9/1/08: Book-Length Thoughts
Over the course of years of working on my own writing and coaching others, I've come to recognize a stumbling place in the process of writing a book. There comes a moment, usually around the completion of a first full draft, when the project seems utterly overwhelming. A new form of writer's block emerges. Rather than writing forward into an unknown territory, the grand adventure of a first draft, the work of finishing or revising a book-length draft is about completing missing pieces. Every book has an anatomy, an intricate system of organs and muscles and nerves, and the interconnected nature of this anatomy begins to become evident only once a significant portion of it is written. In our first draft, we compose a liver and leg and the sense of smell; we amass chunks or chapters that function well on their own but remain disconnected. At some point (different for each writer and even for each book), the writer gains awareness of the need for connective tissue, to hook these organs up and get them communicating to each other. This awareness comes not by means of any overt evidence on the page but through some intuited sense of the whole, and is usually accompanied by awareness that the draft does NOT represent this whole. We sense what's missing but our clueless as to how to fix it.
The terrific inadequacy of our drafts coupled with the mind's inability to encompass complex, book-length thoughts for extended periods of time causes many writers to shut down. The work is simply too hard.
There are many tools for handling this stage, but today I'd like to explore what I believe resides behind them all: a shift in process. The writing process that serves us so well in generating 200+ pages of text rarely transfers directly to the revision process. Revision entails shifting how we write, not just what we write. In my case, I often shift back to pen and paper to generate changes; I no longer can write in snatches of time but need two or three hour blocks; revision work takes me to diverse sections of a manuscript in one sitting rather than proceeding chronologically; I need to work with images (maps, outlines, sketches) rather than words--just to name a few examples. I'm not suggesting these particulars are true for everyone. Just as we each must discover and come to peace with our own unique writing process for generating, we must discover and come to peace with a new process for revising. Often writers don't recognize this; when the old tools no longer work for them, they presume they're helplessly stuck. But the work at this stage is significantly different, demanding new tools and new methods. An hour spent journaling about the writing process--what might best suit your needs now?--can be hugely beneficial.
Thus we gain versatility as writers, and as human beings. We're capable of much more than we initially presume. The capacity to step back, reassess, and develop a new methodology always serves us well. --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
top
8/1/08: The Discomfort of Writing
The greatest nonfiction writers are the ones who are willing to put up with extremely uncomfortable, miserable thoughts, for days and weeks and years on end. --Carol Bly
After allowing my novel to rest for half a year, I've recently launched back in to make some fairly major changes: restructuring the first hundred pages, shifting the personality of the main character a notch, revising her reasons for making a pivotal decision near the end, along with many small tweaks. In the process I've experienced the complicated joy of getting fully immersed. The sensation is one of absolute concentration--I've moved into the world of my book and see nothing beyond its boundaries--alongside absolute rebellion. My whole body revolts against this level of focus. I squirm, I want to get a glass of water, and then ice, then a coaster; I need to clip my nails. When these powerful, contrary forces rise up, I know I'm in the heat of writing.
Writing brings peculiar pleasures. The discomfort of writing reminds me of meditation, how part of me is drawn into the vast, restful realm of silence and another part fights mightily to maintain the dignity of selfhood. I suspect the same spiritual muscles are at work in both. When we write, the true self longs to surrender into story where it thrives and knows itself integral to a unified, human story, while the false but righteous self fights to maintain its boundaries. In such moments, we find ourselves right at the fulcrum of a temporal, physical plane of existence and eternity. It's both thrilling and unpleasant, ecstatic and unbearable, not unlike sex.
Carol Bly says the greatest nonfiction writers are those willing to put up with extremely uncomfortable thoughts for great lengths of time, but I suspect the experience of discomfort applies to all creative work and is comprehensive and full-bodied. A writer's capacity to tolerate this discomfort determines how deeply and for how long he or she can reside in that generative state. Fortunately this is a skill we can develop. I can acknowledge my body's restlessness without leaving my writing chair; I can acknowledge my ego's rebellion and still turn back to the work. While writing I choose again and again to be uncomfortable, going against both instinct and social norms and possibly good sense. But from my discomfort rises my best work, as well as profound awe for this paradoxical process.
top
6/1/08: Acceptance: An Argument for Rejection
Success is sometimes the worst thing that can happen to a writer. Of course success isn't an issue for most of us ground-level writers, but each of us has had at least one moment when our writing spoke to another person, he or she told us as much, and warm pride flushed our hearts. That's success. It can urge us on to great work, or it can raise a brick wall for slamming into.
What determines our response to success is the orientation of our hearts. The opportunities for writing to be a spiritual practice don't end once we put the pen down.
Acceptance of our work by even one person allows us to experience the power of authorship. Mr. Pollice, my seventh grade teacher, was an enthusiastic fan of my poetry and the first person to attend, through my written words, the ideas and swirling feelings of my pre-adolescent being. His acceptance flooded me with hope-- I can connect this roiling inner realm to an adult and external world! I can impact those around me with words! His acceptance also sparked a life-long lust for more. If only I can get others' approval, I'll know that my writing is worthy--that I am worthy . Thus began a protracted journey for the illusory grail of validation. Others out there--Mr. Pollice, the graduate school registrar, the grant committee, the literary agency, the publishing house--have the authority to declare my writing (and therefore myself) worthy or not. I must seek their acceptance.
