This wonderful post echoes an excellent Paul Grealish quote/meme: "Describing your writing as trash while you're still drafting is like looking at a bag of flour and an egg and saying 'My cake tastes like crap.'"
Often I would consider my draft notes for novels "trash" so I wouldn't think it was the start of the great American novel. It was a way for me not to become Icarus. The novel I'm working on now has a different file name that's not "trash". I feel good about that.
Love this! My way of thinking about the wonderfully endless drafts is in harmony with what George says. I've been studying archeology and evolution informally for a few years, reading books and watching YouTube lectures and documentaries. At some point, noting how carefully the workers remove a layer of sediment, sifting it, sorting it, examining the intriguing pieces, testing them, developing working hypotheses, etc., it came clear to me that each new layer is available for examination ONLY because the previous layer has been removed. And making sense of the under-layers was ONLY possible within the framework of what was thought before, even when the hypotheses are reworked. It came to me also that my revision process is the same. Early revisions (1 through 10 or 20?) give me a start with surface changes, maybe a few obvious reworks--the low-hanging fruit. Only then does my mind clear of these and get down successively to the under-layers. When I have removed many layers of sediment, I see the root artifacts in the text, the early developmental vectors that tell me what the story wants to be fundamentally. Much like the archeologists discover in the deep sediment what the human family was trying to be way back when. This process has also taught me that those people exploring our root stories and we writers exploring our root humanity are working hand in hand. My key learning is that you can't get to all revisions in single sweeps. They only open up to you in layers, or as George says, in waves. The obvious analogy is that the unconscious, the psycho-history of it for one piece of writing, is like the sediment of a dig.
What i love about this, Ron, is that your take on this acknowledges that archeology is actually all about story-telling. As wonders are unearthed, it takes a human mind to form a story around them. Because until then, they are merely artifacts. And yes, as more is uncovered, the story morphs and changes and a clarity emerges. Love this way of looking at writing. Thanks for posting.
This is such a great metaphor, Ron. With my students, I've been using sculpture in a similar way e.g. you have a block of marble to start with, and it's only when you chisel away big chunks and small slivers does the final form begin to take shape. This requires making a movement, stepping back and looking at what you've done, assessing its efficacy, then getting back to work once you have a notion what the next nick with the hammer and chisel might be.
It's amazing how all of the arts inform each other. And science and other disciplines too. They are in debt to the unconscious and have much to teach us. The Big Bang is a story. Evolution is a story. The history of culture, from farming and villages to now, is a story. The expression of religion around the world and through time is the story we tell about how we came about and why. And an art we don't think of too often in connection with writing: magic. Like magicians, we create illusions performed so deftly they seem like natural acts. Your work as a sculptor and writer is your hand under the table.
When i was working as a gardener, shaping an overgrown shrub was much the same process. You step back and take a look at it from a distance, from different angles, then you intuituively start to work with the shears. Taking off a branch here or there, stepping back each time to see how the shape looks, what the health of the plant will now be. Pausing, watching and then going back in close and taking out more until the final shape reveals itself. So great that i can now link this process to my writing!
Exactly! And you have hit on the nature of art. It's not a separate existential or ontological sphere. It's always there in everyday life whether gardening or vacuuming (what patterns do you use?), washing dishes (what motions do you use?). etc. etc.
Beautiful, Ron...thank you. I have been working on a very difficult (for me) chapter that involves a lot of violence and bloodshed. I had been putting it off for weeks and weeks...really afraid that I would screw it all up, blow it up, ruin everything...and I finally pushed through it. But now, as I edit the chapter over and over, I'm uncovering more and more and the chapter is getting bigger and bigger as I get deeper and deeper and expose more detail of what is really going on.
Honestly, I had been saying to myself "how deep do I go here...with all this action happening in real-time?" After reading your post, I don't care. Now I'm saying, "calm down, boy...this is the meat, this is the gold...just keep digging, you knucklehead!"
Lay it all in there. You can back some out later if necessary. I always watch in later revisions for tracking actions too closely and supplying info that the reader can intuit from what you have written already. As George says in a lot of places, lifting the writing and the reader up at the same time.
I'm with you, Ron. A voice in my head pokes me when I'm doing that (laying in too much detail).. and then another voice tells me that I should be wondering if the great majority of readers will get what's going on in a fast-paced story situation. So now I have a solution (from you via George)...a way to tell all those voices in my head to quiet down...and so "lift the writing and the reader up at the same time." The writing life gets easier...when you have friends to talk with (like this wonderful group here). For me, Story Club is an amazing discovery. It literally helps me every.single.day.
With the exception of learning how to write and edit poetry when I was in my late teens, I have been entirely self-taught. For the better part of 35 years I was driven by the need to make money and could only write when I had a long stretch of time away from the thundering herd of technology development wildebeests. Talking with people here who understand the forces at work in making stories work is a major blessing.
