Happy Mother’s Day, to all of us. My own mother is dead and gone, and so I also want to give a shout out to those of us who have lost our mothers or those for whom motherhood wasn’t possible or chosen, or those who once had children and no longer have them. It’s a beautiful day but can also be a tough one. Peace and love to all of you.
George writes: "There is literally no wrong answer. The value lies in clarifying one’s preferences, asking, with ever-increasing intensity and honesty: “What do I like? And why?”"
But in order to get to this point—to the point when you can ask yourself “what do I like and why?”—takes a self-confidence, trust, and the ability to not care what others may think—and that’s not always easy. It’s also, surprisingly, not always easy to form a clear opinion in the first place, to know what you like or don’t like, as your true feelings can often become obscured by an overlay of feelings and thoughts disconnected from your visceral self. We are so overwhelmed by what the world tells us to think! And our own personal biases and histories can get in the way so much that we don’t recognize art when we see it, or our own feelings when we feel them. And then we read and learn about art so that we feel safer about making assumptions and having opinions—and that education can get in the way, too! Being told what is “good art” isn’t always helpful! Then again, who wants to fall in love with something only to find out later that the rest of the world finds it trite and worthless? That sense of humiliation, to realize you’ve missed something that the cognoscenti know—it’s not a good feeling. To have real clarity about your own likes and dislikes—it’s hard, but worth striving for.
Elsewhere, George has written this: “It’s kind of crazy, but, in my experience, that’s the whole game: 1) becoming convinced that there is a voice inside you that really, really knows what it likes, and 2) getting better at hearing that voice and acting on its behalf.”
Here, “number two” is where the hang up is. Even if you've gotten better at locating that voice inside of you, the true voice that can separate itself from all of the world that is screaming at you and telling you what to think, there may still still be a problem with “…and acting on its behalf.” Yes, that is the goal. But good luck with "acting on its behalf." That’s where the mystery is. We can use that dial in our brain that George talks about (negative/positive) and (probably) see that much of what we’ve written falls on the “negative” side. But to fix it—that’s the rub. George writes of using one’s intuition, which is akin to listening to that voice in your head. But for beginners, that may mean hundreds of attempts, over and over again. Listening, and then realizing you were wrong. Listening again. It’s daunting. It’s exhausting. Many people never try at all and many who do try, give up.
“I have sort of cornered myself, via my good taste, ha ha.” Love that!
The message, to me, from George’s post this week is: Trust yourself. But more than that, the message is: Keep going.
I was thinking the 'trust yourself' thing is so hard but when I think about times in life when I've royally screwed up I can recognize that, deep down, I did know more than I thought I did, and it was not listening to that uneasy, quiet inner-voice that was the problem. It's a useful pointer to realize the same thing applies to writing.
Mary, I find the idea of trusting myself to be pretty daunting, too. I struggle to really SEE what I've written. I wait between drafts, change the font, pretend I'm someone else, read it out loud, but I still can't ever get enough distance.
I think it comes back to your point about the process obscuring our visceral selves. I enjoy stories because they make me feel a certain way, and if I'm too intimate with construction of the story, I don't know how I feel about it. I only know what seems right, logically, but otherwise, I'm feeling my way around in the dark.
The only thing that works for me is to go ahead and finish a story (through how ever many drafts it takes me) and then put it away for WEEKS. Like three months. Or however long it takes me to know I've written the story but to feel no attachment to it. It's amazing to me how I can cut entire paragraphs this way--sentences I loved when I wrote them, sometimes! Seeing my own words with fresh eyes and detachment allows me to have a more trustworthy opinion about what I've written. When I'm weeks away from the toil of carefully choosing every word and can hardly remember what I went through to get those words on the page, I can be brutal if need be. I can see through it all to the core of what's needed. Or sometimes I find out that I like what I wrote. Either way, it works for me.
For me, I think it probably takes a year to get any distance, but I've only done that when I've given up on something and then gone back to it. Sometimes, I put something away for months and come back, and that certainly helps, but I'm never really fully sure. I've never had a problem with cutting, I'll cut whole paragraphs the same day I wrote them. Maybe it's because I never write anything so good that I feel like I can't cut it.
Amy, thanks for this. I’m with Graeme, I trust you. I trust you because you’re willing to be vulnerable (ie, honest). I trust you because, like the most trustworthy people I know, you (like Mary G, Susie et al.) struggle with trusting yourself!
What I’m trying to learn is how to trust my insecurity and self-doubt and follow it all the way down. Not the content of what the insecurity/self-doubt is telling me! God forbid. But the feeling or impulse or the deep-down ground (or whatever it is) that gives it rise. I’ll let you know how it goes.
In the end I figure we have to trust what Mary G says: keep going.
Interesting resonance with what Pema Chödrön says in her slim book , The Places That Scare You. Let go the story and focus on or be with the feelings. That’s roughly it. She’s helping people to be deeply in touch with what is rather than defend against it. She’s a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan tradition. I have found that book really helpful in life and what you said has helped me now see how this simple piece of advice can apply to writing. Thank you!
Yeah, I try to follow the feelings all the way down, too. Sometimes, I remember the first time I felt that way. It helps with self-compassion when I remember being so little and already not feeling good enough.
Maybe you don't have to pretend to be someone else - maybe you can find some critique partner/s...
Yesterday my critique group partners laid into a chapter I'd been laboring long at. One said bluntly (among other things) --"It meanders. There's no forward momentum." And I responded - "Thank you! This is - oddly - really elating!" And it really was -- I had an instant re-visioning of what work this chapter actually needed to do!
This is a long-running small group where we know each other well, in the group context. I am so grateful for the perspective it brings -- both in the giving and the receiving of critiques. Yes, we have to struggle alone - but everything shifts the moment you put something out for review and receive comments. We've met on Zoom since Covid. Perhaps you can find or create a group that will be helpful to you.
I wish you good luck in finding light - in whatever way works for you.
Thanks. That's good advice. I'm in a couple of writers groups. It's true, they are helpful, but in the end, I'm the one who makes the ultimate decisions.
I've been thinking about trying to start a group with the people involved with Story Club with George, but I don't know how much interest there'd be.
Agree and relate to this. Action usually is the hardest part.
"Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow"
There is a kind of line that we must cross that requires self-transcendence. Which means both honoring our perspective and setting it aside in each moment.
"Neither the separated being nor the infinite being is produced as an antithetical term. The interiority that ensures separation (but not as an abstract rejoinder to the notion of relation) must produce a being absolutely closed over upon itself, not deriving its isolation dialectically from its opposition to the Other. And this closedness must not prevent egress from interiority, so that exteriority could speak to it, reveal itself to it, in an unforseeable movement which the isolation of the separated being could not provoke by simple contrast. In the separated being the door to the outside must hence be at the same time open and closed." (Levinas)
Thanks, Mary for focusing on “What do I like? And why?” The listening part is key and I believe what we are learning here at Story Club is like learning how to sing. There's the technique part but also the practice.
I don't know--I can get very mixed up talking about any of this, talking about the process of writing. Sometimes it seems useless to talk about it all. It's all in the doing. I used to teach fiction writing classes (i'm almost embarrassed to admit that, because i had no idea what I was doing), and each week I just wanted to say, okay everybody, just pick up your pen and write. That would be my whole lesson. Just write.
A friend of mine sent me a slip of paper in the mail. It's just a torn-off scrap of paper, with rough edges, about three inches square, the kind of thing one might use for a grocery shopping list. It's been pinned to the bulletin board over my desk for many years. There are two words written on it with a pencil, in all caps, one on top of the other.
All the theory and knowledge in the universe is useless, unless we actually write. I keep having to relearn this lesson! But I am grateful for all the lessons.
Very late to the party, but just wanted to weigh in because teaching music performance is my job, though I teach piano, not voice. I just thought your analogy was interesting because in my experience, voice is actually very much technique - a lot more so than what we've been discussing here. I accompanied a lot of voice lessons (this was how piano majors were expected to earn extra money in undergrad) and there were often times where we would not go in for the first half of the lesson because that was to be spent on warm-ups and vocalises. A great, great deal of time is invested in breath control, posture, formation of vowels. You'd be surprised. Whereas in my own lessons, I pretty much remember two dedicated lessons on technique: one was a group class where we were given a technical regimen to do on our own, and the second was the one time I played a scales outside of the context of a piece, where my teacher took my arm and dragged me along, telling me the elbow has to lead.
I think the analogy is interesting, and it keeps a place in the forefront of my mind. I think there are similarities. George's description of the revision process reminds me very much of how music is taught. I try to step back and look at the whole first, so the student has some sort of framework to organize their thoughts, but then we pretty much get into line editing: this note is late, make a difference between piano and mezzo piano, don't let the left hand cover up the right hand, etc. But at the same time - in music we are so often working with someone else's script. Even for singer-songwriters, there is the stage where the lyrics are written, the melody composed, and then the mechanical working out of getting the sound color right and ingraining the physical feeling of the song in the body. Here in fiction we are only concerned with creation. (Which is not so say I have *never* heard a writer discuss methods of typing, but typically we just aren't concerned with the actual mechanics of how keys get pressed.) Music lessons are often all about those mechanics. As we say, "sound follows motion," so even if technical exercises aren't assigned, every desire to make a change in the sound involves some discussion of the physicality of playing whatever instrument you're using.
I hope this is somewhat interesting. I always welcome opportunities to ruminate about the similarities and differences among the arts - especially between performance art and other (I feel like I should know a term for this) art.
Thanks for your comment. I like the comparison / contrast with regard to singing and writing (Originally stories were sung. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singer_of_Tales). Also, I believe there is a qualitative difference between writing longhand and typing.
I wonder if there isn't a wrong answer. There's the three blind men feeling-up the elephant, but what about the fourth, with his hand on the branch of a nearby tree, who says "Ah yes, elephants are slender, hard, and flexible, and if you bend them too much they snap."
We're all probably touching the tree (rock, water) instead of the elephant. But at least we're asking the questions and then pondering the possible answers.
Mary G. This is a beautiful post. Beginning with your lovely inclusive Mother’s Day gift of peace and love.
Feeling the judgment of the “cognoscenti!” Been there. Done that!
Do you know Elaine Scarry’s book “On Beauty and Being Just?” There’s a chapter entitled “On Beauty and Being Wrong.” In it she talks about the fact that she was wrong about Matisse’s work—- which she originally discounted. I console myself that my taste can be educated. And this happens all the time. But I especially like your prescription, “pick up your pen and write.” ❤️ (Yikes are we allowed to use emoji’s in the Story Club?)
I love Matisse...to think he was on the edge of Paris being bombed in world war One and still painted and ironies of irony some his early important collectors were Russian^^
Thank you, Gail, for your kind comments. No, I don't know that book, but I'll see if I can find a copy somewhere. I'm curious to know how her tastes changed regarding Matisse. Was she somehow able to open herself up? We can be so closed down sometimes and unable to venture down new pathways in our minds. It's so interesting to think about what we find beautiful and why. Some aspects are there at birth--as babies we are naturally attracted to human faces and find them pleasing. I don't know how I feel about taste being educated. I do appreciate learning about art and art history and understanding why some pieces of art are considered masterpieces while others are not. But I like to think that I can still be in charge of my own taste. Probably impossible, as we are given messages constantly, especially when it comes to beauty. Interesting to think about!
And yes, "pick up your pen and write" is really key. Also--reading! The importance of reading, reading, reading in order to know how to write and in order to find out what you like and what you might aspire to in terms of your own writing. Reading a lot is really fundamental to being a writer.
I’m with you- Reading Reading. Reading. And I’m leaning to read with a different set of lenses from George and this also informs my taste.
But back to reading, there’s a great quote from Wittgenstein in Scarry’s book that I also love- “when the eye sees beauty, the hand wants to make it.” Another reason to read!!
isn't that the truth! We see/hear/experience something and then we want to also create. The poet Marvin Bell wrote: "read something, then write something; read something else, then write something else. And show in your writing what you have read." Totally makes sense to me.
