If a quotation lacks a page
reference, you can assume it's
the same page as
the previous quote. (And you'll usually be
correct.)
If
it appears as
<code> text, that means it's purely the product of my
snarky
mind, and seemed at the time I wrote it to be too much of a
comment on the notes
to be set as part of the notes
themselves. Or it's meta like these lines. Or I
was in tricky territory
interpreting the book, so I put down my best guess or skipped it.
I
didn't take any notes on the introduction.
Start with your childhood
Write down memories
Sit down at approximately the same time every day
Neurosis neurosis neurosis (p 7-9)
Upon review, you may cringe a lot, but something good will shine like a gem--and you don't mind throwing out the rest, which is dreck,
Neuroses return, but you can use them as material
Publication is no great thing
Two major concepts follow as next two chapters
When neuroses strike at writing time, AL turns to one-inch picture frame, on the principle that that's all she needs to write down: as much as can be seen through the one-inch frame.
"All I'm going to do, for example, is write that one paragraph that sets the story in my hometown in the fifties, when the trains were still running." (18)
Faced with a report on birds due the next day, her father advises her despondent brother: "just take it bird by bird." (19)
All good writers write shitty first drafts. "Very few writers know what they're doing until they've done it." (22)
The first draft is the "child's draft" done with no mind paid to who will see it.
No holds barred, put down everything. No telling what will come out and what you need to get through to make it come out.
Example: AL's process writing food reviews
A friend says
the first draft is the down draft--you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft--you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy. (25-26)
Before writing shitty first draft: Quiet the voices in your head (the parts of your internal dialogue that discourage or critique your writing--"The Critic," "The Censor"). Sit quietly and let them start. Isolate one voice (for there are many, apparently as many as you have relatives and bad teachers). Visualize it as a mouse, then visualize a jar can drop the mouse into. Do so. Repeat. Visualize the mice clambering to get at you across the glass lid. Now give the jar a volume knob and turn it all the way up for a bit to hear the clamor, then mute it, visualize the silent lunging, and get to work.
"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor," is what keeps you from writing the shitty first draft.
I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it. (28)
It's a kind of fear of messiness, something you try desperately to avoid.
But tidiness is the opposite of life--it's the picture of something already done, not alive--"held breath, of suspended animation" (29)
Perfectionism is the psychological analogy to muscles' cramping around an injury. "They cramp around out wounds--the pain from our childhood, the losses and disappointments of adulthood, the humiliations suffered in both--to keep us from getting hurt in the same place again..." (29-30)
Perfectionism keeps us circumscribed in tight patterns, away from experimentation, from experiencing life directly.
So
perfectionism is better understood as needing things to be just so so
that going through them isn't painful--like the gait/limp you adopt
when your leg is injured--than as an obsession with quality.
These
aren't very thorough or, therefore, very convincing. I'm sure they're
*true* as far as they go--boiling down as they do to "be aware of the
perfectionist inside you and by God or by your damn self write a lot in
spite of it until you've proven to yourself that you need not fear the
sloppiness of the first draft." But the mice in the jar was a much
better hack, technique to keep working in spite of perfectionism.
The goal is to work up to the point where you keep slogging even when you've lost the muse--the "beckoning finger of smoke in cartoons that rises off the pie...into the nostrils of the sleeping man...crooks its fingers and the...man rises and follows, nose in the air." (31)
On the days when the muse isn't there, you "follow it as best you can, sniffing away." Eventually you take pride in the effort and your persistence, and this is what brings you along better than the muse or inspiration can.
You'll still make messes, but the point is that a) you're making, and b) the mess has value: it's the first step.
"Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism." (32)
This example, writing about school lunches, show how shitty first drafts of short assignments "yield a bounty of detailed memory, raw material, and strong characters lurking in the shadows."
So she and the class write about lunch, but decide even that's too broad, so they write about just the contents of their lunchbags.
the point: details you'd forgotten pop out.