I found myself replacing word "story" with the word "life" and feeling profoundly comforted. "A rough patch in a life is not an error or a defect... It's an indicator that our heroic, brilliant subconscious is working out a problem as it stumbles towards beauty, and is asking for our help, and what it needs for us to do, just now, is have faith." Your message of kindness to oneself, and the kindness with which you share with others, is invaluable. Much gratitude.
Hands up, who else is finding this the most enlightening writing course they're ever taken? Thanks so much George. I live light years away from any school or institution and this is like finding gold in the desert :)
I've done a stack of online writing courses (with a 'regular' structure - lectures and workshops) and that book was more edifying than all of them put together :)
It totally lit me up. What other books did you like?
I loved Ray Bradbury's Zen and the Art of Writing for the sheer enthusiasm, and Francine Prose (Reading Like a Writer, and What to Read and Why). She does a beautiful job of highlighting technique through examples from classics. And she's a sentence devotee.
Another lovely post. I absolutely believe in avoidance moments, in waiting for that inner voice to reveal what is needed. But I also believe in Completely Not Knowing Moments, which I think describes the many stories I have written over the years that turned out to be utter failures. And the reason they failed is because I did not know myself and I did not know what to write about. All I knew is that I wanted to write. And so my stories would go haywire or off track or lead nowhere. And that is because I had no idea what was way down there in my subconscious waiting, someday, to emerge. I needed to grow up. I needed to become the person I hadn't become yet. I suppose you could say I was having decades-long avoidance moments when I gave up on those stories. I hope this makes sense. Nowadays, I know that when I write something, I have been given the gift of a glance into the deep recesses of my own mind and that if i sit and wait with them, there's the chance something will come of it. (Please, God.) But again, I'm older. I've acquired that depth. Thankfully, I'm no longer (quite as much) the shallow person i once was.
I often think the same. I can’t reach that part of me, but rather than growth, in my case I think is fear to say it as I feel it, as if, by doing so, someone would get angry, hurt, offended, even die… perhaps I’ll die… so the unconscious remains so and stories I write seem to keep on holding their breath. But perhaps part of growing is learning not to fear as much… and then one day the stories will start to flow.
Btw, I always love reading your comments, I wish I could follow you!
Aurora: I love that you say your stories are holding their breath. That is exactly how it can feel sometimes. As far as fear goes: Oh, boy, fear is the major Stop sign for writers. I get how you worry about hurting or offending someone. But, if you don't mind me saying so, no one's gonna die from your words, especially not you. In fact, most likely the opposite--you'll feel very much alive. Here's what surprised me the most about one of my books--the mother character was ONE HUNDRED PERCENT my mother, and yet, after reading it she said to me, Thank God, i'm not that mother! So, people see/read what they want to see/read sometimes. Thank you for saying you enjoy my comments. I'm super happy to be here in this space where we can all share with like-minded people. It's such a gift.
Dear Mary, thank you so much for your reply and for sharing this experience with me. How fascinating that your mum didn’t see herself in your novel and how insightful this anecdote is about human’s perception and the nature of reality itself.
I will think about your words next time I’ll write, thanks.
Ah yes Aurora, right about Mary g’s comments and also right to regret that Substack doesn’t, yet, afford users a simple means of ‘Following’ posts by other participants.
It's so interesting what you're saying about insight and age. Like you and probably most writers I've written many many stories that wandered off into their own labyrinthine deserts where I left them. I really hadn't grown into them. Now, I find myself returning to many of these stories & I can write them. Some of them. I have two longer stories, part of a collection, that I a m completely avoiding because they're so lost. But reading George's post and yours and the ones here I feel closer to opening them up and starting again in their present messy state. My daughter, an illustrator potter who also writes stories, asked me recently if I daydreamed. She does all the time, which I find fascinating. I told her that the closest I came to daydreaming was when I was in the midst of a longer text and dreaming my way into the story. It's a lovely way to approach a story especially a messy one. Dream into it.
Lucinda: i love that your daughter daydreams. i remember an interview with Alice Munro where she said that if anyone watched what she was doing, they would think she was doing nothing. But actually, she sits on her sofa and daydreams. It can be hard to allow ourselves space to daydream these days. There is just too much content out there; it's never ending. Regarding looking at your old stories again: There must be some good stuff in there that you can see. My old stories--the ones I'm talking about in my post--are very immature. The only thing they tell me is that I was once very, very young and that my world was very, very small. Also, I was so self-centered back then (hopefully less so now), as well as very literal. I can see seeds in those stories. I can see what my issues were, what mattered to me back then. But oh man, I really had no idea how to write a story. It's crazy--it was all I thought about, how to write a story. I knew intellectually all of it. But I just could not get there. Those stories are gone now. I've got a lot of new things to write about. Well, i hope I do anyway. And i've had a few successes, so that helps. Still, every story is it's own beast. Funny how much I love it even though it's torture.
Understanding myself is a life-long process. I'm 64 years old and still learning/growing. What I know now is that I knew very little a long time ago--when I thought I knew everything.
