#16 Morning's The Time To Write, Writing Your Ending First: Three Questions with David Finkel, Bacon on a Skillet
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CRAFT LESSON: Mornings are made for writing
When's the best time to write? First thing in the day or the last?
It depends on the writer, of course.
But many highly successful writers, whether by habit or belief, find mornings to be the most productive time, which is the subject of this week's Craft Lesson. Neuroscience backs them up.
A search of interviews with working writers, quote collections and an excellent book, "Daily Rituals: How Artists Work," by Mason Currey, revealed repeated examples of writers choosing break of day or even earlier.
"Get up very early and get going at once," was the preference of poet W.H. Auden. "In fact, work first and wash afterwards."
Mornings were the rule for Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, who would write for 3 to 4 hours at a sitting.
When Ernest Hemingway was working on a story, he said, "I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write."
Pre-dawn is the preference for Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. "When I'm in writing mode for a novel," he says, "I get up at 4:00 am and work for five to six hours."
Not every writer has the freedom or inclination for morning sessions. Exiled to military school at 15, J.D. Salinger wrote his early stories at night by flashlight under his blanket. "There's a mislaid family of readers and writers at night," Matt Shoard wrote in a survey of nocturnal writers. And nighttime writers are a passionate if somewhat cranky lot. Maybe it's the caffeine.
"Is it the peace and quiet?" asked Stephanie Meyer, who wrote "Twilight" mostly at night. Nighttime composition is also the preference of Danielle Steele, Jacquelyn Mitchard and Barack Obama. Allison Leotta, who writes legal crime thrillers and is a former federal sex crimes prosecutor, used to write before work. But after her son was born, she switched to stints after bedtime. "Now," says Leotta, "the sound of a softly snoring baby triggers a Pavlovian response in me to start typing."
For every nighttime writer, though, there seem to be many more who prefer early morning, close to dream sleep when the unconscious still lurks.
Brain science suggests that a morning writing schedule is geared to creativity. Moderate levels of the stress hormone cortisol aid focus. It also helps that willpower is strongest at the start, before the day's stresses sap it. The writer can rely on the prefrontal cortex, which governs planning, decision-making, problem-solving, self-control, and acting with long-term goals in mind.
The routines of successful writers suggest that they've discovered, without a degree in neuroscience, the power of the morning writing session.
Children's book author Lloyd Alexander woke at 4 a.m. to write because, he said, "you are closer to the roots of the imagination. At the end of the day the edge is off —You're not the same person as you were in the morning."
Barbara Kingsolver described a routine that starts before dawn. "Four o’clock is standard. My morning begins with trying not to get up before the sun rises. But when I do, it’s because my head is too full of words, and I just need to get to my desk and start dumping them into a file. I always wake with sentences pouring into my head. So getting to my desk every day feels like a long emergency."
Of course, some writers have no choice when to write. Work or family demands may make it impossible to start work first thing. You may have to steal time; drafting at your desk over a quick lunch, after dinner, when the kids are in bed. Crime writer Leotta sometimes writes during her baby's naps. I know writers who work late at night after the house is quiet. They may sacrifice sleep but meet their daily quota.
I've tried both, and sometimes find afternoons conducive to productivity, but prefer the early morning quiet. Otherwise, as the day goes by my willpower and energy wilt. I keep in mind the words of Goethe, the German master: "Use the day before the day. Early morning hours have gold in their mouth."
If you choose AM over PM, here are suggestions to get you moving and writing.
Wake up. Get up. If you're the type who tends to oversleep, set your alarm and don't hit the snooze button. Brew your coffee or tea, take it to your desk.
Quarantine yourself. In her diary, Susan Sontag vowed to tell people not to call her in the morning and she resolved not to answer the phone. Lock your office door. David Margolick uses Flents Quiet Please foam earplugs to buffer the din outside his Manhattan apartment while he's working on his books about comedian Sid Caesar and scientist Jonas Salk.
Start off easy. If you begin first thing trying to write a masterpiece, writer's block will likely ensue. Start writing in your journal, read over what you wrote the day before, make notes for the day ahead. Read "sacred texts," from the Bible to your favorite novel or poem, writings that inspire you to start your own compositions as the sun comes up.
"Roses 1890"/Vincent van Gogh
INTERVIEW: Writing Your Ending First: Three Questions with David Finkel
In the mid-1980s, I had the good fortune to work at the St. Petersburg Times at the same time David Finkel was beginning to emerge as one of the finest reporters of his generation. His stories were always creative, the reporting immersive and presaged his later work as a war correspondent when he embedded with a U.S. infantry battalion during the Iraq war. His first book,"The Good Soldiers," chronicles that experience with heartbreaking granularity. After the surviving members of that unit returned home, he embedded with them again to tell the story of the war's aftermath in "Thank You For Your Service."An editor and writer for The Washington Post, Finkel has reported from Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe and across the United States, and has covered wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Among his honors are a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting and a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant."
In our interview, "Three Questions with David Finkel," he talks about his methodology. One of the more salient aspects is his approach to endings. "Not that there's one, perfect method, but the one that has worked for me is knowing my ending before I begin writing," he told me.
"I used to get so lost in writing when I didn't do this, as if magic, rather than method, would solve the day. Now, if I know my ending, and I mean the actual ending, down to the last sentence, even the last word, it means that I know my reporting is finished and I have a story to tell as opposed to, say, a caption to write. It also means that I know the emotional tone of the piece and I can structure my material to get there as consistently and efficiently as possible. In every story I've done over the second half of my career, including my books, I've known the ending before I wrote the beginning."
WRITERS SPEAK: Bacon on a skillet
"When I see a paragraph shrinking under my eyes like a strip of bacon in a skillet, I know I'm on the right track."
- Peter De Vries
It's not surprising that De Vries, a consummate humorist, would come up with such an evocative metaphor for the power of revision and the need to strip away the fat of your prose. Leaner is always better.
BOOKBAG
Ken Fuson, who died Jan. 3, was one of America's finest storytellers. He was a generous, compassionate man and his readers, students and friends, of whom I proudly count myself one, mourn him. For your enjoyment and inspiration, here are two memorable stories: a single paragraph paean to an Iowa spring day and a narrative series about the mounting of a high school play that captured a group of young people on the cusp of adulthood.
"In Search of Emiliano Salo," is part elegy and part mystery as it seeks to solve the disappearance of a beloved Argentine soccer star who was flying from France, where he had played for several seasons, to Wales and a new berth on the team there.
On the way, his single-engine plane disappeared off England's Channel Islands. Shortly before it vanished, Salo sent this WhatsApp message: "I am now aboard a plane that seems like it is falling apart." ESPN writer Sam Borden tells a universal, finely structured story about loss and a series of decisions that doomed an athlete just as his career was about to soar.
TIP OF THE WEEK: Endgame
Finish the story you started, no matter how much you hate it. You can't revise what isn't written.
Like a farmer's fields, first drafts must be plowed through. With our heads down, we wisely try to lower our standards. Often, we stall just before the end fearful, I believe of committing ourselves to something that isn't good enough. But if we have any chance of reaching excellence, we have to swallow the bile that rises in our throat. We have to push forward to the end, if for no other reason than it teaches us how to begin and what to foreshadow at the start. Leads are always important, but pushing forward to the end are the sign of a writer unafraid to be bad but willing to make it better.
"Self-Portrait with Straw Hat 1887"Vincent van Gogh
CHIP IN YOUR EAR
"Morning Morgantown"/Joni Mitchell
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