No way to tell if any of this is "usable." You're looking to generate nuggets, "there might just be one sentence or one character or one theme that you end up using. But you get it all down." (37)
So AL ends up remember this outcast boy who sat by the fence--she'd forgotten him until the sandwich caste system writing led her to him in memory and tomorrow--though she probably won't use the apricot jam analysis for anything more important than a writing instruction book--she'll have that boy in mind as she gets down to work on her novel.
Write a lot about topics that can be almost arbitrary, as long as they have some hold on your dark places. Write to release things you've kept bottled up, not knowing you had them. Write shitty--not even first drafts, just fishing expeditions. Look for the stand-out characters, themes, phrases. Those are clues to what you should be writing about.
(This
book is getting hard to outline "steps 1,2,3a,3b, 4." But systems are
for wussies. Still, a rough chronology of where the shitty first draft
ends and the better second draft begins could be helpful for starters.)
Summary
First drafts develop slowly, like a Polaroid. You hang onto the images
and aspects that grab you while you keep looking for more, which come
into focus slowly. After some pursuit, you figure out what your piece
is about. It clarifies.
Also like Polaroids, characters take time to get to know.
General: The Emotional Acre
Everybody has an "emotional acre" that they can cultivate however they
want. AL is vague on just what this metaphor points to, but I think it
means the demeanor with which one meets the world. Are you a grumpy old
cuss? It's at least partly because you tend your emotions that way.
Same with the terminally friendly, the curious and thoughtful, the
sunny and bright, the perfectionists, the reluctant leaders, the rabid
ideologue, the theory fetishist, the self-inventor.
Which attitudes toward the world do characters cultivate? Are these attitudes portrayed consciously? (Do they identify themselves by these attitudes as the rabid ideologue does?) Do they let their acre just go to seed?
Specifics
are important, of course. Every kind of specific.
Specific: You're going to have to let bad things happen to characters you like. General lesson: Because characters have characteristics, and therefore behaviors, there will be consequences of these behaviors. Don't hide from the consequences in your story.
Salient details are better than pages and pages of dry description.
Methods for familiarizing yourself with characters:
Example: AL's own character is revealed by with what (and why) she indoctrinates her child. "It would tell us about her current politics and the political tradition from which she sprang, her people pleasing, her longing for peace and her longing to belong, her way of diluting rage and frustration with humor, while also using her child as a prop..."
Estleman in _Writing the Popular Novel_ kind of disputes this.
Major characters (including narrators) should be reliable in most instances, shouldn't be playing tricks on the reader.
I
don't know exactly what this means except that bullshit like the
narrator-who-dun-it in that _Ackroyd_ book is absolutely wrong. Well,
also distancing techniques that avoid directness with the reader for
reasons that aren't purely aesthetic--stuff that I do a lot--that
doesn't make for much of a trust relationship.
Do more listening than dictating to them. Don't bend them to your will too readily--find out what they're about.
Again, don't try to assign a plot to your characters--let the plot grow out of the characters.
"What plot is: what people will up and do in spite of everything that tells them they shouldn't." (55)
Character is a better vehicle than plot for showing "what life is about from your point of view." (55) A mechanical plot is already bound to be less than real.
What your character cares about most in the world.
The stakes are revealed through some action you come up with for that purpose. Then the plot comes about as a function of the characters' attempts to grab, keep, find the stakes.
Stakes are crucial to an interesting plot. "Think of a hockey player--there had better be a puck out there on the ice, or he is going to look pretty ridiculous." (56)
AL stares off into space while
her characters play her a theater-of-the-mind. She pictures herself as
the "designated typist," whose only real role is that of recorder. A
metaphor: she holds the "lantern while the kid does the digging." The
kid is her personified unconscious, of which more will be said later though
she doesn't bother to introduce him here,
the "writer part of AL out of whose way she so assiduously tries to
stay.
Plot will piece together over days as you watch your characters interact. Don't worry that the process comes and goes. Worry about getting what comes to you down on paper, moving the story forward, and put off perfecting continuity and transitions until later.
It
seems that that "later" is right now
Making the story read "in a smooth and seamless way" starts by keeping in mind that the material must work on its own from the reader's point of view.
