Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I've been in many a fiction workshop, received and given many a critique, and never have I heard advice as simple and as poignant as this: trust yourself. So often I have found, when reading my work or the work of others, that I'm looking for something to say or something that needs to be improved upon rather than reading with an open channel as a relatively neutral third party. Sure, I have reactions to what I'm reading, but those reactions are dulled under the blade of criticism.
I like the idea of reading as a meditation, openly, noticing what's coming up and then going back to uncover the why. Thank you for this!
Yes and the idea that we can get BETTER at that micro-reading - we can sense smaller inflections in our preferences...almost like going into the same swath of woods every day and getting better at hearing the soft noises in there...
"...like going into the same swath of woods every day and getting better at hearing the soft noises in there..." Thank you so SO much for this, (and everything else thus far). It is a tough call - the further into the woods one goes it becomes harder to hear those soft sounds without panicking that the path is lost completely. But trusting that they are always there is something to work towards!
This makes so much sense. Your post has given me so many 'a-ha' moments. With every reread, I have begun to see my story better and moulded it more in to what I had originally intended. Not anywhere near the final product, but this post gives me hope. 😊
I love this observation! I have felt greatly frustrated over the years with workshopping, with getting feedback that looks for “something to say or something to be improved upon” i.e. a sort of zombie nightmare over what a fresh reader minus that dulled blade of weary criticism has to say. I want to be that fresh reader because if writing is anything it is reading. I am going to try this technique this week, as I approach that pile of personal essay submissions languishing in my inbox.
Someone referenced an interview in NYT with K. Laymon below and this comment struck me. In my work, I want to implicate the reader somewhat and that can meet with resistance: “ I’ve told you this many times. I’m going to keep saying it. I read “Heavy” and I was angry. I was angry at how vulnerable you were and how powerful you were. I was angry that you kept pushing me to think and feel at the same time. Because like a lot of intellectuals, I prefer to do one or the other. And even then, only on my own terms. And like you just kept insisting that we do both. And then you wrote it in a voice that was undeniable, which I just think of as the ultimate act of creation, when I can argue with you, but I cannot deny you.”
Tressie McMillan Cottom interviewed Kiese Laymon and said that to him. I felt that when she said it. I recommend that anyone who wants to write or read a sentence listen to the interview. I've listened to it three times now. Wow!
I don't know about anyone else here, but my internal device that distinguishes truth from bullshit (that "P/N meter") has gotten rusty with years of 9-5 work. I guess my question is, How do we maintain a sense of truth in an 8hr/day+ situation that requires nonstop, well, bullshit? I don't know if my question makes sense....
I have some ideas on this and am excited to hear what you have. I thinking trusting gut reactions comes naturally, being able to name them takes practice (and then feels as if it comes naturally), however, I think, in writing, I'm still sorta struggling with the "where." Eep.
The part after my talking about "having some ideas" is a long sidebar to that first thought. *One of those emojis that is laughing with eyes closed and a tear shaped sweat drop*
I wonder, when does that bullshit slip away, and you feel you’re really here? Fully present, trusting? Maybe it’s biting into a delicious sandwich, or laughing with a friend, or reading a beautiful poem, or seeing the first shoots of green after a long difficult winter, knowing the world is coming alive again. Or something else entirely!
I ask because it sounds like it isn't just truth, but the challenge of trusting oneself you're speaking to? One of my teachers, Heather Martin, says that when we feel we can’t trust ourselves or our instincts (or our P/N meter), we might remember moments of trust. Those times when we were fully here, without doubt. And when we’re in those trusting moments, we might notice and appreciate that trust (or genuine connection) is present. It's a way to encourage and cultivate trust within ourselves. In my experience, it's easier said than done! But perhaps, little by little, we might learn to shed some of that workaday bullshit, and reconnect with the innate wisdom we each have inside us.
If you know it's bullshit, then it seems you have maintained your sense of truth, or even strengthened it, no? It's an internal truth thing, not the persona you show the world. How you act in an office is, well, acting.
Hi Benjamin, staying with your feelings and trusting your inner compass may be a start.... I know work life can be frustrating, when you cannot express yourself and your vision, but it's all there in a moment of silence, in the stillness inside you when you take time to be here and to read George's and others' posts, or when you read a story you love. Trust...
Hi Benjamin, it's such a good question and I can really identify it. My job doesn't really require much bullshit but it's very much oriented around timing and target achievement and that's the head I struggle to switch off when I'm writing and editing
so true....it helps me to pretend nobody else exists. I'm always crippled by my anticipation of what other people are going to see/think. Even if absolutely nobody is paying attention to me!
George's post and all of your comments about it are a double expresso when you didn't know just how much you needed it. There is so much to discover in every word, phrase and sentence - not only about what we believe works in writing, but just in who we are. I knew all of this, once, and I used to listen carefully and respect what I heard. Time, life, and some brutal workshops happened. :) It became harder to hear myself clearly, and over time, I fear not hearing anything at all. But we can hear ourselves again if we remember we are supposed to listen. Hopefully this makes sense. Thank you all.
I always sensed there was magic in re-writes and this has illuminated a possible explanation. The iceberg analogy is so helpful. My full writer’s mind is not just right now, it stretches out over time, and to mine all the gold from my idea, I need to bring my developing story with me over time.
I also feel like the trusting of my own sanity, that I’m responding to the writing a certain way for a certain good reason, is key. It’s easy to forget this and it’s nice to see it articulated here in today’s lesson.
And of the “strong desire to make something beautiful”. Yes, damnit. Just yes.
Wow, Stephanie. Just, wow. Yes. (How ironic that I’ve erased about 10 versions of this reply to a post on editing, all bc your comment has once again left me struggling to communicate how much it resonates with me.) Thank you for your words.
Dear colleagues, please feel free to email me if you're at a stage in a story when, according to George, your positivity meter is high throughout, and you're ready for an open-minded and friendly critique partner. I want to connect with 2 or 3 writers who genuinely want to trade chapters or full manuscripts.
Great - and we are working on ways to form pods within this community - stay tuned for this as well. I can see already that getting some reading groups together, in which community members can share work with one another, is going to be key, if we want to move from the abstract into the particular.
Glad to hear this is in the works. My kneejerk reaction when this all began was: "I hope someone starts a google classroom so we can start seeing what we are all working on and reading!"
I find that i can read one of my stories one day and my positivity meter is high. The next day it may be just the opposite. So, when my negativity meter is high, (which it often is) what I find that helps is I read someone else's work and think about how much kinder and more objective I am when reading their work, then I slip into reading my own work and try to keep the same softness, but still be able to constructively criticize it. Once in a while I'll hit a day when I feel very reasonable about my own work. On those days I try to do a lot of revising. Usually I'm not reasonable. I either think, "Wow, this is amazing!" or "Wow, this is the suckiest, most embarrassing drivel ever written." It's probably somewhere in between these two.
Would like to make an offer similar to James, but focused more on short and flash fiction! Although maybe better to wait until the "pods" mentioned in another comment are established... either way, just putting the idea out there for folks.
If people sort of self-form into pods, that's (maybe) more organic and better - but we will continue to investigate. The other possibility is doing it, you know, geographically, if meeting in person is desired/possible/safe.
I will just say that personally, one of the greatest challenges I’ve faced as a writer is finding “good” readers (I hope that’s not construed as an inability to receive critique or feedback - I’m STARVING for it) but I find, as this very post of yours brings up, that often writers (who we know are readers!) will super-impose “rules,” conventional wisdom, their own ideas, bias, projections, and, as someone mentioned above - they are not truly open. They have preferences that get in the way of reading, both in their own reading choices and as writer readers. I am a generous reader, as well as writer and so crave like-minded fellows.
Yes! I find the best kind of reader is, in many ways, like a good parent: able to provide resources, support, and encouragement for the story to become the best version of itself, rather than what the reader thinks an ideal story is based on their own idiosyncratic criteria. Am dying for readers who operate this way (the former, not the latter).
I'd put in a big vote for geographical! Also, I wanted to say that I don't know how you are keeping up with all the responses! I find it overwhelming :)
I wonder if a Discord with opt-in channels as various "rooms" for pods might work well with this crowd? I see a decent amount of that from other Substacks and community-driven content creators. (Please excuse the supposition that you and the crew behind the scenes aren't already considering this.)