I fell in love with Rothko paintings, but couldn't say why. One day a friend was visiting me and because she insisted she didn't like his work I forced her to sit in front of a Rothko in a museum "just for a few minutes" and stare at one of his color field paintings (she was a good friend and humored me). After a while she told me she was seeing all kinds of colors in each block and felt mesmerized. So, yes, people can change in their evaluation of art--or at least how it affects them. I think the same is possible for literature.
I love that she sat with his art and took her time experiencing it. As with any art, Rothko meets you where you are. And since we change over time, our feelings toward a work of art will possibly change over time as well--emotionally as well as intellectually. Sometimes we aren't moved by a piece of art (including literature) and then, later in life, we come back to find a meaning we didn't see before. We are a different person, and we are moved.
You are right, and it also works the other way. I loved all the books by Alexander Dumas about the "Three Musketeers"--devoured them in my teens. Then I tried to go back years later and couldn't force myself to read them.
"I’ve often thought that our first scale-model of the universe comes to us by way of our mother’s attitude toward us. 'Does it like me? Will it be nice to me? Am I o.k.? Is it all right to take some chances out there?'”
And here's to those of us who haven't read the rest of this email yet because we close the window every time we reach this paragraph.
Another excellent exercise. Thank you George. What I think we are talking about here is trusting oneself to write, and then later applying an objective or critical perspective to the work in the process of revision. A delicate balance is required. Often, I hear a sort of nasty voice on my shoulder saying, "Who do you think you're kidding?" IF I can get past that, and accept that a first draft (or sometimes a tenth draft!) is not going to be very good at all, if I can allow myself to continue to try, something eventually will occur that is useful. Only then, for me, does the real fun begin. I need to be careful not to get too impressed with what I am writing - that can get in the way too - but when there is something there, sometimes I can find a way to be inside of it, to occupy it fully. Then it becomes authentic, and perhaps it will be of interest to others, but what I love most is the process and the feeling of being fully engaged. I crave the feeling of this engagement. Aristotle defined happiness as "the full use of one's powers along lines of excellence". My powers may be limited - I truly have no way to measure them - but when I am using them fully, engaged completely in what I am working on, then I am happiest and I am eager to go back in my study to do it again. The proverbial blank page is the worst part. Revision is the best part. In the end, it's quite easy to see the difference between good work and work that is not so good. I'd like to think that over time, the work has improved. The comparison exercise bears that out.
Happy Mother's Day to all. I was lucky enough to have my mother in my life until I was in my early 60s. And I have been very lucky in my own family, with my wife and three wonderful grown children, two sons-in-law, many siblings and nieces and nephews, and a granddaughter - a beautiful baby born last year. Parenting required a lot of revision, too!
Personally, I still really struggle with this part of the process:
"I get a little panicked at the thought that this version might somehow makes its way out into the world. This then translates into a feeling of resolve and even relief: it’s not been sent out yet, so I can still make it better."
As an unpublished fiction writer, when I'm working on a short story and I get to this point, my version of this panic feels so intensely personal and wrapped up with my own self-worth.
My version would be more like: "I get a little panicked at the thought" .... 'that I'm a complete and utter failure, and all the tricks I've had to mentally conjure in order to convince myself that I can do this (i.e.: write a decent story) and it's worth this time and effort sitting here are actually just a delusional aspect of my weak, feeble, flawed mind, which shouldn't be trusted, and will probably lead to the destruction of all the things I hold dear (family, friendships, relative financial stability, etc.).'
I can settle this thought-cycle down a bit with perspective, by reminding myself how fortunate and privileged I am to even be able to spending time thinking about this kind of thing, and having an honest outlet of opportunity to act on it (i.e.: I'm in good health, I'm safe, I am relatively free of the type of financial and/or familial restrictions that more than half the world has, etc.)
And then, after settling down a bit, I do often get to a version of: "All of my extant, self-congratulatory aesthetic ideas about the piece and its virtues get called rather rudely into question."
But then, (and I think this is the most critical juncture for me to be somewhat aware of), instead of: "These ideas are felt as a form of fearful scaffolding; they suddenly feel placeholderish and timid, like a sort of ceiling that I have, in my insecurity, placed on the work." At this point, I often cling to and double-down on the IDEAS and CONCEPTS, so they are a sort of fearful scaffolding for me, but instead of letting them fall away, I try to firm them up, secure them, make them permanent.
Which then, literally makes the story draft process at that point like trying to climb over a bulwark of fear, which I admit, leads me too often to run away. (The only promising part of that, is even with those challenges, I still can't stay away from starting all over at some point and doing it over again, going on for 20+ years now -- I could fill volumes with my "unfinished" stories.)
Also in some ways, those ideas and concepts do feel like the only thing I have to pull me into the story. For example, I think of a recent interview I heard with Charles Yu, and he mentioned how he often feels like he needs "sci-fi" concepts/ideas for stories, books, etc. to keep him engaged enough to play around with the story, and to eventually get to the small human moments within it that make it truly resonate.
I really related to Yu's explanation of that. I often feel like those ideas are what I need to get me "into" the story. And I have been fortunate enough (a few times) to let go and discover the magic that happens when the story becomes something else entirely, and those original ideas do fall away. I know this is when my writing becomes the most readable and potentially enjoyable.
I suppose this all amounts to me working better at letting the fear scaffolding fall away, and to trusting more in the value of doing this work versus getting stuck on pondering the value of what this work will become. (And I know, I know...that's sort of what this time and space listening/reading to George, and all of you at Story Club, is all about.)
What a valuable externalisation of your experience of how it has felt, repeatedly, when you've got the point where you are approaching having something closing in on being finished and potentially shaping up as, possibly, publishable.
You've written quite a few words but not, in my view, gone on too long. Rather you seem to have gotten something out as Comment that is important for you to say and for, many, others to read.
Here's a suggestion:
Step 1 Rack up a selection (or maybe even all) of advanced drafts of those 'Unfinished Stories' of yours. Maybe you'll find it most helpful to sequence them chronologically? Perhaps you might find that it makes sense to tag them (whether the sample selection or the full back catalogue) by type / topic / theme? Possibly you may also find it useful to tag them by number of number of words?
Step 2 Re-read them, systematically but without being self-critical, for fun (as George frequently suggests) and entertainment. On becoming reacquainted be open to possibly being surprised by what you see in the stories of words set on pages and how you feel about them. Maybe make pithy, impressionistic notes on the experience of reading each one?
Step 3 When you've worked through a varied sample (even if you intend to work through the whole back catalogue) of say 3 or 5 or 10 of you 'Unfinisheds' pick, say, 3 that you are going to revisit and rework drawing on some of the ideas on reviewing and revising that George has offered us. Why not have an aim of creating a small portfolio of three stories which comprise not just the latest, enhanced versions but also the three previously unfinished versions? Then decide in which order you'd like to think that these, long in gestation, three stories might be published? And then . . . well go for getting the one you'd like to see published first in shape . . . for what else but publication?
Three eezee pezee steps 😂? Not quite but why not go for it, the final push through to feeling you've at least 1, perhaps 2 or maybe as many as 3 pieces that you'd like to get out and read by a wider readership than yourself?
If Tolstoy could write 'The Snowstorm' and allow it, in various ways, to morph over time into 'Master & Man' why shouldn't David do the same with his 'Unfinished Stories'?
oh the ways we beat ourselves up, call ourselves failures, weak, feeble and flawed. It doesn't help, i know, to tell you that you are clearly none of those things (any more than any of us are), that you are a person who writes and who is continuing to press forward with your writing--which of course makes you a success. Being published definitely helps one's ego and helps a person feel as though they've been validated, but you know the folks reading your work are just people with their own opinions, and whether or not they publish you is such a toss up. Your last paragraph about letting the fear scaffolding fall away--fear is such a game stopper. George's post here this week seems to me to be all about trusting one's self. You write about trusting the value of doing this work, and that is all there is, really. Writing is a process and although there is an end product, it's the process that fascinates and lets us learn what's really happening there inside of our hidden brains. Sounds to me as though you are doing that, over and over again. As long as we stay away from "pondering the value of what this work will become" we'll be okay. We have no idea what anything will become. The future isn't here. Sorry if i sound like a pseudo-therapist here. What i really want to do is congratulate you on all of your failed stories. Without them, you'll never write a story you find personally successful. There are no short cuts. (You didn't go on too long, said the woman who always writes too much in these threads....)
Yes, learning to trust one's self! And there's a wonderful CP Cavafy poem, "The First Step," about being a member of the community of writers--even if you are on a lower rung, you are still writing, you still belong. "To have come this far is no small achievement:/What you have done already is a glorious thing.” I often think of this poem when I'm wrestling with a recalcitrant story.
David, as one who has stacks of "unfinished stories" and has experienced much of what you describe (panic, self doubt), I'd like to dare to recommend coaching/therapy with someone specializing in work with artists and writers, if available and not too expensive these days. It's such a tough thing to have so much to need to tell, and then to get stuck, and stuck. Best wishes.
I read today a comment on Twitter which said "Hot poetry tip: if you want to improve a poem you’re struggling with, submit it. Then read over your submission, and you will suddenly see what needs to be changed." (@NatalieGMarino) and I think it holds well for short stories, too, as I have frequently had that experience. This post really helped me in thinking about how to SEE those rough patches before I hit "Submit."
It's too easy to read over something you've revised a bunch of times, and take parts for granted as fine, rather than to do what you say here, which is look at them compared to your ideal idea of writing, and see where they fall short. Kind of brutal, but so necessary.
Great tip. I often send my poems to friends for this reason. I think it helps with lessening the attachment to one's own perspective (to view it from that mysterious exterior place) and also gives that sense of urgency, that sense that one is about to be hanged in a fortnight.
I tried the exercise with two Flannery O’Connor stories, in fact the first and last of her Complete Stories, “The Geranium” and “Judgment Day,” both about an old Southern man feeling cramped and unhappy in his daughter’s New York City apartment, which he regrets moving into. Right from the first sentence of “Judgment Day” I can discern one big difference: in this story (unlike the other) the man has a clear desire and intention, namely to “escape” and get back South. This later story also feels more deftly layered with flashbacks and flashbacks-within-flashbacks, and the details feel more, well, organized. I also think O’Connor had realized that writing about the South was her strength, so much more of the later story takes place there (via flashback). Finally, the meaning of the story feels more direct and precise—not summarizable here, maybe, but something to do with the man’s comeuppance for being a racist (albeit a racist in a complicated way that involves longing for the days of friendship with a black man back home).
Some ripples radiating out from the point in pond where your pebble dropped for me:
> Neat transposition, taking the frame of George's Tolstoy exemplar and offering it up against a temporally equivalent pairing of Flannery O'Connor's: 'Younger' and 'Mature'.
> And that's why I consider George more as 'Educator' than 'Teacher': his encouragement to take what we're learning and test it outwith the fine box that is Story Club.
> And how many, have you noticed, writers of short fiction offer stories not just about what they notice but what they become, not in the least inappropriately, 'knowledgeable' of 'obsessed' by?
> And as to 'summarizable' . . . why not ban precis, of all kinds, in favour of recourse to the text as published - originally or in fine translation(s) - and focus conversation on what reading the 'actual story' throws up rather than that which is derived the, relative and all too often, drivel of the 'pseudo literary commentatoriat'?
> Just ripples, rippling; rippling gently out across, and to perturb, the prior moment's tranquility on the surface of untroubled pond?
> Just ripples of thoughts, passed already, just caught in the slipstream of their passing by my way.
Enough already. I'm away off, upstairs, to blow out the candle an, without further ado, to jump into bed!
Thanks for sharing this, Bryce – what a great example and interesting observations. I've read The Geranium, and so I'll read Judgment Day now – looking forward to comparing the two.
The note on losing the "treasured bits, the gems" was such a challenge for me in both my fiction and non-fiction. I solved it by cutting the phrase/sentence/paragraph out, printing it and pinning it to my bulletin board. It still exists but I am able to get on with the work at hand.
