I wrote an essay for a journal years ago. Might have been about 2,000 words. It was well received and I thought it was pretty good. Then it got more attention and another journal called, wanting to publish it in their special back page feature position. It was an honor. It was also limited to 1,000 words. I had to cut my piece in half. I bled. It got tighter. My wife read it and thought it was much better. She couldn't even remember the parts I cut. Then I heard from the Utne Reader, who wanted to promote it with a brief version. They needed it to be 500 words max. I cut it in half again. I bled more. The story started to bleed. I think I passed the point of coherence and it turned into a synopsis. But they published that and I enjoyed the continued publicity. Then I heard from the Pearson Testing Service. They wanted to license it for an essay question on their standardized tests. I thought it was joke. I asked my daughter in law who is an educator. She said, on the contrary, it was an honor, go for it. So I asked how much they wanted. They said 300 words....and...I cut it again. So the synopsis became an excerpt. I learned a tremendous amount about how much fat can be cut and I learned how much of my own absolutely fabulous words were simply expendable, without losing the point. I also learned how it can go too far, lose the overall grace but still communicate the main points, enough for a student, somewhere, to react to it and bring forth their own ideas, and start the cycle over for themselves. Quite the set of lessons about writing and life.
Thanks George! I read once that Morgan Freeman, when acting in the move Seven, told the director he could cover a particular section of dialogue in the script "with a look." They cut the dialogue and went with the look.
I find I do this every day with my texting—if I can get an emoji to take the place of a sentence it’s like free money. Part of my brain is different now because of technology, but because of that, real writing sounds gorgeous and luxurious to me.
Norman is at his desk hard at work writing a paper which he then turns into his father for review. His father marks it up with a red pen and simply says, “Half as long.”
Norman goes back to work, cuts the length of the paper in half and turns it in for further review. His father marks it up once more and says, “Again, half as long.”
Following a final round of edits, his father looks over the finished product and says, “Good, now throw it away.”
Thanks for asking. At first it felt like loss but then it felt more like honing and polishing, as George has emphasized for us. The first big surprise was when my wife liked the 50% cut better than the original. That helped me see just how much can safely be edited out upon revision. Interestingly, the article was about loss, so maybe there is some sort of meta theme, or joke on me, from the universe.
It's a lovely piece, Kurt. Love the ending: "Before building something new, it is necessary to destroy old, interfering structures–to clear the ground. We have to accept loss, and sometimes destruction, in order to grow."
Kurt, thank you for this essay. I loved it. This applies to all the arts. (But sometimes I have to get tough with myself and ask if I'm truly in a fallow period, or am I just lazy?)
Thanks Nancy. I'm not sure when you joined us but if you go to the main StoryClub page and scroll back through the posted topics you can find a pretty interesting discussion of that very topic, by George and by the community. Look for Office Hours, July 28, 2022 with the title, "Is this a break or am I retired?" I think you'll find some things there that resonate for you....
I remember that. Time to revisit it, thanks. It would probably be a good idea to look through everything--for what I've forgotten and for what sailed right past me like a March wind! Sometimes the student isn't ready for the lesson, no?
Fabulous tale of the edit knife. However, I do fear that there is an easy fetish out there - in writing programs, on line expert advice and in freshman rhetoric courses - for the lean and leaner and then even leaner. Compression owns the high ground. This puts emphasis on plot, information and whatever cuts to both the chase and the bone. Instructive that others come up with like examples from film (Morgan Freeman’s raised eyebrow). Film is not primarily a verbal medium - it’s juice is visual and aural. But literature has only words and sometimes more is indeed more. I don’t think there really is an argument here (as many can extol Lydia Davis as can extol Vollmann). I’m only chirping from my bare branch remembering seeing page proofs sent to Proust from his publishers that Proust returned with whole pages of additions literally pasted into the printed copy. GS is right. What’s at the end of this process. . . A grunt?
Hi Stephen, I often think of that scriptwriting adage: show it don't say it. I agree with. you that film is mostly visual. but I would suggest a similar word - visceral - as maybe being the common factor in film and writing. Good writing reaches into me and my imagination is busy creating all sorts of images. So it has its own version of show it don't say it. Can we write something so that the feeling is inevitable and does not need to be literally described? Can we make the reader feel the thing rather than telling them to feel it?
Yes we can write something with visceral impact that does not literally describe (poetry, especially, does it all the time - and Haiku goes way out on that limb). All I am saying is that the predominant trend in US is towards the highly compressed, the highly edited. And, I can think of countless examples that fly right in the face of that; the “put-it-inners” vs “take-it-outers” that work, viscerally, as well. And fuller description is not all, by any means, of their length. DF Wallace ran afoul of his MFA writing program at U of Arizona because he went against the less-is-more ethos. But I know many who would gladly sacrifice the entire U of Arizona to save Infinite Jest. My comment was only meant as a throat clearing protest against the hegemony of the terse.
Oh, Pastoralia. The first George Saunders story I can remember reading. (Is that right? I think so.) And I remember a couple of things. One, that whoever wrote that story was out of his mind--i mean, the world he conjured! And, two, I remember how that story stuck with me for a long time. George, i hate to say this, but it stayed with me because the story made me feel so bad. I just wanted to go to that crazy place and pull those poor souls out of those cages. And i've more or less hung onto that feeling all of these years which, I see now, is nearly 23 years.
But what I want to really say is how much I love this: "...nothing about us – none of our tendencies – is “wrong.” Everything about us is a potential source of energy." And also this: "We aren’t trying to excise a tendency, but to honor it and talk nice to it so that it will come to the table and be its best, purest, most expressive self for us." I try to honor my tendencies, but god damn if a lot of the time they either sit under that table, or they stand on top of it, shrieking. Well, I'm working on it. It's a long road to come to that place where we love ourselves, i guess.
I've returned many times to this piece on the Buddhist magazine Lion's Roar -- "How To Feed Your Demons" -- about precisely this idea of making friends with our self-hatred and anxiety
Thanks Alex. This was a great reminder. I love the whole concept of embracing the demon to convert it to an ally. To embrace the terror as a teacher and a source of beauty.
I loved this. I've recently been working through the second draft of my first novel (woot!) and I over the last few months I've noticed a new sort of ebb and flow between playfulness and an almost anal-retentive focus on detail. There are scenes I write in which I feel the need to stop and try and get the pacing and the tension and the dialogue just right. But there are also scenes or parts of scenes which seem to burst forth from who-knows-where. And sure those scenes need hella editing but, there is also something so rich and alive about those moments and those playful paragraphs are among some of my favorite I've written.
