The working title of this piece is SCRAP. Basically, wisdom I hoped to share in writing classes. Sometimes I remember something, sometimes I don’t. Up to the student. – JDW
“I’ve always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it’s a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don’t do much giggling.” – Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt.
“It takes a long time to become young,” Picasso said. In school they teach you how not to write. They give you a blank page, a boring topic and a word limit. Tell you to avoid the first person singular. Warn you, don’t use a preposition to end a sentence with. And other important rules.
Shape your letters just so.
Influences. Poe, Wilde, Steinbeck, Henry Miller, Kerouac, Henry Gregor Felsen (check spelling), Jack Schaefer, Bukowski, Richard Ford. Mark Twain. Hemingway. Henry Miller. Lenny Bruce. Kerouac. Dr. Hunter Thompson. Elmore Leonard. Shane. The Lone Ranger. Bob Dylan. Sports Illustrated. I collect John D. MacDonald.
Who I like now: Pam Houston, Jim Thompson, Cormac McCarthy, E. Annie Proulx, Raymond Carver once in a while, Richard Ford. Tobias Wolf. Forrest Gump. I could listen to Sherman Alexie all night.
To tell you the truth, my influences are always the people I’m reading at any given time. I plan it that way. Typically, my intuition, if not common sense, leads me to writers that help me with whatever I am working on right at the moment. I write five books at a time and I read five books at a time. Often, one of the books I am writing or one of the books I am reading demands more of my time and focus. And so I go there.
Joyce Carol Oates’ short stories are good reading, particularly while you are writing character studies.
I have many influences as a writer. Realized only after writing fiction how many fictional influences I have as a man.
I became in many ways my own hero. The hero of the books I read and the hero of books I would hope to write is the man I would hope to become.
Become your own influence.
The strenuous life tastes better. – James.
Life is made in doing and suffering and creating. – James
No mention of paychecks, bylines or deadlines.
Believe in what you have to say. What you believe is your message. You are your own message. Tell the truth.
A hero lives what he believes. Impose your will on reality.
An hour in the morning is worth two in the evening. – Dimnet
I wrote The Sky Fisherman without my glasses. It seemed to bring me closer to the characters. – Craig Lesley
SHORT ASSIGNMENTS. SHITTY FIRST DRAFTS. – ANNE LAMOTT
Oughtabeography. Become your own hero. The writer as subject.
Vigilante fiction. “In the destructive element immerse.” Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
Pup fiction. A doggone good idea.
Scribe-anon, a support group for writers
Writers’ Anonymous. Why not a 12-point program for writers? Modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous and similar organizations.
It is as necessary to write as much as you read. – Hallie Burnett
Writing is as habit-forming as tobacco. – Erskine Caldwell
“Good writing is truly democratic, open to all. What’s really snooty is to put out commercial garbage for those you feel superior to.” – Garrison Keillor
Gail Sheehy talks about a man’s second adulthood. The key she says is making the transition from competition to connectedness. Seems to me she is talking about the same thing I’ve been talking about, the transition fron sports to writing. What is writing but a search for connectedness?
If an author calls his work fiction, the reader should call it fiction.
Creative procrastination.
Breaking the rules. My eighth grade English teacher’s name was Miss Spelling. Contrary advice. E.g., Read Less.
Be a real writer.
Free spirit writing.
The sex of writing. Poetry is flirting. Journal writing is like masturbation.
Is it okay to make up new words?
Profanity is language fouled as a defensive weapon, dirty words a warning like the first faint smell of skunk.
Or shit.
Friends don’t let friends be poets. The virtues of prose.
My history as a writer. Lessons of life, and what the anecdotes have to teach about writing, what they taught me.
Short Story idea. My Life’s Story. A writer’s story as How-to-write lessons.
Everything I know about writing.
“I just decide to go to a place and write,” McCarthy tells us. “One of the great hurdles in life is when you can forget about what other people are doing.”
Interview technique? “Years ago I talked to a linguist who gave me three questions to ask that would be sure to bring a response: Have you ever come close to death? Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do? Do you remember the circumstances of your birth?” – Anna Deavere Smith, performance artist
Myself, I’ve had more than a little success with the question, if you could be any kind of bird, what bird would you be and why?