On the issue of loseness vs. precision, I immediately thought of the improvisation of jazz around a base structure or understanding. I see the City Lights clip much this same way.
I have an order of magnitude more text in my "bits bucket" than is in my actual novel!! It's the only way I can relax and throw things out! But sometimes I really do wonder if I shouldn't go back and.... NO! NO! NO! :-D
what a good Idea!!! I know when I am sucked in by something I just LOVE that is trite or lazy or whatever but I just LOVE it. It takes me ages to dump it ..and sometimes the embarrassment of someone else saying so. THANKS for this great idea.
This is a timely article, as I've just submitted my author's notes for an anthology about revision. Specifically, notes about the difference between the story I submitted to the magazine, and the version that was reworked with the editor, and my thoughts about it.
I won't post my notes here (I have a contract to honor). But I will address the question: I'm not sure how to tell when something is polished. I'm working with the same editor on another story, and his most frequent comment is "Polish"! Maybe the sentence structure is too flat, or it's merely a bridge to get to the point rather than being a beautiful part of the pathway, or etc. The great irony is that the story is one that I challenged myself to finish in under 15 hours, because that last one that got published I worked on for over 80! And I was goddamned sick of it! I wanted to submit something before I strangled my love for it.
I guess if I had to put my finger on it, polish is when insufficient attention has been paid to the details. And overworking is when I've gone over something so often that I've forgotten the greater purpose of the story--and don't get a damn about it anymore. Under-polished stories and overworked stories are editorial opposites. But I'd rather have a story that needs polish than one that's overworked. A lack of polish just needs a gob of spit, a clean cloth, and elbow grease. When something's overworked, I throw the entire manuscript away and start rewriting from line one, trying to remember what I loved about it in the first place.
When I deem a story ready to send to magazines, it's when I've taken the story as far as I could with the skills I have and that further changes are only changes and not improvements. Working with a writing group or an editor whose opinion I trust has helped me find the spots that could use polish. I'm still early enough in my writing career that I don't have many published work available, and those that are out show an enormous jump in quality with each one. Much thanks to you, George--your book and this substack has helped enormously.
This was the most important part of your post for me, George, especially the last sentence: "The escalation is more decisive, everything seems more to purpose. At all times, it seems, the story is posing a question, and we know, roughly, what it is. Expectations are arising and the story is, if not addressing them, taking them into account. We feel in connection with the author, who seems to “see” us - to know where we are at each moment." One day, I'm going to print up all your posts and take them and my dog out to the big lawn in the park and read them again in the open air and sun.
Ellen - you might be interested in this( I’m certainly excited because I love Jewish history):The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem. It’s a new series landing soon on Netflix about the Sephardic community in Old Jerusalem through several decades. It’s described as a romantic melodrama and at its heart is a shepardic boy whose family forbid him to marry an Ashkenazi girl. It’s made by the same Israeli production company that made Fauda and Shtisel (my absolute fave) and features some of the same actors.
It’s going to be subtitles, because apparently the script features Hebrew, Arabic, some English and - fantastically - Ladino. You probably know that that’s the Judeo-Spanish language spoken by Spanish Jews during the great flowering of Jewish culture there in the Middle Ages. The equivalent of Ashkenazi Yiddish. There are very few speakers of it left, as far as I understand. Xxxx
I'm making a note of it! It's luck I saw this post bc, since it wasn't a reply, I didn't get email notification. I have to go back to Shtisel too. I've also had "Burnt by the Sun," on a post-it in my kitchen since you recommended it. I take a while to get to videos requiring more concentration, but I'll get there. Same with books: I'm sort of well-read and not nearly enough, I'd say.
It sounds interesting. And a fairly obscure period in Israeli-Palestinian history. Unrelated show but,
did you happen to see Borgen? I loved it. A little deeper and more nuanced than a lot (not all) of American tv. And with all the problems with our rigid political parties here, I was thinking we might have been better off with a parliamentary system.
Sorry to be late in response again, but I have made the long trip back from Vinegar Hollow to Ithaca and was happy to read all the responses. I can relate to all of them. One of my particular problems relates to what mary g. says below about having "real clarity about your likes and dislikes." I admire so many writers and many of them are very different. It's the same with dressing. I admire many styles of clothing, but I have never known how I want to look, not that I am exactly a chameleon, just that I can't get a style down, though I do get dressed and face the world and some days I am more put together than others. So, with reference to writing, what I do know is that if you write enough, you can find it--your particular style, your flow, your way of being on the page--and it can't be Katherine Mansfield, or Tolstoy, or George Saunders, even though I have clarity about why I love these great writers. I know, by practice, how I feel comfortable on the page in my natural history blog posts, but I am trying to find out I might feel comfortable in fiction writing. I got four chapters into a novel and took a class with a published, successful novelist, who was kind and helpful, but someone in the class said "you need to learn how to write!" That was embarrassing, but if she meant that the writing was stilted, I would have to concur. Now I am old enough to feel comfortable with experimentation, embarrassment, and failure. I am going to play with a short story called "Binary," a title that someone (Rob?) suggested based on the first sentence exercise. I am worried it might be too autobiographical, but I can also feel that while my personal experience provides a framework I might veer into magical realism because of reading One Hundred Years of Solitude while to-ing and fro-ing to that incredibly boring job. I hope all this makes sense. While I might seem to be asserting that there is some kind of inevitability of how one is on the page despite one's desire to be like someone else, I do totally believe in craft. I love thinking and writing about writing. Thank you, George, for opening up so many avenues of discussion. I love your discursive narratives!!!
I was adding a post here around the same time as you...! also bemoaning lack of skill, though in a different way.
Boy that was a harsh comment you got splatted with in the class. I've been splatted also - years ago, I went to a weekend workshop expecting nurturing support but - a couple of the agents were - let's say - blunt. For me it was the "story arc" and so on.
Eventually I found value in the bruising I got and it sounds like you are finding this too. Sometimes it's good to be shaken and not stirred!
The experimentation you talk of - sounds like fun. I wish I could do that. So far - I've been like a seed with hooks that burrow deep and can't back out. I can only keep going, it seems, with this one project.
I've been working at this one book for - at least 8 years now and I've had a lot of trepidation and doubt about this stubbornness. But I think, now, looking back - and forward - that in the process I've learned a lot about how to write - working on the same set of story problems etc this way and that - as opposed to trying different stories - all aspects - and in particular - a lot of what George is conveying to us about intention, causality etc.
Re your thoughts about autobiography - couple things occur to me - Some stories may start autobiographical and then - as you are thinking will happen with "Binary" - start diverging, having a life of their own.
Others may remain autobiographical -- and nothing wrong with that - "autofiction" - or just memoir or other autobiography -- I feel drawn to that myself. Maybe you can give yourself permission to experiment in those genres.
I have no idea how to write a short story. Yet. One day I hope to have a go - and maybe I'll spend 10 years writing one of those, too!
What a great premise for a new, fresh traditional Christmas Panto:
"I have no idea how to write a short story" opines the prime protagonist - named let's say Block (a Wannabee Writer) - with distressing dispirit.
"Oh yes you do" scream back all the children - aged 9 to 90 - in the audience.
And just then a strolling ghost of a Writer Past comes out of the wings. stage left, muttering aloud as only allowed in stage whispers
"Oh woe is me, there is no hope for me and my fond fine ambition to ascend as a lauded literary lad of note if the best I can produce is such poor reward for time spent reading 24 pages as 'The Snowstorm'."
Writer Past exits upper stage right in a miserable slow, soft shoe, shuffle . . . last words being "what a pathetic specimen of humanity am I, if this is the best then my writing goose is cooked and I wish I was dead!" . . .
The audience is hushed, 'how sad for this literary lad', the auditorium is silent, 'what next' minds are wondering . . .
As a spotlight strikes a figure re-entering, in full stride and with alacrity, upper stage right who says, as the band strikes up sprightly . . .
"Don't believe a word of what my melancholic younger self may have just suggested . . . truth is that, over many years of tears, I thot a whole lot about reviision and got whole better at this writing malarkey . . . and, though no more sure about where the idea came from than I ever was, turned out a tale about a Master and a Man, which somehow seemed to to make all the difference . . . and made me, humble Count Leo Tolstoy, the household name that I have been - past, present and future - down the fleeting years centuries passing fast . . . so reach beneath your seat boys and girls to find and pick upon papers and pencils and set yourself to writing . . . even though you know not what, as you start, the story 'tis to be about!"
"Hooray, hooray, hooray" scream the children . . .
Right on the English Jackie and you might be onto something with a raw, rough and not ready lyric that, maybe, starts "A struggling writer am I . . . trying to, oh so trying to take 'The Mikado Out of Nothing' . . . and 'The Pear Out of Shakes****e' . . ."
I am a late arrival in the realm of Pantomime Theatre: still not sure I like it, but realising it is quite a form, and sensing my fingers are getting itchy to sketch out some of what I might call 'Panto Shorts for Voices'. Just realising, thinking back, "It was the Covid Lockdown what done it M'Lud . . . Couldn't go south to sunny Andalucia for part the winter so went to the Prince of Wales Theatre in Cannock instead . . . And the rest is history . . ."
Yes - that's what I picked up as Gilbert and Sullivan - ish!
I think I may already have known you're English, actually, from some earlier interaction. I am a total Panto generation kid. I only saw one, live, back in the late fifties (I'm turning 70 in ever fewer months!!). It had a Buttons character. That means it was Cinderella. I do remember a coach and maybe even yes - real ponies pulling it! It was in Glasgow's Citizen's Theater and I'd be about five years old maybe 7. I saw pantos on TV too with Jimmy Starbuck, Ken Dodd etc. Yup. I'm a sucker for Panto.
I did see one other live panto - also Cinderella - about 12 years ago, with my then-little granddaughter, who lives in Paignton, Devon. It was at The Palace. Paignton is such an old fashioned seaside resort still (though much run down). It was a proper full-on, old-fashioned panto with some famous or semi-famous performers -- I've been out of the UK for so long I'm out of touch with the turnover of comedians -- who genuinely seemed to be having a blast. It had the mildly raunchy "over the tops of the kiddies' heads" humor for the parents, and all the other trimmings, exaggerated costuming, makeup and other tropes - "Look Behind You!" etc - and pretending to squirt water and squirting sparkly bits instead - and then ACTUALLy squirting water (spray). Gosh it was fun. For me at least. My granddaughter was a bit overwhelmed I think!
Gosh, makes me come all-over maudlin thinking about it! :-D
The joy of the Cannock panto was the fact that it panto put on community arts and theatre 🎭 groups.
It's about this time of year, or slightly earlier that panto penners get started dusting off and updating the skeletal plots and spent sketches of previous seasons' pantos
That line to walk, between sticking with tradition and sprucing up with topical innovation, is quite a challenge.
Thank you for your reply, Jackie. It has many insights that are helpful to me. I printed it out and am going to keep it in my short story folder. You reinforce the notion that one must give oneself permission to try without self sabotage. And most of all, you are right that I want to find freedom in my writing. I did write a nonfiction book called Primrose that was published in 2019 and I completed a memoir of place for my MFA in Nonfiction called You Better Come Home With Me that I am going to dust off as soon as I finish Moss & Lichen for the same publisher who put out Primrose. I can't really find freedom in source-based writing though I can hone craft and sentence making. The publisher of Primrose and Moss & Lichen does not want the "I" voice because an informational, impersonal style is preferred. In any event, Moss & Lichen is my last nonfiction book. My goal in Primrose and Moss & Lichen is to inspire readers to respect the biology and beauty of these plants [lichens are only part plant]. The stated goal of Reaction's Botanical Series is botanical, horticultural, and social and cultural background of a plant or group of plants, so I do get to do some art history and literary criticism as well. I have loved writing them, but source-based writing in this style is constrictive. So on to "Binary." I like your comment about not worrying about starting out in an autobiographical way and just waiting for the half-known mysterious inner voice to take over! Thank you again! my best, Elizabeth
I'm glad to be of any help! I feel chuffed you printed out what I wrote :-)
I like the sound of "Primrose". And "Moss & Lichen". I love "science plus" books and read a lot of science-for-lay-people stuff. Carlo Rovelli is my favorite in the physics field. Merlin Sheldrake for fungus. I enjoyed "Gathering Moss" by Robin Wall Kimmerer (and Braiding Sweetgrass), "The Forest Unseen" by David George Haskell and umpteen more.