I'm trying to trust that both of these states are necessary for the project as a whole to succeed. Which I admit is a hard thing to do. When I I'm feeling playful, I worry I won't ever be able to polish the paragraphs I've written without some loss of luster. When I am granularly focused, I worry my writing lacks loft. It's comforting to know that on some level you experience a version of this too. And that you feel it's healthy.
"But there are also scenes or parts of scenes which seem to burst forth from who-knows-where. And sure those scenes need hella editing but, there is also something so rich and alive about those moments and those playful paragraphs are among some of my favorite I've written. I'm trying to trust that both of these states are necessary for the project as a whole to succeed."
Congratulations to Boris Drayluk! From the NY Times:
The Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov won a National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel “Grey Bees,” about a beekeeper living in the “gray zone” in the Donbas, a region torn by ongoing conflict between Russian proxies and the Ukrainian military.
In awarding the N.B.C.C.’s inaugural translation prize to Kurkov and his translator, Boris Dralyuk, the committee praised the novel for illuminating “the tragedies suffered on Ukrainian lands while maintaining a broad, humanistic focus on the crisis’s aftermath.”
When I read "goiteresque" I recoiled in my chair as if I'd been tazed. One Word Stories? There's my nominee.
I've been thinking, talking, writing about, as I see it currently, the metaphysical property of the writing process, where it is of supreme importance for me to get my ass out of the way. Usually the first thing I forget is that I've never seen anything in my life get better because I judged it. Never. Ever. In my life. Not a single thing. I've believed this for years, but every day I start judging before I get out of bed. "Ah, this sucks! Bloody Hell, this is bullshit! What in the Good Christ is that?"
Conversely, when I get over myself enough to accept things as they are, and that I just might not be privy to all the information, I have seen utter miracles take place. Answers that I didn't even have the questions for, and possibilities that would never have occured to me come forth, and then I've got something where I had nothing.
In your analysis, explanation, blow-by blow, or "I think it was like this", shared so thoughtfully, eloquently, and generously, here and elsewhere, I see the word 'fun", and I see the word "buzz", and I see the word "light". And I see the word "work". If I can work welI and be open and take a few chances to serve the story, then I can generate work that is adaptable to create stories that have more than one life, and therefore, more than one purpose. And shoot, more than one paycheck. Why the hell not? Or my ego can bulldog it to the ground and I'm left with "Look at me! Look at me! Dig me!" Now that's deathless art.
I travel so slowly through this platform, basking at the postings, the readings, the breakdowns, and the comments. Goddam, the comments. A army of sharp people, one after the other, each with a different take. So very bright! Terrifying! I've not seen that in so long. It harkens me back to when I first sought I didn't know what, but I wanted to know everything about the magic that was in those books. It worked, I knew that. I'd known that since I was a kid. But how? Where does it come from? I loved it so much that I had to love it more. And I got what I sought, and I wanted what I found for the first time in my life. And I wanted more.
This course has restored that sense of abundant revelation I had the first time I read Flannery O'Connor. And Chekhov. I thought he was the guy from Star Trek, but no. And just to have a home in the world where I could ask folks about all this sorcery. Falling asleep nights thinking about "The Red And The Black", and waking up "In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs." I didn't know I'd get to do this again. "Sure you can."
YOU WROTE: We are, really, bringing to bear on our stories the personal tendencies we were born with; trying to apply these in the right proportions and purify them with our editorial attention and thus “take advantage of” them, or “bring them to their highest pitch.” In this way, we’re celebrating these tendencies, even the ones which are, in real life, a pain-in-the-ass to have.
This was, for me, the "ah ha" takeaway from your essay. Recently, I've tried to decide who I'm writing for (the audience), why I'm writing a particular story, and what part of me is in the story. Honestly, I don't have all the answers. But it's clear that I have some (limited) talent, a good ear, a decent wit, and an intellectual curiosity that I want to exhibit in my writing. At the heart of each one there's usually an "idea" that drives everything. Clearly, these come from whatever "personal tendencies" have emerged in me over 60 years. Fascinating mystery for me--myself--unlikely to be solved. Thanks.
Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn appeared as a way, way shorter piece in the New Yorker. I read that as well as the 10 times longer book. The magazine piece was far better. 90% of everything we do in the arts is too long. Books, jazz solos, opera. Brevity is the soul of wit. I could say more—but I won't.
I respectfully disagree. I'm there with you about 80% of the time but there are certain maximalist writers who's work is so breathtakingly alive precisely *because* they've decided to include all the teensy details we might otherwise find superfluous. I definitely don't think maximalism is for every reader nor do I think many writers are capable of pulling it off. But the genre exists, I think, in part because the constraint of efficiency can sometimes really obscure the realness of of a piece. Life is not neat or orderly or concise. It's often meandering and messy. Which is what I think maximalism is trying to really capture. That's my hypothesis, anyway.
But I do agree with you that for writers not going for maximalism (i.e. most of us) brevity is helpful constraint. And it's definitely forced me to really understand what it is I'm trying to say with a given scene/story/essay. Also for me, getting to this point of understanding what my message is is often the most time consuming and difficult part.
Clearly, there are no real rules other than try not to bore your readers. And: you can't please all the people all the time. Please yourself. Try everything.
Definitely. But I think there are assumptions and parameters and things we test against to measure our success at communicating. That assumes of course that communicating and making a connection with others is the goal, which maybe it's not for every artist. I like to think of art, writing, design as 'offerings,' like serving a meal. So I do think about who is receiving. I am thinking about what I like but also about what the recipient might like or relate to. Not that I want to fulfill their every expectation. Some art needs to be challenging. So....80/20......
Hi Skylark. I think what you're saying makes total sense. There are exceptions to every rule. Not that efficiency is even a rule, but I think it's a mark of good design and I believe that a lot of art, including story structure, is design. But that 80/20 vibe is a good way to measure just about everything. It leaves room for the messiness of life. Also, I had a thought about maximalist writers, maybe more of a question: do you think they have wide appeal or do they appeal mostly to people who tend to be maximalist and dramatic in their lives and writing and therefore relate to what reinforces their experience? Sort of an implicit bias reinforcement cycle..?