The "avoidance moment" reminds me of what I hear songwriters do all the time -- when they have some melody but not all the lyrics. One of my songwriting pals calls it "vocalizing." They put in nonsense words that maybe have the sound or rhythm that feels right, but they aren't meant to be the final song. A placeholder to keep singing through until the subconscious provides beautiful resolution.
Yes. "Yesterday" was originally "Scrambled Eggs." And while it's the most covered song in history, one does wonder how much more money McCartney would have made had he been able to license it for a Denny's commercial.
You know lately I've been mourning the demise of the "ang" form of "/ung/ang" verbs. I have sung. I sang. I have sprung. I sprang. etc. Also "ank". Every time I read "the boat sunk" I wince. But you can't hold back the flood of language and the paths it takes!
The song "Tea for two" - its lyrics were originally nonsense placeholder words. Then they decided to keep them! I thought there was another word for those sort of placeholders but can't find it. Wikipedia also said this: "The phrase 'Tea for Two' was originally shouted by hawkers on the streets of 18th century England who wanted to attract business by lowering the price of a pot of tea from thruppence to tuppence" Well, that was a nice little background nibble. I wonder how the lyricist might have known that (or if he did -- I went farther down this rat hole but I don't need to take you with me).
(Ah I miss the thruppenny bit! And saying things like "Three and sixpence ha'p'ny" - sorry - Brit nostalgia moment!)
Two things I love about this post, Nicole: It gets at the relationship between sound and meaning. I think we forget as writers and readers that pure sound, by itself has meaning (impact, beauty). I am beginning to learn to choose the word that has the delicious or crunchy sound over the one whose meaning is perfect but doesn't sound right for the music of the writing around it. The other thing is the fundamental arbitrariness of meaning. Things mean only what humans make them mean in everyday usage. There is no inherent meaning, as there are natural essences in things that live in the world. Grass has its inherent smell and color. Etc. By paying attention more and more to sound, we get at the arbitrariness more directly.
Wow, Story Club has made such an impact on my writing in such a short time. I can tell my writing is stronger, but even better than that, I am being more compassionate to myself. I know I'm not the only one!
Lol this post sounds like my life at the moment. My sister even had to move in with me after a bad car accident left me with a brain injury.
I love the description of a rough patch as "an indicator that our heroic, brilliant subconscious is working out a problem as it stumbles towards beauty, and is asking for our help, and what it needs for us to do, just now, is have faith. And wait."
Thank you 😃. Compared to my doctor's prognosis of "Look at the positives. You didn't die" I recovered quite well. Physically, I'm close to where I was. Mentally Story Club is the perfect therapy teaching me to WAIT ✋. I take it better from you. When my therapist and I walked in a labyrinth he walked so slowly I wanted to push him.
Thank you for the well wishes! My life has definitely changed, but is well managed for the most part. Choosing a new career is the hardest part, which I hope my subconscious will figure out in time (sooner than later would be great. Patience was never a personal strength.)
I've just unearthed the following transcription, which was jotted down by a Sotheby's manuscript expert from what he recognised as a working draft of one of John Donne's best known 'Devotions':
"Perchance he for whom this kettle boils may be so ill, as that he knows not it boils for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to boil for me, and I know not that.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the kettle boils; it boils for thee."
Nothing more than a literary curio dating from the 17th Century, until the penny dropped with me as I read 'That's Not a Mistake'. Donne's references to kettle boiling were 'avoidance moments' which held their place in this famous piece of writing until the words he was really seeking came to mind.
Now here's a question to ponder, in passing: had the words he wanted not crossed John Donne's mind might Ernest Hemingway's novel of the Spanish Civil War in the 20th Century been entitled 'For Whom the Kettle Boils'?
Oh wow. So glad to have read this, at this very moment, only a few hours after having counted my unfinished stories. And they are fourteen. Yup, you read that right. And now I have this, instead of that little (quite large actually) voice saying discouraging things: “What’ve we got here? Let’s see what we can do. It’s going to be all right.” Needed that, thanks George 🙏🏼
I read and loved the brand new (posted yesterday) translation of Chekhov’s advice for the writer on the writing life, translated into English by Ivan of The Lifeboat Substack, and want to share it with Story Club friends here. Because it’s Chekhov, newly in English! How exciting is that?! Super exciting!
I must say that one advantage (okay, maybe the ONLY advantage) to studying with George this way instead of as a student in his MFA class, is that we get to profit from the amazing diversity of experiences of the participants. Archaeologists! Sculptors! Scientists! I have no doubt George’s traditional students are no slouches, but I love the decades of thoughtful experience many of you bring to this forum.
I am so grateful for this "Story Club." After reading your post yesterday, I resolved to just let the revision process unfold bit by bit and trust my unconscious to help "fix" my story problems. It actually happened. I am amazed because, as George alludes, the solution feels much smarter than me.