I also love the idea of both virtual and in- person pods. Good readers are worth their weight in gold and I’d be beyond the moon to find a community here to collaborate with in the mutual advancement of our craft and art.
I write flash and very short and definitely hope to connect with other writers here. Looking forward to how this plays out and I love that Dylan and James aren't waiting around.
I'd also be interested in sharing work and feedback in future weeks. (Revisions for my novel are due at the end of January, so now that my teaching semester is ending, I'll be entering a frenzied writing state, from which I'll only emerge for the family.)
I’m in! I’ve been slowly reshaping an unruly manuscript and could use readers. I’m looking to do the same for a few others. I’m new to Substack so am not sure how DM works yet.
Hey George, Ira Glass, if I'm not mistaken, goes into a speech on how when one starts as an artist, nothing they make seems quite to equal what they imagined for it, and he describes this as the problem of one's taste exceeding one's skill. An artist, he says, is someone who has or feels themself to have good taste in their medium, and the only way to bridge the gap between taste and skill is practice. I really like your idea of revision as a series of micro-decisions through which an artist imposes her taste on a story, and think it's another good solution to the above problem. Although I do wonder at what point in the taste imposing process a writer figures out that a story might not be inclined to work after all and relegates that story to her pile of phrases and thoughts that might later be incorporated elsewhere.
Aaron, I love the Ira Glass analogy but it, and George's original post, raise a question for me. I understand that all artists are, at bottom, in service to themselves - their muse, or whatever you want to call it - but when you write fiction, and make up stories which are driven by the desires and actions of characters, can we/should we make a distinction between writing in the service of those characters and writing in the service of ourselves? The same thing, ultimately, I guess, but is there any use in making even an artificial distinction for the purposes of story telling?
I say that we write in service of the story, no matter if it's about us or about people we make up. We exist as a conduit to help tell the story in the way that it can touch/affect people the most. My writing only approaches the level I hope for it when I take my desires for it out of the equation. In fact, I always joke that a story of mine isn't done until it's nothing like the original thing I'd envisioned when I wrote the first line.
Amanda, I think we may be saying similar things in different ways here. You are laying bear the intuitive behind the merely technical way in which I expressed this notion of the story taking precedence :)
Sarah, your question about 'can we/should we make a distinction between writing in the service of those characters and writing in the service of ourselves?' reminded me of something George wrote about in 'A Swim in a Pond in the Rain' where a worthy problem is never solved in the frame of its original conception. I think we start off by writing in service to ourselves (and what we think the story is and where it should go), but then bend our writing and editing to the story as it develops subconsciously/organically and takes on a life of its own. Writing, like all good art, should be transformative...
I like to think of myself as my characters‘ biographer. I operate as if, in a parallel universe, they exist — a bit like Horton Hears a Who — and I am the only one who is picking up their signal. (I do have irritatingly sensitive ears) If I get stuck or don’t know what happens next or feel I’ve missed something, I ask them. On a rational level, I know it‘s all me, but it feels different. I prefer feeling I’m helping the characters get their story out rather than feeling the hubris of inventing them and their entire worlds. Perhaps this makes me sound nuts, but it‘s worked so far, so I’m sticking with it. ☺️
After more than 50 years in the Bardo I am a lot humbler and lot less sexist. Also I didn't have time for music when I was alive but I love hearing the songs people play at their funerals.
The ol' taste/skill gap, chuckle chuckle. I am always reminded of Borges, who, if I'm not mistaken? Started going blind and could no longer consume content (read: read.) and therefore went off into his own world of imagination to produce works the likes of which the world had never seen? And Flannery O'Connor, who held that we've experienced enough by the time we're 15 to pursue a lifetime of story-making? And I ask...at what point (and how?) do I move beyond my taste and into myself(ish) self?? What a trip.
I taught art to kids for many years and watched as almost every one at some point crossed a line where they started comparing their own work to other's, and their work would immediately lose its magic. What I love about my writing community is that we are all on this journey trying to go back across that line, back to the magic of true, honest, creativity and communication.
I just read your post while enjoying a bowl of tomato soup and a warm ciabatta roll. All three -post, soup, roll- have left me feeling well nourished.
I appreciate your emphasis on the need to understand, articulate, and trust one's feelings. It took many years of therapy to get there but I have learned the value of not only knowing how I feel/respond to things but also in knowing the internal motivators of those feelings and behaviors. I am a former performer and have been trained to always be audience focused. I approach my writing from this same place. I'm often asking the question, "If I were the audience/reader would I like/dislike this?" But you have stretched and opened my thinking around this idea because I'm not sure I'm ever asking or thinking about why I might or might not like something. Hmm? Now, I'm wondering, if I already have a level of trust in this process, and therefore, I'm not thinking about this as much as I'm just doing it. I'll be rolling this around for awhile. Thanks!
Yes, I completely agree. I teach modern history and I sometimes ask my students to think about their feelings about the primary sources we read before they start to analyse them. If they don't acknowledge their feelings and think about where they come from, they can get in the way. I think the same thing is true when we read fiction.
Hiya again, George (I feel funny calling you George. I feel like I should address you as Professor or Sensei or something equivalently deferential),
My favorite bit of this: "In other words, becoming a better reader has something to do with accepting our own visceral opinions as being completely valid – the only possible place for meaningful literary criticism to begin.
Just as, in real life, if we are trying to figure something out, we have to first see how we’re feeling about it, and then accept those feelings (not deny them away)."
Thank you. Can this also apply to being a better writer? Sometimes I struggle with accepting the validity of my own opinions when A) it seems like others are positively bowled over by a published story they've read and I don't feel the same way about it at all or when B) it comes to my own work. I almost never trust my own opinion that something I've written is "good," whatever good means. I'd like to change that so I can free myself up to dig deeper. How do *you* know when something you've written is good? Do you have a set of criteria your own writing must meet?
What a great question, Janice. I think...this is hard to articulate. But I think that is one thing a writer is trying to "learn": "What are the distinctive mileposts that I learn to recognize in my work that tell me I'm on the right path?" Like, what do my best endings feel like, once I've accomplished one? I guess what I'd emphasize, truly, is that these are 1) highly personal/idiosyncratic, and 2) are feelings, not intellectual judgments, and 3) revising might therefore be understood as making sure that we have learned to take one of our stories to its absolute limit SO THAT we'll know what, say, a good ending feels like (to us).
Hiya, George. Apologies that I never thanked you for your response. I feel like your third point is key and it's something, as a still-emerging writer, I struggle with. And if I'm being entirely honest with myself, I'm a bit impatient with my revision process. I need to make peace with the fact that sometimes a story make take a long time to get to its 'absolute limit'. I've yet to produce something I feel super proud of and I think that's because I've rushed it and called it finished when it really wasn't. Sometimes, though, I go the opposite route and feel crippled by my self-doubt and leave pieces that may have potential sit for so long, I give up. I think I need a writing therapist. Do those exist? Haha. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts.
Thank you, Janice, I also toil with this question and maybe will forever. *facepalm*. I came across this interview with Helen Oyeyemi, whose work feels so free to me when I'm reading it! and I'm like, how did she do that? But there's a quote in the interview where she says she's more concerned with something being True than she is with it being Good. And I haven't been able to let that go, in a good way. Attaching full interview in case you find yourself with some spare time...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRH3CYMOR8s&t=1574s
Alex, that's a wise statement. I can understand why it's stuck with you. I've not read enough of Helen's work, but what I have read, yes, "free" is a perfect word to describe it. I do lack that freedom with my own writing. I always hold back and I'm sick of myself for doing it. And I do love a writer who can make you ask youself, "how did she do that?" Two writers who make me ask that question are Kevin Barry and Donal Ryan. They have very different styles of writing, but goodness what a treat to read them both. I always learn something. I highly recommend them if you've never read either of them.
Thank you for including the link to the interview. I've saved it to watch tomorrow.
I love that--what is true versus what is good. Reading this conversation keeps calling to mind a curious encounter I had a few times in my tai chi classes. The teacher in each case guided me to some place where I stood or moved in a new, unfamiliar way that they described as right or correct. When they asked me how it felt, I (surprised) said it felt "like nothing."
It's more important to be true than to be good. That is a signpost I can use, Alex, thank you! What I feel I need to learn is how to discern the difference between what is true and what is familiar.
