.
So, I tried again, and after twenty-two letters of thanks but not for us, somebody actually made an offer for my second novel. It was a small paperback house, the money wasn’t great, but I was on my way and I’ve never stopped. I don’t believe I can now.
While getting down your first draft, don’t fret about whether you are creating a great piece of writing. The first draft is the time to dive into your theses, your character development, your plot. It’s in your subsequent drafts that you fine-tune.
Tom Parker again: “First you build the house. Then you screw down the boards.”
Many authors express surprise (and delight) at how their characters instruct them; tell the writer how to write their lines. Many writers report that their characters dictate their words and actions.
Being open to all kinds of surprises when you sit down to write is part of being a winning writer. You might have the plot down cold, but a twist might unfold as you are writing—go for it.
It is exactly this element of surprise that will delight your reader. As Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author of Walking Light, Stephen Dunn, writes: “If the writer is not surprised by the ending of a poem, they haven’t done their job.”
In Walking Light, Dunn’s collection of essays on writing, he addresses the importance of surprise, especially when writing on political topics:
“To complain, protest, register outrage, are familiar impulses in most of our lives. And what occurs in our lives inevitably is reflected in poetry. Yet Robert Frost wrote that ‘grievances are a form of impatience,’ and went on to say that he didn’t like them in poetry…. Yeats told us that quarrels with others produce rhetoric.”
Later, in the chapter on “Complaint, Complicity, Outrage, and Composition,” Dunn targets exactly what causes rhetorical or dogmatic poems to fall flat. After analyzing several successful and unsuccessful poems in the vein of “complaint,” Dunn writes: “In any of these poems we could speculate on the varieties of inspiration which spurred them, though, I think, it’s safe to say that the linguistic discoveries in the act of composition were at least as inspiring as the events or attitudes which preceded them.”
To rephrase, Dunn is teaching that you can write a successful poem of complaint or outrage if you allow it to unfold, as any other good writing does. If you allow the poem to lead you, to surprise you. “Locate a poem’s first real discovery, and often you will find its motor, if not its ignition key.”
Writing stories and novels is a different process, yet the basic elements are similar. In all forms of creative writing, “something has to change.”
In a novel, it is your protagonist’s change that keeps your reader turning the pages. The “big reveal” is the element of your story that you might subtly hint at for the first section. What skeleton does your character hide in his closet?
Another key element to keep your story moving is timing. The minute your book opens, the clock is ticking. As we will read later, Tinkers, a first novel that won the Pulitzer Prize, is all about clocks ticking!
Narration: Who’s Talking?
Crafting a winning book is the art of crafting a reliable narrator. Is the person telling the story consistent? Are they likable? Trustworthy? Snarky might be trendy, but think about whether you want to read an entire book sustained by a snarky narrator.
Other issues to consider on narration are point of view—first person or omniscient narrator. Would you like to create intimacy with your reader, or keep a cool distance? Italo Calvino, in If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler, has what is called a “close voice.” You feel he is in the room with you, speaking directly to you. That is a writer with an “intimate” voice. On the other hand, Charlotte Bronte, in Jane Eyre, maintains a cool distance.
Jonathan Franzen on narrative voices and gaining the reader’s trust:
“Every writer is first a member of a community of readers, and the deepest purpose of reading and writing fiction is to sustain a sense of connectedness, to resist existential loneliness; and so, a novel deserves a reader’s attention only as long as the author sustains the reader’s trust.”
In the classic book Novel Voices, edited by Jennifer Levasseur and Kevin Rabelais, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford talks about writing in first person. The interviewer inquires whether Ford feels more comfortable writing in first person, and Ford responds: “I have a much harder time finding redemptive language for events and characters if I am not writing in first person.” The stories written (in third person or by an omniscient narrator) “are harsher. The moral quotient to those stories tends to be a more negative kind. They tend to be stories that indict their characters more than the first-person stories. Why? I don’t know. But I’d like it to not be so.”
In the same book, Ann Patchett talks about how The Patron Saint of Liars is told by three first-person narrators. Patchett explains: “I spent a year putting that book together before I started writing it.” And, “The last two things I do when I start a book are naming the characters and figuring out the narrative structure. Those are the hardest things for me, and so I put them off as long as possible.”
There are many ways to start. Many ways to tell a story. Map it in advance or simply start writing. You will find your way, the way that opens the doors to page after page. The way that allows you to empathize with and understand your characters. There is no one right way.