Other people can help you here, tell you "if the seams show, or if you've lurched off track..."
Let trusted readers' comments guide you when deciding when to cut bait on errant plots and plot points. (See chapter 22, "Someone to Read Your Drafts.)
is done through drama: "setup, buildup, payoff." (59) Buildup seems to be most important for our discussion here: character must always be moving forward, even if only just a little, or audience goes.
Don't fake character in order to force the plot along. Remember that readers want a kind of reliability in characters (see last chapter). If you find you've been faking it, you need to turn inside again to find out who the characters are.
"Brings all the tunes you have been playing together in one major chord." (61)
"There must be a killing or a healing or a domination" (61). These can be figurative.
It needs to feel inevitable, which is achieved by not focusing too tightly on a preconceived climax, but letting it be revealed as you follow your characters.
ABDCE: Action, Background, Development, Climax, Ending. Action first, to compel reading, the characters' backgrounds, who they are. Development shows us what's most important to them, which leads the plot to the climax, then the ending where the changes and their meaning are evaluated.
(Which is more on character with a few fitful ways that dialogue reflects character and especially vice-versa)
Good dialogue is a refreshing break from description--it is apparently a pleasure to read dialogue.
Bad dialogue will ruin a piece.
Dialogue: your sense of how the character talks; the stylization says as much as the words. Dialogue "should be more interesting and concise and even more true" than speech. (65)
"Sound your words out loud." This will lead to paying attention to others' speech when about in the wide wide world.
Remember that each character speaks differently, and the differences reflect the people they are.
Put together two people who are trying very hard to avoid each other. (As they're afraid of what they might say, you can see that good dialogue is also what isn't said.
"your characters may become impatient with your inability...to keep up with all they have to say." (67)
By finding the character's voice, you define the character. But it's not a conscious process.
How to find voice: (Using the example of a boy and a girl on the street) (see p. 68)
Seed a scene: put two
characters together and sprinkle in some elements you might like to
have in the scene. Why not
make them things you like that you want to shill for?
Follow the characters and listen to them, getting their dialogue down.
At some point, you'll realize that you know them better and that the early dialogue was crap--but don't change it till the rewrite.
Don't draw characters from fiction or movies, draw them from your own observations of actual people.
You'll have compassion for them if you draw them right. You should understand all your characters this way.
While discovering the voice, you might realize some aspects you gave the characters in the beginning have changed. It's amazing, but trust what the dialogue tells you.
Doubleplusstar this one: "this is the nature of most good writing: that you find out things as you go along. Then you go back and rewrite." (71)
The unconscious gives you the snippets you create characters from. AL thinks of the writing unconscious as a child (she also recommends a Dr. Seuss character) who makes the character and hands it to you through the door of the cellar. The only way to receive them from the kid is to relax and eliminate the critics (mice in a jar). To "some extent, you're just the typist. A good typist listens." (72)
You may want to come up with another metaphor for your unconscious collaborator.
No
shit?!
Is usually ugh. Opt out. At least be careful with it.
You may get started easier or better sometimes if you concentrate on setting, taking a break from character.
A room is a "showcase of its occupants' values and personality." (74) "Every room gives us layers of information about our past and present and who we are."
If you don't know what a setting would look like, call up somebody and ask like AL did this once with a garden she wanted to write and a gardener.
Last sentence: "You can see the underlying essence only when you strip away the busyness, and then some surprising connections appear." (84)
Just as AL didn't really know who the old people in the convalescent home were when she had only visited them a couple times, you often won't really know your characters are first and you'll have to start, start again.
Just as Pammy, AL's friend who was dying of cancer, wasn't actually defined by being physically unable to sign checks, you'll find that the accidents, the "packaging," aren't at all the character.
This
is an important something to remember when writing about people who are
types--they're people first and they probably won't even be that type
forever--remember Don Cheadle in _Boogie Nights_ taking on a thousand
guises, each of which was a *clue* to him, but a tangential clue. You
can see a lot about what people *want* through their guises, but that's
only part of who they *are*.