How can we receive the good encouragement of acceptance and fend off these insidious creeping vines? How does one even sort through the terrible tangle?
We want sturdy, healthy writing egos, strong enough to weather rejection, resilient enough to write for writing's sake, confident enough to follow a quirky digression to its unanticipated conclusion. We need to revel in the timbre and nuance of our own voice. We need to claim our power as authors, cherish our character as narrators, and relish the unique lens we each bring to the world.
Likewise, we need humble boundaries for our egos. The self must step far enough aside that our subject can shine through, that our story can manifest its own will, and that our audience feels welcomed. Any pride that depends on others' approval rather than our own inner knowing in the long-run is destructive. Thus the inflated, soaring power-trip I took after a prestigious agent asked for an exclusive look at my novel is also a storm siren: Danger! Danger!
My Buddhist poet-friend counsels detachment in such circumstances. Just as we must detach our fragile egos from the hurt of rejection, we must also detach from acceptance. Each time we're shoved away from center, whether by a bully or a fan, we can relocate ourselves according to our values. The clumsy climb back to center grows familiar. As a Christian, I strive to center myself in an unknowable and mighty love. This means trusting that my writing and I are lovable and loved regardless of external confirmation. "Write a little every day," Isaac Dineson wrote, "without hope and without despair." The process is steady and trustworthy.
Seen with the lens of detachment, acceptance is not a reward we've earned. It's a gift. We writers must make the effort of creating; we must increase our skills; we must make ourselves available to receive this gift, and then, once we've done all we can, turn our hearts toward worthier ends. The process of writing yields so many reliable, practical gifts, we may not need that golden grail of acceptance after all.
--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
top
5/1/08: Rejection: An argument for acceptance
"I reject the rejections!" the righteous writer cries; "I will persist!" Hoorah for determination, I say. But before you ritually burn the rejection slips to rid yourself of bad juju, I'd like to suggest an alternative. "Rejection along with uncertainty are as much a part of the writer's life as snow and cold are of an Eskimo's," editor Ted Solotaroff writes. "They are conditions one has not only to learn to live with but also learn to make use of." What use can we possibly make of rejection?
Minnesotans should know that the more time we spend outdoors in the winter, the less bothersome the cold becomes. I suggest we develop a sustainable, positive attitude to this wretched climate. Bundle up, folks!
Admittedly, rejection adds insult to injury. Maintaining faith in our work without pay or recognition is hard enough for us sensitive, writer-types without the gut-sinking sound of self-addressed stamped envelopes thunking in the mailslot. But consider this: Unless a rejection letter is nasty (which I've never seen), the rejections themselves are harmless. They yield only as much power as we give them. The more we locate authority outside of ourselves-- this writing instructor or agent or editor is more worthy than I to declare a work valuable --the less we learn to trust our own good authority. The publishing industry is a poor determinant of literary quality. The marketplace is worse. As a result, we each must develop standards for our writing and strive to achieve these standards as best we can. Then we can stand solidly beside our work as we send it out.
As painful as rejection is--and I know; I've just received twenty from agents and have another thirty to go--each rejection is an opportunity to learn. Not enclosing SASEs so you never get rejected or burning your old rejection letters only shoots you in the foot. First, it's disrespectful not honor agents' or publishers' submissions guidelines. Some refuse to look at your work if you've demonstrated you can't follow directions. Second, rejections can give us useful information, about the market or, when they're personalized, about our work. Third, knowing your rejection history is important. I recently dug through my rejections folder and found four slips from agents who liked my writing but wouldn't take that particular project. Now I can query them again with this new work. Finally, denial isn't healthy. If we hope to communicate with an audience, we must hold our own vision and standards up against the realities of the marketplace. Pretending Minnesota is warm in January is a bad idea, especially if you want to go someplace.
Rejections can be invaluable. While I was writing my first book, Swinging on the Garden Gate , I imagined the story speaking to the mass market. Two dozen unequivocal rejections from agents and major presses later, I reassessed--mine was a quiet memoir, nosing around the private world of faith and sexual identity and not likely to leap off the shelves to make some agent (or me) any money. Sure, this realization was a blow to my ego, but it taught me to more accurately assess the marketability of my work. Note--not the literary value, not the personal or relational value, but its market value. Next, I imagined a feminist press taking on Swinging as a queer woman's perspective on divinity. Nope. The feminists couldn't push my work away fast enough. I learned that most feminist presses treated religion like the plague. Finally, I identified my ideal audience--people of faith questioning their sexual identity and queer folks questioning their faith--and asked, Who markets books to these people? The denominational publishing houses? So I sent off the manuscript and got a few nibbles followed by waffling. The theology and writing were great, but bisexuality? Too scary. I was devastated, but gained regard for those presses willing to undertake edgy work. Finally Skinner House nabbed the book. Even though publishing with the Unitarians, who welcome GLBT folk into their clergy roster and bless same-sex marriages, was preaching to the choir, I was thrilled. An accepting press would escort the book into the world! Without all the rejections, Swinging would never have been published.