Construction
Umberto Eco, author of Name of the Rose, told an interviewer about his practice of building the architecture of his books. He would not begin writing until all the plot elements were in place, the character’s quirks and personalities fully developed.
Like Tom Parker, he also compared writing to building: “First, the foundation, then the framework. You design the rooms and the lighting. Then you decorate.”
Like many other writers, the Beat poet and novelist Jack Kerouac wrote his iconic On the Road in one long sweep. So did Pearl Buck, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Good Earth.
Trust
Trust is the first part of growing confident in your work. You may have heard the adage: “Trust the process.” What exactly does that mean?
The writer Joan Didion addressed the topic of trust in the wonderful Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold. When asked to speak about her writing process by her nephew (the producer and director of the documentary), Didion replied: “When I sit down to write, the work unfolds.”
Didion, a prolific writer who published two novels, a seminal memoir, and countless articles and screenplays, maintained a daily eccentric practice. She would wake up, drink a Coke, eat a few almonds, and set to work.
All writers begin with the germ of an idea. A plot. Characters. But it is only when you sit down to actually flesh out that plot or character do the ideas flower into a beautiful, mysterious garden, fit for a long, leisurely visit.
Be ready for your words to flow. Be open to your own new ideas.
Michael Jackson, the musician, lyricist and creative artist, said “I am just the channel.”
The source of your work might be hard research. It might be a mystery. Whichever it is, making the work readable still remains a process and that process is art.
Winning writers are ready for the flowering, to be the channel, and to discover who they are through their work.
As a keynote speaker once pronounced: “Always remember that you writers are in the entertainment business.” Employing surprise, delight, bringing your reader to new worlds, fantasy, imagination, and incorporation of the five senses will bring your writing from first draft to winning writing!
“Writing a book is like crossing a stream. Now I’m on this rock. Now I’m on this rock.”
—Ann Beattie
Onward!
New Yorker columnist, pop psychologist and bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell wrote Outliers, a book that proves the thesis that it requires “10,000 hours to master a skill.” The phrase went viral. Thinkers, musicians, artists, and writers who read Gladwell’s book agreed. Here is an excerpt from an article that Gladwell wrote when his theory came under fire:
“Forty years ago, in a paper in American Scientist, Herbert Simon and William Chase drew one of the most famous conclusions in the study of expertise:
There are no instant experts in chess—certainly no instant masters or grandmasters. There appears not to be on record any case (including Bobby Fischer) where a person reached grandmaster level with less than about a decade’s intense preoccupation with the game. We would estimate, very roughly, that a master has spent perhaps 10,000 to 50,000 hours staring at chess positions…
In the years that followed, an entire field within psychology grew up devoted to elaborating on Simon and Chase’s observation—and researchers, time and again, reached the same conclusion: it takes a lot of practice to be good at complex tasks. After Simon and Chase’s paper, for example, the psychologist John Hayes looked at seventy-six famous classical composers and found that, in almost every case, those composers did not create their greatest work until they had been composing for at least ten years. (The sole exceptions: Shostakovich and Paganini, who took nine years, and Erik Satie, who took eight.)
This is the scholarly tradition I was referring to in my book Outliers, when I wrote about the ‘ten-thousand-hour rule.’ No one succeeds at a high level without innate talent, I wrote: ‘achievement is talent plus preparation.’ But the ten-thousand-hour research reminds us that ‘the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.’ In cognitively demanding fields, there are no naturals. Nobody walks into an operating room, straight out of a surgical rotation, and does world-class neurosurgery. And second—and more crucially for the theme of Outliers—the amount of practice necessary for exceptional performance is so extensive that people who end up on top need help. They invariably have access to lucky breaks or privileges or conditions that make all those years of practice possible. As examples, I focused on the countless hours the Beatles spent playing strip clubs in Hamburg and the privileged, early access Bill Gates and Bill Joy got to computers in the nineteen-seventies. ‘He has talent by the truckload,’ I wrote of Joy. ‘But that’s not the only consideration. It never is.’ ”
I bring this issue up in the interest of becoming a winning writer. An agent friend of mine once said, after I told him that I was revising my novel for a fourth time, “That’s good. Very good. The most common problem I see is writers letting go of their work too soon. Work on it until you are satisfied.”
In the interest of the craft of writing, a good question to ask yourself is: Are you ready to log those 10,000 hours? How will you do it? Do you like to write in long spurts, working an idea until exhaustion? Or do you prefer to work an hour, or two or four, every day?