AL had a horrible time with one book--the second draft was rejected, so she got depressed, but then rallied, rewrote the whole thing, stopped protecting characters, murdered her darlings, the whole bit. She turned it in and it got rejected again. She flipped and went boozing, then went to her editor's place and ranted about what a great book it was--or could be--start to finish, going chapter by chapter about the magic that was happening in the book. When she calmed down, he suggested that she write a treatment based on that rant, because the rant was compelling, unlike the drafts. She successfully parlayed the treatment into a final draft.
(from pp 91-92)
"You just do." (93)
There's so much cleaning up to do, suggestions to take, mismatches to fix, having the manuscript "weeded and pruned and rewritten." You do a lot of it, and you're always finding things to fix. But at some point, you realize that you've used all the energy you've got for this project and that you're done.
Summary: Your job as a writer
is to present people correctly, so you must observe them. When you get
it right, your reader will recognize
a character as real, but you can't present characters like that if you
don't know and respect your damn self, so you've got to practice that.
Then you've got to be open to observation, to seeing the world fresh,
to being caught up in things outside yourself (Compare
Ortega y Gasset's "Intellectual love" in _Meditations on Quixote_.)
with "so much focus given to each syllable of life as life sings
itself...that kind of attention is the prize." (102)
Your writing should be driven by your desire to share what you know to be right. This "moral point of view" needs to be distinguished from having a moral, and if your belief can be stated in one sentence, write that sentence instead. (What probably happens is that you intuit something that is true, but rather than observe and pay attention a la the last chapter, you find in your mental repertoire a folk saying/bromide/cliche that seems to fit and you take that away instead. (This parenthetical brought to you by Ch. 16.))
After you've been writing for awhile, you'll become more and more interested in "your characters [acting] out the drama of humankind." (104) This drama comes about because some things work and some don't--and your take on those things is your moral point of view.
Jeanne Moreau explains what we humans are faced with: "The winds of solitude roaring at the edge of infinity." What's your take on how people behave in the face of this? That's your moral point of view.
"Moral" isn't about adopting
God's code in this instance, it's about finding yours. When you're
writing truths that you believe, it's easier to see what beliefs drive
your characters. (Their
assumptions, creencias.)
Characters who are organically driven to be good are inspiring to
people in a way that a goody two shoes or unmotivated hero isn't. It is
"the acknowledgement that in the midst of ourselves there is still a
good part that hasn't been corrupted or destroyed..." (106)
If you don't have a passion for your moral positions, they won't energize your writing.
Life (modern
life?) is crisis, so good
writing is about the important topic of making one's way through the
morass--individually and communally. Don't mistake your material
obsessions ("fasting and high colonics" (108)) for what you care
passionately about. Instead (?)
write about freedom... narrative
coherence ceases for the rest of the chapter--Freedom is good and good
to write about.
When you don't know where to go
in your writing, "listen to your broccoli," give up trying to force it
and listen quietly to your intuition. Which
is probably the unconscious kid in the cellar trying to give you
pieces, if we're trying to be systematic.
You lost your intuition, or your dialog with it, as a child when you learned that the voice of truth isn't often wanted, especially when it's speaking aloud.
"It is essential that you get it back." (111) Essential because when you're blocked, your conscious rational mind won't see any reason to keep going. You need to have faith that you can sit and expect to have the voice tell you which direction to go.
Finding the right metaphor for your intuition is key to using it. AL just likes "broccoli" because it's wacky enough to disarm.
"Intuition"
is different for AL than it was for that other great proponent of the
gut: Captain Kirk. For both, it's the
internal voice that clamors for some action that reason doesn't
recommend, but for Kirk, intuition was overwhelming, a feeling that
"logical" response was wrong but also that his cowboy tactics were
right, and compellingly so. AL's intuition is just a whispered hint
from the unconscious about where the character or story goes next, it's
just what ends up happening when you set your characters free on the
stage of your mind.
Whatever metaphor you choose, make sure it's not one (like a horse) that you control. Your taking the reins gets in the way.
After you've followed your intuition, you step out and go over what you wrote, and sure it'll need work, and sometimes you've totally fucked it. That's why the conscious mind is there: to fix things.