I'll flip this. The people that make the dumbest mistakes are smart people, usually because they're reading things into a situation that don't exist. Sometimes overthinking a problem can blind you to a simple solution. Easy to miss something right in front of you.
I totally agree Mona...it is a wonderful moment, being in touch with part of myself. Maybe, I'm thinking, these moments where "the solution feels much smarter than me" are a significant part of why I continue to write. A moment of bliss.
It always amazes me how harsh we are of our own work in progress. I sort of think of my stories like this scene in The Simpsons where Homer's going through his garage and finds a robot he started making. It looks at him and says father in a sad little voice before he shoves it out of the way. That's how I picture my unfinished stories, like sad little robots lying around the place. I expect them to shiny and cool, go get me some coffee, tell me a joke, cook some eggs before I've wired them up and given them legs or a head.
Bruised, unenlightened, despairing, embarrassed . . I'm glad to see these feelings dragged out into the light and named. I have felt all of them in workshop and yes, they are no fun, and more important, not helpful, not for me, anyway.
My workshop days are over.
But my trying-to-write-a-story days are not.
It's very hard to have faith in your talent under such circumstances. Even now, I'm tempted to put 'talent' in parentheses - my so-called "talent."
There is a serious erosion in faith that goes on, I believe. Having faith that your talent will work it out if you give it time - and keeping coming back to revise - is a pretty radical idea, actually. Or so it seems to me.
I think it is the erosion in faith that prevents me from the keep-coming-back-to-revise part. At some point I give up, feeling that the whole thing is somehow beyond me. Yes, I missed that essential frequency broadcast from Story Central. Guess I'm just not cut out for this. Etc..
I haven't quite made that connection before, I don't think.
Like I said, kind of radical.
I'm going to try treating my talent with a little more faith, kindness, and respect, and see what happens.
Yes - and I really do sometimes think of my "talent" as something apart from me. It's easier to see it like that with say, guitar playing - there, I don't have that intense habit of identifying "me" with the product - I think because writing feels like it is identical to "us," it's harder to make that separation. With guitar, I'm just sort of looking over at it, like: "How are you today? Anything good to give me?"
I'm with you. I have no idea where "it" all comes from. I still even feel a little odd saying "I'm a writer" to myself, even though I've been doing it since high school. It's not something concrete like being a carpenter or even a body of knowledge, like medicine. It's something that just happens under the right conditions. I know the craft to shape a story now, but I still have no idea where the stories come from. I just tell people the Writing Gods send them, and it would risk their wrath if I didn't accept their gift.
I do identify with my work though. I know that my characters and my stories wouldn't exist without me. They live because of me, and they live with other people now because of me. Kinda sticks you with the responsibility to keep them going; but that's not bad. I get to go to a different world and do things I can't in this one. That's a lot of fun and helps keep me sane. Better an imaginary Siamese that I can spend some time with than no Siamese, at least for the present.
I like this "cooler" idea of talent, which can be kind of a "hot" word. A nice entity over there, ready to help out when needed, in time . . almost nothing to do with individuals. I guess revision is also a process of instilling degrees of separation between us and what we write, so you can see it as separate from you somehow. That might be the hardest thing about it, that separation. I do not feel mortally ashamed when, juggling, I drop at least two balls on the floor almost immediately. That's all I know : )
I like thinking of talent more as uniqueness, how you can spill your singular sensibilities onto the page. And for me, my greatest pleasure in writing comes from when I detach from the ego/talent thingy and feel it coming from the universe/unconscious/human-brain-evolution place. That feels like grace to me.
“Keep coming back to that place, with affection and hope, until it relents and pops into clarity.” This story club newsletter itself is such a jolt of “affection and hope” and always leaves me with a new sense of clarity, thank you!
This wonderful post echoes an excellent Paul Grealish quote/meme: "Describing your writing as trash while you're still drafting is like looking at a bag of flour and an egg and saying 'My cake tastes like crap.'"
Often I would consider my draft notes for novels "trash" so I wouldn't think it was the start of the great American novel. It was a way for me not to become Icarus. The novel I'm working on now has a different file name that's not "trash". I feel good about that.
Pasting this and saving it. Chef's kiss.
as an avid home baker, this helps me so much - thank you, MVM!
Paul Grealish is my hero - brilliant point, right?!
Love this! My way of thinking about the wonderfully endless drafts is in harmony with what George says. I've been studying archeology and evolution informally for a few years, reading books and watching YouTube lectures and documentaries. At some point, noting how carefully the workers remove a layer of sediment, sifting it, sorting it, examining the intriguing pieces, testing them, developing working hypotheses, etc., it came clear to me that each new layer is available for examination ONLY because the previous layer has been removed. And making sense of the under-layers was ONLY possible within the framework of what was thought before, even when the hypotheses are reworked. It came to me also that my revision process is the same. Early revisions (1 through 10 or 20?) give me a start with surface changes, maybe a few obvious reworks--the low-hanging fruit. Only then does my mind clear of these and get down successively to the under-layers. When I have removed many layers of sediment, I see the root artifacts in the text, the early developmental vectors that tell me what the story wants to be fundamentally. Much like the archeologists discover in the deep sediment what the human family was trying to be way back when. This process has also taught me that those people exploring our root stories and we writers exploring our root humanity are working hand in hand. My key learning is that you can't get to all revisions in single sweeps. They only open up to you in layers, or as George says, in waves. The obvious analogy is that the unconscious, the psycho-history of it for one piece of writing, is like the sediment of a dig.