What’s the trick?
I’ve read countless articles about how many writers trick themselves into writing. Why? Because the idea of writing for three to five hours a day is intimidating. That the writers don’t have the confidence that the words will be there. That, as Joan Didion insists, they don’t trust the process. There’s a reason that “writer’s block” is a topic of endless discussion among students and professionals in the writing world.
Tricks are fine. Whatever gets you to the page.
One trick writers employ is a timer. They set a timer for ten, fifteen or twenty minutes. The rationale is that they can certainly write for twenty minutes! Then, when the timer buzzes, if the work is flowing, off they go!
Recently, the writer Janet Malcolm published a book titled Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Writers and Artists. Her fascinating and lengthy essay on the infamous Bloomsbury group gives us the backstory on how a disparate group of intellectuals and artists became ubiquitous in the literary world. Have you ever wondered how an author as experimental, as language-driven and as dreamy as Virginia Woolf became embedded into every college English curriculum? How Bloomsbury captured the imagination of virtually every aspiring author?
“Every day for five to six days a week, they went to their rooms after breakfast. They wrote from 9:30 a.m. until lunchtime at 1:00 p.m. Three and a half hours per day, five to six days per week, 330 days a year. That is why their output was prodigious—novels, memoirs, essays, a prodigious output. In the afternoons and evenings, they walked, they read, they had long discussions,” Malcolm writes.
Not every writer has the luxury of time, or the confidence to arrange their lives as the Bloomsbury group did. But what about using a timer to accomplish a minimum of twenty minutes or even an hour per day? Don’t forget: hours add up.
Do the math: You write 1,000 words in an hour, that’s four pages. Four pages over a month (twenty days) equals eighty pages. Eighty pages over three months equals 240 pages. Congratulations! You just wrote the first draft of your next book!
If you were to research the backstory of now-famous writers, you would learn that a significant percentage wrote their first books on stolen time, in short spurts, on weekends. Toni Morrison wrote in taxicabs while she was working as an editor. Christopher Gortner, author of eight novels, wrote his first three while he was working full-time.
What Are You Afraid Of? A Frank Discussion of Writer’s Block and Fear
The fear of writing is real. For many, the idea of a blank page is one of, if not the most, terrifying task. Given any other task—mopping the floor, running a load of laundry, cooking, cleaning the cat box, walking the dog—anything is more appealing than facing that page.
No matter that once the body is in the chair, the words, most of the time, will begin to flow. Still, the fear is, “What if they don’t?”
Fear is powerful. We avoid fear in all sorts of ways. We fear planes; we don’t buy a ticket. We fear meeting new people; we don’t go out to events where we don’t know anyone. Our subconscious avoids fear as a survival tool!
Avoiding fear, or any other uncomfortable situation, is called staying in your “comfort zone.” Choosing to write will certainly take you out of your comfort zone.
So, before you become a winning writer, you will have to make peace with fear. I’m not a psychologist, but my colleague Renate Stendhal is. We’ll hear from her later in our chapter on “Confidence.”
Anne Lamott wrote: “I used to not be able to write if there was a dirty dish in the sink. Now I can write if there is a dead body!”
Again, your writing is a practice. Do you work in a rush or methodically?
Joan Didion worked every day, to much success. So did the Bloomsbury group. Many writers believe in a daily writing practice like the pope believes in Jesus.
But how about this for an idea? A “crash”?
Nobel Prize-winning British writer Kazuo Ishiguro wrote The Remains of the Day in four weeks. He writes: “Many people work long hours. When it comes to the writing of novels, however, the consensus seems to be that after four hours or so of continuous writing, diminishing returns set in. I’d always more or less gone along with this view, but as the summer of 1987 approached I became convinced that a drastic approach was needed. Lorna, my wife, agreed…. So Lorna and I came up with a plan. I would, for a four-week period, ruthlessly clear my diary and go on what we mysteriously called a “crash.” During the crash, I would do nothing but write from 9:00 a.m. through 10:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday. I’d get one hour off for lunch and two for dinner. I’d not see, let alone answer, any mail, and would not go near the phone. No one would come to the house. Lorna, despite her busy schedule, would for this period do my share of the cooking and housework. In this way, so we hoped, I’d not only complete more work quantitatively, but reach a mental state in which my fictional world was more real to me than the actual one…. Throughout the Crash, I wrote free-hand, not caring about the style or if something I wrote in the afternoon contradicted something I’d established in the story that morning. Awful sentences, hideous dialogue, scenes that went nowhere—I let them remain and plowed on.”