K-fucked. In stereo. Channel 1 is unhelpful self-regard, egotism, puffery. Channel 2 is destructive self-hate and all the fears you have about your lack of talent, will, and worth.
All this self gets in the way
of listening to your characters or intuition or little voice. Or
whatever you've supposed to be listening to. Thanks for making your
scheme so easily trackable, Anne.
(No telling how much of this is facetious.)
First notice that KFKD is
on and want to turn it off. Sounds
a little 12-steppy, doesn't it?
Ritual can help bring about
quiet. AL recommends new-age/catholicky things like burning stuff and
altars , but probably the
lucky socks from _How To Write a Movie In 21 Days_ would work, too.
Breathe. Consciously, deeply, follow your breath, all that rot. (AL tires to distance herself from types that would usually recommend breathing, but swears it works.)
After you've successfully quieted yourself, distractions will appear. Gently put yourself back on task after they've come and gone. Do this by closing your eyes and getting quiet again--you know, through breathing.
You will know when you've reached the stage where you can hear your characters above the chatter.
Tuning out the KFKD and tuning in your characters is like realizing yourself to be in step with the flow of writing. Getting antsy (like AL did when invited to fly to NYC on short notice) is a sure sign that you're not in step.
The straw-Gulf Stream analogy
says that if the straw is aligned correctly, it will channel the Gulf
Stream. If aligned improperly, it gets in its own way fighting the wind
--or it's the wind's bitch.
Not too clear on what the Gulf Stream represents, whether intuition or
the world or both or the circumstances part of the myself and my
circumstances equation.
It's part of the KFKD playlist.
When you can laugh at it, you're on the road to healed.
AL had a terrible case of it. Then she talked about it a lot and started getting over it piece by piece, little by little, and she wrote about it since it was there. And she accepted it and it didn't bug her anymore.
This
chapter may be a parable
Lists can be frustrating, can just be reminders of the things you didn't do while you're writing down another list, but as bad as they are, they're better than no lists.
You should write things down and AL recommends index cards.
Keep index cards and pens all over the house and in the car and in your pocket.
Write down ideas, images, strange things, beautiful things, dialogue, transitions, quotes, other things you overhear.
Even the great moments you'll forget, so jot down a few words to remind you when you've had an experience.
Write things down immediately--you won't remember them when you get home (unless you will, in which case AL hates you).
Writers will constantly find things around them seem to present themselves as writing fodder. Ideas come fast and furiously, and even if you thing one won't go away, write it down.
Don't feel bad about writing things down (if this is an obstacle for you).
What happens after you've written it down:
Even a small reminder can bring back a flood of memory, like AL's reminiscence of her aunt's lemonade pitcher.
One trouble with writing can be transitions. You can leave some space for transitions and maybe one will come to you--and you write it on a card when it comes.
Lots of cards get thrown out--the idea gets used or it wasn't so great, or it doesn't make sense because you were asleep or on drugs.
People love it when you call them up asking for information that they can provide.
Calling people for research is a good way not to become completely warped by the solitary lonely writing life.
Writers are like children.
Every day they need discipline, but also every day they need a break.
So set a quota for writing, but think of calling people as your break. (Good
premise, but a forced, weak conclusion.)
Sometimes you come to a point in the writing where you can't go forward without some information about place or history or method or something. You figure out what you need to know, who would know it, and you call this person.
*If they're some kind of character or a good conversationalist, you can get material from them just by writing down what they say.
Eventually, you want your material read, just so you can see what people think of it (and any concomitant help that can provide). You will consider workshops and conferences, and classes.
Some good reasons to attend a class or workshop:
The odds of famous writers you take classes from or run into at conferences loving your shit and hooking you up are against you. Better to think of classes and conferences as friendly support.
But sometimes, be warned, they're not so friendly. Which isn't helpful to your average unpublished writer.
If you're all like "Fuck that" to having a bunch of fellow wannabes give you shit about your work, maybe you should start a writers group.