Thanks for asking this question. Seeing people's answers is so helpful. I started making art about 5 years ago, and I struggle with this. Is what I make any good? Part of me dismisses the question, asking instead: did it feel good to make? Did it make me feel satisfied in some way? Did the making of it allow me time to be intentional, to pay attention, to breathe? If I can say "yes" to these questions, that is enough. But, then there's part of me that wants to know, "would others say what I'm doing is good?" And, as much as I don't want the answer to matter...it matters. (Same goes for the poetry I write.)
Hey, Scott. Thanks for this. I think your questions are quite good and I need to adopt them for myself. I'm an artist, too, and I've always been way more confident with my art than with my writing, even though I know some people won't like or may even hate what I create. I honestly have no idea why that is. For some reason I readily except that everyone's aesthetic tastes are different when it comes to art and I think 'so what?' if others don't like it. But with writing...well. I have a few trusted writer friends who offer me feedback on the rare occasions I ask for it and that does go a long way to helping me decide if I'm on the right track or not. Still, I'm scared of putting my work out there, but I'm working on that. Do you have trusted feedback partners for your writing? Also, do you have a webpage for your art? I'd love to see it.
I'm starting to think there is no objective 'good' in terms of quality. I mean, there are definitely style conventions and narrative approaches that make a piece more 'universal' (as opposed to personal - something that makes it more palatable to the masses), but that ultimately 'good' comes down to a matter of taste. If you find it good (i.e. you enjoy it, it evokes the kind of emotions you wanted it to, or captures an idea or essence in a way that shapes (or aligns with) your perspective on things, that the prose sings for *you*, etc), the best you can do is then hope others will share your taste, or that you convey it in such a way that stretches the audience boundaries (becomes a little less personal and more universal) so that the differences between your taste and theirs isn't as vast... I think there's a reason that many books considered great are of a style that was more palatable in its milieu than it is now (hence why adaptations are used to translate it for a more modern audience). Maybe instead of asking 'is it good?' we should ask 'does it hold something of value?' (but, I'm not sure that's a better, or easier, question to ask and answer!). I think this is why I like the Story Club's approach to writing better through *reading* better. We take time to gnaw on the bones of a story and see what moves us, what tickles our taste, what we find of value - so that we're more adept at doing the same when we edit our own stories.
Hi, Mikhaeyla. Thank you for your wise insight. I love "Maybe instead of asking 'is it good?' we should ask 'does it hold something of value?'" I agree that may not be better or easier to answer, because what is of value to one person may not be of value to another, but for me I think it would be a more productive, less subjective (for myself) and more encouraging way (again, for myself) of approaching my writing. It's more freeing and wide-open than looking at it from the narrow scope of 'good' or 'bad.'
Totally agree with this approach. I find good is almost always a matter of taste. I have friends who love books and are enthusiastic readers, yet I know if they loved it, I’ll probably hate it and vice versa. So who‘s right or who‘s wrong here? I think we all get to be right, which is wonderful as there is room for so many types of writing, given that there are so many readers who love different things. That said, I think George‘s point about pushing something to its edge is valid as well- how can we take this piece, which may be preferable to different people, as far as IT can go, whatever that means in that case? That seems a goal worth pursuing. „Is it good?“ on the other hand, never seems to give me something to get my teeth into.
What trips me up, what causes me anxiety, what halts production and confidence is often too much thinking. On top of that is this feeling that Over-Thinking and Moralizing are somehow necessary conditions (for me) to write.
I feel the weight of the idea that "the world doesn't need any more books, songs, poems, or stories." If we didn't write any more starting now, we'd be fine, and there would be still more than we can handle or need.
There will forever be more art than humans need. And I keep thinking:
So why add to the pile?
And if I'm adding to the pile, what is worthy of the pile?
If I'm adding to the pile, it better be worthy!
You must take care to "make it count" for something that "feels worthy."
Something that feels worthy ought to, at the very least, add to a conversation in some meaningful way.
Something that feels worthy ought to try and engage with the things it purports to be an extension of—awareness of influence, and tradition, and all that (the Anxiety of Influence).
And on and on...
I am trying hard to distinguish between asking these questions out of a sort of "aspirational vanity" (I want to be the next Big Name), and asking them as some form of RESPONSIBILITY we have as writers. As maintainers of this "Pile," these "Canons," this "Sum-Total-of Writing-in-the-World," do we not have some form of responsibility to it? A form of "Do No Harm," as it were that says "don't add to the pile needlessly."
My thinking on the “pile” is that it doesn’t actually accumulate in our real houses. Nobody has to trip over this pile or work around it. We’re not bothering anybody’s actual life with our writing as long as we’re not dropping manuscripts down everyone’s chimneys across the globe unbidden.
The pile isn’t exactly real, is what I mean. It’s conceptual. How could we ever determine the right amount of writing out there? What could cause a tipping point and what would the damage be?
What does seem more real is the worry that we’re too late to have our individual lives and experiences matter. Like, enough lives have been registered. Basta.
We’re all so weird and particular, though, and our specific permutations might make a matching art kidney for someone in need, so maybe it’s more risky for the collective if we don’t go for it.
I personally also don’t want to live with a “shut up, you’re not needed” cloud over my head, just as a way of life. I want to live somewhere that welcomes me—and I want everyone to live somewhere they’re welcomed, too—and if you can’t bring your thoughts to a place, you’re not really welcome there.
So I’m inclined to create the idea for myself that there’s plenty of room for what I want to say, and if I want to be responsible and of service I’ll just spend the time trying to say it in a way that’s fun, a way that lifts the collective spirit somehow.
Tina, you know I agree with you 100% here. I love the idea of it not physically accumulating in people‘s houses.
What I always think is, when someone reads a book they LOVE, what’s the first thing they do afterward?
If this person is me, they say „more of that, please!“
If I love a book and am in that sad place of having finished it and feeling disoriented back in the ‘real’ world, I’m desperately trying to get back in to the reading imaginal world.
I don’t think people read stories and think “great! Checked that theme off my list, so I never have to read something like it again.”
And since this is the case, there is room for more stories. As Tina says so well, we are a bunch of weirdos and we’re all going to approach things differently. For a voracious reader, this is a gift rather than a burden.
This is what I choose to think, anyway, because otherwise writing feels miserable and hopeless, and where’s the fun in that?
No one is going to drop dead if we don’t write our books, although we might end up creatively broken-hearted. This isn’t emergency medicine. So if that’s true, why not do this in a way we enjoy? We spend way more time writing a piece than any reader is going to spend reading it, except maybe Gerorge Saunders with his thoughtful slow treks through these stories. If we spend all this time on a story, I feel we deserve to enjoy that experience, and that doesn’t make it any less valid as a piece of writing. Otherwise, why bother?
"My thinking on the "pile" is that it doesn't actually accumulate in our real houses." - it does if you have a book habit! ;)
And we are "constantly dropping manuscripts down everyone's chimneys across the globe unbidden" - Substack tries to solve some of these problems. Still, any Media is essentially a hub of Unbidden Manuscripts.
"our specific permutations might make a matching art kidney for someone in need, so maybe it's more risky for the collective if we don't go for it." <- This, though! I feel like this is the argument I was waiting to hear, and I thank you for sharing it with us.
Over coffee this morning – scrolling though call-response gems on George’s latest post on revision I ran to everything from “icebergs”, “trust”, “beauty”, over-thinking”, to concerns about “making it count, it must be worthy”, "reading as a meditation”, and my two favourites; from Mike, “writing as a matching art kidney” and this on trusting our P/N meter from Benjamin… “How do we maintain a sense of truth in an 8hr/day+ situation that requires nonstop, well, bullshit?"
I wanted to keep reading but had to rush out of the house, into the car. And synchronicity delivered me this … Tressie Mcmillian Cottom was guest hosting Ezra Klein's NYTimes podcast. Her interview was with Kiese Laymon—two-writers talking for a full hour on the subject of revision; a gold mine of insight. Laymon recently bought back the rights to two of his books (at a price higher than he was initially paid) so he could revise, change, re-edit, re-write and republish them to reflect “where he is now at”. Fascinating conversation, then I was side-swiped by Cottom as she read from one of Laymon’s pieces about revision...
“In my own sloppy work on and off the page, I was beginning to understand revision as a dynamic practice of revisitation premised on ethically reimagining the ingredients, scope and primary audience of one’s initial vision. Revision required witnessing and testifying. Witnessing and testifying required rigorous attempts at remembering and imagining. If revision was not God, revision was everything every god ever asked of believers.” I love that. You elevated revision. You elevated revision to faith.”
