#11 How To Whittle Down Your Reporting, Fighting the Fraud Squad, Treating Every Writer As Their Own Species. A Smart Cure for Writer's Block
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HOW TO WHITTLE DOWN YOUR REPORTING AND RESEARCH
I'm overwhelmed, a writer I'm working with told me the other day. She's assembling a collection of essays and can't decide which ones to include.
Her problem brought to mind a clever solution for that kind of problem that I learned many years ago from Alix M. Freedman, then an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the tobacco industry's use of ammonia additives to heighten nicotine potency.
Even though she might spend a year on a project, Freedman said, the Journal back then limited space to any kind of feature, blockbusting or not, to one inside page. And even that was sometimes eaten up by another story. Other publications would often devote days and multiple pages to their enterprise projects.
To cope, Freedman developed an approach to help her decide which materials from the mountain of her reporting would make it into that precious space.
For every quote, fact, statistic, source or detail she collected she assigned a letter grade as if she were a school teacher. marking up papers. When she was done, only the A's made it into her stories, ensuring they were of the highest quality.
Take your pile of essays, I counseled my client. Assess their quality by a set of standards you establish, grade them and only include the ones that earned the highest mark.
She hasn't decided on the final cut, but she believes the exercise will help her whittle down her selections.
Next time you're faced with a pile of reporting or research, take a page from Alix Freedman. Grade what you have and only use the A's in your story. Your readers will give you high marks.
CRAFT LESSON: "Feel like a fraud? Join the Club"
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Is there a writer out there who hasn't had a moment of self-doubt. They have an idea for a book, a story or a screenplay. but before they begin, they start hearing voices. "This idea stinks. Besides, you've lost your touch. Oh sure, you've written them before, but those were flukes. And this time people will realize you're a fake?"
There may be some writers without doubts, but I've yet to meet one who hasn't entertained a loss of faith at one point or another. They were suffering from imposter syndrome, what I think of as belonging to the fraud club, described in this week's Craft Lesson, "Feel Like a Fraud? Join the C[ub." I confess I feel like I belong now as I struggle to write this post.
What helps is knowing that we're not alone. Not only that, we're in good company.
"I have written 11 books, but each time I think, "Uh-oh, they're going to find out now. I've run a game on everybody and they're going to find me out.' "
That's Maya Angelou talking.
"There comes a point when you think, 'How did I get here? When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me."
Tom Hanks speaking.
In 1978, psychologists Pauline Rose Clane and Suzanne Imes coined "imposter syndrome" to "describe an experience of feeling incompetent and of having deceived others about their abilities." The malady's paradox is that it often targets high-achieving success stories. Michelle Obama. Check. Neil Armstrong. Check. Writer Neil Gaiman, who consoled himself by observing that if "Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did."
It may be hard to feel sorry for them. When's the last time you set foot on the moon? Walked the red carpet? Written a best-seller? Lived in the White House. Stop whining already.
But consider this. Just like you, every time they succeed, they're terrified whether they can do it again, and if not, will be exposed to the world as the frauds they believe they are. Imposters don't have to be mega-stars. Fraud feelings target everyone from the neophyte struggling with their first stories to the pros with credits to die for.
What's the reprieve? Is there anything a successful "imposter" can do to help those of us who may not cash the same paychecks or bask in the same sunlight, but have the same creative dreams and share the same misgivings?
Taffy Brodesser-Akner has something that works for her and may do the same for you. She's another imposter, despite the fact that she's a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, once holding down simultaneous gigs there and at GQ and, did I mention, has a best-selling debut novel, "Fleishman Is In Trouble."
I have a crisis around every single story I write — that I've lost an ability that I'm just flailing this time.
She copes by embracing a lesson she learned in film school class when discussions revolved around a hero in distress.
"I think if you look at every single moment of adversity and self-doubt in your life and imagine yourself as the hero of a 90s movie — a thriller, a rom-com, a satire, whatever, it's easy to answer the question: what does the hero do next? You figure that out and you do it. It always amounts to the same thing, which is to rise up and do the hard thing anyway."
It's never too late. Even if you do feel like a fraud sometimes, that advice may be just what you need to combat the imposter syndrome.