Friendly pressure to produce. The right kind of encouragement (i.e., from people you've grown to trust, who will use a light touch, who know what you're going through and have no need to preach, who won't even joke about bad things because that's not what you need right now.
Which
seems like a damn good question that's not asked enough. What is the
next thing you do?Some disagree, but AL thinks you want someone who will read your close-to-final drafts and give detailed comments. At the very least it will let you know whether you're on the right track.
When they report back, it's going to sting like a sonuvabitch at first, which is okay. Just play through it and (we hope) it will turn into love. Warm love.
Such readers are like midwives--they help get the story you want to tell out of you.
They are important intermediaries--they tell you honestly whether you're dressed up enough to go out.
AL goes through all sorts of hell when she sends her drafts to friends, but the good one hold her hand though the resentment and walk her though the story. You need to be sure your work is A-#1-Prime before sending to agents and publishers, after all.
Having a reader gives you a real idea of your work's effect on other people, information you should take into account going into the final draft.
Similar to putting together a writing group--but only one person; so it's like a date you're asking for. So you may get devastated.
If someone you know really likes your work, ask them, and perhaps offer to reciprocate.
Keep plugging until you have a reader or two. (AL has two.)
AL is optimistic that you'll find a reader, because everyone she knows has.
Of
course, nobody she knew voted for Nixon.
The pressure of your anticipated audience or editor may be causing you block. So if you're stuck, write part of your (or your character's) history as a letter to someone.
It will focus you on images from the past and on getting them down. It will get you interested in your subject and you'll throw yourself into it.
Block sucks. You despair of writing anything worthwhile ever again, of being capable of action at all. And it hits at the worst times, when you're too tire or busy to fight it.
You get disenchanted with yourself, knowing that you're just the man behind the curtain pulling some rods, unimpressed by the giant televisor and colored smoke.
Block is the wrong
metaphor--you're not a raging river
thwarted by
some big stone in your way--it's that you're empty, there's no more
material for the unconscious to work with.
So instead of fight it, you've got to accept it--you're empty and you've got to fill up again.
So write a page of whatever each day--dreams, memories, blather--and let it go while you do something else.
The something else should be something that you are really alive--"present"--for. You're trying to tack up feeling and experience, remember. So participate in something.
As a freshman writer, there's so much inertia calling for you to give up that it's crucial you commit to finishing things you start, to slogging through, doing whatever it takes to finish some things. Even in the midst of block, you've got to commit--Jot down a little every day, stay committed to your project till the block passes and you can finish.
Surrender yourself to destiny. You will be called, but you can't force yourself. Just remain open and do whatever Jesus puts in front of you.
Chill on the unoriginality pity party. No matter how many times it's been said before, you're going to say it in a new way. You unconscious is going to hand you something one day, and all you've got to do is be ready to run with it.
Don't try to help the unconscious out. Just go out and be receptive t the world and ready to be receptive to the unconscious.
Publication isn't the only reason to write. (And it's overhyped anyway.)
You can still get a lot out of writing even what doesn't get published.
Case in point (and this
chapter's raison): AL has written books as love letters to people who
were dying. Don't let the
fact that they were both published make you think bad things about this
section's premise. Hah.
While her father was dying, AL wrote about life in the house, the parts that were different, strange, the way people coped. She had her father read it while he could and he reacted well.
But she also wrote the stories because she couldn't find the book she was looking for, something honest and funny about families with cancer. So it was a kind of present to people in similar situations.
Same thing with her book on the baby, which she put together for her dying friend Pammy. It was a present to her, but also to single mothers who might find themselves in AL's position of not finding any books that told the truth about childrearing.
(It's definitely worthwhile to write portraits of your friends, to try to capture your special moments with them.)
viz Toni Morrison: "The function of freedom is to free someone else" and that's what you do by telling the previously hidden truth so that others can recognize it. (193)
Writing personal stories tip: make the shitty first draft as self-indulgent and effusive as you need to to get everything down, then take out the excess in later drafts.
Writing presents for people directly makes you write "carefully and soulfully" (194) (like writing letters, previous chapter), so of course it makes good stories.