So, winning writers’ styles vary. Daily practice, crash, and “flow.” There is no right way.
The movie Trumbo tells the story of Dalton Trumbo, the author of Academy Award-winning screenplays and prize-winning novels. Trumbo worked in a fever of alcohol and pills—turning out play after play. His output, like the Bloomsbury group’s, was prodigious.
Your style might even vary from project to project. Some poems “write themselves.” Others need ten revisions. And some books come very easily. Be open to how your project is going.
Where Did That Come From? A Note on the Source of Writing
I’ve had students ask, “How can I multiply my ideas for stories, poems, or even my next novel?” A good practice is training yourself to pay close attention. Dorothy Bryant advised: “It is common that while you are working on one project, your creativity is at a fever pitch. You have ideas for other projects. Rather than stop what you are doing, take your notes, file them away. That way you know you’ve captured the ideas, but they must wait until you finish the project at hand.”
For example: You might overhear a couple arguing in a restaurant. A friend might have a gem of insight, but she is not a writer. Ask if you can use her idea—promising proper attribution, of course. Or, you walk into a pet store and two turtles are mating. You’re fascinated, so you observe, wait to see if the scene provokes a feeling. You go to a rally, an art show, a movie. It moves you deeply. Try to locate the feelings. That’s your germ.
Another approach is to turn your dreams into poetry, prose, songs or any other creative endeavor.
Writer and teacher Sandy Boucher said, “Everyone wants to have written.” To that, I would like to add “Everyone dreams of being a writer.”
I’m here to tell—you don’t have to dream about it—you can actually use your dreams to source your creativity.
Many famous artists from John Lennon and Paul McCartney to Albert Einstein to Mick Jagger and James Cameron have used their dreams as a source of their creativity.
In Kelly Sullivan Walden’s book, I Had the Strangest Dream, the author offers tips on remembering your dreams.
1.Sleep with a notebook by your bed—if/when you wake up with a dream, jot down snippets if that’s all you have.
2.Incubate a dream: Ask for a dream before you go to sleep.
3.Once the dream is recorded, spend time with it. Look up the images in a dream book and think about the symbols.
Here’s a dream from one of Kelly’s books:
A woman is in a bar and another woman approaches her with a drink. As the woman gets close to her, she throws the drink in her face, hits her over the head with a glass, and yells in her face, “Wake up.” And the woman wakes up from her dream and she’s covered in water and she’s got a bump on her head and she’s holding a glass. And she realizes that she did this to herself. She poured water on herself, hit herself on the head and was yelling the words “wake up.”
And she sat on the edge of her bed drenched and aching and saying, “What am I supposed to be waking up to?”
She sat down to write. She started journaling and she realized she was journaling for the first time in years. What came through her journaling was, “You’re a creative. You have a master’s in creative writing and you teach creative writing in schools. You are constantly encouraging your students to write, and yet you have not written creatively in years. You must write.”
So, she continued her journaling and it turned into pages and pages and pages of a story, of a fictional story that turned into poetry. Cut to present time. She’s changed her life. She’s no longer teaching, she’s writing full-time and making a living at it. And she’s living in Mexico and traveling. She’s got a totally different life—unrecognizable from the life that she had at that time.
And some of the background of what was happening at that time in her life was that she had put all of the money that she had made and saved into this “dream house” that was completely falling apart and causing so much stress. And she ends this story by saying, “Instead of plunking all my money down into my dream house, I thought I would just put my money and energy into living my dreams instead.”
Recently, my friend Yvonne had a dream about numbers. She tried to remember them in the dream but she couldn’t. When she woke up she realized that the numbers were her old address and that she needed to write about a friend who had co-owned the house with her and had died of AIDS.
The story of how I wrote “The Ferlinghetti School of Poetics” is not so unusual, but it did require me to pay attention, to record my dreams and to meditate on them. The poem went on to win an award from the City of San Francisco, and was made into a short film that has been shown around the world.
In the first dream, Lawrence Ferlinghetti made an appearance. That was it. I woke up and said, “Hey, that’s cool, I had a dream about a famous poet.”
The second dream came some time later—maybe two or three months. In the dream, I am on a dark street instructing a small boy: “You gotta go to the Ferlinghetti School. It’s totally rad and completely cool.” I’m beginning to think something interesting is happening. Recurring dreams always deserve attention!