So join the flock of frauds out there. Psst. Most of us feel this way sometimes) and prove yourself wrong.
Rise up. Standing behind the mask of every imposter is a hero.
WRITERS SPEAK
"I've long believed that there are two distinct but equally important halves to the writing process. One of these is related to art; the other is related to craft. Obviously, art cannot be taught. No one can give another human being the soul of an artist, the sensibility of a writer, or the passion to put words on paper that is the gift and the curse of those who fashion poetry and prose. But it's ludicrous to suggest and shortsighted to believe that the fundamentals of fiction can't be taught.
This sentiment, expressed by mystery writer Elizabeth George, creator of the acclaimed Inspector Lynley series, conveys great comfort to anyone who struggles to write and worries that they must be born with the talent to write. Writers like George know that you learn to write by writing.
INTERVIEW: Three Questions with Diana K. Sugg
As a writer, even a Pulitzer Prize-winner, Diana K. Sugg was afraid to tinker too much with her stories, or for her editors to do so, either. Revision, she feared, might make the fragile sentences and paragraphs fall apart.
Now, as enterprise editor and writing coach at The Baltimore Sun, Sugg has come to recognize what she calls "the inherent strength of stories." As she talks about it in this week's "Three Questions with Diana K. Sugg" interview, she describes the change and uses a metaphor from her childhood to explain the transformation:
"Being an editor has allowed me to truly see how much revision and tinkering can bring to a story. I wish I'd played more when I was a reporter with structure, focus and endings. I wish I'd felt more like I do now: as if I'm in the basement of my childhood home, in my father's workshop, seated on a stool at a narrow bench, taking the pieces apart and scrutinizing them, and figuring out the most powerful way to put them together. Once you have the goods from the reporting, you're set. We should never be afraid to try different approaches to writing.
Sugg is also a magical writer who brings a poet's eye to describe her newfound joy after decades of the reporting life. As an editor and coach, she sees herself as more of a gardener now.
"To me, if feels as if each reporter is a different species, with particular traits, needs and skills. Each needs to be nurtured. And when I roam the newsroom, stopping at desks to chat, it's as if I'm the reporter, trying to figure out what the story is behind each person, what are they struggling with, what do they really want to do, and how can I help take them to the next level."
TIP OF THE WEEK
When blocked, reacquaint yourself with your notes and research materials to find your way back to the initial excitement of your discovery.
This advice comes from Robert Boice, a psychologist who spent his career coaching academics with writer's block. His advice, found in "How Writers Journey to Comfort and Fluency: A Psychological Adventure," is a cult, out of print classic. Look for it in your library and you'll find a wealth of counsel that will break any block.
BOOKBAG: Highlights from the week's reading
Two valuable perspectives on the literary community within America's prisons:
The Washington Post Magazine devoted an entire issue to essays, fiction, illustrations and photography by current and formerly incarcerated artists and writers.
"What incarcerated writers want the literary community to understand" offers a forum from LitHubfor a range of writers who are behind bars to talk about their work, their dreams and their challenges. A sample quote, from inmate Elizabeth Hawes:
"While all artists/writers question the value of their work and wonder who is viewing it and how it is being perceived, a prisoner who is an artist or who writes always carries the added burden of having to apologize for their past."
I am a sucker for quest stories. Recently my Twitter feed was awash with praise for "The Jungle Prince of Delhi," a first-person account by Ellen Barry, a New York Times India correspondent who became obsessed with solving the mystery behind a reclusive family living in an abandoned hunting lodge swallowed up in a jungle in the heart of the city. Her search takes her to Pakistan and finally to England where she learns the answer. It's a haunting, exquisitely told story by a compassionate and dogged reporter who got sucked into a story and wouldn't give up until she learned the sad but very human truth about people's compulsive need to feel important, no matter what the consequences.
Geoff Edgers of The Washington Post wrote a definitive account of the Altamont Music Festival, billed as the "West Coast Woodstock" but which signaled the end of the "Peace and Love" era of the 1960s after the event ended in mayhem and a vicious death. An absorbing account of a disaster that began when The Grateful Dead had the bright idea to hire the Hell's Angels as security.
CHIP IN YOUR EAR
"Folsom Prison Blues"/Johnny Cash
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