Each rejection is an opportunity to relocate ourselves in faith--not the faith that everything will work out in the end, but faith that our writing is worthwhile, regardless. Our desire to communicate with others will bear fruit, although perhaps not in the form we originally hoped and after a shitload more work than we expected. We may need to generate the circumstances with which our writing encounters its readership, whether by rubbing elbows with other authors, writing and rewriting our queries, finding a niche publisher, publishing online, or running off photocopies to distribute at the family reunion. Each rejection is a chance to hunker down in the real reason we write--because we are helplessly compelled--and trust that this reason is worthy enough.
In the end, I always take my inspiration from the poets. Even the best among them will never amass enough writing income to buy a used car. Most won't get published, and those that do rarely get read. They write anyway. They hand out copies of their work at the rail station, asking for spare change. They read in cafés during National Poetry Month. The media ignores them, popular culture rejects them, and yet they continue to bear witness. I suspect that, more than any glossily embossed best-seller, the poets' quiet, ongoing commitment does tremendous good for the world. To me, that's what matters.
--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
top
4/1/08 Why is memoir hot?
I was asked this question in class last night, and a lively discussion ensued. There are many reasons memoir is flying off the shelves right now--Americans' voyeuristic obsessions, our thrill at the democratization of the personal narrative (you don't have to be a president or have climbed Mount Everest to write about your life), the multicultural movement and our increasing interest at the variety of life's experiences, Americans' misguided sense that nonfiction is truer than fiction, our desperation to know that our small lives matter... One answer occurred to me that I want to explore further here: Memoir is hot now because, in this fragmented, frenzied society, we long to know that our lives have structure and unity. We feel scattered. We can't see the big picture. We read about other, ordinary people's struggles because we intuit they've had to make some sense of them in order to make a book.
If a memoirist has done his or her work, the disparate fragments of life have become something artful and engaging. How? Revision! In fact, revision on at least two planes. The author must revise how he or she conceives of the life-story, and the author must revise the written version. Often these two go hand-in-hand. I can't tell you how many students of mine are disconcerted when they discover that writing memoir feels like therapy--the tears, the memories they'd rather not face, the hard questions, the digging in sore spots... I've worked with therapists writing their memoirs who, after decades of doing their own therapeutic work, were shocked to uncover even more insights and memories in the course of writing. Like any worthy, emotional work, the only way out is through. This revision benefits us--we become more self-aware--and it benefits our work. I often wonder what James Frey's A Million Little Pieces might have looked like had he not simply lied about his past but also explored why he lied, within the memoir. We all knowingly or unknowingly fabricate the past. Had Frey taken the next step in revision, digging into a deeper level of honesty and a deeper level of complexity in his manuscript, he might have created a story that could last beyond a momentary flurry of publicity.
Without seeing our lives and our written work from multiple angles over various periods of time, we cannot find the themes that bind one memory to the next. Nor can we discover the structure lurking below the story's surface, nor the movement that has carried us from the person we were into the person we are now. Revision helps us find a container for our story, and it is this container that readers grab at. Because if Mary Karr or Augustine Burroughs or Patricia Hampl or any number of seemingly ordinary people can make wholeness of this mess, perhaps we can, too.
--Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
top
3/4/08 Playing with Revision
The more I revise and the more I help new writers learn to revise, the more I'm convinced that good revision, like any good writing, is essentially play. Robin Marantz Henig's recent article in the New York Times , "Taking Play Seriously," looks at recent scientific studies that ask, What is play's role in the evolution of species? Of course there are many theories, but here is one from Patrick Bateson, a biologist at Cambridge University: "Play is the best way to reach certain goals. Through play, an individual avoids...the lure of 'false endpoints.' Players are having so much fun that they keep noodling away at a problem and might well arrive at something better than the first, good-enough solution."
First drafts are first, good-enough solutions. We adults are particularly prone to false endpoints because we like results and we like efficiency. With writing, often that first draft satisfies whatever longings drove us to write in the first place. But first drafts offer only one perspective, and quality writing, like quality thinking, requires multiple perspectives. The rich layers of meaning in our favorite books were achieved over time, by authors noodling away at an idea rather than accepting its first manifestation. As Carol Bly asks, "What more do I have to say here?" I like asking, What other shape could this thought or story take?
Many writers complain that their second draft is far worse than the first. Of course it is! Second drafts lack that initial inspiration and drive. Play with your subject; can you see it in an entirely new light? Start over from scratch. Keep noodling. Don't allow the success of one draft to interfere with the possibility of a better one.
Revision, like any kind of problem-solving, becomes more difficult the more seriously we take our work. As soon as concern for our end product appears, our process is crippled. However, if play is our process, even very serious material can be great fun. Why? Because we're still learning, discovering, and growing as we write. Play on, writers! --Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
top