I love to look at mosses and lichens (and etc) under my cheap dissecting microscope, but really don't get much past "wow!" So I'll definitely be on the lookout for your "Moss & Lichen" book! I wonder if there's a prepublication mailing list I can get on?
Actually, I have kind of similar tension going on as you do, writing-wise. I've a lay-person's enthusiasm for local native plants and ecosystems in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where I moved from Silicon Valley 22 years go. I feel an obligation, really, to write a kind of "So you've moved to the mountains" book or web site for others who are leaving suburbia for acreage in a wildland area. Most of us have no clue what that shift really means. I'd like to help orient them towards appreciation of co-evolved nature - and love of their irreplaceable (and steadily degrading) local ecosystems, and encourage them to nurture them in practical ways -- like pulling invasive weeds, even if they're pretty! I'd use personal experience and also provide references to useful content in books or online.
But I'd be equally happy if someone else would write that book! What I most want to do is - write fiction, poetry, memoir...
Well--here's to kicking over the traces and galloping off into writerly freedom!
Another thing I really recommend to develop one's writing is finding a critique group or forming one - with people whose writing and support you can relate to well - I've learned such a lot about writing by giving and receiving regular critiques.
I remember the post in which you briefly described the job you had one summer in NYC. I thought your prose was great – I hesitate to attempt to characterise it, but it struck me as (among other things) clear, natural, it had a nice rhythm and variation, and such an honest voice. Definitely not "stilted" – I myself would read on!
I can relate to your experience of writing non-fiction for a time, then focussing on something else. I have written a lot of legal briefs in the last few years, and I am now devoting time to writing personal essays and short stories. I am no expert, but I wouldn't worry too much about whether your current writing is too "autobiographical"; your experience is obviously a legitimate source of material, and my own thinking on this is that you can apply the principles that govern good fiction to help shape your own story – for example, deciding which events or details from your experience to include or exclude, having regard to causation, escalation, patterns ... And, as part of that process, perhaps you could introduce everything from simple embellishments to entirely fictional events and episodes.
I think it is such an exciting process, learning to find one's voice, style, subject matter, while writing with a different purpose in mind.
Thank you for this, Geoff. I have printed this out also and put in my writing folder. It is very important to remember that this transition from nonfiction to fiction can be/should be "exciting"! After all, why not? Thank you, my best, Elizabeth
If you 'require' months just would 'prefer' months' but get to know that you'll be hung in a fortnight why not go with flow towards concentrating the mind?
Get brutal Gail? Cut to the chase?
Just stirring the though pot, thankful that I'm not signed up to script a twice weekly sketch show of a quality that might stick and have longevity!
And we don't have the challenge that Dr Johnson faced every time he sat to where he was writing to add a new word to his original dictionary: "Mmm, how to spell it?"
Enjoy getting the fruits of bringing fresh eyes to bear on each of your pages Gail.
I wonder . . . did Johnson coin 'phonetic' as an addition to his innovative English Dictionary? Maybe having sounded out "C, A, T > CAT"? Could we have been readin' and writing about the weather "reigning kats and dawgs" if Samuel had made other spelling choices?
Endless revision is a kind of hell if you don't have that ability to discern in the optometrist's big heavy goggle things - which is better - A....? or B....?
Developing the discrimination - exploring what that is for each of us - that's the thing I'm learning about here or hope I am.
I drive myself nuts. I have access to all the earlier drafts of my kids' novel (not each iteration of each chapter in each draft but -- actually many of those too!).
Yesterday I went back to draft 3 looking for a thing I needed -- a factoid actually -- and came across writing that seems really not any different in quality from what I'm working on in the parallel chapter in draft 6. I thought it was quite good, and wondered what I've been up to in all the years since that draft.
However -- what is different is my attention to the hooks and - even to resonances between the hooks - that make the story a story. That is much sharpened under George's guidance.
The things being hooked together have their own littler hooks, and I'm getting better at those too. Hooks within hooks within hooks.
But as to the direction - that's another thing. As to what is BEING hooked. There I'm having problems. What belongs in THIS story? What is distracting or extraneous? What follows are specifics. You don't have to carry on - the above rant is really my current situation as regards Story Club and what I'm learning! However... if anybody is curious --
I want my 1962 Cuban Missiles on the way - spy and space (Telstar) - mystery story for 12 year olds to have a family Cold War too. My protagonist learns that her dad is estranged from HIS dad -- a grandfather she didn't know existed -- and she helps to bring about a reconciliation. And gains a lovely grandfather into the bargain.
To me it's a terrific (and entwined) parallel.
To my critique partners - it's another book. The book without it is great, they say -- and I'm happy that they think so! BUT
I WANT this thickening of the texture. I want the protagonist to learn things about her family and end the cold war there too. And in the course of the microfilm/spy/"Tell Kennedy!" challenges - she also learns more about who she is, which is different from who she thought she was as a younger child (a "leader" like her sea captain dad). She sheds that persona and gives new weight to - other and more authentic and central aspects of herself as she is growing and developing into them.
I mean isn't this what fun and exciting and really good reads do?
Or are my partners right and I need to keep my arrow flight single and focused and the story will just be really so much stronger and better that way.
I can't decide.
I know the workshops on kid lit etc are on the side of my critique partners, who are astute and I respect them - but... I REALLY want this family aspect.
And there's the rub: what we want may not, in fact, be the best thing for the story.
Ah yes, memories . . . "which is better - A....? or B....?" . . . to which question, bridge of the the nose heavily laden with those optometrist's googles you too are familiar with Jackie, I have been known to reply . . . "top half of A and bottom half of B".
Now that I've reflected a moment more I think I'd suggest that you let the story have it's head. Allow it to follow its instinct, to take you where it will. Insist all you want on the story embracing the family aspect that you really, really, really want . . . but listen to the story's verdict: if it fits go with it, if it doesn't fit don't insist on your right to write a doomed misfit?
Like Mary I say "listen", though I think "listen to the story" before "listening to yourself" 😊
Hit a couple of little snags in this post - do I even know what my best writing is or where to find it? I've got a queasy feeling about that.
But mostly, not such a little snag, really, is the whole conception of urgency as it applies to writing. This would seem to lie at the polar opposite (not to confuse elephants with polar bears) from procrastination. I like the analogy of cleaning the house a few days vs. a few hours before a party. Being something of a clean freak, which is to say, being better at cleaning than sitting down to write or revise. A thing that can be discouraging is the little nagging thought that, no matter how many damn times I polish it, chances are practically true that no one, give or take a rejector here or there, will ever see my writing. The same is basically true of my living room, but somehow that doesn't bother me quite as much. In fact, I'm relieved that most people will never see my living room, even when it is clean.
How did I end up here, I wonder?
I can see how thinking, this story I'm working on is likely eventually going to be read by lots and lots of individuals who are interested in literature and want to know what I'm up to lately, could indeed concentrate the mind.
I'd be on it in no time, myself.
But maybe what GS is saying is, the idea that you are participating in this grand project called art while you are still alive and able (I already regret phrasing it like that but) is motivation enough. Or could be, if you could only get your mind turned around to feeling that way about it.
Definitely does seem like a wonderful gift, if you are by nature or aptitude already turned around to that way of feeling about it. Inspiration comes in many forms too, and to be open to it is also a gift, I feel.
I wonder what this strange lethargy is other than, I'm sure no one will ever see this.
Strategies for outwitting it, anyone? Besides dire threats, I mean.
Well Amanda this latest SC Newsletter from the 🖊 of GS has certainly set you thinking 🤔. Got to be a good thing, and good on you for rising to the challenge to think about crossing the borderlands between ‘writing for self’ and ‘writing for others’.
Let’s allow the possibility that all that you’ll ever write will not, never, be read by others. Quite a stark downside scenario? Maybe or maybe not. A glorious upside might be that, because you’ve written so much, with so much care and an openness to new ideas, your ability to constructively critique and enjoy the fictions of others increases greatly.
Just from reading this one post I think you do have both a talent for writing and a potential to, finally, find yourself pushing pieces out to prospective publishers. A thought that’s just strolled across the stage that is my imagination is that you might find it fun to acquire two tee-shirts. One have printed REJECTED, the other ACCEPTED. Wear them with pride on those, future, occasions when you get to know that something you’ve submitted has either got a green light and is proceeding to publication or a stop, sorry, no go response?
Definitely not dire threats--I feel like you're being hard enough on yourself as it is. I wish I could tell you "if you write it, they will come" or something like that, but the truth is I'm in no position to guarantee you anything. And if your life experience tells you that no one will read your writing besides a rejector here or there, then maybe that's accurate too. Except...even if the rejector rejects it, they still read it, right?
Sometimes, if I'm reading something that doesn't happen to be all-consuming, I liken it to panning for gold. Like sure, most of this stuff is probably getting tossed, but I'm sure to find some good nuggets. And even the tossed stuff I will have at least considered. So if someone does that with whatever I share--takes some, leaves the rest, well then, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? (By the way, I can no longer even write the word 'goose' without remembering My First Goose--the power of literature).
Lately, what's helped me be more open with myself and others is remembering that we're all equal in God's eyes, which means I have as much right as anyone, but also that I can learn from anyone. And all that learning, it has a tendency to bubble up, so that I want to share it, put my own spin on it, take it for a ride and invite someone to join me. So maybe, if you write it, they will come. Or go. Or come and go. It's almost no business of yours what they do. Just what you do. And you get to do whatever you want to do, for as long as you want to do it.
George's interest in "More pronounced and intentional causation" is key for me, because it's been a hole in much of my fiction for a long time. I find now, as part of my learning here, that knowing what my protagonist really, really wants becomes an anchor for me, a stabilizing force. It may take some time to achieve, but it then drives the story. It's a particular thing to work with, rather than the mass of emotion and structural questions that can overwhelm.
Both my kids called me yesterday and my spouse took me out for dinner, and my flower garden is blooming away. Happy Mother's Day to writing mothers everywhere, especially to you Story Clubbers.
Happy Mother’s Day, to all of us. My own mother is dead and gone, and so I also want to give a shout out to those of us who have lost our mothers or those for whom motherhood wasn’t possible or chosen, or those who once had children and no longer have them. It’s a beautiful day but can also be a tough one. Peace and love to all of you.
George writes: "There is literally no wrong answer. The value lies in clarifying one’s preferences, asking, with ever-increasing intensity and honesty: “What do I like? And why?”"
But in order to get to this point—to the point when you can ask yourself “what do I like and why?”—takes a self-confidence, trust, and the ability to not care what others may think—and that’s not always easy. It’s also, surprisingly, not always easy to form a clear opinion in the first place, to know what you like or don’t like, as your true feelings can often become obscured by an overlay of feelings and thoughts disconnected from your visceral self. We are so overwhelmed by what the world tells us to think! And our own personal biases and histories can get in the way so much that we don’t recognize art when we see it, or our own feelings when we feel them. And then we read and learn about art so that we feel safer about making assumptions and having opinions—and that education can get in the way, too! Being told what is “good art” isn’t always helpful! Then again, who wants to fall in love with something only to find out later that the rest of the world finds it trite and worthless? That sense of humiliation, to realize you’ve missed something that the cognoscenti know—it’s not a good feeling. To have real clarity about your own likes and dislikes—it’s hard, but worth striving for.
Elsewhere, George has written this: “It’s kind of crazy, but, in my experience, that’s the whole game: 1) becoming convinced that there is a voice inside you that really, really knows what it likes, and 2) getting better at hearing that voice and acting on its behalf.”