That's a great question! Personally, maximalism appeals to me as a writer because there is so much space for juicy detail and, because I'm dyslexic, my brain sometimes transposes one word or phrase for another which leads me to read sometimes radically altered versions of the many, many details. And often those radically altered, maximalist inspired details make it into my own work.
I also love that maximalism seems to go hand in hand with absurdity (as least the few maximalist writers I've read). And because I feel like life is absurd, I feel at home in those books.
As far as mass appeal, I don't think so. Especially in the Twitter era.
I agree Joel. It becomes about ego. People drone on too long, enamored by their own fabulousness. I think one of the gifts that George brings to us, through his writing and through story club is his humility and efficiency, even while freely admitting his ambition and ego. Now that’s an enlightened person and artist, in my view.
May I respectfully disagree (regarding brevity)? Efficiency works perfectly when called for. But some art requires length, time, repetition, patience. Some works need that accretion of movement/detail, etc. in order for the full meaning to come clear. There is an art work called The Clock. It's a 24 hour film. Yes, you get "the point" after the first few moments. But sitting there, watching and watching and watching....it all adds up to something bigger than what you thought you were experiencing. (I've not seen the whole thing. But I've sat through a couple hours of it.) Then there is Proust, of course. Or Knausgaard's My Struggle volumes. There are, of course, thousands of examples--i'm just throwing these few out. Sometimes I love a run-on sentence! (“Ducks, Newburyport,” is a 426,100-word sentence and 1,000 pages.) Anyway, as usual I'm playing devil's advocate here. Sticking up for all forms of art. Brevity is perfect when brevity is perfect. But length is okay, too.
Hi Mary. I don’t disagree. And a friend raved to me about the Clock. He sat through a couple hours. I‘m not sure we’re saying different things here. And meditation or deep presence come to mind. I would not argue in all cases, and especially with the arts, that brevity is the goal. But I think ‘efficiency’ is different. If something really, really needs to be long to do its job, that’s fine. It’s still efficient and elegant. But I think we all know that many artists, writers and people you end up in conversations with are sloppy and excessive with their output. I receive that as insensitive to the audience. You and I discussed this elsewhere in other comments about interrupting. I think there’s editing and there’s interrupting. Interrupting is pre-mature. Editing and distillation are, for me, about clarity.
I so appreciate this thought, Mary --- I remember first reading Thomas Mann and being astonished what an author could do with sentences of 70 words. Fat novels have always been a comfort to me.
As for Christian Marclay (The Clock) We stood in line for hours to get into that Chelsea Gallery --- It was bitter cold. We stayed til 1am. Sleepy. Starving. We couldn't leave. They just had a retrospective of his work at the Pompidou (including The Clock)--- I hear he's working on a new "long" work ---
It played here in LA at LACMA (the museum). My husband and I watched for as long as we could before we had to run off to other appointments. The next morning, i woke up very early to find my husband wasn't home. He'd driven back to LACMA during the night to watch more! Can't wait for it to come back again.
Have you ever delved into or responded to Jonathan Lethems “disappointment artist” scenario.., which prompted me to write about the “performance artist” in me and which many of us could cleave to and run with…
A Disappointment Artist resonates with me… in a good way… it offers endless thoughts… if you think about it.
I appreciate so much the freeing approach to writing in these posts -- I'm a perfectionist and get very attached to certain versions of stories, like "ah yes this draft it's *finished*. Thanks to reading the posts here I've been experimenting with moving passages around not to "improve" the story but just for the hell of it, to see how this breaks up structure, or perhaps creates new ruptures to write into. Before I would have winced doing this after working "so hard" on stories but now it feels fun, non-threatening, and an approach to learning about how my writing is functioning. I think next I'll try to make micro-versions of long stories that feel stuck. Like a thumbnail version, just to see what I leave out.
I still struggle with the idea that there is no right version of a story. The figure inside the stone, etc. But that could be just a desire for a process to "end" at some point, which is a me-problem not a story-problem.
A few months ago. I gave to my husband a new version (maybe a final draft!) of the opening of my novel-in-progress. He said it was brilliant, and that I was a genius. Hey, I too thought it was pretty good!
Since then I’ve been revising it (you know, not really changing anything, just, you know, prettying it up) using George’s method of the +/- meter and making microdecisions. It has changed so very much and is so much better—but there are still some “negatives” on the meter, so I’m still working.
Years ago, I was in a workshop with Tim O’Brien. At a public event one night, he read “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” from The Things They Carried, which had been in print for a few years. Next day in class, he showed us the copy he had read from, in the printed book, and he had made so many changes! I was astounded! What a lesson!
Can you remind me of the +/- meter or how you apply it? In my mind it’s tracking the energy sentence by sentence at a micro level? I also am revising/polishing parts of a novel — solidarity. And thanks for responding 😁 I want to re read Tim OBrien now. Currently immersed in Yoko Ogawa’s short stories, shimmering and strange.
Hi Alex, in solidarity! And, yes, so many books, so little time!
What I call the +/- meter, George calls the P/N meter, the little dial that swings one way or the other when rereading a draft. "Tracking the energy at a micro level" might be part of it (or all of it), but that is a little too abstract for me. For me, it's more like, "oops, wrong word there," "oops, too much about how the shadows fall--boring, slows it down," "oops, do I really need to explain that, or can I trust the reader to get it?" Lots and lots and lots of tiny stuff.
My sister was a veterinarian, and she said that when an owner couldn't quite explain what was wrong with their dog, she'd been trained to think, "Okay, ADR--Ain't Doin' Right." So when a phrase or word or sentence in my work is ADR, I've got to figure it out and fix it.
I find that, yes, fixing many, many things adds up to a better piece of writing. But I also find that tending to the manuscript that closely keeps me focused, keeps me deep in the story, and, perhaps, engages my subconscious to do more work. Especially in my "off hours."
At the end of the day, I find it more rewarding to say, "There. That's a little better now," rather than, "1200 more words today."
I've never ever been the woo-woo type. Now, LOL, I'm 100% woo-woo. Go, subconscious, go!
I don't know the stories of Yoko Ogawa. But re: Tim O'Brien: I'm rereading a lot of his work now. I want to recommend his "Dad's Maybe Book," a letter to his sons, a memoir, an examination of what he remembers, what's important, etc. I loved it; it's full of lots of great stuff. It was published in 2019; I'm sure there are used copies galore, and your library probably has it. (But maybe I loved it because I love Tim O'Brien--disregard recommendation if you like.) Also, there's a documentary, "The War and Peace of Tim O'Brien" (2021), which is riveting.