In the third dream, Ferlinghetti arrives in a movie theater. By this time, I was thinking “I don’t know what it is with Ferlinghetti, but I’m getting a pretty strong message.”
But what should I do with it?
I began to craft a poem. I didn’t know I had a winner until the poem was published six subsequent times, three times by request.
Sometime after the poem was out and published, I was co-hosting a program on how artists use their dreams with dream expert Kelly Sullivan Walden. I read the Ferlinghetti poem on air. Kelly’s husband, musician and filmmaker Dana Walden, fell in love with the poem and asked if I was interested in making a movie of the poem.
Over the next six months we filmed in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Santa Cruz. We spent another few months editing. A year later, we launched the film at the Beat Museum in San Francisco to great reviews.
That little five-minute film went on to be shown at the International Poetry Festival in Athens, Greece, the Meraki Film Festival in Madrid, and numerous venues in San Francisco. The poem won Best Poem of the year from Levure Littéraire, a French literary journal, and the film went viral too, garnering over 12,000 hits on YouTube.
That seemingly innocuous practice of recording my dreams delivered me an award-winning poem and helped me on my way to becoming a winning writer.
I believe that using dreams for art is especially powerful because dreams are “messages” or information from our unconscious, the part of our brains that is most sensitive. The unconscious knows us better than we know ourselves and can tell us what we really feel, even when we are thinking differently.
This is Carl Jung on dreams:
The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered.
Hence, we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work.
But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer’s secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters.
This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift.
So, go ahead! Capture that gem of an idea and see what evolves.
Writing Workshops, Writing Circles, & Write-a-thons
Even after settling into your writing style (daily practice or flow), you might still be wondering—How do I get those 10,000 hours/240 pages/poetry manuscript? Maybe you have tried a daily writing practice, but your words are not adding up. Your kids or full-time job disrupts your best intentions. Sickness, travel, family problems. The list of obstacles that can, and do, derail writers writing practices is long. They are part of life.
Okay. You tried. You failed. The self-flagellation begins.
I can’t stick to anything. I’ll never be a winning writer. I’m a loser. A failure. Why did I ever think that I could be a writer anyway? Who am I fooling?
These castigations are normal, and unfortunately seem to be part and parcel of the writer’s journey. But don’t give up hope—not yet!
Here is another idea.
Structured writing environments have set many on the path to winning writers.
In cities, workshops abound. Groups and classes can be found in local community colleges, adult learning centers, private teachers, and writing centers.
Workshop formats vary. One might be a group of writers who meet every week, or every two weeks or once a month. Some workshops employ a formal leader, a professional writing teacher. Others are peer-led.
If you are not in a metropolitan area or even a small town that offers opportunities to meet up with other writers, then you may want to investigate online writing workshops. In the back of this book is a reference list of some of the best online groups.
The advantage of an online group is that many online writing workshop teachers and facilitators run their classes with Skype or Facetime so writers have a chance to have a rigorous experience.
Some workshops require writers to submit work to the group prior to the meetings, while others read the work for the first time at the meeting.
Personal chemistry will impact your experience of the workshop. Do you like your fellow writers and trust them enough to read, and ultimately judge, your work? Do you like their work? Are you working at a similar level of expertise?
The good news:
A well-run workshop, especially for writers just starting out, can be substantially supportive and inspiring. The chance to hear new voices and a wide range of writing styles can help a new writer ascertain where their work falls on the scale of accomplishment.
It can also help to get those pages finished. Knowing that, every second Wednesday (or every Saturday, or Thursday), you will be required to read pages can help to motivate even the most procrastinating of writers. If you like your fellow workshop participants, even more so. Now you are part of a group. You want to show them what you can do, and you go home inspired to write by your fellow writers who are moving along at a steady clip.
However, workshops can be frightening if you’ve never shared your work in public. To that end, you might want to interview the instructor, sit in on a class or check reviews of the teachers.
Many independently run workshops require an application. The instructor might inquire into your background and goals. Also they will ask to see at least ten to twenty pages of your recent work. If this is the case, then you can safely assume that the level of writing will be above average.
Workshops that do not require an application will be open to writers at all levels. In these classes, you could very well be joined with degreed writers, prize winners, published writers and newbies.
A lively writing workshop can provide a stimulating environment as well as a networking opportunity. Fraternizing with others who are pursuing their dream of writing can help you feel part of a community. And, of course, a good writing instructor can provide just the encouragement you need to keep going. Because if you are working on a long project, doubt will rear its ugly head.