Lovely - that archeology metaphor is perfect, Ron. Thanks and I'll use it in the future. :)
"...each new layer is available for examination ONLY because the previous layer has been removed." YES.
What i love about this, Ron, is that your take on this acknowledges that archeology is actually all about story-telling. As wonders are unearthed, it takes a human mind to form a story around them. Because until then, they are merely artifacts. And yes, as more is uncovered, the story morphs and changes and a clarity emerges. Love this way of looking at writing. Thanks for posting.
This is such a great metaphor, Ron. With my students, I've been using sculpture in a similar way e.g. you have a block of marble to start with, and it's only when you chisel away big chunks and small slivers does the final form begin to take shape. This requires making a movement, stepping back and looking at what you've done, assessing its efficacy, then getting back to work once you have a notion what the next nick with the hammer and chisel might be.
It's amazing how all of the arts inform each other. And science and other disciplines too. They are in debt to the unconscious and have much to teach us. The Big Bang is a story. Evolution is a story. The history of culture, from farming and villages to now, is a story. The expression of religion around the world and through time is the story we tell about how we came about and why. And an art we don't think of too often in connection with writing: magic. Like magicians, we create illusions performed so deftly they seem like natural acts. Your work as a sculptor and writer is your hand under the table.
When i was working as a gardener, shaping an overgrown shrub was much the same process. You step back and take a look at it from a distance, from different angles, then you intuituively start to work with the shears. Taking off a branch here or there, stepping back each time to see how the shape looks, what the health of the plant will now be. Pausing, watching and then going back in close and taking out more until the final shape reveals itself. So great that i can now link this process to my writing!
Exactly! And you have hit on the nature of art. It's not a separate existential or ontological sphere. It's always there in everyday life whether gardening or vacuuming (what patterns do you use?), washing dishes (what motions do you use?). etc. etc.
Michelangelo said that he was liberating the figures imprisoned within the block of marble. https://www.accademia.org/explore-museum/artworks/michelangelos-prisoners-slaves/#:~:text=The%20latent%20power%20one%20feels,the%20flesh%20burdening%20the%20soul.
Fantastic!!
Beautiful, Ron...thank you. I have been working on a very difficult (for me) chapter that involves a lot of violence and bloodshed. I had been putting it off for weeks and weeks...really afraid that I would screw it all up, blow it up, ruin everything...and I finally pushed through it. But now, as I edit the chapter over and over, I'm uncovering more and more and the chapter is getting bigger and bigger as I get deeper and deeper and expose more detail of what is really going on.
Honestly, I had been saying to myself "how deep do I go here...with all this action happening in real-time?" After reading your post, I don't care. Now I'm saying, "calm down, boy...this is the meat, this is the gold...just keep digging, you knucklehead!"
Lay it all in there. You can back some out later if necessary. I always watch in later revisions for tracking actions too closely and supplying info that the reader can intuit from what you have written already. As George says in a lot of places, lifting the writing and the reader up at the same time.
I'm with you, Ron. A voice in my head pokes me when I'm doing that (laying in too much detail).. and then another voice tells me that I should be wondering if the great majority of readers will get what's going on in a fast-paced story situation. So now I have a solution (from you via George)...a way to tell all those voices in my head to quiet down...and so "lift the writing and the reader up at the same time." The writing life gets easier...when you have friends to talk with (like this wonderful group here). For me, Story Club is an amazing discovery. It literally helps me every.single.day.
With the exception of learning how to write and edit poetry when I was in my late teens, I have been entirely self-taught. For the better part of 35 years I was driven by the need to make money and could only write when I had a long stretch of time away from the thundering herd of technology development wildebeests. Talking with people here who understand the forces at work in making stories work is a major blessing.
I found myself replacing word "story" with the word "life" and feeling profoundly comforted. "A rough patch in a life is not an error or a defect... It's an indicator that our heroic, brilliant subconscious is working out a problem as it stumbles towards beauty, and is asking for our help, and what it needs for us to do, just now, is have faith." Your message of kindness to oneself, and the kindness with which you share with others, is invaluable. Much gratitude.
I thought the same thing - what a generous and kind approach to bring to all our endeavors.
“What’ve we got here? Let’s see what we can do. It’s going to be all right.”
I thought about this in the realm of painting - just replace "story" with "painting" - voila! Enlightening.