I drove straight home, downloaded the transcript – all I could think was the Story Club folks would love this….
Thank you for this! Was immediately struck, in context of this conversation, with this from Tressie: “ I’ve told you this many times. I’m going to keep saying it. I read “Heavy” and I was angry. I was angry at how vulnerable you were and how powerful you were. I was angry that you kept pushing me to think and feel at the same time. Because like a lot of intellectuals, I prefer to do one or the other. And even then, only on my own terms. And like you just kept insisting that we do both. And then you wrote it in a voice that was undeniable, which I just think of as the ultimate act of creation, when I can argue with you, but I cannot deny you.”
Thank you for this link, Dorothy. I'm looking forward to listening. I'm especially interested in hearing thoughts about Laymon's rewriting, which bothers me a little. It seems that finally letting your work go is also important to the process.
I hear you Deb. Laymon maybe referring more specifically to his non-fiction, his essays. For example, he said his thoughts about Kayne has shifted dramatically over 5 years and he didn't want the legacy of that old POV. But I do think his approach translates to fiction too. It's is a wonderful way to re-frame editing; "a dynamic practice of revisitation" with an energy and openness to really look critically at your draft and elevating revision to a kind of "faith".
For me, the process of revision is more time consuming, complex, and filled with doubt than first drafts. So I'm buoyed by the idea of embracing the ideas of of faith and trust in revision.
> I feel the weight of the idea that "the world doesn't need any more books, songs, poems, or stories." If we didn't write any more starting now, we'd be fine, and there would be still more than we can handle or need.
I often think about this. There is so much content out there and so much passive consumption of it.
One reason to write is because you enjoy writing. You wouldn’t stop yourself from eating ice cream because so many other people have eaten, are eating, and will eat ice cream. Who cares! You enjoy eating ice cream, so eat it!
Another reason to write is, as Tina so beautifully put it, because your writing might be “a matching art kidney for someone in need.” I recently wrote an undergraduate thesis, and I remember being overjoyed several times upon finding *the right paper* to help me with my research. Oftentimes these were not widely cited, but they were just what I needed. Someone had systematically considered a problem I was thinking about, and there was all their work, on a platter, ready for me to take from as needed. Fiction works in a similar way.
If we are burdened by a particular sorrow or buoyed by a specific joy, it is wonderful when we find a story that expresses that experience. And there are so many particular sorrows and specific joys that we, as artists, have some duty to capture ours.
If nothing else, I already know that friends, and, perhaps in the future, say, people that went to the same schools as I did, can enjoy stories that capture *that* place at *that* time, which perhaps nobody else has done. Specificity is as wonderful a quality as universality.
As for all of your thoughts about worthiness: I feel it too. One of my lofty goals is to weave myself into the tapestry of literature--to connect to what has come before me and to make room for what will come after me (I have a background in science, so I’m thinking in the spirit of academic family trees and citations). I don’t want to be a braindead megaphone, spewing drivel that has no connection to the artistic landscape. But it takes trial and error to make the worthy thing. Say you write three novels and only the third is worthy. Well, you probably needed to write the first two to create the third. And how do you know whether you’re on the #1, #2, or #3? It’s likely you don’t, not until you’ve finished at least, so you might as well write it anyways.
This all hinges on what you mean by “adding to the pile.” If you are referring to writing and sharing with others, I say don't hesitate to do it! If you mean publishing or posting it somewhere, I don’t know what the right choice is. It’s easy to say, "don’t send out bad writing," but it can be hard to tell if your writing is actually bad or if you are being too hard on yourself.
“Say you write three novels and only the third is worthy. Well, you probably needed to write the first two to create the third.”
Thanks for shining a light on this bit, Alex! I can forget that all my failure pages aren’t the dead ends I think they are.
And I worry, too, Mike, about worthiness. Don’t want to make it sound like I don’t. I think it’s a good worry if it results in more dedicated work in place of a work stoppage.
Alex, your comment had a sting to it! Especially this: "f nothing else, I already know that friends, and, perhaps in the future, say, people that went to the same schools as I did, can enjoy stories that capture *that* place at *that* time, which perhaps nobody else has done. Specificity is as wonderful a quality as universality."
I've been struggling with memoir-in-stories about being the child or a Russian forced laborer mother and Russian POW born and raised in post-war Germany and then living on an American base, and how very specific that experience was, and who cares?
But I keep being driven to tell that story, and it almost seems like an ethical, not just an artistic challenge, to just TELL THE DAMN STORY of what the experience of coming up through three cultures simultaneously (not in order) especially three ENEMY cultures, is like and how that affects you, for better or for worse. And wondering if there are others wandering around who would read it and find resonance, as well as those who could abstract it to apply to themselves and feel that resonance, even if the circumstances are totally different. Your sharing made a difference and I thank you.
Argh - I keep deleting what I’m writing here… scared/shy? I’m so afraid of giving it life outside of my own head that I’m even afraid to try to tell you what it’s about…
There are some similarities to yours - also inspired by family, also sort of tied to Russia (more removed for me - grandparents / great-grandparents came to US in early 1900s.) Has to do with what gets passed down, how secrets protect or harm, how trauma hides in bodies, how memory is a living, creative force… there’s an heirloom that grounds the story (I say that as if it exists as a whole entity - it doesn’t. It’s a bunch of disparate fragments I’m trying to figure out how to turn into something cohesive.)
Hi Mike, thanks for your comments. I wondered have you ever read Karl Ove Knausgaard's book Inadvertent? It's about his experience of writing, and he's brilliant on this idea of worthiness and whether it has any value
Thank you, kindly, for alerting me to this. I was overwhelmed reading "My Struggle," but I have not returned to his more recent work. I will look it up. I am very interested in this question of value - I think Knausgaard showed there is great value in the seemingly mundane things of life...
I think that's an easy trap to get caught in, Mike. I find myself there often. But on the other side, and what always makes me keep writing regardless, is the thought of writing for a friend. Just one single person. If you are compelled to write, then I think that's enough. Because that instinct is there for a reason. Maybe writing with the thought of one person releases some of that weight. At least it always does for me! Maybe put the idea of the "pile" on the shelf :)
I still struggle with thought of 'the pile' and 'worthiness' - 'if someone is reading my work, when they could be reading [insert name of more accomplished, objectively better writer], have I done them a disservice?' and 'adding mediocrity to the world is not a noble pursuit' :) - but, I think, Laura, you are right - sometimes there are people out there who connect with your particular style, approach, narrative, ideas - and get something from it that they wouldn't from another writer. Art has many faces - it can enlighten, enrage, entertain, elucidate - and it travels many different, winding paths to reach the diversity of humanity. My work may not be right for everyone, but it could be right for someone.
General observation: this has got to be one of the best comments sections on the internet.
I agree, Daniel.
George,
Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I've been in many a fiction workshop, received and given many a critique, and never have I heard advice as simple and as poignant as this: trust yourself. So often I have found, when reading my work or the work of others, that I'm looking for something to say or something that needs to be improved upon rather than reading with an open channel as a relatively neutral third party. Sure, I have reactions to what I'm reading, but those reactions are dulled under the blade of criticism.
I like the idea of reading as a meditation, openly, noticing what's coming up and then going back to uncover the why. Thank you for this!
Yes and the idea that we can get BETTER at that micro-reading - we can sense smaller inflections in our preferences...almost like going into the same swath of woods every day and getting better at hearing the soft noises in there...
"...like going into the same swath of woods every day and getting better at hearing the soft noises in there..." Thank you so SO much for this, (and everything else thus far). It is a tough call - the further into the woods one goes it becomes harder to hear those soft sounds without panicking that the path is lost completely. But trusting that they are always there is something to work towards!
This makes so much sense. Your post has given me so many 'a-ha' moments. With every reread, I have begun to see my story better and moulded it more in to what I had originally intended. Not anywhere near the final product, but this post gives me hope. 😊
I love this observation! I have felt greatly frustrated over the years with workshopping, with getting feedback that looks for “something to say or something to be improved upon” i.e. a sort of zombie nightmare over what a fresh reader minus that dulled blade of weary criticism has to say. I want to be that fresh reader because if writing is anything it is reading. I am going to try this technique this week, as I approach that pile of personal essay submissions languishing in my inbox.
