Chapter 3
Think Like a Writer
|
Writers are as varied as the colors in a box of crayons. Yet the good ones are cut from the same wax. They share a common belief: You can’t write well unless you know how to think well. For writing is nothing but thinking in its the purest form.
This idea shapes not only how a writer works but how he lives. In fact, how a writer works and lives are as inseparable as air is from breathing. Let's take a look at why that's so.
The great English writer Robert Graves penned novels, poems and critiques of world history, politics and culture. But when it came to counseling aspiring writers, he had but four words: “Learn to cultivate leisure.” Graves wasn’t advising his acolytes to lounge around the pool all day, sipping Margaritas. He certainly didn’t. The man traveled everywhere and read everything, including Homer in the ancient Greek. Hardly a leisurely pursuit.
Rather, what Graves mean was this: Make time to immerse yourself in life. Hear all, see all. Notice that some girls go barefoot, even when it’s below freezing, while others wear furry boots in the heat of summer. No detail is too small if it’s meaningful. The trick is to find the meaning and that requires the time to think deeply about life. With an army no bigger than the New York City police force, Alexander the Great conquered most of the civilized world in the 300 years before the birth of Jesus. His greatest moment came when he sent a mere 300 commandos to subdue a rebel army that thought it was safely perched atop a cliff in Uzbekistan. Alexander's commandos scaled the cliff, overwhelming the surprised rebels.
If he hadn’t been a warrior King, Alexander would have made a fine writer. He was the ancient embodiment of the writer’s credo: Less is more. The guy knew how to do a lot with a little.
Consider “less is more” as the Zen Koan of writing well. It represents an ethic that makes writers the sworn enemy of all pretense and bloviation. Writers worship clarity. They struggle to reduce all ideas, people and places to their essence. Writers say as much as they can in as few words as necessary. Writers are, above all, men and women of few words.
Like his fellow Englishman Graves, Benjamin Disraeli was no slouch, either. He busied himself running the country and writing histories and novels. Despite his awesome workload, Disraeli wasn’t so grave. He always credited both his artistic and political successes to his “strong sense of the ridiculous.” He tried never to take anyone – especially himself – too seriously. Hence, his preference for pirate garb and Turkish baths.
Whom or what configured the motherboards of our souls seems to have purposely crossed many of the wires. We’re forever shorting out, acting inconsistently and contradictorily. People’s behavior doesn’t add up neatly like the columns of a balance sheet. There’s always some unexplainable gap. How else to explain why Disraeli, a conservative who idolized the landed aristocracy, extended suffrage to the British working class and laid the foundation for the modern welfare state?
Writers try to capture such contradictions, not excuse or explain them away. You don’t have to pretend in your writing that life makes sense. Leave that to the experts. Lord knows there are enough of them today, pontificating on everything from economics to friendship.
Not that you should take experts too seriously. You’ll learn that most of them are wrong most of the time. Remember, it was highly paid experts who were certain Y2K would destroy computers worldwide and that the Pet Rock would be the hottest thing since the wheel. As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. If the future were predictable our service economy would collapse. There’d be little work for the legions of economists, financial planners, online pundits and late night TV soothsayers.
As an aspiring writer, rejoice in life’s unpredictable. It has kept writers employed for a millennium. A growing sense of the ridiculous, if left untreated, will fester into doubt. This is a good thing if you're a writer.
Think of doubt as a nagging parrot. It sits on a writer’s shoulder whispering incessantly. “Is this person telling me the truth? How can I verify what he’s saying. Are these documents believable and why?”
Don’t confuse this nagging with cynicism, believing the worst about everyone or everything. Rather, it’s an attitude a newspaper editor I once knew called a “healthy pessimism.” Writers assume nothing until it's proven.
Doubt is part of a never-ending struggle to remain independent in thought and deed. It’s a struggle that requires questioning yourself, continually asking: “Am I sure and why? What evidence supports my theme or point of view?” Let doubt keep you humble and humility will save you from the blindness of arrogant self-confidence.
“Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong,” wrote Philip Roth in his Pulitzer Prize winning novel “American Pastoral.” “The illusion that you may get it right is the perversity that draws you on.”
If Roth, one of our greatest living writers, can retain his humility, so can you. Arrogant self-assurance is a wet blanket that will smother any spark of ingenuity. Nurturing doubt can be a bit dangerous. A modest amount keeps you honest and humble.
But too much will strangle your initiative like kudzu enveloping a live oak.
A touch of courage helps to temper doubt. It inspires you to take chances, to wander away from cliché and convention, pushing the envelope of understanding, thinking the unthinkable. That’s how you gain the insight that drives a truly fresh voice.
Of course, taking chances is never easy. There are times when you’re going to end up in a ditch. "Writing is like driving a truck in the dark without headlights," said writer Gay Talese.
Still, if you’ve never felt lost or afraid when writing than you are not trying hard enough.
You have to learn to feel comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Take heart, though. All who wander are not lost. In fact, writers like to wander. They’re self-starters who are happy to find their own way.
Ever restless, writers tend to live life as a never-ending quest for the next good challenge. All the better if it’s one they’ve set for themselves.
For restless striver types, writing makes a worthy pursuit. That’s because writing is an ever-rising hill with no peak. If there’s no peak, you never reach the top, always leaving room for improvement. Indeed, it’s by challenging yourself – trying new genres, techniques, and voices - that your writing improves. Climbing that ever-rising hill is not unlike some kind of lifelong marathon. To ascend any distance requires rigorous training. Writers must learn not only how to push themselves; they must master how to weather hard but constructive criticism as well.
The key to benefiting from criticism is to embrace failure.
It sounds counter-intuitive, I know, because you've been mislead to
believe that failure is a bad thing. In fact, successful people from
all walks of life learn to see it as the boot camp of excellence. It's
only through trial and error, missteps and detours that one can grow
and improve. You can't stand tall until you've tumbled down a lot of
stairs. No understands this connection between excellence and failure
better than basketball legend Michael Jordon. Here's how he once put
it: "I've
missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost 300 games.
Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and
missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. That is
why I succeed."
Like
basketball, writing is often not a solo endeavor. Writing in particular
is too hard to do alone. Every writer needs a demanding yet supportive
coach - or a knitting circle.
Finding advice isn’t hard. Plenty of people – parents, friends, lovers, even rivals – will offer opinions about your writing. The problem is that most of it will stink.
How, then, to discern the diamond from the glass, the valuable from the worthless? The secret is to become your own best critic. That requires two things.
First, deafen yourself to mummery. Be wary of anyone, including your mother, who offers undeserved praise or likes everything you write. While well intentioned, such praise will soften your intellect like a rotting melon.
Instead, seek out voices that prompt you to stop and think: Are my facts right; have I fairly represented them and is my writing clear and persuasive? Don't expect to find many who can provide such constructive critique. But when you do find such people, embrace them.
Second, as suggested earlier, read the best. Discover writers you admire and explore their work. Study what makes it so compelling. It will tune your ear to hear the best in your own work. Words are the notes that make writing sing. That's why writers treasure them the way a gemologist does amethyst or malachite. Writers are forever on the hunt for new gems.
Words such as purl, sough and widdershins. A strong vocabulary makes your writing shine. Even seasoned veterans keep an ever-growing journal of vocabulary, gathering words from reading and conversation. I’ve been collecting words now for more than 25 years, having started when I was in college. Make gathering words a lifelong hobby, even an obsession.
Copyright© 2006 by Nec Aspera Terrent All rights reserved. Barking Dogwood Press, Atlanta, GA |