You are always looking for stories.
Conducting an interview is like pitching batting practice.
Where do I get my ideas?
Some of them arrive like a 16-year-old returning the family car one minute before curfew. It’s getting late. I look out the window. The driveway’s empty.
Suddenly, tires screech!
Others come like an overdue check when you’re really down on your luck.
Don’t listen to anybody else until you have finished your first draft.
Do not fear rejection. Embrace it. Defeat has its upside.
“Rejection is an attitude. Once a poem is finished, it becomes inventory. There’s no accounting for the vagaries of editorial taste.” said Floyd Skloot, whose recent award-winning poem had first collected 19 rejections. Skloot, by the way, was paid $75 for a poem which appeared in April ’95 Atlantic Monthly.
Once you finish a story, it becomes inventory.
Become your own coach.
1. Listen. Pay attention.
2. Encourage. Support.
3. Share tales of the writing life. Offer a series of lessons, some learned, some not.
4. Explain what works for you, what doesn’t.
5. Review the student’s effort. What’s good? What could be better?
6. Exercises.
7. Respect. Always there is respect. For the words, for each other. For yourself.
There are many sources outside literature where we can advance our understanding of what it takes to become a great writer.
A glimpse through an issue of TV Click reminded me that “Good work is hard to do – period. If you are trying to learn and trying to grow, you have got to work hard. You can’t settle for a bag of tricks. It is hard to do honest work…. If you are doing stuff you don’t believe in, it really makes it that much harder to get the energy to try to serve it. But when you are inspired by the material, it sparks something and makes you not want to drop the ball…. It’s always great to be dealing with issues. It forces you to examine, perhaps in a deeper way, some of how you feel about those moral issues personally. There are a lot of gray areas.” Television celebrity Adam Arkin offered these words of advice in a syndicated piece by Susan King.
Arkin may know what he’s talking about, but clouding the sagacity of his message like camouflage netting is Arkin’s choice of words and King’s writing.
There’s nothing wrong with a writer cleaning up a subject’s syntax, just as there is nothing wrong with an editor cleaning up an interview. For example, “you have got to work hard,” could just as easily have been said, and written, as you have to work hard or, even better, you must work hard. Don’t think such a change prejudices the integrity of the quote.
Good writing is not hard to do really. Honest work should be easier to do than dishonest work. You can’t settle for a bag of tricks, but every good writer carries as big a bag as he can tote without slowing himself down. Inspired or not, don’t drop the ball. Anyone who has actually dealt with issues knows such dealing is often not great. One can hardly examine except in a deeper way; that is what “examine” means, to my mind.
Adam Arkin talked to King about his motivation as an actor. “Fear of things not being good, I joke about it, but to some extent you really don’t want to stink up the joint. Fear keeps you trying to be good.”
Too often, fear keeps you from trying.
You can build a short story from the first sentence to the last.
How do you find your voice? How can you recognize the sound of your own voice?
“The supreme law of life is this: the sense of worth of self shall not be allowed to diminish.” Alfred Adler, an Austrian psychologist said that.
THE MEANING OF SUCCESS.
“Being number one does not necessarily mean you are doing things right,” George Sheehan.
“One can only write if one arrives at the instant towards which one can only move through space opened up by the movement of writing.” – Maurice Blanchot
To make a good story, you eliminate as much as possible. Writers should know when to stop. What is left out is often far more more important than what is put in.
Let your stories write themselves. Let them be what they want to be.
Revision gives you the sense of the organic whole, like when you enter a dark room, it takes a while for your eyes to adjust to the light before you start to see shapes. Not the events of the book, but its soul. The events are almost an aftereffect. – Les Plesko, Poetry Flash, 4/93
Style should be the foremost thing, because form determines content. The shape of the language pushes the momentum of whatever action or lack of action is there. language fires certain associative ideas for the author – which then goes to the reader as a byproduct. – Les Plesko, Poetry Flash, 4/93
Patrick O’Brian maintains that style is a writer’s choice of words. More important is what O’Brian calls prose rhythm. Prose rhythm then is the order in which the writer places those words and the spaces he sets between them.