It's okay to write in someone else's voice for awhile--you're just borrowing it and it can lead to finding your own voice.
But you want to find your voice as soon as you can, because you're not fully expressing yourself until you do.
Derivative styles lead to stories that don't explore the dark side, the nooks and crannies, the forbidden places--stories that play it safe.
It's by exposing those parts that you're afraid to that you really connect with people in writing. Writers are unique people in that their role is to mine these forbidden depths that most people avoid.
Your own voice is necessary to do this, but doing this is also necessary to finding your voice because you'll only find it when you write courageously without submitting everything to the psychic censors' review.
Why does the truth need to come in your own voice? Because otherwise it lacks the quality of good writing that convinces a reader; form doesn't fit content quite and readers get put off and wary because of that.
You're a rambler, someone who feels ill-at-ease and lost in the world, "homesick" (200) or homeless. The thing that keeps you apart from the world is the buried truth you aren't expressing. When people start opening the "forbidden door," they find they have a home in the truth.
And you get to the truth via "your anger and damage and grief." (200) You avoid the dark places, but this leaves you avoiding presence in the rest of the world as well. When you acknowledge those buried truths, you begin to live in the moment. "And that moment is home."
Annie Dillard says every day you have to throw all your best stuff into your writing, everything that's inside of you, with no thought of saving it up or doling it out in pieces, and then you'll have more the next day, but if you get parsimonious with the good stuff, you'll lose it.
AL only gets "any sense of full presence" when she throws herself into the work and shoots her "literary, creative wad on a daily basis." (202)
Give your best material up each day (to the page, doofus, not to the ether) and more good material will replenish it.
"There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver."
Books are like children,
alternatively loving and ungrateful, unaware of your status as their
creator. But you have to nurture them anyway. As
Ted Nugent says, sometimes when you give the world your best you get
kicked in the teeth; give the world your best anyway.
Giving love and attention to
your book or toddler gets you "out of yourself" (203), probably by
giving you a reason to do the right thing that doesn't have to do with
craven self-interest. (I'm
willing to entertain notions that it's enlightened self-interest, but
that seems very not-Lamott.)
AL thinks this process is the secret to happiness--which makes this
lesson a non-publication reward for writing.
Speaking specifically of giving to the world--and not just your characters or book, AL has two things that inspire her to give.
There was a boy who had to think about it, but agreed to die that his sister might live. (Nobody made it clear that he was expected to fully recover from the one-pint blood transfusion.) Giving should be done that fully and that naively.
Next
comes some stuff about "sophisticated innocence" that I think, though
it doesn't say, is supposed to be a brave alternative to easy cynicism
and snideness, a conviction that the simple right is worth fighting for
and preserving.
You give your hard-won sophisticated innocence away to people in hope that it lets them find a home in reality, too.
You can put a character in danger by having them unable to face reality, to be numb and numbed like that reader you're trying to save. Note that in real life most people stay in this state through any number of things that Dr. Drew will yell at you about--compulsive anything, addiction, codependency...
So how does your character escape the soul doldrums? Maybe it's just not possible for that character to do so. It sure is hard for real people, it seems.
But maybe you can dig that character out with something your find in her. Of course, to do this you'll have to find it in yourself first. And then you've got something really huge to give away.
Yes,
this is almost certainly a sly reference to Jesus Christ. But it might
have metaphorical value anyway.
Publication will make you less happy than you think. You think it will disappear the doubt and pain and be automatic payback to your enemies, and make you the superconfident writer you know is buried inside you.
AL's experience is that it's more of an ego roller-coaster, with lots of opportunities for your self-regard to get real ramped up on accomplishment and/or praise and then get shot down by bad press and the pure disappointment of nobody really standing up to take notice.
Then you've got to write again and worry really hard that you can't match your success, that you're a phony one-trick pony or about to hit the sophomore slump. And you've got to kind of forget about your having been published, because it's a kind of self-satisfaction that doesn't help you get the words down.
Eventually if you're lucky you come back to satisfaction with a job being done, with being one who writes, not just one who has written. "Total dedication is the point." (215)
There's satisfaction to be had from the writing and the having been published, but you pay for it with a treacherous lifestyle--the constant threat of someone wondering what you've written that they've heard of. The world will always give you ways to trip at your own parade.