Yep. Beautifully expressed too.
Hands up, who else is finding this the most enlightening writing course they're ever taken? Thanks so much George. I live light years away from any school or institution and this is like finding gold in the desert :)
YES!
Yes, Reb, I totally agree!!!!
I've done a stack of online writing courses (with a 'regular' structure - lectures and workshops) and that book was more edifying than all of them put together :)
It totally lit me up. What other books did you like?
I loved Ray Bradbury's Zen and the Art of Writing for the sheer enthusiasm, and Francine Prose (Reading Like a Writer, and What to Read and Why). She does a beautiful job of highlighting technique through examples from classics. And she's a sentence devotee.
Another lovely post. I absolutely believe in avoidance moments, in waiting for that inner voice to reveal what is needed. But I also believe in Completely Not Knowing Moments, which I think describes the many stories I have written over the years that turned out to be utter failures. And the reason they failed is because I did not know myself and I did not know what to write about. All I knew is that I wanted to write. And so my stories would go haywire or off track or lead nowhere. And that is because I had no idea what was way down there in my subconscious waiting, someday, to emerge. I needed to grow up. I needed to become the person I hadn't become yet. I suppose you could say I was having decades-long avoidance moments when I gave up on those stories. I hope this makes sense. Nowadays, I know that when I write something, I have been given the gift of a glance into the deep recesses of my own mind and that if i sit and wait with them, there's the chance something will come of it. (Please, God.) But again, I'm older. I've acquired that depth. Thankfully, I'm no longer (quite as much) the shallow person i once was.
Beautiful observation, Mary g..
I often think the same. I can’t reach that part of me, but rather than growth, in my case I think is fear to say it as I feel it, as if, by doing so, someone would get angry, hurt, offended, even die… perhaps I’ll die… so the unconscious remains so and stories I write seem to keep on holding their breath. But perhaps part of growing is learning not to fear as much… and then one day the stories will start to flow.
Btw, I always love reading your comments, I wish I could follow you!
Aurora: I love that you say your stories are holding their breath. That is exactly how it can feel sometimes. As far as fear goes: Oh, boy, fear is the major Stop sign for writers. I get how you worry about hurting or offending someone. But, if you don't mind me saying so, no one's gonna die from your words, especially not you. In fact, most likely the opposite--you'll feel very much alive. Here's what surprised me the most about one of my books--the mother character was ONE HUNDRED PERCENT my mother, and yet, after reading it she said to me, Thank God, i'm not that mother! So, people see/read what they want to see/read sometimes. Thank you for saying you enjoy my comments. I'm super happy to be here in this space where we can all share with like-minded people. It's such a gift.
Dear Mary, thank you so much for your reply and for sharing this experience with me. How fascinating that your mum didn’t see herself in your novel and how insightful this anecdote is about human’s perception and the nature of reality itself.
I will think about your words next time I’ll write, thanks.
Ah yes Aurora, right about Mary g’s comments and also right to regret that Substack doesn’t, yet, afford users a simple means of ‘Following’ posts by other participants.
Thank you, Rob! I think there are a handful of regulars on these threads and little by little we're getting to know one another.
And what, as yet little, I know of you makes me 😍 your thoughtful, erudite, generous posts Mary.
same right back at you, Rob!
It's so interesting what you're saying about insight and age. Like you and probably most writers I've written many many stories that wandered off into their own labyrinthine deserts where I left them. I really hadn't grown into them. Now, I find myself returning to many of these stories & I can write them. Some of them. I have two longer stories, part of a collection, that I a m completely avoiding because they're so lost. But reading George's post and yours and the ones here I feel closer to opening them up and starting again in their present messy state. My daughter, an illustrator potter who also writes stories, asked me recently if I daydreamed. She does all the time, which I find fascinating. I told her that the closest I came to daydreaming was when I was in the midst of a longer text and dreaming my way into the story. It's a lovely way to approach a story especially a messy one. Dream into it.
Lucinda: i love that your daughter daydreams. i remember an interview with Alice Munro where she said that if anyone watched what she was doing, they would think she was doing nothing. But actually, she sits on her sofa and daydreams. It can be hard to allow ourselves space to daydream these days. There is just too much content out there; it's never ending. Regarding looking at your old stories again: There must be some good stuff in there that you can see. My old stories--the ones I'm talking about in my post--are very immature. The only thing they tell me is that I was once very, very young and that my world was very, very small. Also, I was so self-centered back then (hopefully less so now), as well as very literal. I can see seeds in those stories. I can see what my issues were, what mattered to me back then. But oh man, I really had no idea how to write a story. It's crazy--it was all I thought about, how to write a story. I knew intellectually all of it. But I just could not get there. Those stories are gone now. I've got a lot of new things to write about. Well, i hope I do anyway. And i've had a few successes, so that helps. Still, every story is it's own beast. Funny how much I love it even though it's torture.