“In the long run, the market rewards risk.” – Steve Salerno, Writer’s Digest, June ’87
“You have to work in whatever way you can, and thereby progress; each piece of writing you do is enormously and coincidentally similar to every failure and every success you have had previously. Each new work is practically related to the work you did the last time.” Eavan Boland, Irish poetess.
CLASS. Bring a bundle of yellow pads, a box of pencils and a pencil sharpener to every class. A sheaf of white sheets for the first exercise. Work up a lesson plan schedule. Physically block out your four days of presentation into 15 minute blocks. Make sure every block is full and active. Offer supplementary exercises. Offer longer exercises which can be reviewed not the next day, but the day after. Offer to meet with any student privately who wishes individual consultation.
AFTER EVERYONE IN THE CLASS IS SEATED, ASK THEM TO STAND. AFTER THEY ARE STANDING, HAVE THEM SIT DOWN AGAIN.
SITTING DOWN IS THE FIRST STEP TO BECOMING A GOOD WRITER.
EXERCISES. Put your pencils down when you are done.
1. I need to see you run. Tell me what the blank page means to you. (in 25 words or less.)
Jack D’s answer. Honest and true.
A field of fresh snow at daybreak. The mat for a wrestling match between what I think I am doing and what I eventually do.
2. I am fantasy made flesh and my characters are flesh made words. Best to get your muscles in shape.
Nude modeling for yourself. Draw for me a character sketch of yourself without your clothes.
Now costume your character. How does your character clothe himself? Suggest you try actually putting the clothes on.
Get your character moving.
3. Personal ads.
4. Love Letter (25 words or less, an actual contest.)
INTERVIEW SUCCESSFUL WRITERS, e.g., Tim Tays, Paul Duffau, Joe Henderson, others with a lesson to share.
If you had a single piece of advice to give a writer, what would you say?
My problems as a writer. What are they? And how have I addressed them.
A new beginning.
Am I writing? Ask yourself that question more often. Start answering, yes! Yes, I am.
Stay at your desk. Get in the habit of writing.
Fifteen minutes is enough time to write.
Give everyone a dollar for their final assignment. Buy the best class exercises for a dollar each. Pay $5! for any special pieces.
Day one. In class. Character study. Your face or mime.
One person cold.
A poem.
Come to class tomorrow with an opening line and a closing line. Your close doesn’t have to be connected to your opening, although a word to the wise suggests a connection would serve you best.
100-word short story.
Exchange stories.
In class, convert to 99 words or less.
300-word short story.
In class, cut story to 250 words or less.
writer’s choice
Reading.
What we cannot do in real life we can do in fiction.
First day. The promise. My promise. I guarantee every graduate of my workshop will leave a promising writer capable of selling his or her own work.
Last day. The students’ promise. “I promise to think like a writer every day. I promise to feel as a writer every day. I promise to be a writer every day.” Make them all stand, raise their right hands and solemnly swear.
Great writing is better than bad sex. – Barker Ajax
“The tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.” – William Faulkner
Emerson said talent writes with genius, genius writes with wine.
Care about your characters and their fate.
Asked his theory for plotting a mystery, Raymond Chandler said, “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun.”
How do we want our prose? “Vivid and continuous,” John Garner said. “Immediate and compelling,” answers Anne Lamott.
Never give up. Grow or die. Get wilder. Take more risks.
Write the fewest number of words you need to tell the story.
Writing is a craft, great writing is an art. I am here in some ways not to discourage the craftsman, but to celebrate the artist among you. While I as much as any man appreciate the merits of smoothly applied latex wall covering, just because you can paint a ceiling, doesn’t mean you are ready for the Sistine Chapel.
Get 200 photos and write 500 words about each one. When you’re done, you’ll have 100,000 words. Toss’em all out. Now you are ready to become a writer. In whatever field you chose, whatever art it is that moves you, throw the first hundred thousand away. From that place, start.