Yes....and it's so hard to give useful feedback on someone's story.
Someone referenced an interview in NYT with K. Laymon below and this comment struck me. In my work, I want to implicate the reader somewhat and that can meet with resistance: “ I’ve told you this many times. I’m going to keep saying it. I read “Heavy” and I was angry. I was angry at how vulnerable you were and how powerful you were. I was angry that you kept pushing me to think and feel at the same time. Because like a lot of intellectuals, I prefer to do one or the other. And even then, only on my own terms. And like you just kept insisting that we do both. And then you wrote it in a voice that was undeniable, which I just think of as the ultimate act of creation, when I can argue with you, but I cannot deny you.”
Tressie McMillan Cottom interviewed Kiese Laymon and said that to him. I felt that when she said it. I recommend that anyone who wants to write or read a sentence listen to the interview. I've listened to it three times now. Wow!
“Those reactions are dulled under the blade of criticism” … that! I’m right there with you on that one.
I don't know about anyone else here, but my internal device that distinguishes truth from bullshit (that "P/N meter") has gotten rusty with years of 9-5 work. I guess my question is, How do we maintain a sense of truth in an 8hr/day+ situation that requires nonstop, well, bullshit? I don't know if my question makes sense....
I have some exercises that take up this very valid point....stay tuned.
I have some ideas on this and am excited to hear what you have. I thinking trusting gut reactions comes naturally, being able to name them takes practice (and then feels as if it comes naturally), however, I think, in writing, I'm still sorta struggling with the "where." Eep.
The part after my talking about "having some ideas" is a long sidebar to that first thought. *One of those emojis that is laughing with eyes closed and a tear shaped sweat drop*
Thanks for your comment, Benjamin!
I wonder, when does that bullshit slip away, and you feel you’re really here? Fully present, trusting? Maybe it’s biting into a delicious sandwich, or laughing with a friend, or reading a beautiful poem, or seeing the first shoots of green after a long difficult winter, knowing the world is coming alive again. Or something else entirely!
I ask because it sounds like it isn't just truth, but the challenge of trusting oneself you're speaking to? One of my teachers, Heather Martin, says that when we feel we can’t trust ourselves or our instincts (or our P/N meter), we might remember moments of trust. Those times when we were fully here, without doubt. And when we’re in those trusting moments, we might notice and appreciate that trust (or genuine connection) is present. It's a way to encourage and cultivate trust within ourselves. In my experience, it's easier said than done! But perhaps, little by little, we might learn to shed some of that workaday bullshit, and reconnect with the innate wisdom we each have inside us.
If you know it's bullshit, then it seems you have maintained your sense of truth, or even strengthened it, no? It's an internal truth thing, not the persona you show the world. How you act in an office is, well, acting.
Hi Benjamin, staying with your feelings and trusting your inner compass may be a start.... I know work life can be frustrating, when you cannot express yourself and your vision, but it's all there in a moment of silence, in the stillness inside you when you take time to be here and to read George's and others' posts, or when you read a story you love. Trust...
Hi Benjamin, it's such a good question and I can really identify it. My job doesn't really require much bullshit but it's very much oriented around timing and target achievement and that's the head I struggle to switch off when I'm writing and editing
so true....it helps me to pretend nobody else exists. I'm always crippled by my anticipation of what other people are going to see/think. Even if absolutely nobody is paying attention to me!
It bet the P/N meter isn't rusty. It just needs to be cleaned off so you can use it again. 🙃
Agreed!
George's post and all of your comments about it are a double expresso when you didn't know just how much you needed it. There is so much to discover in every word, phrase and sentence - not only about what we believe works in writing, but just in who we are. I knew all of this, once, and I used to listen carefully and respect what I heard. Time, life, and some brutal workshops happened. :) It became harder to hear myself clearly, and over time, I fear not hearing anything at all. But we can hear ourselves again if we remember we are supposed to listen. Hopefully this makes sense. Thank you all.
Beautifully said:
"we can hear ourselves again if we remember we are supposed to listen."
I always sensed there was magic in re-writes and this has illuminated a possible explanation. The iceberg analogy is so helpful. My full writer’s mind is not just right now, it stretches out over time, and to mine all the gold from my idea, I need to bring my developing story with me over time.
I also feel like the trusting of my own sanity, that I’m responding to the writing a certain way for a certain good reason, is key. It’s easy to forget this and it’s nice to see it articulated here in today’s lesson.
And of the “strong desire to make something beautiful”. Yes, damnit. Just yes.
"to mine all the gold from my idea, I need to bring my developing story with me over time." so very well put
Wow, Stephanie. Just, wow. Yes. (How ironic that I’ve erased about 10 versions of this reply to a post on editing, all bc your comment has once again left me struggling to communicate how much it resonates with me.) Thank you for your words.
Dear colleagues, please feel free to email me if you're at a stage in a story when, according to George, your positivity meter is high throughout, and you're ready for an open-minded and friendly critique partner. I want to connect with 2 or 3 writers who genuinely want to trade chapters or full manuscripts.
Great - and we are working on ways to form pods within this community - stay tuned for this as well. I can see already that getting some reading groups together, in which community members can share work with one another, is going to be key, if we want to move from the abstract into the particular.
I am really interested in this, so I hope it works out!
I’m in!
So excited for this to start. :)
Glad to hear this is in the works. My kneejerk reaction when this all began was: "I hope someone starts a google classroom so we can start seeing what we are all working on and reading!"
Count me in, too!
Yes, please!
I find that i can read one of my stories one day and my positivity meter is high. The next day it may be just the opposite. So, when my negativity meter is high, (which it often is) what I find that helps is I read someone else's work and think about how much kinder and more objective I am when reading their work, then I slip into reading my own work and try to keep the same softness, but still be able to constructively criticize it. Once in a while I'll hit a day when I feel very reasonable about my own work. On those days I try to do a lot of revising. Usually I'm not reasonable. I either think, "Wow, this is amazing!" or "Wow, this is the suckiest, most embarrassing drivel ever written." It's probably somewhere in between these two.
Reading someone else's work--a wonderful suggestion!!
I know this feeling well! Beautifully put- basically, what you said.
Would like to make an offer similar to James, but focused more on short and flash fiction! Although maybe better to wait until the "pods" mentioned in another comment are established... either way, just putting the idea out there for folks.
If people sort of self-form into pods, that's (maybe) more organic and better - but we will continue to investigate. The other possibility is doing it, you know, geographically, if meeting in person is desired/possible/safe.
I love the idea of both virtual and in-person pods. I'm in.
Me, too.
I will just say that personally, one of the greatest challenges I’ve faced as a writer is finding “good” readers (I hope that’s not construed as an inability to receive critique or feedback - I’m STARVING for it) but I find, as this very post of yours brings up, that often writers (who we know are readers!) will super-impose “rules,” conventional wisdom, their own ideas, bias, projections, and, as someone mentioned above - they are not truly open. They have preferences that get in the way of reading, both in their own reading choices and as writer readers. I am a generous reader, as well as writer and so crave like-minded fellows.
Yes! I find the best kind of reader is, in many ways, like a good parent: able to provide resources, support, and encouragement for the story to become the best version of itself, rather than what the reader thinks an ideal story is based on their own idiosyncratic criteria. Am dying for readers who operate this way (the former, not the latter).
A little late to this party, but +1 to all this. Am seeking a feedback group that attends to the spirit of a story. Happy to join / help form.
Update: where we at on this?
I'd put in a big vote for geographical! Also, I wanted to say that I don't know how you are keeping up with all the responses! I find it overwhelming :)
I wonder if a Discord with opt-in channels as various "rooms" for pods might work well with this crowd? I see a decent amount of that from other Substacks and community-driven content creators. (Please excuse the supposition that you and the crew behind the scenes aren't already considering this.)
This is a great idea, although one hesitates to make the first move to see what is being developed...
I also love the idea of both virtual and in- person pods. Good readers are worth their weight in gold and I’d be beyond the moon to find a community here to collaborate with in the mutual advancement of our craft and art.
The in-person option DOES sound lovely!
I'd love that. I love reading new work.
I write flash and very short and definitely hope to connect with other writers here. Looking forward to how this plays out and I love that Dylan and James aren't waiting around.