Understanding myself is a life-long process. I'm 64 years old and still learning/growing. What I know now is that I knew very little a long time ago--when I thought I knew everything.
The "avoidance moment" reminds me of what I hear songwriters do all the time -- when they have some melody but not all the lyrics. One of my songwriting pals calls it "vocalizing." They put in nonsense words that maybe have the sound or rhythm that feels right, but they aren't meant to be the final song. A placeholder to keep singing through until the subconscious provides beautiful resolution.
Yes, I love that.
The Beatles documentary "Get Back" has a lot of examples of that. Fun to listen to.
Yes. "Yesterday" was originally "Scrambled Eggs." And while it's the most covered song in history, one does wonder how much more money McCartney would have made had he been able to license it for a Denny's commercial.
You know lately I've been mourning the demise of the "ang" form of "/ung/ang" verbs. I have sung. I sang. I have sprung. I sprang. etc. Also "ank". Every time I read "the boat sunk" I wince. But you can't hold back the flood of language and the paths it takes!
The song "Tea for two" - its lyrics were originally nonsense placeholder words. Then they decided to keep them! I thought there was another word for those sort of placeholders but can't find it. Wikipedia also said this: "The phrase 'Tea for Two' was originally shouted by hawkers on the streets of 18th century England who wanted to attract business by lowering the price of a pot of tea from thruppence to tuppence" Well, that was a nice little background nibble. I wonder how the lyricist might have known that (or if he did -- I went farther down this rat hole but I don't need to take you with me).
(Ah I miss the thruppenny bit! And saying things like "Three and sixpence ha'p'ny" - sorry - Brit nostalgia moment!)
Mary Poppins. Feed the birds tuppence a bag!
Two things I love about this post, Nicole: It gets at the relationship between sound and meaning. I think we forget as writers and readers that pure sound, by itself has meaning (impact, beauty). I am beginning to learn to choose the word that has the delicious or crunchy sound over the one whose meaning is perfect but doesn't sound right for the music of the writing around it. The other thing is the fundamental arbitrariness of meaning. Things mean only what humans make them mean in everyday usage. There is no inherent meaning, as there are natural essences in things that live in the world. Grass has its inherent smell and color. Etc. By paying attention more and more to sound, we get at the arbitrariness more directly.
Wow, Story Club has made such an impact on my writing in such a short time. I can tell my writing is stronger, but even better than that, I am being more compassionate to myself. I know I'm not the only one!
Lol this post sounds like my life at the moment. My sister even had to move in with me after a bad car accident left me with a brain injury.
I love the description of a rough patch as "an indicator that our heroic, brilliant subconscious is working out a problem as it stumbles towards beauty, and is asking for our help, and what it needs for us to do, just now, is have faith. And wait."
In the meantime I guess I'll just keep revising:)
So sorry to hear about your accident, Sima, and I hope all is well soon.
Thank you 😃. Compared to my doctor's prognosis of "Look at the positives. You didn't die" I recovered quite well. Physically, I'm close to where I was. Mentally Story Club is the perfect therapy teaching me to WAIT ✋. I take it better from you. When my therapist and I walked in a labyrinth he walked so slowly I wanted to push him.
Oh good luck Sima, I hope you’ll get better soon.
Thank you for the well wishes! My life has definitely changed, but is well managed for the most part. Choosing a new career is the hardest part, which I hope my subconscious will figure out in time (sooner than later would be great. Patience was never a personal strength.)
I've just unearthed the following transcription, which was jotted down by a Sotheby's manuscript expert from what he recognised as a working draft of one of John Donne's best known 'Devotions':
"Perchance he for whom this kettle boils may be so ill, as that he knows not it boils for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to boil for me, and I know not that.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the kettle boils; it boils for thee."
Nothing more than a literary curio dating from the 17th Century, until the penny dropped with me as I read 'That's Not a Mistake'. Donne's references to kettle boiling were 'avoidance moments' which held their place in this famous piece of writing until the words he was really seeking came to mind.
Now here's a question to ponder, in passing: had the words he wanted not crossed John Donne's mind might Ernest Hemingway's novel of the Spanish Civil War in the 20th Century been entitled 'For Whom the Kettle Boils'?
I like the Beanie and Cecil jokes: No Man is an island, uninhabited, in the Pacific, just over from Nothing Atoll, which you can't see.
"Beanie?"
"Cecil?"
"This us?"
"Speakin'?"
"So it seems."
"At last."
"To each other. Me to you. You to me."
"Like old times? The way it was? The way we were?"
"Shall we meet up?"
"Get together?"