Will check out Yoko Ogawa. Thanks for your message.
A really neat experiment (if a tad masochistic) would be for all of us to take one of our short stories (over 2,000 words) and turn it into a 200 word micro-fiction piece, and then post them here as comments in this forum. I am NOT advocating doing that in this thread. But I think it would be cool to do one day. For the hell of it.
This made me think of a story I'd written in my last fiction course in college. The first few drafts were 20+ pages, and I was feeling quite good about it. I generally liked what I'd done. My professor validated those feelings during an office hours visit. But then she, the wonderful and wise fiction wizard she was and is, challenged me to cut it by, if my memory serves me right, 25%.
So within hours I was diving back into the draft, and on a mission. I remember getting on a roll with all the lopping off. You know, being sad about some of the darlings, but all in all really enjoying it. Feeling the draft get leaner. Punchier.
By the end of the process the story was 10 pages, which was about the length of it when I turned it in as part of my semester's end portfolio. And, 10+ years removed from those first drafts, I'm still proud of that story, and more importantly, of that process. As someone who generally overwrites their first drafts, I think it really helped shape how I approach revisions for any project.
Yet, I really wish I'd have kept all those trimmings in a document somewhere, just so I could peek back. It's entirely possible I cut things that really should've stayed.
I highly recommend making a "scrap" document. I have one for each chapter and every time I cut something, I stick it in my scrap doc. It makes it easier to cut passages knowing they're not really lost forever. Most of the time I never use the things I cut but ever so often there's a good line or two I can recycle.
I do that now, but definitely didn't back then. Or... maybe I did and it just got lost somewhere? Haha not sure. But yes, definitely a practice I'd suggest to any writer.
I am currently in a workshop and each week we write in response to a series of prompts. Rather than generating new work, I've been using the prompts to take a fresh look at pieces in my "drafts" folder. This is not working. I find myself simply line editing them, or altering them to respond to the prompts. The resulting pieces feel less alive, for sure. I know there is something between starting endless new pieces and merely polishing the turds. My writing life is stuck in this "bardo."
I've been working on a story without regard to length. I tend to let the story come out and just follow it along, thinking I can cut back on it later. The problem is that I don't cut, but generally add more to it. I don't know how long a story for THE NEW YORKER has to be, only that they never take mine. They're always long, because that's what I love to read. That's why I love and adore Alice Munro. Reading one of her stories is like reading a full novel. Even though I know 18,700 words is too long--even for THE NEW YORKER--I find myself going back and looking at it, wondering where to cut it. I guess that's why I like Substack. I can put my stories on here and not have to worry about it being too long. I can cut it into sections and put them up one at a time, which gives me time to work on my next one. It would be nice if only once, some editor at some big magazine said they liked it, but it's too long. I could live with that.
Speaking of cutting it down, I base way too much on my visual impression of a cover image (at the start, anyway) and man-oh-man do I love the last cover you posted which, of course, I've seen already but still love. ALL of the covers you posted are great, I have to say, but that one always stops me for longer. It has just the very very slightest hint of trouble brewing wrapped in the most beautiful hues of the most gorgeous scenery, or so we (maybe just I) have been made to think, and believe, is a tantalizing glimpse of paradise with an animal reminding us of the flaw in that thinking. Way way back when I took a college course called "Outdoor Recreation"...yes it really existed, as part of studying the development and creation of park spaces for the public...I participated in a study in which we, the subjects, were shown slide after slide (remember those?) of scenes from scenic-view pullovers, and we had to rate them. I never found out what won the day...perhaps some close-up foliage, a meandering river or creek that led away at ideal angles to draw the eye, and layers upon layers of blue-green misty mountain peaks...can't recall, but those scenes still and will always resonate with something mysterious. Even a still image can tell a story, so choose your covers carefully if given the opportunity :-)
I recently read a piece in my writers group and as I did I had a deja vu of this story having another version...
Looking back over my work I found the edited version of the piece... the edited version was the one I tended to share ...
However each had a completely different story to tell...
Same intro... some of the same paragraphs...completely different outcome...
The cleverest sections were in the original piece(my opinion)... while the edits highlighted the “point” ...
Editing is almost a cruel sister to the work sometimes...
As one who becomes attached to their words... editing as much as I hate it.., often opens the door to more and better understanding of what the point was ..,
We are talking here about 500 to 1200 word pieces...at most...
A bit different than short story or novel writing... and yet as difficult to navigate.
I wrote an essay for a journal years ago. Might have been about 2,000 words. It was well received and I thought it was pretty good. Then it got more attention and another journal called, wanting to publish it in their special back page feature position. It was an honor. It was also limited to 1,000 words. I had to cut my piece in half. I bled. It got tighter. My wife read it and thought it was much better. She couldn't even remember the parts I cut. Then I heard from the Utne Reader, who wanted to promote it with a brief version. They needed it to be 500 words max. I cut it in half again. I bled more. The story started to bleed. I think I passed the point of coherence and it turned into a synopsis. But they published that and I enjoyed the continued publicity. Then I heard from the Pearson Testing Service. They wanted to license it for an essay question on their standardized tests. I thought it was joke. I asked my daughter in law who is an educator. She said, on the contrary, it was an honor, go for it. So I asked how much they wanted. They said 300 words....and...I cut it again. So the synopsis became an excerpt. I learned a tremendous amount about how much fat can be cut and I learned how much of my own absolutely fabulous words were simply expendable, without losing the point. I also learned how it can go too far, lose the overall grace but still communicate the main points, enough for a student, somewhere, to react to it and bring forth their own ideas, and start the cycle over for themselves. Quite the set of lessons about writing and life.
Love this, Kurt. Someday someone will ask you to get it down to a single word, and then a guttural utterance. 🥴
Thanks George! I read once that Morgan Freeman, when acting in the move Seven, told the director he could cover a particular section of dialogue in the script "with a look." They cut the dialogue and went with the look.
I have a "Sea Oak" story related to this and Glenn Close, that I'll make a post about soon.
I find I do this every day with my texting—if I can get an emoji to take the place of a sentence it’s like free money. Part of my brain is different now because of technology, but because of that, real writing sounds gorgeous and luxurious to me.
