Hello bookish friends. I hope you had a lovely weekend and that you’re excited for the Thanksgiving holiday later this week. Thanksgiving has never been a favorite of mine, but I do appreciate long holiday weekends and secular holidays. We should have more of those.
I know many of you are writers out there, and I wanted to pass along some of the best writing advice I continue to return to when writing my own work. Maybe it will be helpful for you, too.
“This is my lodge.” - Bill Roorbach, adapted (and possibly apocryphal) from Chief Crazy Horse.
Bill gave us a lecture in class one day about the importance of claiming space for your writing work - even going so far to label it as work. If someone asks you if you’re busy, and you say you’re working, then they won’t question what you’re doing or try to distract you. Might as well use America’s hyper-capitalistic overly-independent workaholic culture to our advantage, right? This culminated in Bill recounting a story of how Crazy Horse, whenever he would walk into a new location, would slam his staff on the ground and declare, ‘This is my lodge.” Now, I have no idea whether that is true or not,1 but the idea of declaring wherever I am to be my writing desk has stayed with me.
How to use in your writing: Carve out space and time to write. It can be anywhere, just make it yours. Command your space - don’t let anyone distract you from your work.“Use concrete, sensory details.” - Tim Weed, from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction.
I have taken so many workshops with Tim, and have learned so much from him over the years. His Novel-In-Progress workshop at Grubstreet was the first workshop I took both after moving back to Boston and at the writing center itself. However, this particular advice comes from a discussion of John Gardner’s craft book, The Art of Fiction.
Now, I need to get this out of the way: there is much in Gardner’s book that I do not agree with. Some of the writing is very sexist, and the overall tone is condescending and patronizing. However, I do have to agree with his thoughts on the ‘vivid, continuous dream of fiction.’2 They are as follows:
“A true work of fiction does all of the following things, and does them elegantly, efficiently: it creates a vivid and continuous dream in the reader’s mind; it is implicitly philosophical; it fulfills or at least deals with all of the expectations it sets up; and it strikes us, in the end, not simply as a thing done but as a shining performance.”
How many times have you read a book and felt engrossed? As if you transported to another world, another time? *That’s* the continuous, vivid dream of fiction. Conversely, how many times have you been thrown out of a book, realizing that something isn’t possible or logical? As writers, we don’t want that. One easy way to that, as Tim often reminded us, was to use concrete, sensory details. Use all five of the senses, not just sight.3 It is truly underrated how quickly using sensory details will shortcut your brain into thinking you’re in a specific place. Try it for yourself, I promise you’ll be surprised at its success.
How to use in your writing: Use all 5 of the sense to incorporate concrete, sensory details into your work. Don’t just rely on sight. This will go a long way to developing that vivid dream of fiction.“Don’t get rid of parts of speech.” -
, on adverbs.Ann gave a craft lecture every semester, and I was immediately relieved to hear her say this. I like adverbs! I have a lot of Leo in my chart! I can be hyperbolic and overly dramatic! Don’t take my adverbs away from me!!
I took this advice to mean something else, too: you can’t start breaking the rules until you know the rules first. Yes, everyone overuses adverbs. Yes, they can be flowery and overblown. Stephen King excoriates them in On Writing. I mentioned this in my post on Eats, Shoots and Leaves, but as writers, we shouldn’t be throwing out parts of speech. It’s a part of our toolkit. The key with adverbs is to use them wisely. Ann’s example was one I return to often - use an adverb if it conveys additional meaning that the verb doesn’t convey. Like: whispers loudly, or tiptoes noisily, or something of the like. I keep this in the back of my mind whenever I get to -ly happy.How to use in your writing: Don’t neglect adverbs, but don’t overuse them, either. Make sure they are enhancing your verb by providing meaning that the verb doesn’t already have.
Now looking at this list, that’s a lot of men, so let’s finish with some writing advice I’ve gotten from women. Bonus because I have neither attended lecture with nor met Anne Lamott.
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” - Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Bird by Bird is such a lovely book. It’s so reassuring and completely understands the neuroses that pervade every writers psyche. The major quote that gets repeated from this is what I cited above. It boils down to: don’t be afraid to tell your story. You own it. No one else will have your story to tell. And don’t worry about what other people will say, either. You can’t please everyone, and also, maybe they shouldn’t have been jerks/acted like a crazy person/done something so deranged to warrant inclusion in a novel or memoir. Just saying.
How to use in your writing: Take this as reassurance. You’re allowed to tell your story. Even if you think someone will stop you, they won’t.
That’s it my friends. I hope some of this advice lands for you. As always, take what works and leave the rest. What writing advice has been helpful for you? Anything that I’ve missed? Let me know in the comments!
Here’s a picture of my friend’s new puppy4 to send us into the turkey day holiday.
And have not managed to find any convincing sources on the internet.
Another footnote doing it’s job! The Art of Fiction. John Gardner. Page number uncertain because I’m not getting up to get the book.
Humans are visual creatures, and sight is the sense we rely on the most. You’re forgiven for defaulting to those details in your work (I know I certainly do), but try to mix it up every once and a while.
As you can see, I have zero problems with using cute animals as bribes.