Writing Tools (30 page)

Here are the kinds of people I need:

• A helper who keeps me going.
For years, my teaching partner Chip Scanlan has played this role for me, especially when I am working on a long project. Chip has a rare quality as a colleague: he is capable of withholding negative judgments. He says to me, over and over again, "Keep going. Keep writing. We'll talk about that later."

• A helper who understands my idiosyncrasies.
All writers have quirks. The fleas come with the dog. I find it almost unbearable to read my published work in the newspaper. I assume I'll encounter some terrible mistake. My wife, Karen, understands this. While I cower under the covers with my dog, Rex, she sits at the breakfast table, crunching her Rice Chex, reading my story in the paper and making sure no unforeseen horror has appeared. "All clear," she says, to my relief.

• A helper willing to answer my questions.
For many years writing coach Donald Murray has been willing to read my drafts, and he begins by asking me what I need from him. In other words, "How would you like me to read this?" or "What kind of reading are you looking for?" My response might be, "Is this too Catholic?" or "Does this seem real enough to publish as a memoir?" or "Just let me know if you find this interesting." Murray is always generous, but it helps us both when he reads with a focus in mind.

• An expert helper to match my topic.
My current interest often dictates the kind of helper I need. When I wrote about the Holocaust and the history of anti-Semitism, I depended on the wisdom and experience of a rabbi, Haim Horowitz. When I wrote about AIDS, I turned to an oncologist, Dr. Jeffrey Paonessa. Such people may begin as interview subjects, but the deeper you get into a topic, the more they can turn into sounding boards and confidants.

• A helper who runs interference.
On fire with enthusiasm for one writing project, I'd wake up early, get into the office before daylight, and try to write for a couple of hours before my other work responsibilities forced an interruption. Joyce Barrett blessed me with her assistance for twenty years. I especially remember the morning she came to work, saw that I was writing, closed my office door, and put a motel-style Do Not Disturb sign on the handle. That's good downfield blocking.

• A coach who helps me figure out what works and what needs work.
For more than a year, an intern named Ellen Sung edited a column I wrote for the Poynter Web site. In most ways, the two of us could not have been more different. I was older, white, male, with a print orientation. Ellen was twenty-four years old, Chinese American, female, and thrived online. She was well read, curious, with mature sensibilities as an editor. She could articulate the strengths of a column, asked great questions that would lead to revisions and clarifications, and framed negative criticism with persuasive diplomacy. Ellen now works as a newspaper reporter, but she still belongs to my network, willing to help at a moment's notice.

You may choose these helpers one by one, but over time they form a network, with you at the center. You may address them as a group via e-mail or ask them in various combinations to help you solve a problem. You can test the criticism of one against the wisdom of another. You can fire one who gets too bossy. You can send another flowers or a bottle of wine. It's good, on occasion, for the writer to be the king — or queen.

WORKSHOP

1. Look at the six categories of helpers described above. Make a list of six people who might be able to serve you in these capacities. Rehearse a conversation with each with the goal of expanding your network.

2. Make a list of the specific ways an editor, teacher, or friend has helped you improve a story. Have you approached that person to express thanks for such help? If not, go out of your way the next time it happens.

3. Admit it. An editor or teacher is driving you crazy. Rehearse a conversation in which you describe the behavior that hinders your work. Can you find a way to communicate this with civility and diplomacy? "Jim, the last few times I've suggested a story idea to you, you've rejected it. I find this discouraging. I'd like to work on some of these stories. Is this something we can talk about?"

4. Make a list of the members of your writing posse. Next to their names, list the roles they play for you. Who else do you need to accomplish your best work?

As I peruse my collection of books on writing, I find they fall into two broad categories. In one box, I find books such as
The Elements of Style
and
On Writing Well.
These classics by Strunk and White and William Zinsser capture writing as a craft, so they concern themselves with toolboxes and blueprints. In the other box, I find works such as
Bird by Bird
and
Wild Mind.
In these works by Anne Lamott and Natalie Goldberg, I'm less likely to find advice on technique than on living a life of language, of seeing a world of stories.

The standards for this second category go back at least to the 1930s when Dorothea Brande wrote
Becoming a Writer
(1934) and Brenda Ueland wrote
If You Want to Write
(1938). It is a blessing that both books remain in print, inviting a new generation into the community of writers.