I would never have written my first novel if my gentle and compassionate teacher, Sandy Boucher, had not encouraged me to “just keep going.” I went to her workshop with a sketch of a story that she could see as a book-length piece. I just kept going as she advised, and in two years I had a novel. Left to my own devices, I would never have had the confidence to declare myself fit to write a novel!
Here is a beautiful example of a writer nurturing other writers along the path by creating a conscious support group:
Every writer benefits from the promise and support of a writing community. A feedback forum helps cultivate self-editing mastery, deepen craft, and provide confidence to follow through with the next draft. I created the Writer’s Tribe to offer up a space for writers to give and receive feedback in the spirit of generosity. In community, we polish our manuscripts in a safe, highly interactive space built on respect, clarity, and honesty. We support and guide each other through a powerful revision process. Writers learn from the comments, notes, and editing suggestions from their fellow participants. These invaluable critiques of our works-in-progress provide a road map and help the group form bonds for the writing process through to the book launch. I’ve been honored to shepherd new writers who are unable to quiet their inner critics and are afraid to read their work aloud into a community of powerful, successful and confident authors.
Tips on How to Give Feedback
•In the manuscript margins, make comments and suggestions.
•Identify the writer’s strengths, interesting subject matter, pleasing shape of the text, and examples of vivid detail.
•During the discussion, read a sentence or craft element you love.
Tips on How to Receive Feedback
•Take every suggestion IN with receptivity and a deep breath.
•Do not defend the text.
•What you resist may be what you most need to hear.
•Ask yourself if the reader’s comments are irrelevant or destructive to your process.
•All feedback is golden.
With a writing teacher and the support of writing communities, many students have been launched onto the path of publishing and confidence.
The point is, it is not easy, this “starting out” process.
Jonathan Franzen muses: “When I was writing my first book, I hated going to parties. No matter what the reason for the party, the topic would invariably turn to:
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a writer,’ I would say.
‘Oh? What have you published?’
‘Nothing.’ ”
To avoid this socially awkward encounter, many writers work in stealth mode! They don’t tell anyone what they are working on, nor do they mention that they are writing. It’s a personal decision to be sure!
The Bad News about Workshops
The bad news is that many independently run workshops should be advertised with warning label: “This workshop may be harmful to your self-esteem.”
I had an experience with an editor that set me back in a big way.
I was revising my first novel when I began to feel adrift. I’d left my corporate job based on a note from a NY agent: “You are clearly very talented. This book is compelling and interesting. The second half falls down. Please let us know what you decide to do.”
“I’ll have this book finished in a few months,” I promised myself. But after a few months of revising, I wasn’t confident that I was on the right track. At that time, I saw an ad for a pricey writing workshop. I would have dismissed it, but the leaders were a well-known New York editor and a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist.
Writers were invited to apply. I spoke with the editor, sent in pages, and was allowed to join.
I was not only hoping to get the direction I needed to fix my novel for the New York agent, but secretly hoping to make a connection to people in the literary world.
The workshop, run in a chilly meeting room of Fort Mason, the large warehouse complex in San Francisco waterfront, was filled with accomplished writers; journalists from big-name newspapers and MFA grads.
The critiquing style of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist/teacher was brutal. “God doesn’t even care about that goat as much as you do,” she chastised one of my fellow writers.
Another bad workshop story, albeit with a happy ending, is the story of Lolly Winston. Winston, the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Good Grief, had been a student of my teacher Tom Parker. The workshop (comprised of a different group than the one I was in) ridiculed her novel about a young widow. Lolly, to her credit, absented herself from the workshop and finished her novel. She sold the novel which climbed to the NYT bestseller list. Soon after publication, Good Grief was optioned by none other than Julia Roberts for a movie.
The Lolly Winston story exemplifies the hazards of writing workshops: mind-numbingly harsh feedback, overly critical members and unsupportive groups.
A good rule of thumb before enrolling in any independent writing workshop might be to ask these questions:
Who is teaching? What are his/her credentials?
How do their former students rate them?
What have their students gone on to accomplish?
Remember, in an independent workshop (as opposed to an accredited college class) teachers have not been vetted by strict administrations, do not adhere to a formal pedagogy, and cannot be relied upon to be the teacher that you need.
Barbara Kingsolver cautions to focus on your own voice and finding how best to express it to your own satisfaction first:
“Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.”