Again, it's not a magic spell that publication casts on your motivation and self-esteem. The coach in Cool Runnings says "If you're not enough before the gold medal, you wont' be enough with it."
We're raised to want to be somebodies, but that's destructive to buy into since there will always be plenty of people somebodier than you.
the attention you'll get, even if publication is more star-studded than it usually is, will dazzle you and you'll go into fits when it goes away. And it's annoying and noisy in your head while you're so dazzled.
You'll long for peace that you can only get from within, but you'll be so overstimulated you won't know where to start. Once you find it in your heart, though, "the world can't take it away." (221)
Write about your childhood--you were open to the world then, and empathizing with your small self is good practice for empathizing in general
Becoming a writer = becoming conscious. Your presence and caring make the odds a lot better than what you're writing isn't trite and that it will strike a chord with the reader. Such a process defines the success of writing: it decreases the loneliness and confusion of the reader.
"Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique." (226) Don't avoid the past or the pain or be embarrassed by it. be embarrassed how old you're getting while avoiding it.
You've got to be vulnerable
if you're to pull off those moments of recognition in the reader. it's
very unlikely that those things about you that you're hiding make you a
freak--father, there's something heroic about bring them out in the
open for others to recognize in themselves. You still might step on
some toes, but fuck 'em, you're a writer, not a diplomat. "Truth is
always subversive." (Which
makes it funny that it's our nature to speak truth, unless something
about reality constantly undermines itself--but philosophy wearies me.)
Always "write out of vengeance [but] do so nicely." (226) If you've got massive traumatic memories, they're yours and it wouldn't be honest not to use them. Don't get caught libeling someone, though:
Writing is often a pain, but don't start whimpering. Take on the mantle of a writer and wear it full-time. You've chosen (should you so choose) a wonderful thing to do, so do it.
You're probably not going to be any Truman Capote; you might not even get published. You should write every day with all you've got anyway. You should write with passion and dedication because it's a good way to live:
Society is dying. Harsh!
But artists have it good, because they're really needed now, not as
prophets or reformers, but as bards, people who create communal
understanding. Even in the dark time, with your writing you create the
niche where you belong, you have your home in the truth, and you can
take a kind of stand there. You earned your niche by telling the truth;
as you live out of that truth, you can have focus, a reason--you'll
"finally know what you're doing." (234)
A lot of what you're doing will be dealing with your own words and deep dark places. Lots didn't make it past this realization.
This place of your is a special thing to have. Because you're present and you care, you'll feel a "secret feeling of honor" that you didn't have when you didn't know what you're doing.
Unfortunately,
this sounds a lot like being a hysterical politically active sort who
really believes that caring more than the next guy confers a
superiority over him and a right to rule. So don't get feeling like
your specialness means you can suddenly vote twice or anything. Keep it
secret.
Just getting down the truth on paper is honorable--think of the monks who copied the ancient texts and saved civilization hundreds of years later. Even if you haven't really written a prescription for anyone, the fact that it's down means it's a potential good. "Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining." (236)
You can get the words down with whatever attitude you like, but AL thinks the involved, lose-yourself way will cut to the quick more easily.
Life is a banquet, but you've got to create people's vision for them to believe it. Good writing is kind of a ramp into the interzone where we see life as abundant, where we're not closed off.
Becoming conscious, present, you are confronting the scary question of how much life you want to live and how much you want to shy away from--so don't think it doesn't take balls and time and making yourself do it.
As an artist, you get to create, you end up with satisfaction in the work and a product to show for it. You've got a mission when you're a writer and sometimes to go on with the mission you've got to tune out the voices that want you to do something else.
Writing--and reading it--show us that we're connected more than we thought. It may give us the courage to step out from the shell. Our lives can become expansive though writing and reading, and our souls can grow bigger and encompass more.
Also, no matter how cold and mean the world is, writing allows us to show others and ourselves how to face the weather with an attitude we choose.