I am very interested, but only with structure to ensure that the feedback is both useful and encouraging. I'm interested in what George has in mind.
I'd also be interested in sharing work and feedback in future weeks. (Revisions for my novel are due at the end of January, so now that my teaching semester is ending, I'll be entering a frenzied writing state, from which I'll only emerge for the family.)
I’m in! I’ve been slowly reshaping an unruly manuscript and could use readers. I’m looking to do the same for a few others. I’m new to Substack so am not sure how DM works yet.
I second this. It would be great to workshop some material with some of you fine folks.
A really good suggestion. My positivity meter is not high throughout, but I will definitely take you up on this offer sometime early next year.
Hey George, Ira Glass, if I'm not mistaken, goes into a speech on how when one starts as an artist, nothing they make seems quite to equal what they imagined for it, and he describes this as the problem of one's taste exceeding one's skill. An artist, he says, is someone who has or feels themself to have good taste in their medium, and the only way to bridge the gap between taste and skill is practice. I really like your idea of revision as a series of micro-decisions through which an artist imposes her taste on a story, and think it's another good solution to the above problem. Although I do wonder at what point in the taste imposing process a writer figures out that a story might not be inclined to work after all and relegates that story to her pile of phrases and thoughts that might later be incorporated elsewhere.
Aaron, I love the Ira Glass analogy but it, and George's original post, raise a question for me. I understand that all artists are, at bottom, in service to themselves - their muse, or whatever you want to call it - but when you write fiction, and make up stories which are driven by the desires and actions of characters, can we/should we make a distinction between writing in the service of those characters and writing in the service of ourselves? The same thing, ultimately, I guess, but is there any use in making even an artificial distinction for the purposes of story telling?
I say that we write in service of the story, no matter if it's about us or about people we make up. We exist as a conduit to help tell the story in the way that it can touch/affect people the most. My writing only approaches the level I hope for it when I take my desires for it out of the equation. In fact, I always joke that a story of mine isn't done until it's nothing like the original thing I'd envisioned when I wrote the first line.
I totally agree, Amanda.
Amanda, I think we may be saying similar things in different ways here. You are laying bear the intuitive behind the merely technical way in which I expressed this notion of the story taking precedence :)
Sarah, your question about 'can we/should we make a distinction between writing in the service of those characters and writing in the service of ourselves?' reminded me of something George wrote about in 'A Swim in a Pond in the Rain' where a worthy problem is never solved in the frame of its original conception. I think we start off by writing in service to ourselves (and what we think the story is and where it should go), but then bend our writing and editing to the story as it develops subconsciously/organically and takes on a life of its own. Writing, like all good art, should be transformative...
I like to think of myself as my characters‘ biographer. I operate as if, in a parallel universe, they exist — a bit like Horton Hears a Who — and I am the only one who is picking up their signal. (I do have irritatingly sensitive ears) If I get stuck or don’t know what happens next or feel I’ve missed something, I ask them. On a rational level, I know it‘s all me, but it feels different. I prefer feeling I’m helping the characters get their story out rather than feeling the hubris of inventing them and their entire worlds. Perhaps this makes me sound nuts, but it‘s worked so far, so I’m sticking with it. ☺️
That's exactly what happens when I pick up a guitar too - huge taste to skill gap!
Me too.
Somehow it's extra reassuring to hear Andre Breton express these human frailties. (:D Joking-but-not-joking. :D)
After more than 50 years in the Bardo I am a lot humbler and lot less sexist. Also I didn't have time for music when I was alive but I love hearing the songs people play at their funerals.
The ol' taste/skill gap, chuckle chuckle. I am always reminded of Borges, who, if I'm not mistaken? Started going blind and could no longer consume content (read: read.) and therefore went off into his own world of imagination to produce works the likes of which the world had never seen? And Flannery O'Connor, who held that we've experienced enough by the time we're 15 to pursue a lifetime of story-making? And I ask...at what point (and how?) do I move beyond my taste and into myself(ish) self?? What a trip.
Mary Karr talks about this in her book Art of Memoir! It's, of course, a dynamite read.
Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHrmKL2XKcE
I love this.
I taught art to kids for many years and watched as almost every one at some point crossed a line where they started comparing their own work to other's, and their work would immediately lose its magic. What I love about my writing community is that we are all on this journey trying to go back across that line, back to the magic of true, honest, creativity and communication.
I had that quote in my thesis. It resonated so much for me.
Oooo K.C.--the Ira quote?! What was your thesis? (Please link!)
It was in the intro to my MFA thesis. Why do you write sort of thing.
I remember that podcast!
George,
I just read your post while enjoying a bowl of tomato soup and a warm ciabatta roll. All three -post, soup, roll- have left me feeling well nourished.
I appreciate your emphasis on the need to understand, articulate, and trust one's feelings. It took many years of therapy to get there but I have learned the value of not only knowing how I feel/respond to things but also in knowing the internal motivators of those feelings and behaviors. I am a former performer and have been trained to always be audience focused. I approach my writing from this same place. I'm often asking the question, "If I were the audience/reader would I like/dislike this?" But you have stretched and opened my thinking around this idea because I'm not sure I'm ever asking or thinking about why I might or might not like something. Hmm? Now, I'm wondering, if I already have a level of trust in this process, and therefore, I'm not thinking about this as much as I'm just doing it. I'll be rolling this around for awhile. Thanks!
Yes, I completely agree. I teach modern history and I sometimes ask my students to think about their feelings about the primary sources we read before they start to analyse them. If they don't acknowledge their feelings and think about where they come from, they can get in the way. I think the same thing is true when we read fiction.
Yes, that why now feels urgent. We'll all be rereading our own writing through that lens, I think.
Hiya again, George (I feel funny calling you George. I feel like I should address you as Professor or Sensei or something equivalently deferential),
My favorite bit of this: "In other words, becoming a better reader has something to do with accepting our own visceral opinions as being completely valid – the only possible place for meaningful literary criticism to begin.
Just as, in real life, if we are trying to figure something out, we have to first see how we’re feeling about it, and then accept those feelings (not deny them away)."
Thank you. Can this also apply to being a better writer? Sometimes I struggle with accepting the validity of my own opinions when A) it seems like others are positively bowled over by a published story they've read and I don't feel the same way about it at all or when B) it comes to my own work. I almost never trust my own opinion that something I've written is "good," whatever good means. I'd like to change that so I can free myself up to dig deeper. How do *you* know when something you've written is good? Do you have a set of criteria your own writing must meet?
What a great question, Janice. I think...this is hard to articulate. But I think that is one thing a writer is trying to "learn": "What are the distinctive mileposts that I learn to recognize in my work that tell me I'm on the right path?" Like, what do my best endings feel like, once I've accomplished one? I guess what I'd emphasize, truly, is that these are 1) highly personal/idiosyncratic, and 2) are feelings, not intellectual judgments, and 3) revising might therefore be understood as making sure that we have learned to take one of our stories to its absolute limit SO THAT we'll know what, say, a good ending feels like (to us).
Hiya, George. Apologies that I never thanked you for your response. I feel like your third point is key and it's something, as a still-emerging writer, I struggle with. And if I'm being entirely honest with myself, I'm a bit impatient with my revision process. I need to make peace with the fact that sometimes a story make take a long time to get to its 'absolute limit'. I've yet to produce something I feel super proud of and I think that's because I've rushed it and called it finished when it really wasn't. Sometimes, though, I go the opposite route and feel crippled by my self-doubt and leave pieces that may have potential sit for so long, I give up. I think I need a writing therapist. Do those exist? Haha. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts.
Thank you, Janice, I also toil with this question and maybe will forever. *facepalm*. I came across this interview with Helen Oyeyemi, whose work feels so free to me when I'm reading it! and I'm like, how did she do that? But there's a quote in the interview where she says she's more concerned with something being True than she is with it being Good. And I haven't been able to let that go, in a good way. Attaching full interview in case you find yourself with some spare time...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRH3CYMOR8s&t=1574s
Alex, that's a wise statement. I can understand why it's stuck with you. I've not read enough of Helen's work, but what I have read, yes, "free" is a perfect word to describe it. I do lack that freedom with my own writing. I always hold back and I'm sick of myself for doing it. And I do love a writer who can make you ask youself, "how did she do that?" Two writers who make me ask that question are Kevin Barry and Donal Ryan. They have very different styles of writing, but goodness what a treat to read them both. I always learn something. I highly recommend them if you've never read either of them.