Writing Circles
Often peer-run, critique groups can also be a positive motivator to produce work. When you know that you will be presenting to the group, in some magical way, the pages get written. Writing circles are a lovely and low-key way to use peer pressure to motivate your writing process.
Jackie Berger is the author of four acclaimed books of poetry, three of which have won prestigious awards. She reports:
“I always tell my graduate students that the best aspect of the program (ours leads to an MA in English with a focus on creative writing) is the community of writers they join. The degree takes two years to earn, but if they can create an ongoing writing group from among their classmates, that will serve them well beyond graduation.
That’s what I did. Actually, it took just one woman in my MFA program to invite me to join her group. Twenty-three years later, I’m still meeting with these writers twice a month. They’ve seen me through four books of poetry, and I can say quite sincerely that I wouldn’t be the writer I am without them. By this I mean that they provide a concrete audience for my poetry. They also provide a deadline, the value of which should never be underestimated! Every other Wednesday night, I need a new poem. Yes, I’m too busy, too uninspired, too overwhelmed by life. And I need a new poem. My writing group gives me critical feedback, of course, but also a home for my writing practice—a place to take it. And this is invaluable.
Solitude is not the same as isolation. We write alone, but we don’t need to go it alone. And, in fact, much of my raw material is generated in a group setting as well. In addition to my Wed. group, I’m in a monthly Saturday group devoted to freewriting. We spend an hour or so eating, catching up, reading to each other authors we love. Then we each find a room in the house we meet in to write for an hour or two. After, we return and read to each other. No critiques; just reflecting back. I love a pressure cooker, and nothing like that actual audience on the other side of the wall to up the ante.
This is, of course, my process. And what works for me might not work for you. But the point is, writers need community, in whatever form, to tell us that what we have to say matters. That someone’s listening.”
Write-a-thons
A “Write-a-thon” is a time set aside to write with a group. A full Saturday. A weekend. Any time where the writer can give him or herself a stretch of uninterrupted time. The success rate is high. Think of it as locking yourself in a room, but with the pleasure of knowing that other people are doing it too.
Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo? It’s National Novel Writing Month, and the idea is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to creative writing.
On November 1, participants begin working toward the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel by 11:59 p.m. on November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm, determination, and a deadline, NaNoWriMo is for anyone who has ever thought about writing a novel.
I’ve heard of writers drafting their novel during NaNoWriMo. Think of it as a version of Ishiguro’s Crash. It can be done.
Many writers will also dedicate valuable free time—and money—to attending writer’s conferences. Despite the time and expense, most attendees report that the jolt they get from the workshops and talks and being around other writers can be just what they need to get over that next hurdle or challenge.
From Writer magazine:
Writer Jennifer Mattson shares her top ten must-go-to conferences for writers, taking conference size, geographical locations, topics and experience levels into account. No matter your background, your interests or your budget, there’s a conference on this list for you.
1. The Muse and the Marketplace
Grub Street, a writing center in Boston, holds its annual conference at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel for three days each spring. The weekend draws over 140 well-known authors, literary agents, editors and publishers. (Disclaimer: I teach online classes for Grub Street.)
Past faculty: Charles Baxter, Colum McCann, Roxane Gay
Why you should go: It’s a large conference with more than 800 people on some 100 panels. It’s a good choice if you’re looking to survey multiple sessions or want a conference aimed at all levels.
Highlights: The Muse draws a number of top New York agents and editors. For an extra fee, you can pitch them one on one by signing up for the popular Manuscript Mart. Don’t miss the Shop Talk Happy Hour for guaranteed facetime with agents and editors if you’re looking to land a book deal.
Where: Boston
When: May
Website: museandthemarketplace.com
2. The American Society of Journalists and Authors Conference (ASJA)
The ASJA conference is held each spring in New York City. Specifically aimed at freelance journalists and nonfiction authors, the conference attracts some 500–600 people each year. The two-day gathering focuses on helping independent writers survive and thrive as freelancers. Programs include pitch sessions with editors, agents and publishers. Can’t make it to NYC? Regional conferences are typically held in the summer and fall in places like Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, DC.
Faculty: Speakers and attendees include editors and writers at The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, Family Circle, BBC Travel, Inc.com, Fortune, Fast Company, The Atavist, Seal Press and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Why you should go: This is the best conference for freelance journalists and those interested in pursuing a career as an independent writer.