Here, “number two” is where the hang up is. Even if you've gotten better at locating that voice inside of you, the true voice that can separate itself from all of the world that is screaming at you and telling you what to think, there may still still be a problem with “…and acting on its behalf.” Yes, that is the goal. But good luck with "acting on its behalf." That’s where the mystery is. We can use that dial in our brain that George talks about (negative/positive) and (probably) see that much of what we’ve written falls on the “negative” side. But to fix it—that’s the rub. George writes of using one’s intuition, which is akin to listening to that voice in your head. But for beginners, that may mean hundreds of attempts, over and over again. Listening, and then realizing you were wrong. Listening again. It’s daunting. It’s exhausting. Many people never try at all and many who do try, give up.
“I have sort of cornered myself, via my good taste, ha ha.” Love that!
The message, to me, from George’s post this week is: Trust yourself. But more than that, the message is: Keep going.
I was thinking the 'trust yourself' thing is so hard but when I think about times in life when I've royally screwed up I can recognize that, deep down, I did know more than I thought I did, and it was not listening to that uneasy, quiet inner-voice that was the problem. It's a useful pointer to realize the same thing applies to writing.
Mary, I find the idea of trusting myself to be pretty daunting, too. I struggle to really SEE what I've written. I wait between drafts, change the font, pretend I'm someone else, read it out loud, but I still can't ever get enough distance.
I think it comes back to your point about the process obscuring our visceral selves. I enjoy stories because they make me feel a certain way, and if I'm too intimate with construction of the story, I don't know how I feel about it. I only know what seems right, logically, but otherwise, I'm feeling my way around in the dark.
The only thing that works for me is to go ahead and finish a story (through how ever many drafts it takes me) and then put it away for WEEKS. Like three months. Or however long it takes me to know I've written the story but to feel no attachment to it. It's amazing to me how I can cut entire paragraphs this way--sentences I loved when I wrote them, sometimes! Seeing my own words with fresh eyes and detachment allows me to have a more trustworthy opinion about what I've written. When I'm weeks away from the toil of carefully choosing every word and can hardly remember what I went through to get those words on the page, I can be brutal if need be. I can see through it all to the core of what's needed. Or sometimes I find out that I like what I wrote. Either way, it works for me.
For me, I think it probably takes a year to get any distance, but I've only done that when I've given up on something and then gone back to it. Sometimes, I put something away for months and come back, and that certainly helps, but I'm never really fully sure. I've never had a problem with cutting, I'll cut whole paragraphs the same day I wrote them. Maybe it's because I never write anything so good that I feel like I can't cut it.
Amy, thanks for this. I’m with Graeme, I trust you. I trust you because you’re willing to be vulnerable (ie, honest). I trust you because, like the most trustworthy people I know, you (like Mary G, Susie et al.) struggle with trusting yourself!
What I’m trying to learn is how to trust my insecurity and self-doubt and follow it all the way down. Not the content of what the insecurity/self-doubt is telling me! God forbid. But the feeling or impulse or the deep-down ground (or whatever it is) that gives it rise. I’ll let you know how it goes.
In the end I figure we have to trust what Mary G says: keep going.
Interesting resonance with what Pema Chödrön says in her slim book , The Places That Scare You. Let go the story and focus on or be with the feelings. That’s roughly it. She’s helping people to be deeply in touch with what is rather than defend against it. She’s a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan tradition. I have found that book really helpful in life and what you said has helped me now see how this simple piece of advice can apply to writing. Thank you!
Yeah, I try to follow the feelings all the way down, too. Sometimes, I remember the first time I felt that way. It helps with self-compassion when I remember being so little and already not feeling good enough.
Maybe you don't have to pretend to be someone else - maybe you can find some critique partner/s...
Yesterday my critique group partners laid into a chapter I'd been laboring long at. One said bluntly (among other things) --"It meanders. There's no forward momentum." And I responded - "Thank you! This is - oddly - really elating!" And it really was -- I had an instant re-visioning of what work this chapter actually needed to do!
This is a long-running small group where we know each other well, in the group context. I am so grateful for the perspective it brings -- both in the giving and the receiving of critiques. Yes, we have to struggle alone - but everything shifts the moment you put something out for review and receive comments. We've met on Zoom since Covid. Perhaps you can find or create a group that will be helpful to you.
I wish you good luck in finding light - in whatever way works for you.
Thanks. That's good advice. I'm in a couple of writers groups. It's true, they are helpful, but in the end, I'm the one who makes the ultimate decisions.
I've been thinking about trying to start a group with the people involved with Story Club with George, but I don't know how much interest there'd be.
I trust you Amy^^
Ha! Thank you, Graeme.
Agree and relate to this. Action usually is the hardest part.
"Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow"
There is a kind of line that we must cross that requires self-transcendence. Which means both honoring our perspective and setting it aside in each moment.
"Neither the separated being nor the infinite being is produced as an antithetical term. The interiority that ensures separation (but not as an abstract rejoinder to the notion of relation) must produce a being absolutely closed over upon itself, not deriving its isolation dialectically from its opposition to the Other. And this closedness must not prevent egress from interiority, so that exteriority could speak to it, reveal itself to it, in an unforseeable movement which the isolation of the separated being could not provoke by simple contrast. In the separated being the door to the outside must hence be at the same time open and closed." (Levinas)
Thanks, Mary for focusing on “What do I like? And why?” The listening part is key and I believe what we are learning here at Story Club is like learning how to sing. There's the technique part but also the practice.
I don't know--I can get very mixed up talking about any of this, talking about the process of writing. Sometimes it seems useless to talk about it all. It's all in the doing. I used to teach fiction writing classes (i'm almost embarrassed to admit that, because i had no idea what I was doing), and each week I just wanted to say, okay everybody, just pick up your pen and write. That would be my whole lesson. Just write.
A friend of mine sent me a slip of paper in the mail. It's just a torn-off scrap of paper, with rough edges, about three inches square, the kind of thing one might use for a grocery shopping list. It's been pinned to the bulletin board over my desk for many years. There are two words written on it with a pencil, in all caps, one on top of the other.
JUST
TYPE
All the theory and knowledge in the universe is useless, unless we actually write. I keep having to relearn this lesson! But I am grateful for all the lessons.
Write on!
Yes yes yes!
Very late to the party, but just wanted to weigh in because teaching music performance is my job, though I teach piano, not voice. I just thought your analogy was interesting because in my experience, voice is actually very much technique - a lot more so than what we've been discussing here. I accompanied a lot of voice lessons (this was how piano majors were expected to earn extra money in undergrad) and there were often times where we would not go in for the first half of the lesson because that was to be spent on warm-ups and vocalises. A great, great deal of time is invested in breath control, posture, formation of vowels. You'd be surprised. Whereas in my own lessons, I pretty much remember two dedicated lessons on technique: one was a group class where we were given a technical regimen to do on our own, and the second was the one time I played a scales outside of the context of a piece, where my teacher took my arm and dragged me along, telling me the elbow has to lead.
I think the analogy is interesting, and it keeps a place in the forefront of my mind. I think there are similarities. George's description of the revision process reminds me very much of how music is taught. I try to step back and look at the whole first, so the student has some sort of framework to organize their thoughts, but then we pretty much get into line editing: this note is late, make a difference between piano and mezzo piano, don't let the left hand cover up the right hand, etc. But at the same time - in music we are so often working with someone else's script. Even for singer-songwriters, there is the stage where the lyrics are written, the melody composed, and then the mechanical working out of getting the sound color right and ingraining the physical feeling of the song in the body. Here in fiction we are only concerned with creation. (Which is not so say I have *never* heard a writer discuss methods of typing, but typically we just aren't concerned with the actual mechanics of how keys get pressed.) Music lessons are often all about those mechanics. As we say, "sound follows motion," so even if technical exercises aren't assigned, every desire to make a change in the sound involves some discussion of the physicality of playing whatever instrument you're using.
I hope this is somewhat interesting. I always welcome opportunities to ruminate about the similarities and differences among the arts - especially between performance art and other (I feel like I should know a term for this) art.
Thanks for your comment. I like the comparison / contrast with regard to singing and writing (Originally stories were sung. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singer_of_Tales). Also, I believe there is a qualitative difference between writing longhand and typing.
I wonder if there isn't a wrong answer. There's the three blind men feeling-up the elephant, but what about the fourth, with his hand on the branch of a nearby tree, who says "Ah yes, elephants are slender, hard, and flexible, and if you bend them too much they snap."
We're all probably touching the tree (rock, water) instead of the elephant. But at least we're asking the questions and then pondering the possible answers.
Come on I want to see the whole elephant^^
Mary G. This is a beautiful post. Beginning with your lovely inclusive Mother’s Day gift of peace and love.
Feeling the judgment of the “cognoscenti!” Been there. Done that!
Do you know Elaine Scarry’s book “On Beauty and Being Just?” There’s a chapter entitled “On Beauty and Being Wrong.” In it she talks about the fact that she was wrong about Matisse’s work—- which she originally discounted. I console myself that my taste can be educated. And this happens all the time. But I especially like your prescription, “pick up your pen and write.” ❤️ (Yikes are we allowed to use emoji’s in the Story Club?)
I love Matisse...to think he was on the edge of Paris being bombed in world war One and still painted and ironies of irony some his early important collectors were Russian^^
Thank you, Gail, for your kind comments. No, I don't know that book, but I'll see if I can find a copy somewhere. I'm curious to know how her tastes changed regarding Matisse. Was she somehow able to open herself up? We can be so closed down sometimes and unable to venture down new pathways in our minds. It's so interesting to think about what we find beautiful and why. Some aspects are there at birth--as babies we are naturally attracted to human faces and find them pleasing. I don't know how I feel about taste being educated. I do appreciate learning about art and art history and understanding why some pieces of art are considered masterpieces while others are not. But I like to think that I can still be in charge of my own taste. Probably impossible, as we are given messages constantly, especially when it comes to beauty. Interesting to think about!
And yes, "pick up your pen and write" is really key. Also--reading! The importance of reading, reading, reading in order to know how to write and in order to find out what you like and what you might aspire to in terms of your own writing. Reading a lot is really fundamental to being a writer.
I’m with you- Reading Reading. Reading. And I’m leaning to read with a different set of lenses from George and this also informs my taste.
But back to reading, there’s a great quote from Wittgenstein in Scarry’s book that I also love- “when the eye sees beauty, the hand wants to make it.” Another reason to read!!
isn't that the truth! We see/hear/experience something and then we want to also create. The poet Marvin Bell wrote: "read something, then write something; read something else, then write something else. And show in your writing what you have read." Totally makes sense to me.
I like my mistake above “leaning” to read instead of “learning” to read!!
Years ago, I heard a definition of a Freudian slip. It's when you "say one thing and mean a mother". (Or "mean one thing and say a mother".)
Thank you for this definition. I already used it!
Aye Mary! Readeareaderead. Even the bad stuff teaches what is bad.
I fell in love with Rothko paintings, but couldn't say why. One day a friend was visiting me and because she insisted she didn't like his work I forced her to sit in front of a Rothko in a museum "just for a few minutes" and stare at one of his color field paintings (she was a good friend and humored me). After a while she told me she was seeing all kinds of colors in each block and felt mesmerized. So, yes, people can change in their evaluation of art--or at least how it affects them. I think the same is possible for literature.
I love that she sat with his art and took her time experiencing it. As with any art, Rothko meets you where you are. And since we change over time, our feelings toward a work of art will possibly change over time as well--emotionally as well as intellectually. Sometimes we aren't moved by a piece of art (including literature) and then, later in life, we come back to find a meaning we didn't see before. We are a different person, and we are moved.
You are right, and it also works the other way. I loved all the books by Alexander Dumas about the "Three Musketeers"--devoured them in my teens. Then I tried to go back years later and couldn't force myself to read them.
Exactly!