Yes! I scroll through those emoji's forever, looking for the one that says so much with emotion that I don't need words.
Or one raised eyebrow.
Good Lord, a river runs through you, but we only get to see the light shimmering over the water! (Which might just be enough!)
Thanks David. What a poetic comment! Lovely.
You might also thank Norman MacLean and Robert Redford. As I was reading your comment their visions came clear in my head and heart.
From https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2019/07/writing-lessons-from-a-river-runs-through-it/
This is how the scene plays out:
Norman is at his desk hard at work writing a paper which he then turns into his father for review. His father marks it up with a red pen and simply says, “Half as long.”
Norman goes back to work, cuts the length of the paper in half and turns it in for further review. His father marks it up once more and says, “Again, half as long.”
Following a final round of edits, his father looks over the finished product and says, “Good, now throw it away.”
Oh, now I get the analogy. Some pretty harsh 'halving' down to zero in this one.
Tha's a Scottish Presbyterian fer ye.
Great article, thank you!
Wow. I’m honored.
How did you feel about cutting the fabulous words? For me, sometimes it hurts more to cut a beautiful thing than a necessary thing.
Thanks for asking. At first it felt like loss but then it felt more like honing and polishing, as George has emphasized for us. The first big surprise was when my wife liked the 50% cut better than the original. That helped me see just how much can safely be edited out upon revision. Interestingly, the article was about loss, so maybe there is some sort of meta theme, or joke on me, from the universe.
It's a lovely piece, Kurt. Love the ending: "Before building something new, it is necessary to destroy old, interfering structures–to clear the ground. We have to accept loss, and sometimes destruction, in order to grow."
Kurt, thank you for this essay. I loved it. This applies to all the arts. (But sometimes I have to get tough with myself and ask if I'm truly in a fallow period, or am I just lazy?)
Mary, thanks for sharing the link.
Thanks Nancy. I'm not sure when you joined us but if you go to the main StoryClub page and scroll back through the posted topics you can find a pretty interesting discussion of that very topic, by George and by the community. Look for Office Hours, July 28, 2022 with the title, "Is this a break or am I retired?" I think you'll find some things there that resonate for you....
I remember that. Time to revisit it, thanks. It would probably be a good idea to look through everything--for what I've forgotten and for what sailed right past me like a March wind! Sometimes the student isn't ready for the lesson, no?
OMG. You hunted it down! Thanks so much.
Do you have a version somewhere you'd care to share a link to? I'd love to read it as well.
Never mind. Found it! (Thanks Google)
Fabulous tale of the edit knife. However, I do fear that there is an easy fetish out there - in writing programs, on line expert advice and in freshman rhetoric courses - for the lean and leaner and then even leaner. Compression owns the high ground. This puts emphasis on plot, information and whatever cuts to both the chase and the bone. Instructive that others come up with like examples from film (Morgan Freeman’s raised eyebrow). Film is not primarily a verbal medium - it’s juice is visual and aural. But literature has only words and sometimes more is indeed more. I don’t think there really is an argument here (as many can extol Lydia Davis as can extol Vollmann). I’m only chirping from my bare branch remembering seeing page proofs sent to Proust from his publishers that Proust returned with whole pages of additions literally pasted into the printed copy. GS is right. What’s at the end of this process. . . A grunt?
Hi Stephen, I often think of that scriptwriting adage: show it don't say it. I agree with. you that film is mostly visual. but I would suggest a similar word - visceral - as maybe being the common factor in film and writing. Good writing reaches into me and my imagination is busy creating all sorts of images. So it has its own version of show it don't say it. Can we write something so that the feeling is inevitable and does not need to be literally described? Can we make the reader feel the thing rather than telling them to feel it?
Yes we can write something with visceral impact that does not literally describe (poetry, especially, does it all the time - and Haiku goes way out on that limb). All I am saying is that the predominant trend in US is towards the highly compressed, the highly edited. And, I can think of countless examples that fly right in the face of that; the “put-it-inners” vs “take-it-outers” that work, viscerally, as well. And fuller description is not all, by any means, of their length. DF Wallace ran afoul of his MFA writing program at U of Arizona because he went against the less-is-more ethos. But I know many who would gladly sacrifice the entire U of Arizona to save Infinite Jest. My comment was only meant as a throat clearing protest against the hegemony of the terse.
I love this as a stand-alone story! Now I want to read your work.
😂😂😂😂😂
This is very well said, written and stated :)
Oh, Pastoralia. The first George Saunders story I can remember reading. (Is that right? I think so.) And I remember a couple of things. One, that whoever wrote that story was out of his mind--i mean, the world he conjured! And, two, I remember how that story stuck with me for a long time. George, i hate to say this, but it stayed with me because the story made me feel so bad. I just wanted to go to that crazy place and pull those poor souls out of those cages. And i've more or less hung onto that feeling all of these years which, I see now, is nearly 23 years.
But what I want to really say is how much I love this: "...nothing about us – none of our tendencies – is “wrong.” Everything about us is a potential source of energy." And also this: "We aren’t trying to excise a tendency, but to honor it and talk nice to it so that it will come to the table and be its best, purest, most expressive self for us." I try to honor my tendencies, but god damn if a lot of the time they either sit under that table, or they stand on top of it, shrieking. Well, I'm working on it. It's a long road to come to that place where we love ourselves, i guess.
Therapy Club
Totally
I've returned many times to this piece on the Buddhist magazine Lion's Roar -- "How To Feed Your Demons" -- about precisely this idea of making friends with our self-hatred and anxiety
https://www.lionsroar.com/how-to-practice-feeding-your-demons/
That was a good read, thanks, Alex.
Thanks Alex. This was a great reminder. I love the whole concept of embracing the demon to convert it to an ally. To embrace the terror as a teacher and a source of beauty.
“Welcome to the party” we can say to all our feelings.
Yes. Thank you.
All this is liberating in the best way.
I loved this. I've recently been working through the second draft of my first novel (woot!) and I over the last few months I've noticed a new sort of ebb and flow between playfulness and an almost anal-retentive focus on detail. There are scenes I write in which I feel the need to stop and try and get the pacing and the tension and the dialogue just right. But there are also scenes or parts of scenes which seem to burst forth from who-knows-where. And sure those scenes need hella editing but, there is also something so rich and alive about those moments and those playful paragraphs are among some of my favorite I've written.