The best example I can offer to explode the notion of writing as something to be taught, the difference between a poorly written book about writing and the truly inspiring book about writing is art. And the artist creates the latter.
A single sentence paragraph must be good enough to stand alone.
Too true.
A series of single sentence paragraphs can be a good goal.
Don’t do too much overt psychologizing. Don’t spell out your message. Not too obviously, if you must spell it out at all. Let the reader find the message for themselves.
You’re not fooling anyone, you know.
Start with one true fact. – Hemingway. Doubtlessly a paraphrase. Check Movable Feast.
Ask yourself where do I fit into the picture?
Take notes as you go through life. Learn to step aside yourself. Get a new perspective, one that puts you in the movie.
Life is like a library. You can’t judge a book by its cover blurbs.
“Choose one word and say it over/and over, till it builds a fire inside your mouth.” – Naomi Shihab Nye.
The only thing you’ve got that is deeply your own, is your values and what you believe in. And that believing means something. You don’t believe in anything unless you stand up for it. And you should always try to keep your mind free, because you might not have a lot of money and you might not have a lot of success and life can get really hard, but essentially how you live is who you are. – Elizabeth Ashley.
“The writer must never cease being astounded by the mediocrity and self-satisfaction of the material world in which he is obliged to function. He must never cease being outraged by the compromise with pride and love and honor which he knows his society, and even himself, has made. In every work he sets down there must be his sharp awareness of the fear of men before their own kind, of the constant failures of justice, of the endless distortions of truth, that have brought our civilization to the brink of disaster. For in common with all religious believers, the writer knows that this is not the way the world was intended to be.” – Kay Boyle, Oregon artist & activist.
In every good writer is the willingness to say that unspeakable thing which everyone else in the house is too coy, or too frightened, or too polite to say. – Tobias Wolff.
The storyteller’s claim is that life has meaning – that the things that happen to people happen not just by accident…but that there is order and purpose deep behind them or inside them and that they are leading us not just anywhere but somewhere. The power of stories is that they are telling us that life adds up somehow. – Frederick Buechner.
A writer must make a decision to march or to dance. – Guggenheim.
Difficulties are things that show what men are. – Epictetus.
All a writer can really do is check into work and see what happens. – Andre Dubus.
It doesn’t matter how good you are if people don’t read you. – Pete Dexter
I think that it takes courage to lead a life. Any life. I am a risk taker, and I think you can’t be a good writer unless you’re a risk taker. – Erica Jong.
Writing is the hardest, most arduous work there is. It’s terribly difficult and as you get older it gets harder. Perhaps that’s because writing is thinking, and thinking is the hardest thing we do. Writers lead lives of total loneliness and terrible pain, and we try to help them. – Roger Angell.
Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work. – Flaubert.
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” – Thoreau.
(Great quote to memorize) It’s not the critic that counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or whether the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, and often comes up short again and again.
Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause. And who, if at best in the end, knows the triumph of higher treatment and high achievement. And who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his soul shall never be with those cold and timid ones who neither victory nor defeat. – Theodore Roosevelt.
One of the saddest experiences which can come to a human being is to awaken, gray-haired and wrinkled, near the close of an unproductive career, to the fact that all through the years he has been using only a small part of himself. – V. W. Burrows.
“When you write you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and to feel that it’s good and to sell millions of copies of it and have everybody whose opinion you value think it’s good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You’re not likely to ever get all these things, and you are not likely to ever get all these things, and you’re not likely to give up writing or commit suicide if you don’t, but that is – and should be – your goal. Anything less is kind of piddling.” – Dashiell Hammett, from an unfinished novel Tulip, published posthumously.
There are no rules for the novel, ever…which saves it from people who like to make rules. – Doris Lessing at Arts & Lectures series in PDX, May 28, 1987.
“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.” – Mark Twain.
When I finish one play, I don’t get up. I stay there until I get an idea for the next one. – August Wilson.
Ending. The lights dim. Fade to black. A voice off stage booms o’er the loudspeaker: “Jack D. has left the building.”
Ha!