The scale and contrast of the colours in free abstract form and contours^^
"I’ve often thought that our first scale-model of the universe comes to us by way of our mother’s attitude toward us. 'Does it like me? Will it be nice to me? Am I o.k.? Is it all right to take some chances out there?'”
And here's to those of us who haven't read the rest of this email yet because we close the window every time we reach this paragraph.
Right there with you! Thank you for saying it so well.
Brad. I don't have the proper words to respond but I want you to know how much i love your words here, though they kill me.
Another excellent exercise. Thank you George. What I think we are talking about here is trusting oneself to write, and then later applying an objective or critical perspective to the work in the process of revision. A delicate balance is required. Often, I hear a sort of nasty voice on my shoulder saying, "Who do you think you're kidding?" IF I can get past that, and accept that a first draft (or sometimes a tenth draft!) is not going to be very good at all, if I can allow myself to continue to try, something eventually will occur that is useful. Only then, for me, does the real fun begin. I need to be careful not to get too impressed with what I am writing - that can get in the way too - but when there is something there, sometimes I can find a way to be inside of it, to occupy it fully. Then it becomes authentic, and perhaps it will be of interest to others, but what I love most is the process and the feeling of being fully engaged. I crave the feeling of this engagement. Aristotle defined happiness as "the full use of one's powers along lines of excellence". My powers may be limited - I truly have no way to measure them - but when I am using them fully, engaged completely in what I am working on, then I am happiest and I am eager to go back in my study to do it again. The proverbial blank page is the worst part. Revision is the best part. In the end, it's quite easy to see the difference between good work and work that is not so good. I'd like to think that over time, the work has improved. The comparison exercise bears that out.
Happy Mother's Day to all. I was lucky enough to have my mother in my life until I was in my early 60s. And I have been very lucky in my own family, with my wife and three wonderful grown children, two sons-in-law, many siblings and nieces and nephews, and a granddaughter - a beautiful baby born last year. Parenting required a lot of revision, too!
Parenting definitely takes a lot of revision. Grandparenting has humbled me as well.
Personally, I still really struggle with this part of the process:
"I get a little panicked at the thought that this version might somehow makes its way out into the world. This then translates into a feeling of resolve and even relief: it’s not been sent out yet, so I can still make it better."
As an unpublished fiction writer, when I'm working on a short story and I get to this point, my version of this panic feels so intensely personal and wrapped up with my own self-worth.
My version would be more like: "I get a little panicked at the thought" .... 'that I'm a complete and utter failure, and all the tricks I've had to mentally conjure in order to convince myself that I can do this (i.e.: write a decent story) and it's worth this time and effort sitting here are actually just a delusional aspect of my weak, feeble, flawed mind, which shouldn't be trusted, and will probably lead to the destruction of all the things I hold dear (family, friendships, relative financial stability, etc.).'
I can settle this thought-cycle down a bit with perspective, by reminding myself how fortunate and privileged I am to even be able to spending time thinking about this kind of thing, and having an honest outlet of opportunity to act on it (i.e.: I'm in good health, I'm safe, I am relatively free of the type of financial and/or familial restrictions that more than half the world has, etc.)
And then, after settling down a bit, I do often get to a version of: "All of my extant, self-congratulatory aesthetic ideas about the piece and its virtues get called rather rudely into question."
But then, (and I think this is the most critical juncture for me to be somewhat aware of), instead of: "These ideas are felt as a form of fearful scaffolding; they suddenly feel placeholderish and timid, like a sort of ceiling that I have, in my insecurity, placed on the work." At this point, I often cling to and double-down on the IDEAS and CONCEPTS, so they are a sort of fearful scaffolding for me, but instead of letting them fall away, I try to firm them up, secure them, make them permanent.
Which then, literally makes the story draft process at that point like trying to climb over a bulwark of fear, which I admit, leads me too often to run away. (The only promising part of that, is even with those challenges, I still can't stay away from starting all over at some point and doing it over again, going on for 20+ years now -- I could fill volumes with my "unfinished" stories.)
Also in some ways, those ideas and concepts do feel like the only thing I have to pull me into the story. For example, I think of a recent interview I heard with Charles Yu, and he mentioned how he often feels like he needs "sci-fi" concepts/ideas for stories, books, etc. to keep him engaged enough to play around with the story, and to eventually get to the small human moments within it that make it truly resonate.
I really related to Yu's explanation of that. I often feel like those ideas are what I need to get me "into" the story. And I have been fortunate enough (a few times) to let go and discover the magic that happens when the story becomes something else entirely, and those original ideas do fall away. I know this is when my writing becomes the most readable and potentially enjoyable.
I suppose this all amounts to me working better at letting the fear scaffolding fall away, and to trusting more in the value of doing this work versus getting stuck on pondering the value of what this work will become. (And I know, I know...that's sort of what this time and space listening/reading to George, and all of you at Story Club, is all about.)
So thanks, sorry for going on too long.
What a valuable externalisation of your experience of how it has felt, repeatedly, when you've got the point where you are approaching having something closing in on being finished and potentially shaping up as, possibly, publishable.
You've written quite a few words but not, in my view, gone on too long. Rather you seem to have gotten something out as Comment that is important for you to say and for, many, others to read.
Here's a suggestion:
Step 1 Rack up a selection (or maybe even all) of advanced drafts of those 'Unfinished Stories' of yours. Maybe you'll find it most helpful to sequence them chronologically? Perhaps you might find that it makes sense to tag them (whether the sample selection or the full back catalogue) by type / topic / theme? Possibly you may also find it useful to tag them by number of number of words?
Step 2 Re-read them, systematically but without being self-critical, for fun (as George frequently suggests) and entertainment. On becoming reacquainted be open to possibly being surprised by what you see in the stories of words set on pages and how you feel about them. Maybe make pithy, impressionistic notes on the experience of reading each one?
Step 3 When you've worked through a varied sample (even if you intend to work through the whole back catalogue) of say 3 or 5 or 10 of you 'Unfinisheds' pick, say, 3 that you are going to revisit and rework drawing on some of the ideas on reviewing and revising that George has offered us. Why not have an aim of creating a small portfolio of three stories which comprise not just the latest, enhanced versions but also the three previously unfinished versions? Then decide in which order you'd like to think that these, long in gestation, three stories might be published? And then . . . well go for getting the one you'd like to see published first in shape . . . for what else but publication?
Three eezee pezee steps 😂? Not quite but why not go for it, the final push through to feeling you've at least 1, perhaps 2 or maybe as many as 3 pieces that you'd like to get out and read by a wider readership than yourself?
If Tolstoy could write 'The Snowstorm' and allow it, in various ways, to morph over time into 'Master & Man' why shouldn't David do the same with his 'Unfinished Stories'?
Wow. So very grateful for your thoughts and suggestion, Rob. Truly helpful. I will give it a go.
'Liked' and 'riposted'. What a treat. Thank you David.
Great. Do hope you get to 'give it a go'. Gently.
And of that difference that is, surely, there? Simply, sustained 'Attention to Detail'?
Go well David and do, do, commit to sharing how you do and, sometimes, don't. progress?
oh the ways we beat ourselves up, call ourselves failures, weak, feeble and flawed. It doesn't help, i know, to tell you that you are clearly none of those things (any more than any of us are), that you are a person who writes and who is continuing to press forward with your writing--which of course makes you a success. Being published definitely helps one's ego and helps a person feel as though they've been validated, but you know the folks reading your work are just people with their own opinions, and whether or not they publish you is such a toss up. Your last paragraph about letting the fear scaffolding fall away--fear is such a game stopper. George's post here this week seems to me to be all about trusting one's self. You write about trusting the value of doing this work, and that is all there is, really. Writing is a process and although there is an end product, it's the process that fascinates and lets us learn what's really happening there inside of our hidden brains. Sounds to me as though you are doing that, over and over again. As long as we stay away from "pondering the value of what this work will become" we'll be okay. We have no idea what anything will become. The future isn't here. Sorry if i sound like a pseudo-therapist here. What i really want to do is congratulate you on all of your failed stories. Without them, you'll never write a story you find personally successful. There are no short cuts. (You didn't go on too long, said the woman who always writes too much in these threads....)
Yes, learning to trust one's self! And there's a wonderful CP Cavafy poem, "The First Step," about being a member of the community of writers--even if you are on a lower rung, you are still writing, you still belong. "To have come this far is no small achievement:/What you have done already is a glorious thing.” I often think of this poem when I'm wrestling with a recalcitrant story.
Thank you so much, Mary. As I said to Rob, above, truly grateful for your thoughts. I needed them. Thank you.
David, as one who has stacks of "unfinished stories" and has experienced much of what you describe (panic, self doubt), I'd like to dare to recommend coaching/therapy with someone specializing in work with artists and writers, if available and not too expensive these days. It's such a tough thing to have so much to need to tell, and then to get stuck, and stuck. Best wishes.
We all are for the moment unfinished stories..long may it continue as we revise^^
I read today a comment on Twitter which said "Hot poetry tip: if you want to improve a poem you’re struggling with, submit it. Then read over your submission, and you will suddenly see what needs to be changed." (@NatalieGMarino) and I think it holds well for short stories, too, as I have frequently had that experience. This post really helped me in thinking about how to SEE those rough patches before I hit "Submit."
It's too easy to read over something you've revised a bunch of times, and take parts for granted as fine, rather than to do what you say here, which is look at them compared to your ideal idea of writing, and see where they fall short. Kind of brutal, but so necessary.
Loved this post, George!
Great tip. I often send my poems to friends for this reason. I think it helps with lessening the attachment to one's own perspective (to view it from that mysterious exterior place) and also gives that sense of urgency, that sense that one is about to be hanged in a fortnight.
I tried the exercise with two Flannery O’Connor stories, in fact the first and last of her Complete Stories, “The Geranium” and “Judgment Day,” both about an old Southern man feeling cramped and unhappy in his daughter’s New York City apartment, which he regrets moving into. Right from the first sentence of “Judgment Day” I can discern one big difference: in this story (unlike the other) the man has a clear desire and intention, namely to “escape” and get back South. This later story also feels more deftly layered with flashbacks and flashbacks-within-flashbacks, and the details feel more, well, organized. I also think O’Connor had realized that writing about the South was her strength, so much more of the later story takes place there (via flashback). Finally, the meaning of the story feels more direct and precise—not summarizable here, maybe, but something to do with the man’s comeuppance for being a racist (albeit a racist in a complicated way that involves longing for the days of friendship with a black man back home).
Though provoking post Bryce. Thank you.
Some ripples radiating out from the point in pond where your pebble dropped for me:
> Neat transposition, taking the frame of George's Tolstoy exemplar and offering it up against a temporally equivalent pairing of Flannery O'Connor's: 'Younger' and 'Mature'.
> And that's why I consider George more as 'Educator' than 'Teacher': his encouragement to take what we're learning and test it outwith the fine box that is Story Club.
> And how many, have you noticed, writers of short fiction offer stories not just about what they notice but what they become, not in the least inappropriately, 'knowledgeable' of 'obsessed' by?
> And as to 'summarizable' . . . why not ban precis, of all kinds, in favour of recourse to the text as published - originally or in fine translation(s) - and focus conversation on what reading the 'actual story' throws up rather than that which is derived the, relative and all too often, drivel of the 'pseudo literary commentatoriat'?
> Just ripples, rippling; rippling gently out across, and to perturb, the prior moment's tranquility on the surface of untroubled pond?
> Just ripples of thoughts, passed already, just caught in the slipstream of their passing by my way.
Enough already. I'm away off, upstairs, to blow out the candle an, without further ado, to jump into bed!
Thanks again Bryce.
Thanks for sharing this, Bryce – what a great example and interesting observations. I've read The Geranium, and so I'll read Judgment Day now – looking forward to comparing the two.
The note on losing the "treasured bits, the gems" was such a challenge for me in both my fiction and non-fiction. I solved it by cutting the phrase/sentence/paragraph out, printing it and pinning it to my bulletin board. It still exists but I am able to get on with the work at hand.
