Writing Tools (32 page)

• Write a draft.
Some writers write fast and free, accepting the inevitable imperfection of early drafts, moving toward multiple revisions. Other writers, my friend David Finkel comes to mind, work with meticulous precision, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, combining the drafting and revising steps. One way is not better than another. But here's the key: I once believed that writing began with drafting, the moment my rear hit the chair and my hands hit the keyboard. I now recognize that step as deep in the process, a step that becomes more fluid when I have taken other steps first.

• Revise and clarify.
Don Murray once gave me a precious gift, a book of photographed manuscript pages titled
Authors at Work.
In it you see the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley crossing out by hand the title "To
the
Skylark," revising it to "To
a
Skylark." You watch as the novelist Honore de Balzac writes dozens upon
dozens
of revisions in the margins of a corrected proof. You can observe Henry James cross out twenty lines of a twenty-five-line manuscript page. For these artists, writing is rewriting. And while word processors now make such revisions harder to track, they also eliminate the donkey labor of recopying and help us improve our work with the speed of light.

Sniff. Explore. Collect. Focus. Select. Order. Draft. Revise.

Don't think of these as tools. Think of them as tool shelves or toolboxes. A well-organized garage has the gardening tools in one corner, the paint cans and brushes in another, the car repair equipment in another, the laundry helpers in another. In the same way, each of my process words describes a mode of writing and thinking that contains its own tool set.

So in my
focus box,
I keep a set of questions the reader may ask about the story. In my
order box,
I have story shapes such as the chronological narrative and the gold coins. In my
revision box,
I keep my tools for cutting useless words.

A blueprint of the writing process will have many uses over time. Not only will it give you confidence by demystifying the act of writing, not only will it provide you with big boxes in which to store your tool collection, but it will also help you diagnose problems in individual stories. It will help you account for your strengths and weaknesses over time. And it will build your critical vocabulary for talking about your craft, a language about language that will lead you to the next level.

WORKSHOP

1. With some friends, take a big piece of chart paper and with colored markers draw a diagram of your writing process. Use words, arrows, images, anything that helps open a window to your mind and method.

2. Find a piece of your writing that did not work. Using the writing tasks described above, identify the part of the process that broke down. Did you fail to collect enough information? Did you have a problem selecting the best material?

3. Using the tasks, create a scoring grid. Review a portfolio of your writing and grade yourself in each of the categories. Do you generate enough story ideas? Is your work well ordered?

4. Interview another writer about her writing process. Turn it into a conversation in which you describe your own methods.

5. On a blank piece of paper, list your favorite writing tools to add to this collection. Good luck and keep writing.

So there you have them: a shiny new set of writing tools and a workbench on which to store them. Use them well, to learn, to find your authentic voice, and to see the world — with startling intensity — as a storehouse of story ideas. Use them to become a better student, a better teacher, a better worker, a better parent, a better citizen, a better person. Own these writing tools. They now belong to you. Keep them sharp. Share them with others. Add your own. Take pride in your craft. Join a nation of writers. And never forget to get the name of the dog.