I'm trying to trust that both of these states are necessary for the project as a whole to succeed. Which I admit is a hard thing to do. When I I'm feeling playful, I worry I won't ever be able to polish the paragraphs I've written without some loss of luster. When I am granularly focused, I worry my writing lacks loft. It's comforting to know that on some level you experience a version of this too. And that you feel it's healthy.
"But there are also scenes or parts of scenes which seem to burst forth from who-knows-where. And sure those scenes need hella editing but, there is also something so rich and alive about those moments and those playful paragraphs are among some of my favorite I've written. I'm trying to trust that both of these states are necessary for the project as a whole to succeed."
Love this.
Congrats on the novel, and happy revising!
Thank you!
Let yourself run free and write a first rough draft 👌
I already have! I'm working on my second draft now. But I'm learning that my second draft needs to be somewhat rough as well. :)
Yes!! Agree 👌
My takeaway from this week’s is to try to work in the word goiteresque into my everyday chitchat.
Ha! When I saw that I immediately wrote it down in my word and phrase notebook.
I have a notebook, too! This class is filling it right up.
Hahaha same.
Congratulations to Boris Drayluk! From the NY Times:
The Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov won a National Book Critics Circle Award for his novel “Grey Bees,” about a beekeeper living in the “gray zone” in the Donbas, a region torn by ongoing conflict between Russian proxies and the Ukrainian military.
In awarding the N.B.C.C.’s inaugural translation prize to Kurkov and his translator, Boris Dralyuk, the committee praised the novel for illuminating “the tragedies suffered on Ukrainian lands while maintaining a broad, humanistic focus on the crisis’s aftermath.”
Go, Boris!
When I read "goiteresque" I recoiled in my chair as if I'd been tazed. One Word Stories? There's my nominee.
I've been thinking, talking, writing about, as I see it currently, the metaphysical property of the writing process, where it is of supreme importance for me to get my ass out of the way. Usually the first thing I forget is that I've never seen anything in my life get better because I judged it. Never. Ever. In my life. Not a single thing. I've believed this for years, but every day I start judging before I get out of bed. "Ah, this sucks! Bloody Hell, this is bullshit! What in the Good Christ is that?"
Conversely, when I get over myself enough to accept things as they are, and that I just might not be privy to all the information, I have seen utter miracles take place. Answers that I didn't even have the questions for, and possibilities that would never have occured to me come forth, and then I've got something where I had nothing.
In your analysis, explanation, blow-by blow, or "I think it was like this", shared so thoughtfully, eloquently, and generously, here and elsewhere, I see the word 'fun", and I see the word "buzz", and I see the word "light". And I see the word "work". If I can work welI and be open and take a few chances to serve the story, then I can generate work that is adaptable to create stories that have more than one life, and therefore, more than one purpose. And shoot, more than one paycheck. Why the hell not? Or my ego can bulldog it to the ground and I'm left with "Look at me! Look at me! Dig me!" Now that's deathless art.
I travel so slowly through this platform, basking at the postings, the readings, the breakdowns, and the comments. Goddam, the comments. A army of sharp people, one after the other, each with a different take. So very bright! Terrifying! I've not seen that in so long. It harkens me back to when I first sought I didn't know what, but I wanted to know everything about the magic that was in those books. It worked, I knew that. I'd known that since I was a kid. But how? Where does it come from? I loved it so much that I had to love it more. And I got what I sought, and I wanted what I found for the first time in my life. And I wanted more.
This course has restored that sense of abundant revelation I had the first time I read Flannery O'Connor. And Chekhov. I thought he was the guy from Star Trek, but no. And just to have a home in the world where I could ask folks about all this sorcery. Falling asleep nights thinking about "The Red And The Black", and waking up "In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs." I didn't know I'd get to do this again. "Sure you can."
Loved that word as well 😎
YOU WROTE: We are, really, bringing to bear on our stories the personal tendencies we were born with; trying to apply these in the right proportions and purify them with our editorial attention and thus “take advantage of” them, or “bring them to their highest pitch.” In this way, we’re celebrating these tendencies, even the ones which are, in real life, a pain-in-the-ass to have.
This was, for me, the "ah ha" takeaway from your essay. Recently, I've tried to decide who I'm writing for (the audience), why I'm writing a particular story, and what part of me is in the story. Honestly, I don't have all the answers. But it's clear that I have some (limited) talent, a good ear, a decent wit, and an intellectual curiosity that I want to exhibit in my writing. At the heart of each one there's usually an "idea" that drives everything. Clearly, these come from whatever "personal tendencies" have emerged in me over 60 years. Fascinating mystery for me--myself--unlikely to be solved. Thanks.
❤️👌
Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn appeared as a way, way shorter piece in the New Yorker. I read that as well as the 10 times longer book. The magazine piece was far better. 90% of everything we do in the arts is too long. Books, jazz solos, opera. Brevity is the soul of wit. I could say more—but I won't.
I respectfully disagree. I'm there with you about 80% of the time but there are certain maximalist writers who's work is so breathtakingly alive precisely *because* they've decided to include all the teensy details we might otherwise find superfluous. I definitely don't think maximalism is for every reader nor do I think many writers are capable of pulling it off. But the genre exists, I think, in part because the constraint of efficiency can sometimes really obscure the realness of of a piece. Life is not neat or orderly or concise. It's often meandering and messy. Which is what I think maximalism is trying to really capture. That's my hypothesis, anyway.
But I do agree with you that for writers not going for maximalism (i.e. most of us) brevity is helpful constraint. And it's definitely forced me to really understand what it is I'm trying to say with a given scene/story/essay. Also for me, getting to this point of understanding what my message is is often the most time consuming and difficult part.
Clearly, there are no real rules other than try not to bore your readers. And: you can't please all the people all the time. Please yourself. Try everything.
Definitely. But I think there are assumptions and parameters and things we test against to measure our success at communicating. That assumes of course that communicating and making a connection with others is the goal, which maybe it's not for every artist. I like to think of art, writing, design as 'offerings,' like serving a meal. So I do think about who is receiving. I am thinking about what I like but also about what the recipient might like or relate to. Not that I want to fulfill their every expectation. Some art needs to be challenging. So....80/20......
Hm
True, true!