On the issue of loseness vs. precision, I immediately thought of the improvisation of jazz around a base structure or understanding. I see the City Lights clip much this same way.
I have an order of magnitude more text in my "bits bucket" than is in my actual novel!! It's the only way I can relax and throw things out! But sometimes I really do wonder if I shouldn't go back and.... NO! NO! NO! :-D
what a good Idea!!! I know when I am sucked in by something I just LOVE that is trite or lazy or whatever but I just LOVE it. It takes me ages to dump it ..and sometimes the embarrassment of someone else saying so. THANKS for this great idea.
This is a timely article, as I've just submitted my author's notes for an anthology about revision. Specifically, notes about the difference between the story I submitted to the magazine, and the version that was reworked with the editor, and my thoughts about it.
I won't post my notes here (I have a contract to honor). But I will address the question: I'm not sure how to tell when something is polished. I'm working with the same editor on another story, and his most frequent comment is "Polish"! Maybe the sentence structure is too flat, or it's merely a bridge to get to the point rather than being a beautiful part of the pathway, or etc. The great irony is that the story is one that I challenged myself to finish in under 15 hours, because that last one that got published I worked on for over 80! And I was goddamned sick of it! I wanted to submit something before I strangled my love for it.
I guess if I had to put my finger on it, polish is when insufficient attention has been paid to the details. And overworking is when I've gone over something so often that I've forgotten the greater purpose of the story--and don't get a damn about it anymore. Under-polished stories and overworked stories are editorial opposites. But I'd rather have a story that needs polish than one that's overworked. A lack of polish just needs a gob of spit, a clean cloth, and elbow grease. When something's overworked, I throw the entire manuscript away and start rewriting from line one, trying to remember what I loved about it in the first place.
When I deem a story ready to send to magazines, it's when I've taken the story as far as I could with the skills I have and that further changes are only changes and not improvements. Working with a writing group or an editor whose opinion I trust has helped me find the spots that could use polish. I'm still early enough in my writing career that I don't have many published work available, and those that are out show an enormous jump in quality with each one. Much thanks to you, George--your book and this substack has helped enormously.
Sounds a really interesting anthology, I hope you'll let us know when it's out, would love to read.
I'll ask if I can post a link!
This was the most important part of your post for me, George, especially the last sentence: "The escalation is more decisive, everything seems more to purpose. At all times, it seems, the story is posing a question, and we know, roughly, what it is. Expectations are arising and the story is, if not addressing them, taking them into account. We feel in connection with the author, who seems to “see” us - to know where we are at each moment." One day, I'm going to print up all your posts and take them and my dog out to the big lawn in the park and read them again in the open air and sun.
Woof^^
Ellen - you might be interested in this( I’m certainly excited because I love Jewish history):The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem. It’s a new series landing soon on Netflix about the Sephardic community in Old Jerusalem through several decades. It’s described as a romantic melodrama and at its heart is a shepardic boy whose family forbid him to marry an Ashkenazi girl. It’s made by the same Israeli production company that made Fauda and Shtisel (my absolute fave) and features some of the same actors.
It’s going to be subtitles, because apparently the script features Hebrew, Arabic, some English and - fantastically - Ladino. You probably know that that’s the Judeo-Spanish language spoken by Spanish Jews during the great flowering of Jewish culture there in the Middle Ages. The equivalent of Ashkenazi Yiddish. There are very few speakers of it left, as far as I understand. Xxxx
Hi Kate!
I'm making a note of it! It's luck I saw this post bc, since it wasn't a reply, I didn't get email notification. I have to go back to Shtisel too. I've also had "Burnt by the Sun," on a post-it in my kitchen since you recommended it. I take a while to get to videos requiring more concentration, but I'll get there. Same with books: I'm sort of well-read and not nearly enough, I'd say.
Well, I thought you might like the wonderful Jewish history aspect of it. Of course, I haven’t seen it myself yet…..
It sounds interesting. And a fairly obscure period in Israeli-Palestinian history. Unrelated show but,
did you happen to see Borgen? I loved it. A little deeper and more nuanced than a lot (not all) of American tv. And with all the problems with our rigid political parties here, I was thinking we might have been better off with a parliamentary system.
Ya. Well. Nobody’s very happy with what’s going on here either! 🤣
Sorry to be late in response again, but I have made the long trip back from Vinegar Hollow to Ithaca and was happy to read all the responses. I can relate to all of them. One of my particular problems relates to what mary g. says below about having "real clarity about your likes and dislikes." I admire so many writers and many of them are very different. It's the same with dressing. I admire many styles of clothing, but I have never known how I want to look, not that I am exactly a chameleon, just that I can't get a style down, though I do get dressed and face the world and some days I am more put together than others. So, with reference to writing, what I do know is that if you write enough, you can find it--your particular style, your flow, your way of being on the page--and it can't be Katherine Mansfield, or Tolstoy, or George Saunders, even though I have clarity about why I love these great writers. I know, by practice, how I feel comfortable on the page in my natural history blog posts, but I am trying to find out I might feel comfortable in fiction writing. I got four chapters into a novel and took a class with a published, successful novelist, who was kind and helpful, but someone in the class said "you need to learn how to write!" That was embarrassing, but if she meant that the writing was stilted, I would have to concur. Now I am old enough to feel comfortable with experimentation, embarrassment, and failure. I am going to play with a short story called "Binary," a title that someone (Rob?) suggested based on the first sentence exercise. I am worried it might be too autobiographical, but I can also feel that while my personal experience provides a framework I might veer into magical realism because of reading One Hundred Years of Solitude while to-ing and fro-ing to that incredibly boring job. I hope all this makes sense. While I might seem to be asserting that there is some kind of inevitability of how one is on the page despite one's desire to be like someone else, I do totally believe in craft. I love thinking and writing about writing. Thank you, George, for opening up so many avenues of discussion. I love your discursive narratives!!!
I was adding a post here around the same time as you...! also bemoaning lack of skill, though in a different way.
Boy that was a harsh comment you got splatted with in the class. I've been splatted also - years ago, I went to a weekend workshop expecting nurturing support but - a couple of the agents were - let's say - blunt. For me it was the "story arc" and so on.
Eventually I found value in the bruising I got and it sounds like you are finding this too. Sometimes it's good to be shaken and not stirred!
The experimentation you talk of - sounds like fun. I wish I could do that. So far - I've been like a seed with hooks that burrow deep and can't back out. I can only keep going, it seems, with this one project.
I've been working at this one book for - at least 8 years now and I've had a lot of trepidation and doubt about this stubbornness. But I think, now, looking back - and forward - that in the process I've learned a lot about how to write - working on the same set of story problems etc this way and that - as opposed to trying different stories - all aspects - and in particular - a lot of what George is conveying to us about intention, causality etc.
Re your thoughts about autobiography - couple things occur to me - Some stories may start autobiographical and then - as you are thinking will happen with "Binary" - start diverging, having a life of their own.
Others may remain autobiographical -- and nothing wrong with that - "autofiction" - or just memoir or other autobiography -- I feel drawn to that myself. Maybe you can give yourself permission to experiment in those genres.
I have no idea how to write a short story. Yet. One day I hope to have a go - and maybe I'll spend 10 years writing one of those, too!
I wish you much joy and freedom in your writing!
What a great premise for a new, fresh traditional Christmas Panto:
"I have no idea how to write a short story" opines the prime protagonist - named let's say Block (a Wannabee Writer) - with distressing dispirit.
"Oh yes you do" scream back all the children - aged 9 to 90 - in the audience.
And just then a strolling ghost of a Writer Past comes out of the wings. stage left, muttering aloud as only allowed in stage whispers
"Oh woe is me, there is no hope for me and my fond fine ambition to ascend as a lauded literary lad of note if the best I can produce is such poor reward for time spent reading 24 pages as 'The Snowstorm'."
Writer Past exits upper stage right in a miserable slow, soft shoe, shuffle . . . last words being "what a pathetic specimen of humanity am I, if this is the best then my writing goose is cooked and I wish I was dead!" . . .
The audience is hushed, 'how sad for this literary lad', the auditorium is silent, 'what next' minds are wondering . . .
As a spotlight strikes a figure re-entering, in full stride and with alacrity, upper stage right who says, as the band strikes up sprightly . . .
"Don't believe a word of what my melancholic younger self may have just suggested . . . truth is that, over many years of tears, I thot a whole lot about reviision and got whole better at this writing malarkey . . . and, though no more sure about where the idea came from than I ever was, turned out a tale about a Master and a Man, which somehow seemed to to make all the difference . . . and made me, humble Count Leo Tolstoy, the household name that I have been - past, present and future - down the fleeting years centuries passing fast . . . so reach beneath your seat boys and girls to find and pick upon papers and pencils and set yourself to writing . . . even though you know not what, as you start, the story 'tis to be about!"
"Hooray, hooray, hooray" scream the children . . .
You must be English with that Panto ref - and do I hear a hint of or potential for - a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan?? :-D
Right on the English Jackie and you might be onto something with a raw, rough and not ready lyric that, maybe, starts "A struggling writer am I . . . trying to, oh so trying to take 'The Mikado Out of Nothing' . . . and 'The Pear Out of Shakes****e' . . ."
I am a late arrival in the realm of Pantomime Theatre: still not sure I like it, but realising it is quite a form, and sensing my fingers are getting itchy to sketch out some of what I might call 'Panto Shorts for Voices'. Just realising, thinking back, "It was the Covid Lockdown what done it M'Lud . . . Couldn't go south to sunny Andalucia for part the winter so went to the Prince of Wales Theatre in Cannock instead . . . And the rest is history . . ."
Yes - that's what I picked up as Gilbert and Sullivan - ish!
I think I may already have known you're English, actually, from some earlier interaction. I am a total Panto generation kid. I only saw one, live, back in the late fifties (I'm turning 70 in ever fewer months!!). It had a Buttons character. That means it was Cinderella. I do remember a coach and maybe even yes - real ponies pulling it! It was in Glasgow's Citizen's Theater and I'd be about five years old maybe 7. I saw pantos on TV too with Jimmy Starbuck, Ken Dodd etc. Yup. I'm a sucker for Panto.
I did see one other live panto - also Cinderella - about 12 years ago, with my then-little granddaughter, who lives in Paignton, Devon. It was at The Palace. Paignton is such an old fashioned seaside resort still (though much run down). It was a proper full-on, old-fashioned panto with some famous or semi-famous performers -- I've been out of the UK for so long I'm out of touch with the turnover of comedians -- who genuinely seemed to be having a blast. It had the mildly raunchy "over the tops of the kiddies' heads" humor for the parents, and all the other trimmings, exaggerated costuming, makeup and other tropes - "Look Behind You!" etc - and pretending to squirt water and squirting sparkly bits instead - and then ACTUALLy squirting water (spray). Gosh it was fun. For me at least. My granddaughter was a bit overwhelmed I think!
Gosh, makes me come all-over maudlin thinking about it! :-D
The joy of the Cannock panto was the fact that it panto put on community arts and theatre 🎭 groups.
It's about this time of year, or slightly earlier that panto penners get started dusting off and updating the skeletal plots and spent sketches of previous seasons' pantos
That line to walk, between sticking with tradition and sprucing up with topical innovation, is quite a challenge.
Lovely! This is a very liberating narrative, Rob! Hooray!!!