Highlights: Networking with editors and other freelancers who understand what it is like to work for yourself.
Where: New York City
When: April or May
Website: asja.org/for-writers/annual-conference
3. San Francisco Writers’ Conference
SFWC spans four days and hosts over 100 sessions including panels, two keynote lunches, workshops, networking events, open mic readings, and pitch sessions. You can pick from panels on everything from how to write a book, sell a book, get an agent or create a book proposal. The conference focuses primarily on the art of nonfiction and fiction books, but there are also panels on freelance and travel writing, to name a few.
Past faculty: Ann Packer, Jane Friedman, Annie Barrows
Why you should go: In addition to providing a great escape from mid-winter snow, this all-levels conference is ideal for first-time conference attendees looking to survey multiple panels.
Highlights: The conference always takes place at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins, one of the jewels of San Francisco, located atop Nob Hill. The luxury hotel provides elegant breakfasts, keynote luncheons and a gala. Each night, the conference hosts a group dinner at a different restaurant around town. They cost extra but are a great way to meet other writers and the presenters.
Where: San Francisco
When: February
Website: sfwriters.org
4. BinderCon
BinderCon is a professional development conference designed to empower women and gender nonconforming writers, authors and those in the media. An offshoot of the popular Facebook group Binders Full of Women, the main conference takes place in the fall in New York City with a second installment in Los Angeles each spring.
Past faculty: Lisa Kudrow, Jill Abramson, Anna Holmes, Leslie Jamison
Why you should go: You are a woman or identify as gender nonconforming and are interested in a writing conference that takes these issues into account.
Highlights: Drawing a lot of heavy hitters from the media world, including top women editors and agents, the conference abounds with the spirit of feminism. You’re sure to meet some inspiring women.
Where and when: November in New York; February in Los Angeles
Website: bindercon.com
5. Literary Writers Conference
A two-day conference for fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction writers “learning how to maneuver in the marketplace.” Hosted by the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses in conjunction with the National Book Foundation and The New School Graduate Writing Program, it attracts a number of prestigious editors, agents, publicists and publishers.
Past faculty: Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Galassi, Julie Barer, Gail Hochman, Renée Zuckerbrot
Why you should go: This is a serious conference for serious writers. Many panels include author-editor conversations, which are a fascinating listen for anyone interested in writing a book. Attendees are a mix of New School graduate students and mid-career New York writers looking for a book deal. It’s small enough that it doesn’t feel overwhelming and always has an impressive group of panelists.
Highlights: Agent speed dating. Each participant has the opportunity to sit down with two literary agents for eight minutes to pitch a book idea. Last year’s event featured agents from Brandt & Hochman, Zoë Pagnamenta Agency, Kuhn Projects, Fletcher and Co., Trident, Folio Literary Management, Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency and Renée Zuckerbrot Literary Agency.
Where: New York City
When: November
Website: clmp.org/lwc
6. San Miguel Writers’ Conference
This is a destination writers’ conference where the atmosphere is just as important as the conference. San Miguel de Allende, a small town in Mexico, is known for its artistic community of writers, painters, musicians, poets and philosophers. In recent years, more American artists have flocked here in the winter.
Past faculty: Joyce Carol Oates, Gail Sheehy, Elizabeth Hay, Scott Simon, Juan Villoro
Why you should go: You have a sense of adventure and love the idea of mixing travel and writing. Perfect for those looking for an escape to Mexico during February.
Highlights: This conference draws famous media personalities in addition to some great faculty for the workshops. It is not just a literary conference, but also a cultural experience. Don’t miss the live storytelling performances and the legendary fiesta, which Barbara Kingsolver has called “one of the ten best parties I’ve ever attended in my life.”
Where: San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
When: February
Website: sanmiguelwritersconference.org
7. Sewanee Writers’ Conference
The longest event on this list, spanning twelve days, Sewanee is built on a workshop model. Each participant is assigned a workshop that meets every other day, combining lectures and informal exchanges. Each one is led by two faculty members, but attendees can also meet with faculty one on one. The focus of this conference is on finishing submitted work, not generating new pages.
2016 faculty: Jill McCorkle, Alice McDermott, Robert Hass, Mark Jarman, Sidney Wade, Naomi Iizuka and Dan O’Brien
Why you should go: This conference is great for those looking for an immersive workshop experience with room and board included.
Where: Sewanee, Tennessee
When: July
Website: sewaneewriters.org/conference
8. VONA