Hi Skylark. I think what you're saying makes total sense. There are exceptions to every rule. Not that efficiency is even a rule, but I think it's a mark of good design and I believe that a lot of art, including story structure, is design. But that 80/20 vibe is a good way to measure just about everything. It leaves room for the messiness of life. Also, I had a thought about maximalist writers, maybe more of a question: do you think they have wide appeal or do they appeal mostly to people who tend to be maximalist and dramatic in their lives and writing and therefore relate to what reinforces their experience? Sort of an implicit bias reinforcement cycle..?
That's a great question! Personally, maximalism appeals to me as a writer because there is so much space for juicy detail and, because I'm dyslexic, my brain sometimes transposes one word or phrase for another which leads me to read sometimes radically altered versions of the many, many details. And often those radically altered, maximalist inspired details make it into my own work.
I also love that maximalism seems to go hand in hand with absurdity (as least the few maximalist writers I've read). And because I feel like life is absurd, I feel at home in those books.
As far as mass appeal, I don't think so. Especially in the Twitter era.
I agree Joel. It becomes about ego. People drone on too long, enamored by their own fabulousness. I think one of the gifts that George brings to us, through his writing and through story club is his humility and efficiency, even while freely admitting his ambition and ego. Now that’s an enlightened person and artist, in my view.
May I respectfully disagree (regarding brevity)? Efficiency works perfectly when called for. But some art requires length, time, repetition, patience. Some works need that accretion of movement/detail, etc. in order for the full meaning to come clear. There is an art work called The Clock. It's a 24 hour film. Yes, you get "the point" after the first few moments. But sitting there, watching and watching and watching....it all adds up to something bigger than what you thought you were experiencing. (I've not seen the whole thing. But I've sat through a couple hours of it.) Then there is Proust, of course. Or Knausgaard's My Struggle volumes. There are, of course, thousands of examples--i'm just throwing these few out. Sometimes I love a run-on sentence! (“Ducks, Newburyport,” is a 426,100-word sentence and 1,000 pages.) Anyway, as usual I'm playing devil's advocate here. Sticking up for all forms of art. Brevity is perfect when brevity is perfect. But length is okay, too.
Hi Mary. I don’t disagree. And a friend raved to me about the Clock. He sat through a couple hours. I‘m not sure we’re saying different things here. And meditation or deep presence come to mind. I would not argue in all cases, and especially with the arts, that brevity is the goal. But I think ‘efficiency’ is different. If something really, really needs to be long to do its job, that’s fine. It’s still efficient and elegant. But I think we all know that many artists, writers and people you end up in conversations with are sloppy and excessive with their output. I receive that as insensitive to the audience. You and I discussed this elsewhere in other comments about interrupting. I think there’s editing and there’s interrupting. Interrupting is pre-mature. Editing and distillation are, for me, about clarity.
Or Claude Lanzmann’s 9 hour Shoah. It seems too brief🧿🌷💙
I so appreciate this thought, Mary --- I remember first reading Thomas Mann and being astonished what an author could do with sentences of 70 words. Fat novels have always been a comfort to me.
As for Christian Marclay (The Clock) We stood in line for hours to get into that Chelsea Gallery --- It was bitter cold. We stayed til 1am. Sleepy. Starving. We couldn't leave. They just had a retrospective of his work at the Pompidou (including The Clock)--- I hear he's working on a new "long" work ---
It played here in LA at LACMA (the museum). My husband and I watched for as long as we could before we had to run off to other appointments. The next morning, i woke up very early to find my husband wasn't home. He'd driven back to LACMA during the night to watch more! Can't wait for it to come back again.
Your husband! If I'm ever in a room with Christian Marclay I'm sharing that story.
Have you ever delved into or responded to Jonathan Lethems “disappointment artist” scenario.., which prompted me to write about the “performance artist” in me and which many of us could cleave to and run with…
A Disappointment Artist resonates with me… in a good way… it offers endless thoughts… if you think about it.
I’ll look it up🌷
I appreciate so much the freeing approach to writing in these posts -- I'm a perfectionist and get very attached to certain versions of stories, like "ah yes this draft it's *finished*. Thanks to reading the posts here I've been experimenting with moving passages around not to "improve" the story but just for the hell of it, to see how this breaks up structure, or perhaps creates new ruptures to write into. Before I would have winced doing this after working "so hard" on stories but now it feels fun, non-threatening, and an approach to learning about how my writing is functioning. I think next I'll try to make micro-versions of long stories that feel stuck. Like a thumbnail version, just to see what I leave out.
I still struggle with the idea that there is no right version of a story. The figure inside the stone, etc. But that could be just a desire for a process to "end" at some point, which is a me-problem not a story-problem.
Hi Alex,
A few months ago. I gave to my husband a new version (maybe a final draft!) of the opening of my novel-in-progress. He said it was brilliant, and that I was a genius. Hey, I too thought it was pretty good!
Since then I’ve been revising it (you know, not really changing anything, just, you know, prettying it up) using George’s method of the +/- meter and making microdecisions. It has changed so very much and is so much better—but there are still some “negatives” on the meter, so I’m still working.
Years ago, I was in a workshop with Tim O’Brien. At a public event one night, he read “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” from The Things They Carried, which had been in print for a few years. Next day in class, he showed us the copy he had read from, in the printed book, and he had made so many changes! I was astounded! What a lesson!
I enjoyed your post.
Can you remind me of the +/- meter or how you apply it? In my mind it’s tracking the energy sentence by sentence at a micro level? I also am revising/polishing parts of a novel — solidarity. And thanks for responding 😁 I want to re read Tim OBrien now. Currently immersed in Yoko Ogawa’s short stories, shimmering and strange.
Hi Alex, in solidarity! And, yes, so many books, so little time!
What I call the +/- meter, George calls the P/N meter, the little dial that swings one way or the other when rereading a draft. "Tracking the energy at a micro level" might be part of it (or all of it), but that is a little too abstract for me. For me, it's more like, "oops, wrong word there," "oops, too much about how the shadows fall--boring, slows it down," "oops, do I really need to explain that, or can I trust the reader to get it?" Lots and lots and lots of tiny stuff.
My sister was a veterinarian, and she said that when an owner couldn't quite explain what was wrong with their dog, she'd been trained to think, "Okay, ADR--Ain't Doin' Right." So when a phrase or word or sentence in my work is ADR, I've got to figure it out and fix it.