Don't let anyone splat YOU^^
Thank you for your reply, Jackie. It has many insights that are helpful to me. I printed it out and am going to keep it in my short story folder. You reinforce the notion that one must give oneself permission to try without self sabotage. And most of all, you are right that I want to find freedom in my writing. I did write a nonfiction book called Primrose that was published in 2019 and I completed a memoir of place for my MFA in Nonfiction called You Better Come Home With Me that I am going to dust off as soon as I finish Moss & Lichen for the same publisher who put out Primrose. I can't really find freedom in source-based writing though I can hone craft and sentence making. The publisher of Primrose and Moss & Lichen does not want the "I" voice because an informational, impersonal style is preferred. In any event, Moss & Lichen is my last nonfiction book. My goal in Primrose and Moss & Lichen is to inspire readers to respect the biology and beauty of these plants [lichens are only part plant]. The stated goal of Reaction's Botanical Series is botanical, horticultural, and social and cultural background of a plant or group of plants, so I do get to do some art history and literary criticism as well. I have loved writing them, but source-based writing in this style is constrictive. So on to "Binary." I like your comment about not worrying about starting out in an autobiographical way and just waiting for the half-known mysterious inner voice to take over! Thank you again! my best, Elizabeth
Try writing in second person omniscient^^
I'm glad to be of any help! I feel chuffed you printed out what I wrote :-)
I like the sound of "Primrose". And "Moss & Lichen". I love "science plus" books and read a lot of science-for-lay-people stuff. Carlo Rovelli is my favorite in the physics field. Merlin Sheldrake for fungus. I enjoyed "Gathering Moss" by Robin Wall Kimmerer (and Braiding Sweetgrass), "The Forest Unseen" by David George Haskell and umpteen more.
I love to look at mosses and lichens (and etc) under my cheap dissecting microscope, but really don't get much past "wow!" So I'll definitely be on the lookout for your "Moss & Lichen" book! I wonder if there's a prepublication mailing list I can get on?
Actually, I have kind of similar tension going on as you do, writing-wise. I've a lay-person's enthusiasm for local native plants and ecosystems in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where I moved from Silicon Valley 22 years go. I feel an obligation, really, to write a kind of "So you've moved to the mountains" book or web site for others who are leaving suburbia for acreage in a wildland area. Most of us have no clue what that shift really means. I'd like to help orient them towards appreciation of co-evolved nature - and love of their irreplaceable (and steadily degrading) local ecosystems, and encourage them to nurture them in practical ways -- like pulling invasive weeds, even if they're pretty! I'd use personal experience and also provide references to useful content in books or online.
But I'd be equally happy if someone else would write that book! What I most want to do is - write fiction, poetry, memoir...
Well--here's to kicking over the traces and galloping off into writerly freedom!
Another thing I really recommend to develop one's writing is finding a critique group or forming one - with people whose writing and support you can relate to well - I've learned such a lot about writing by giving and receiving regular critiques.
Hi Elizabeth,
I remember the post in which you briefly described the job you had one summer in NYC. I thought your prose was great – I hesitate to attempt to characterise it, but it struck me as (among other things) clear, natural, it had a nice rhythm and variation, and such an honest voice. Definitely not "stilted" – I myself would read on!
I can relate to your experience of writing non-fiction for a time, then focussing on something else. I have written a lot of legal briefs in the last few years, and I am now devoting time to writing personal essays and short stories. I am no expert, but I wouldn't worry too much about whether your current writing is too "autobiographical"; your experience is obviously a legitimate source of material, and my own thinking on this is that you can apply the principles that govern good fiction to help shape your own story – for example, deciding which events or details from your experience to include or exclude, having regard to causation, escalation, patterns ... And, as part of that process, perhaps you could introduce everything from simple embellishments to entirely fictional events and episodes.
I think it is such an exciting process, learning to find one's voice, style, subject matter, while writing with a different purpose in mind.
Thank you for this, Geoff. I have printed this out also and put in my writing folder. It is very important to remember that this transition from nonfiction to fiction can be/should be "exciting"! After all, why not? Thank you, my best, Elizabeth
Your style is no style...very trendy^^
I like so much George’s idea of taking a passage (or story or scene) that one has written that seems to work and just holding it as a kind of measure.
Still any trust in my opinion/taste about my own work often requires months. Sometimes longer. Time.
Refer to quote from Old Wise Sam Johnson?
If you 'require' months just would 'prefer' months' but get to know that you'll be hung in a fortnight why not go with flow towards concentrating the mind?
Get brutal Gail? Cut to the chase?
Just stirring the though pot, thankful that I'm not signed up to script a twice weekly sketch show of a quality that might stick and have longevity!
Well, thankfully I don’t write sketch comedy either!! I can get to the page with pen, but it often needs to sit. To get fresh eyes on it.
And we don't have the challenge that Dr Johnson faced every time he sat to where he was writing to add a new word to his original dictionary: "Mmm, how to spell it?"
Enjoy getting the fruits of bringing fresh eyes to bear on each of your pages Gail.
He moved around a lot...I love old Anglo Saxon words^^
I wonder . . . did Johnson coin 'phonetic' as an addition to his innovative English Dictionary? Maybe having sounded out "C, A, T > CAT"? Could we have been readin' and writing about the weather "reigning kats and dawgs" if Samuel had made other spelling choices?
You have a lovely family, George. And I’m only feeling the equivalent of a toenail.
Thank you, Andy.
Endless revision is a kind of hell if you don't have that ability to discern in the optometrist's big heavy goggle things - which is better - A....? or B....?
Developing the discrimination - exploring what that is for each of us - that's the thing I'm learning about here or hope I am.
I drive myself nuts. I have access to all the earlier drafts of my kids' novel (not each iteration of each chapter in each draft but -- actually many of those too!).
Yesterday I went back to draft 3 looking for a thing I needed -- a factoid actually -- and came across writing that seems really not any different in quality from what I'm working on in the parallel chapter in draft 6. I thought it was quite good, and wondered what I've been up to in all the years since that draft.
However -- what is different is my attention to the hooks and - even to resonances between the hooks - that make the story a story. That is much sharpened under George's guidance.
The things being hooked together have their own littler hooks, and I'm getting better at those too. Hooks within hooks within hooks.
But as to the direction - that's another thing. As to what is BEING hooked. There I'm having problems. What belongs in THIS story? What is distracting or extraneous? What follows are specifics. You don't have to carry on - the above rant is really my current situation as regards Story Club and what I'm learning! However... if anybody is curious --
I want my 1962 Cuban Missiles on the way - spy and space (Telstar) - mystery story for 12 year olds to have a family Cold War too. My protagonist learns that her dad is estranged from HIS dad -- a grandfather she didn't know existed -- and she helps to bring about a reconciliation. And gains a lovely grandfather into the bargain.
To me it's a terrific (and entwined) parallel.
To my critique partners - it's another book. The book without it is great, they say -- and I'm happy that they think so! BUT
I WANT this thickening of the texture. I want the protagonist to learn things about her family and end the cold war there too. And in the course of the microfilm/spy/"Tell Kennedy!" challenges - she also learns more about who she is, which is different from who she thought she was as a younger child (a "leader" like her sea captain dad). She sheds that persona and gives new weight to - other and more authentic and central aspects of herself as she is growing and developing into them.
I mean isn't this what fun and exciting and really good reads do?
Or are my partners right and I need to keep my arrow flight single and focused and the story will just be really so much stronger and better that way.
I can't decide.
I know the workshops on kid lit etc are on the side of my critique partners, who are astute and I respect them - but... I REALLY want this family aspect.
And there's the rub: what we want may not, in fact, be the best thing for the story.
And how do we tell?
I'm in a real dilemma here!
Ah yes, memories . . . "which is better - A....? or B....?" . . . to which question, bridge of the the nose heavily laden with those optometrist's googles you too are familiar with Jackie, I have been known to reply . . . "top half of A and bottom half of B".
Now that I've reflected a moment more I think I'd suggest that you let the story have it's head. Allow it to follow its instinct, to take you where it will. Insist all you want on the story embracing the family aspect that you really, really, really want . . . but listen to the story's verdict: if it fits go with it, if it doesn't fit don't insist on your right to write a doomed misfit?
Like Mary I say "listen", though I think "listen to the story" before "listening to yourself" 😊
Sage and sound advice!
"I REALLY want this family aspect." Listen to yourself.
Thank you for reading my sorry tale, Mary - and giving the family your vote!!
Family FIRST even if we have a missile problem again^^
Hit a couple of little snags in this post - do I even know what my best writing is or where to find it? I've got a queasy feeling about that.
But mostly, not such a little snag, really, is the whole conception of urgency as it applies to writing. This would seem to lie at the polar opposite (not to confuse elephants with polar bears) from procrastination. I like the analogy of cleaning the house a few days vs. a few hours before a party. Being something of a clean freak, which is to say, being better at cleaning than sitting down to write or revise. A thing that can be discouraging is the little nagging thought that, no matter how many damn times I polish it, chances are practically true that no one, give or take a rejector here or there, will ever see my writing. The same is basically true of my living room, but somehow that doesn't bother me quite as much. In fact, I'm relieved that most people will never see my living room, even when it is clean.
How did I end up here, I wonder?
I can see how thinking, this story I'm working on is likely eventually going to be read by lots and lots of individuals who are interested in literature and want to know what I'm up to lately, could indeed concentrate the mind.
I'd be on it in no time, myself.
But maybe what GS is saying is, the idea that you are participating in this grand project called art while you are still alive and able (I already regret phrasing it like that but) is motivation enough. Or could be, if you could only get your mind turned around to feeling that way about it.
Definitely does seem like a wonderful gift, if you are by nature or aptitude already turned around to that way of feeling about it. Inspiration comes in many forms too, and to be open to it is also a gift, I feel.
I wonder what this strange lethargy is other than, I'm sure no one will ever see this.
Strategies for outwitting it, anyone? Besides dire threats, I mean.
Well Amanda this latest SC Newsletter from the 🖊 of GS has certainly set you thinking 🤔. Got to be a good thing, and good on you for rising to the challenge to think about crossing the borderlands between ‘writing for self’ and ‘writing for others’.
Let’s allow the possibility that all that you’ll ever write will not, never, be read by others. Quite a stark downside scenario? Maybe or maybe not. A glorious upside might be that, because you’ve written so much, with so much care and an openness to new ideas, your ability to constructively critique and enjoy the fictions of others increases greatly.
Just from reading this one post I think you do have both a talent for writing and a potential to, finally, find yourself pushing pieces out to prospective publishers. A thought that’s just strolled across the stage that is my imagination is that you might find it fun to acquire two tee-shirts. One have printed REJECTED, the other ACCEPTED. Wear them with pride on those, future, occasions when you get to know that something you’ve submitted has either got a green light and is proceeding to publication or a stop, sorry, no go response?
Thanks, Rob! Your comments made me smile this morning!
Definitely not dire threats--I feel like you're being hard enough on yourself as it is. I wish I could tell you "if you write it, they will come" or something like that, but the truth is I'm in no position to guarantee you anything. And if your life experience tells you that no one will read your writing besides a rejector here or there, then maybe that's accurate too. Except...even if the rejector rejects it, they still read it, right?
Sometimes, if I'm reading something that doesn't happen to be all-consuming, I liken it to panning for gold. Like sure, most of this stuff is probably getting tossed, but I'm sure to find some good nuggets. And even the tossed stuff I will have at least considered. So if someone does that with whatever I share--takes some, leaves the rest, well then, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? (By the way, I can no longer even write the word 'goose' without remembering My First Goose--the power of literature).
Lately, what's helped me be more open with myself and others is remembering that we're all equal in God's eyes, which means I have as much right as anyone, but also that I can learn from anyone. And all that learning, it has a tendency to bubble up, so that I want to share it, put my own spin on it, take it for a ride and invite someone to join me. So maybe, if you write it, they will come. Or go. Or come and go. It's almost no business of yours what they do. Just what you do. And you get to do whatever you want to do, for as long as you want to do it.
Excellent advice all around : ) Thank you.
George's interest in "More pronounced and intentional causation" is key for me, because it's been a hole in much of my fiction for a long time. I find now, as part of my learning here, that knowing what my protagonist really, really wants becomes an anchor for me, a stabilizing force. It may take some time to achieve, but it then drives the story. It's a particular thing to work with, rather than the mass of emotion and structural questions that can overwhelm.
Both my kids called me yesterday and my spouse took me out for dinner, and my flower garden is blooming away. Happy Mother's Day to writing mothers everywhere, especially to you Story Clubbers.