Thank you for including the link to the interview. I've saved it to watch tomorrow.
I love that--what is true versus what is good. Reading this conversation keeps calling to mind a curious encounter I had a few times in my tai chi classes. The teacher in each case guided me to some place where I stood or moved in a new, unfamiliar way that they described as right or correct. When they asked me how it felt, I (surprised) said it felt "like nothing."
It's more important to be true than to be good. That is a signpost I can use, Alex, thank you! What I feel I need to learn is how to discern the difference between what is true and what is familiar.
Thanks for asking this question. Seeing people's answers is so helpful. I started making art about 5 years ago, and I struggle with this. Is what I make any good? Part of me dismisses the question, asking instead: did it feel good to make? Did it make me feel satisfied in some way? Did the making of it allow me time to be intentional, to pay attention, to breathe? If I can say "yes" to these questions, that is enough. But, then there's part of me that wants to know, "would others say what I'm doing is good?" And, as much as I don't want the answer to matter...it matters. (Same goes for the poetry I write.)
Hey, Scott. Thanks for this. I think your questions are quite good and I need to adopt them for myself. I'm an artist, too, and I've always been way more confident with my art than with my writing, even though I know some people won't like or may even hate what I create. I honestly have no idea why that is. For some reason I readily except that everyone's aesthetic tastes are different when it comes to art and I think 'so what?' if others don't like it. But with writing...well. I have a few trusted writer friends who offer me feedback on the rare occasions I ask for it and that does go a long way to helping me decide if I'm on the right track or not. Still, I'm scared of putting my work out there, but I'm working on that. Do you have trusted feedback partners for your writing? Also, do you have a webpage for your art? I'd love to see it.
I'm starting to think there is no objective 'good' in terms of quality. I mean, there are definitely style conventions and narrative approaches that make a piece more 'universal' (as opposed to personal - something that makes it more palatable to the masses), but that ultimately 'good' comes down to a matter of taste. If you find it good (i.e. you enjoy it, it evokes the kind of emotions you wanted it to, or captures an idea or essence in a way that shapes (or aligns with) your perspective on things, that the prose sings for *you*, etc), the best you can do is then hope others will share your taste, or that you convey it in such a way that stretches the audience boundaries (becomes a little less personal and more universal) so that the differences between your taste and theirs isn't as vast... I think there's a reason that many books considered great are of a style that was more palatable in its milieu than it is now (hence why adaptations are used to translate it for a more modern audience). Maybe instead of asking 'is it good?' we should ask 'does it hold something of value?' (but, I'm not sure that's a better, or easier, question to ask and answer!). I think this is why I like the Story Club's approach to writing better through *reading* better. We take time to gnaw on the bones of a story and see what moves us, what tickles our taste, what we find of value - so that we're more adept at doing the same when we edit our own stories.
Hi, Mikhaeyla. Thank you for your wise insight. I love "Maybe instead of asking 'is it good?' we should ask 'does it hold something of value?'" I agree that may not be better or easier to answer, because what is of value to one person may not be of value to another, but for me I think it would be a more productive, less subjective (for myself) and more encouraging way (again, for myself) of approaching my writing. It's more freeing and wide-open than looking at it from the narrow scope of 'good' or 'bad.'
Totally agree with this approach. I find good is almost always a matter of taste. I have friends who love books and are enthusiastic readers, yet I know if they loved it, I’ll probably hate it and vice versa. So who‘s right or who‘s wrong here? I think we all get to be right, which is wonderful as there is room for so many types of writing, given that there are so many readers who love different things. That said, I think George‘s point about pushing something to its edge is valid as well- how can we take this piece, which may be preferable to different people, as far as IT can go, whatever that means in that case? That seems a goal worth pursuing. „Is it good?“ on the other hand, never seems to give me something to get my teeth into.
SO, true, Janice. I feel exactly the same way in both cases (A and B)…
What trips me up, what causes me anxiety, what halts production and confidence is often too much thinking. On top of that is this feeling that Over-Thinking and Moralizing are somehow necessary conditions (for me) to write.
I feel the weight of the idea that "the world doesn't need any more books, songs, poems, or stories." If we didn't write any more starting now, we'd be fine, and there would be still more than we can handle or need.
There will forever be more art than humans need. And I keep thinking:
So why add to the pile?
And if I'm adding to the pile, what is worthy of the pile?
If I'm adding to the pile, it better be worthy!
You must take care to "make it count" for something that "feels worthy."
Something that feels worthy ought to, at the very least, add to a conversation in some meaningful way.
Something that feels worthy ought to try and engage with the things it purports to be an extension of—awareness of influence, and tradition, and all that (the Anxiety of Influence).
And on and on...
I am trying hard to distinguish between asking these questions out of a sort of "aspirational vanity" (I want to be the next Big Name), and asking them as some form of RESPONSIBILITY we have as writers. As maintainers of this "Pile," these "Canons," this "Sum-Total-of Writing-in-the-World," do we not have some form of responsibility to it? A form of "Do No Harm," as it were that says "don't add to the pile needlessly."
My thinking on the “pile” is that it doesn’t actually accumulate in our real houses. Nobody has to trip over this pile or work around it. We’re not bothering anybody’s actual life with our writing as long as we’re not dropping manuscripts down everyone’s chimneys across the globe unbidden.
The pile isn’t exactly real, is what I mean. It’s conceptual. How could we ever determine the right amount of writing out there? What could cause a tipping point and what would the damage be?
What does seem more real is the worry that we’re too late to have our individual lives and experiences matter. Like, enough lives have been registered. Basta.
We’re all so weird and particular, though, and our specific permutations might make a matching art kidney for someone in need, so maybe it’s more risky for the collective if we don’t go for it.
I personally also don’t want to live with a “shut up, you’re not needed” cloud over my head, just as a way of life. I want to live somewhere that welcomes me—and I want everyone to live somewhere they’re welcomed, too—and if you can’t bring your thoughts to a place, you’re not really welcome there.
So I’m inclined to create the idea for myself that there’s plenty of room for what I want to say, and if I want to be responsible and of service I’ll just spend the time trying to say it in a way that’s fun, a way that lifts the collective spirit somehow.
Tina, you know I agree with you 100% here. I love the idea of it not physically accumulating in people‘s houses.
What I always think is, when someone reads a book they LOVE, what’s the first thing they do afterward?
If this person is me, they say „more of that, please!“
If I love a book and am in that sad place of having finished it and feeling disoriented back in the ‘real’ world, I’m desperately trying to get back in to the reading imaginal world.
I don’t think people read stories and think “great! Checked that theme off my list, so I never have to read something like it again.”
And since this is the case, there is room for more stories. As Tina says so well, we are a bunch of weirdos and we’re all going to approach things differently. For a voracious reader, this is a gift rather than a burden.
This is what I choose to think, anyway, because otherwise writing feels miserable and hopeless, and where’s the fun in that?
No one is going to drop dead if we don’t write our books, although we might end up creatively broken-hearted. This isn’t emergency medicine. So if that’s true, why not do this in a way we enjoy? We spend way more time writing a piece than any reader is going to spend reading it, except maybe Gerorge Saunders with his thoughtful slow treks through these stories. If we spend all this time on a story, I feel we deserve to enjoy that experience, and that doesn’t make it any less valid as a piece of writing. Otherwise, why bother?
“I don’t think people read stories and think “great! Checked that theme off my list, so I never have to read something like it again.”
This never won’t be a comfort!
💗
"My thinking on the "pile" is that it doesn't actually accumulate in our real houses." - it does if you have a book habit! ;)
And we are "constantly dropping manuscripts down everyone's chimneys across the globe unbidden" - Substack tries to solve some of these problems. Still, any Media is essentially a hub of Unbidden Manuscripts.
"our specific permutations might make a matching art kidney for someone in need, so maybe it's more risky for the collective if we don't go for it." <- This, though! I feel like this is the argument I was waiting to hear, and I thank you for sharing it with us.
Yes, me too. Thank you, Tina!
I love your analogy, the “matching art kidney in need.”
Over coffee this morning – scrolling though call-response gems on George’s latest post on revision I ran to everything from “icebergs”, “trust”, “beauty”, over-thinking”, to concerns about “making it count, it must be worthy”, "reading as a meditation”, and my two favourites; from Mike, “writing as a matching art kidney” and this on trusting our P/N meter from Benjamin… “How do we maintain a sense of truth in an 8hr/day+ situation that requires nonstop, well, bullshit?"