I find that, yes, fixing many, many things adds up to a better piece of writing. But I also find that tending to the manuscript that closely keeps me focused, keeps me deep in the story, and, perhaps, engages my subconscious to do more work. Especially in my "off hours."
At the end of the day, I find it more rewarding to say, "There. That's a little better now," rather than, "1200 more words today."
I've never ever been the woo-woo type. Now, LOL, I'm 100% woo-woo. Go, subconscious, go!
I don't know the stories of Yoko Ogawa. But re: Tim O'Brien: I'm rereading a lot of his work now. I want to recommend his "Dad's Maybe Book," a letter to his sons, a memoir, an examination of what he remembers, what's important, etc. I loved it; it's full of lots of great stuff. It was published in 2019; I'm sure there are used copies galore, and your library probably has it. (But maybe I loved it because I love Tim O'Brien--disregard recommendation if you like.) Also, there's a documentary, "The War and Peace of Tim O'Brien" (2021), which is riveting.
Will check out Yoko Ogawa. Thanks for your message.
🙌🙌❤️
A really neat experiment (if a tad masochistic) would be for all of us to take one of our short stories (over 2,000 words) and turn it into a 200 word micro-fiction piece, and then post them here as comments in this forum. I am NOT advocating doing that in this thread. But I think it would be cool to do one day. For the hell of it.
This made me think of a story I'd written in my last fiction course in college. The first few drafts were 20+ pages, and I was feeling quite good about it. I generally liked what I'd done. My professor validated those feelings during an office hours visit. But then she, the wonderful and wise fiction wizard she was and is, challenged me to cut it by, if my memory serves me right, 25%.
So within hours I was diving back into the draft, and on a mission. I remember getting on a roll with all the lopping off. You know, being sad about some of the darlings, but all in all really enjoying it. Feeling the draft get leaner. Punchier.
By the end of the process the story was 10 pages, which was about the length of it when I turned it in as part of my semester's end portfolio. And, 10+ years removed from those first drafts, I'm still proud of that story, and more importantly, of that process. As someone who generally overwrites their first drafts, I think it really helped shape how I approach revisions for any project.
Yet, I really wish I'd have kept all those trimmings in a document somewhere, just so I could peek back. It's entirely possible I cut things that really should've stayed.
I highly recommend making a "scrap" document. I have one for each chapter and every time I cut something, I stick it in my scrap doc. It makes it easier to cut passages knowing they're not really lost forever. Most of the time I never use the things I cut but ever so often there's a good line or two I can recycle.
I call mine 'The Wasteland'
I call mine The Boneyard. ;)
Love it!
I call mine "The Dump."
Ha! Why not call it "Future Story Possibilities." :)
How about Compost?
This from the sunshiny fellow who wrote CivilWarLand in Bad Decline?
I do that now, but definitely didn't back then. Or... maybe I did and it just got lost somewhere? Haha not sure. But yes, definitely a practice I'd suggest to any writer.
Nice. First story I ever had published, in 2012, was 23 pages when I workshopped it. Final published version: 12 pages.
"If it occurs in us, it likely occurs in other people as well" – this realization has helped me so much. And not just in writing.
❤️❤️
I am currently in a workshop and each week we write in response to a series of prompts. Rather than generating new work, I've been using the prompts to take a fresh look at pieces in my "drafts" folder. This is not working. I find myself simply line editing them, or altering them to respond to the prompts. The resulting pieces feel less alive, for sure. I know there is something between starting endless new pieces and merely polishing the turds. My writing life is stuck in this "bardo."
Think less
Observe more
The wisdom of this - you have no idea. 🙏🏼thank you, Marcy
On Lawrence Ferlinghetti's typewriter: "LOOK! + THINK!"
Don't give up. Sometimes things feel "less alive" until you breathe life into them. The prompt may be just the thing they need. 🌷
Thanks, Lucinda - I’m giving it another chance - as GS would say, I’m listening to where the story wants to go.
😂❤️
I've been working on a story without regard to length. I tend to let the story come out and just follow it along, thinking I can cut back on it later. The problem is that I don't cut, but generally add more to it. I don't know how long a story for THE NEW YORKER has to be, only that they never take mine. They're always long, because that's what I love to read. That's why I love and adore Alice Munro. Reading one of her stories is like reading a full novel. Even though I know 18,700 words is too long--even for THE NEW YORKER--I find myself going back and looking at it, wondering where to cut it. I guess that's why I like Substack. I can put my stories on here and not have to worry about it being too long. I can cut it into sections and put them up one at a time, which gives me time to work on my next one. It would be nice if only once, some editor at some big magazine said they liked it, but it's too long. I could live with that.
My memory is that is needs to be under 9000 words…
Well, I guess this one goes up on my page then!
Speaking of cutting it down, I base way too much on my visual impression of a cover image (at the start, anyway) and man-oh-man do I love the last cover you posted which, of course, I've seen already but still love. ALL of the covers you posted are great, I have to say, but that one always stops me for longer. It has just the very very slightest hint of trouble brewing wrapped in the most beautiful hues of the most gorgeous scenery, or so we (maybe just I) have been made to think, and believe, is a tantalizing glimpse of paradise with an animal reminding us of the flaw in that thinking. Way way back when I took a college course called "Outdoor Recreation"...yes it really existed, as part of studying the development and creation of park spaces for the public...I participated in a study in which we, the subjects, were shown slide after slide (remember those?) of scenes from scenic-view pullovers, and we had to rate them. I never found out what won the day...perhaps some close-up foliage, a meandering river or creek that led away at ideal angles to draw the eye, and layers upon layers of blue-green misty mountain peaks...can't recall, but those scenes still and will always resonate with something mysterious. Even a still image can tell a story, so choose your covers carefully if given the opportunity :-)
I recently read a piece in my writers group and as I did I had a deja vu of this story having another version...
Looking back over my work I found the edited version of the piece... the edited version was the one I tended to share ...
However each had a completely different story to tell...
Same intro... some of the same paragraphs...completely different outcome...
The cleverest sections were in the original piece(my opinion)... while the edits highlighted the “point” ...
Editing is almost a cruel sister to the work sometimes...
As one who becomes attached to their words... editing as much as I hate it.., often opens the door to more and better understanding of what the point was ..,
We are talking here about 500 to 1200 word pieces...at most...
A bit different than short story or novel writing... and yet as difficult to navigate.
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