Brande expresses her preference for coffee, a medium-soft lead pencil, and a noiseless portable typewriter. She offers advice on what writers should read and when they should write. Her concerns include meditation, imitation, practice, and recreation. But she is most powerful on the topic of self-criticism. To become a fluent writer, she argues, one must silence the internal critic early in the process. The critic becomes useful only when enough work has been done to warrant evaluation and revision. Influenced by Freud, Brande argues that during the early stages of creation, the writer should write freely, "harnessing the unconscious":

Up to this point it is best to resist the temptation to reread your productions. While you are training yourself into facility in writing and teaching yourself to start writing whenever and wherever opportunity offers, the less you turn a critical eye upon your own material the better — even for a cursory survey. The excellence or triteness of your writing was not the matter under consideration. But now, turning back to see what it may reveal under a dispassionate survey, you may find those outpourings very enlightening.

Four decades later, another writer, Gail Godwin, would cover the same territory in an essay titled "The Watcher at the Gate." For Godwin, the Watcher is the "restraining critic who lived inside me," and who appeared in many forms to lock the doors of her creativity.

It is amazing the lengths a Watcher will go to keep you from pursuing the flow of your imagination. Watchers are notorious pencil sharpeners, ribbon changers, plant waterers, home repairers and abhorrers of messy rooms or messy pages. They are compulsive looker-uppers. They cultivate self-important eccentricities they think are suitable for "writers." And they'd rather die (and kill your inspiration with them) than risk making a fool of themselves.

Like Brande, Godwin draws her central images from Freud, who quotes Friedrich von Schiller: "In the case of a creative mind . .. the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in ... and only then does it review and inspect the multitude." Schiller chides a friend: "You reject too soon and discriminate too severely."

Brenda Ueland fights the battle against internal and external criticism with the passion of a warrior princess and the zeal of a suffragette. She titles one chapter, "Why women who do too much housework should neglect it for their writing." In another chapter, she argues, "Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say."

She notes that "all people who try to write . .. become anxious, timid, contracted, become perfectionists, so terribly afraid that they may put something down that is not as good as Shakespeare." That is one loud critical voice, one bug-eyed watcher.

And so no wonder you don't write and put it off month after month, decade after decade. For when you write, if it is to be any good at all, you must feel free, — free and not anxious. The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny; whose attitude is:

"Tell me more. Tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out."

And if you have no such friend, — and you want to write, — well then you must imagine one.

For Godwin, weapons against the Watcher include such things as deadlines, writing fast, writing at odd times, writing when you're tired, writing on cheap paper, writing in surprising forms from which no one expects excellence.

So far, I have emphasized only one side of the equation: the value of silencing the voice of the internal critic early in the process. You have a right to ask, "But when the Voice speaks out during revision, what should I hope she says to me?" The Voice will be a more useful critic, I say immodestly, after exposure to this set of tools. Armed with tools, the Voice might say, "Do you need that adverb?" Or, "Is this the place for a gold coin?" Or, "Isn't it time for you to climb down the ladder of abstraction and offer a good example?"

The important lesson is this: the self-conscious application of all writing advice will turn you to stone if you try to do it too early, or if you misapply it as orthodoxy. Dorothea Brande, Brenda Ueland, Gail Godwin — these writers have the right idea. There's enough hard critical work to do and enough criticism to face. So begin with a gift to yourself, maybe that first cup of coffee.

WORKSHOP

1. Be more conscious of those moments when the critical voice shouts or whispers in your ear. What is the Voice saying? Make a list of the negative things the Voice is likely to say about you. Now burn the list and flush the ashes.

2. Have at least one person in your circle of helpers who praises you without reservation, who is willing to tell you what works in your story, even when you know that much work remains to be done. Can you play this role in the life of another writer?

3. Be aware of the moment in the writing process when you are ready to call the critical voice onstage. Make a list of the kinds of questions you'd like the Voice to ask you. Consult these writing tools to form the list.

4. Godwin writes that she fools the Watcher by disguising the form of the writing. So if she is working on a draft of a short story, she may disguise it in the form of a letter. The next time you struggle with a story, put a salutation at the top ("Dear Friend") and write a message to your friend about the story. See what happens.

I've saved one of the hardest lessons for near the end. I don't know anyone who enjoys negative criticism, especially of creative work. But such criticism can be priceless if you learn how to use it. The right frame of mind can transform criticism that is nasty, petty, insincere, biased, and even profane, into gold.

This alchemy requires one magic strategy: the receptive writer must convert debate into conversation. In a debate, one side listens only to find a counterargument. In a conversation, there is give and take. A debate ends with a winner and a loser. A conversation can conclude with both sides learning, and a promise of more good talk to come.

I long ago made a resolution that will sound like an impossible task: I never defend my work against criticism.