I wanted to keep reading but had to rush out of the house, into the car. And synchronicity delivered me this … Tressie Mcmillian Cottom was guest hosting Ezra Klein's NYTimes podcast. Her interview was with Kiese Laymon—two-writers talking for a full hour on the subject of revision; a gold mine of insight. Laymon recently bought back the rights to two of his books (at a price higher than he was initially paid) so he could revise, change, re-edit, re-write and republish them to reflect “where he is now at”. Fascinating conversation, then I was side-swiped by Cottom as she read from one of Laymon’s pieces about revision...
“In my own sloppy work on and off the page, I was beginning to understand revision as a dynamic practice of revisitation premised on ethically reimagining the ingredients, scope and primary audience of one’s initial vision. Revision required witnessing and testifying. Witnessing and testifying required rigorous attempts at remembering and imagining. If revision was not God, revision was everything every god ever asked of believers.” I love that. You elevated revision. You elevated revision to faith.”
I drove straight home, downloaded the transcript – all I could think was the Story Club folks would love this….
Highly recommend the whole episode https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-kiese-laymon.html
Thank you for this! Was immediately struck, in context of this conversation, with this from Tressie: “ I’ve told you this many times. I’m going to keep saying it. I read “Heavy” and I was angry. I was angry at how vulnerable you were and how powerful you were. I was angry that you kept pushing me to think and feel at the same time. Because like a lot of intellectuals, I prefer to do one or the other. And even then, only on my own terms. And like you just kept insisting that we do both. And then you wrote it in a voice that was undeniable, which I just think of as the ultimate act of creation, when I can argue with you, but I cannot deny you.”
Thank you for this link, Dorothy. I'm looking forward to listening. I'm especially interested in hearing thoughts about Laymon's rewriting, which bothers me a little. It seems that finally letting your work go is also important to the process.
I hear you Deb. Laymon maybe referring more specifically to his non-fiction, his essays. For example, he said his thoughts about Kayne has shifted dramatically over 5 years and he didn't want the legacy of that old POV. But I do think his approach translates to fiction too. It's is a wonderful way to re-frame editing; "a dynamic practice of revisitation" with an energy and openness to really look critically at your draft and elevating revision to a kind of "faith".
For me, the process of revision is more time consuming, complex, and filled with doubt than first drafts. So I'm buoyed by the idea of embracing the ideas of of faith and trust in revision.
Love both Kiese Laymon and Tressie McMillan Cottom, thanks for sharing!
> I feel the weight of the idea that "the world doesn't need any more books, songs, poems, or stories." If we didn't write any more starting now, we'd be fine, and there would be still more than we can handle or need.
I often think about this. There is so much content out there and so much passive consumption of it.
One reason to write is because you enjoy writing. You wouldn’t stop yourself from eating ice cream because so many other people have eaten, are eating, and will eat ice cream. Who cares! You enjoy eating ice cream, so eat it!
Another reason to write is, as Tina so beautifully put it, because your writing might be “a matching art kidney for someone in need.” I recently wrote an undergraduate thesis, and I remember being overjoyed several times upon finding *the right paper* to help me with my research. Oftentimes these were not widely cited, but they were just what I needed. Someone had systematically considered a problem I was thinking about, and there was all their work, on a platter, ready for me to take from as needed. Fiction works in a similar way.
If we are burdened by a particular sorrow or buoyed by a specific joy, it is wonderful when we find a story that expresses that experience. And there are so many particular sorrows and specific joys that we, as artists, have some duty to capture ours.
If nothing else, I already know that friends, and, perhaps in the future, say, people that went to the same schools as I did, can enjoy stories that capture *that* place at *that* time, which perhaps nobody else has done. Specificity is as wonderful a quality as universality.
As for all of your thoughts about worthiness: I feel it too. One of my lofty goals is to weave myself into the tapestry of literature--to connect to what has come before me and to make room for what will come after me (I have a background in science, so I’m thinking in the spirit of academic family trees and citations). I don’t want to be a braindead megaphone, spewing drivel that has no connection to the artistic landscape. But it takes trial and error to make the worthy thing. Say you write three novels and only the third is worthy. Well, you probably needed to write the first two to create the third. And how do you know whether you’re on the #1, #2, or #3? It’s likely you don’t, not until you’ve finished at least, so you might as well write it anyways.
This all hinges on what you mean by “adding to the pile.” If you are referring to writing and sharing with others, I say don't hesitate to do it! If you mean publishing or posting it somewhere, I don’t know what the right choice is. It’s easy to say, "don’t send out bad writing," but it can be hard to tell if your writing is actually bad or if you are being too hard on yourself.
“Say you write three novels and only the third is worthy. Well, you probably needed to write the first two to create the third.”
Thanks for shining a light on this bit, Alex! I can forget that all my failure pages aren’t the dead ends I think they are.
And I worry, too, Mike, about worthiness. Don’t want to make it sound like I don’t. I think it’s a good worry if it results in more dedicated work in place of a work stoppage.
Alex, your comment had a sting to it! Especially this: "f nothing else, I already know that friends, and, perhaps in the future, say, people that went to the same schools as I did, can enjoy stories that capture *that* place at *that* time, which perhaps nobody else has done. Specificity is as wonderful a quality as universality."
I've been struggling with memoir-in-stories about being the child or a Russian forced laborer mother and Russian POW born and raised in post-war Germany and then living on an American base, and how very specific that experience was, and who cares?
But I keep being driven to tell that story, and it almost seems like an ethical, not just an artistic challenge, to just TELL THE DAMN STORY of what the experience of coming up through three cultures simultaneously (not in order) especially three ENEMY cultures, is like and how that affects you, for better or for worse. And wondering if there are others wandering around who would read it and find resonance, as well as those who could abstract it to apply to themselves and feel that resonance, even if the circumstances are totally different. Your sharing made a difference and I thank you.
I would read it, Nadja!
Amazing! Thanks! Writing it is a roller-coaster. If I may ask, what are you working on? Not that you have to be, to get a lot out of George's course!
Argh - I keep deleting what I’m writing here… scared/shy? I’m so afraid of giving it life outside of my own head that I’m even afraid to try to tell you what it’s about…
There are some similarities to yours - also inspired by family, also sort of tied to Russia (more removed for me - grandparents / great-grandparents came to US in early 1900s.) Has to do with what gets passed down, how secrets protect or harm, how trauma hides in bodies, how memory is a living, creative force… there’s an heirloom that grounds the story (I say that as if it exists as a whole entity - it doesn’t. It’s a bunch of disparate fragments I’m trying to figure out how to turn into something cohesive.)
Hi Mike, thanks for your comments. I wondered have you ever read Karl Ove Knausgaard's book Inadvertent? It's about his experience of writing, and he's brilliant on this idea of worthiness and whether it has any value
Thank you, kindly, for alerting me to this. I was overwhelmed reading "My Struggle," but I have not returned to his more recent work. I will look it up. I am very interested in this question of value - I think Knausgaard showed there is great value in the seemingly mundane things of life...
Thanks for the recommendation you've offered to Mike. I'm going to check it out.
I think that's an easy trap to get caught in, Mike. I find myself there often. But on the other side, and what always makes me keep writing regardless, is the thought of writing for a friend. Just one single person. If you are compelled to write, then I think that's enough. Because that instinct is there for a reason. Maybe writing with the thought of one person releases some of that weight. At least it always does for me! Maybe put the idea of the "pile" on the shelf :)
I love this notion, write as if I am writing to one person . Thx
I still struggle with thought of 'the pile' and 'worthiness' - 'if someone is reading my work, when they could be reading [insert name of more accomplished, objectively better writer], have I done them a disservice?' and 'adding mediocrity to the world is not a noble pursuit' :) - but, I think, Laura, you are right - sometimes there are people out there who connect with your particular style, approach, narrative, ideas - and get something from it that they wouldn't from another writer. Art has many faces - it can enlighten, enrage, entertain, elucidate - and it travels many different, winding paths to reach the diversity of humanity. My work may not be right for everyone, but it could be right for someone.
If someone is reading your work, they are reading it EVEN THOUGH they could be reading [that other guy]. Kudos! :-)