"Bury the hatchet . . . "
Oh wow. So glad to have read this, at this very moment, only a few hours after having counted my unfinished stories. And they are fourteen. Yup, you read that right. And now I have this, instead of that little (quite large actually) voice saying discouraging things: “What’ve we got here? Let’s see what we can do. It’s going to be all right.” Needed that, thanks George 🙏🏼
I had the same experience :)
Nice to know I'm not alone Reb :-)
I read and loved the brand new (posted yesterday) translation of Chekhov’s advice for the writer on the writing life, translated into English by Ivan of The Lifeboat Substack, and want to share it with Story Club friends here. Because it’s Chekhov, newly in English! How exciting is that?! Super exciting!
https://lifeboat.substack.com/p/rules-for-aspiring-authors
I must say that one advantage (okay, maybe the ONLY advantage) to studying with George this way instead of as a student in his MFA class, is that we get to profit from the amazing diversity of experiences of the participants. Archaeologists! Sculptors! Scientists! I have no doubt George’s traditional students are no slouches, but I love the decades of thoughtful experience many of you bring to this forum.
Kudos to this cadre!
That, and we get to do it in our jammies...
I am so grateful for this "Story Club." After reading your post yesterday, I resolved to just let the revision process unfold bit by bit and trust my unconscious to help "fix" my story problems. It actually happened. I am amazed because, as George alludes, the solution feels much smarter than me.
I'll flip this. The people that make the dumbest mistakes are smart people, usually because they're reading things into a situation that don't exist. Sometimes overthinking a problem can blind you to a simple solution. Easy to miss something right in front of you.
I agree, Michael!!!
I totally agree Mona...it is a wonderful moment, being in touch with part of myself. Maybe, I'm thinking, these moments where "the solution feels much smarter than me" are a significant part of why I continue to write. A moment of bliss.
Beautifully said, Paul!!!
I've been having similar moments. So grateful also!!
It always amazes me how harsh we are of our own work in progress. I sort of think of my stories like this scene in The Simpsons where Homer's going through his garage and finds a robot he started making. It looks at him and says father in a sad little voice before he shoves it out of the way. That's how I picture my unfinished stories, like sad little robots lying around the place. I expect them to shiny and cool, go get me some coffee, tell me a joke, cook some eggs before I've wired them up and given them legs or a head.
That gave me a chuckle - and a hmph of recognition!
Bruised, unenlightened, despairing, embarrassed . . I'm glad to see these feelings dragged out into the light and named. I have felt all of them in workshop and yes, they are no fun, and more important, not helpful, not for me, anyway.
My workshop days are over.
But my trying-to-write-a-story days are not.
It's very hard to have faith in your talent under such circumstances. Even now, I'm tempted to put 'talent' in parentheses - my so-called "talent."
There is a serious erosion in faith that goes on, I believe. Having faith that your talent will work it out if you give it time - and keeping coming back to revise - is a pretty radical idea, actually. Or so it seems to me.
I think it is the erosion in faith that prevents me from the keep-coming-back-to-revise part. At some point I give up, feeling that the whole thing is somehow beyond me. Yes, I missed that essential frequency broadcast from Story Central. Guess I'm just not cut out for this. Etc..
I haven't quite made that connection before, I don't think.
Like I said, kind of radical.
I'm going to try treating my talent with a little more faith, kindness, and respect, and see what happens.
Thanks!
Yes - and I really do sometimes think of my "talent" as something apart from me. It's easier to see it like that with say, guitar playing - there, I don't have that intense habit of identifying "me" with the product - I think because writing feels like it is identical to "us," it's harder to make that separation. With guitar, I'm just sort of looking over at it, like: "How are you today? Anything good to give me?"
I'm with you. I have no idea where "it" all comes from. I still even feel a little odd saying "I'm a writer" to myself, even though I've been doing it since high school. It's not something concrete like being a carpenter or even a body of knowledge, like medicine. It's something that just happens under the right conditions. I know the craft to shape a story now, but I still have no idea where the stories come from. I just tell people the Writing Gods send them, and it would risk their wrath if I didn't accept their gift.
I do identify with my work though. I know that my characters and my stories wouldn't exist without me. They live because of me, and they live with other people now because of me. Kinda sticks you with the responsibility to keep them going; but that's not bad. I get to go to a different world and do things I can't in this one. That's a lot of fun and helps keep me sane. Better an imaginary Siamese that I can spend some time with than no Siamese, at least for the present.
Besides, I'm lousy on the guitar.
I like this "cooler" idea of talent, which can be kind of a "hot" word. A nice entity over there, ready to help out when needed, in time . . almost nothing to do with individuals. I guess revision is also a process of instilling degrees of separation between us and what we write, so you can see it as separate from you somehow. That might be the hardest thing about it, that separation. I do not feel mortally ashamed when, juggling, I drop at least two balls on the floor almost immediately. That's all I know : )
I like thinking of talent more as uniqueness, how you can spill your singular sensibilities onto the page. And for me, my greatest pleasure in writing comes from when I detach from the ego/talent thingy and feel it coming from the universe/unconscious/human-brain-evolution place. That feels like grace to me.
“Keep coming back to that place, with affection and hope, until it relents and pops into clarity.” This story club newsletter itself is such a jolt of “affection and hope” and always leaves me with a new sense of clarity, thank you!