#19 Excuses. Excuses. When an investigative journalist turns to fiction, part one, 1619 Project, Working in uncertainty
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Tiraz textile fragment
WRITERS SPEAK
"I try for motion in every paragraph. I hate sentences that begin 'There was a storm.' Instead, write 'A storm burst.'"
- Barbara Tuchman
CRAFT LESSON: Excuses, Excuses
I’m too young to make it as a writer.
I’m too old.
Excuses, excuses. These two defenses cripple many writers from doing the work it takes to produce a novel, screenplay, a poem, a nonfiction book or article or an enterprise story.
I’ve heard—and made—them over the years. They keep writers from achieving many of their writing dreams which is a darn shame.
I’ve sat with writers who, with sincerity and some madness, make them. Here’s what I want to tell them:
Langston Hughes published his first major work when he was 19. Stephen King, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez were 20. 21: Bret Easton Ellis and Mary Shelley. 22: Margaret Atwood, Ray Bradbury. Worried you're too young? Read the rest of this list.
James Michener wrote 40 books after he turned 40. Raymond Chandler was 43 years old when he published his first novel, “The Big Sleep.” Anna Sewell started writing “Black Beauty” when she was 51; she was 57 when she sold the book. Frank McCourt published his Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, “Angela’s Ashes” when he was 66. Harriet Doer’s first novel, “Stones of Ibarra” won the National Book Award. It was published when she was 74. Worried you’re too old? Read the rest of this list.
Here’s another potent excuse, one fueled by what psychologists call the “Victim Mentality.”
I’m quitting because I was rejected. Do you think you're the first?
“First, we must ask, does it have to be a whale?” That was the response of one of the multiple publishers who turned down Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick".
“An irresponsible holiday story that will never sell.” That was the rejection Kenneth Grahame received for his classic “The Wind in the Willows.”
“An endless nightmare. I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book.'” H.G. Wells got this rejection for “The War of the Worlds,” still in print more than a century after it was published.
Joseph Heller got 22 rejections for his satirical masterpiece “Catch-22.” One of them read, “I haven’t the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say. Apparently the author intends it to be funny.” For more on famous authors and their rejections, read the rest of the list here.
There are lots of other excuses writers make. I’m too tired. My friends give me a hard time because I don’t have time for them. I’m not inspired. Revision means I've failed. I don’t have enough time.
Go ahead and use them. You’ll get nowhere fast.
But here's what I'd rather say. Challenge them. You can make time. Mothers write during their baby's nap time. When I was working demanding jobs, I got a lot done just by setting my alarm a half-hour early. Scott Turow wrote the first of his best-selling thrillers, "Presumed Innocent," on the train to his job as a federal prosecutor.
Good friends understand. Inspiration happens when you’re at your desk. And revision offers unlimited chances to make your writing better.
Excuses try to release a person from blame. When it comes to writing, as with many other endeavors, most of the time there’s no one to blame but yourself. It’s easy for me to say take responsibility, but what I’d rather say is you don't need to make excuses. Do the work.
"Getting good as a writer, or any kind of storyteller, seems to me a lifelong pursuit," says Jacqui Banaszynski, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and editor of Nieman Storyboard, which celebrates narrative nonfiction. "And one that demands we realize there is always another level to reach and dare ourselves to take some creative risks as we get there."
Keep that counsel close. Dare yourself. And just bear in mind that if there's anything the history of publishing demonstrates, it's that writing success has no shelf life, and there’s no accounting for taste.
INTERVIEW: When an investigative journalist turns to fiction: Part One
Every year for the past quarter-century, Greg Borowski, longtime watchdog editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, writes a short story keyed to the holiday. His offering this year was "The Christmas Boxes," a poignant story about a woman who connects with her dying mother suffering from dementia when she opens a box of Christmas decorations, each with their own memory.
Writing fiction has profound implications for those trying to get better at narrative nonfiction. And vice versa.
That's what I learned recently when I interviewed Borowski for Nieman Storyboard.
Narrative writers like Borowski, whose credits also include “First and Long: A Black School, a White School and Their Season of Dreams," call on the same tools to produce the verisimilitude that their fiction counterparts strive for: details, scenes, dialogue, drama and suspense. But there is a crucial distinction.
Here's an excerpt from our interview, reprinted with permission:
Your story has all the elements of narrative nonfiction. How do you manage to write a made up story that feels so real?
I tend to fall back on techniques I learned as a journalist: Use only telling details. Make every word count. Cut anything that does not advance the story. Don’t use quotes/dialogue as exposition. Less is more.
With these stories, I try to write cinematically. That is, I can see the scene in my head — where people are standing, what the room looks like, every nod, gesture, voice inflection. When people are told to write descriptively, it can come off like an inventory of a room. When they describe action, it can read like stage directions. My goal is to have the reader feel like the scene is happening in front of them — for them to experience the story, not just read the story.
Beyond that, I try to do double duty with descriptions.
For instance, in the first paragraphs of the story, I wanted to get across the idea Lauren is a busy professional woman in a tough spot at Christmas time without saying any of those words. Likewise, I felt like I had a single paragraph to describe both the house where she grew up and what it was like to grow up without a father around.
Even though it’s fiction, do you have to report it?
As a rule, yes. But the stories I write generally focus on relationships between people, and often carry some magical Santa-esque element.
Rather than reporting out scenes and locations, I think of this more in terms of making sure the stories hold together within themselves. That is, does the reality they create — even if it’s something fanciful or magical — ring true? As I work through the drafts, I try to scrub them with that in mind: Is the character consistent throughout the story? Do the ages and timelines fit together properly? My wife, Katy, who is usually the first person to read them, is a good check on this. So is Jim Higgins, an editor at the Journal Sentinel who coordinates getting them published in print and online each year.
When they raise questions of reality or continuity, I sometimes want to reply: “Come on. It’s fiction. Anything can happen in fiction.” But that’s lazy and untrue. Instead, their questions are a sign I need to go back and rework something.
You’re an investigative journalist. How is writing fiction the same and dramatically different from narrative journalism?
The parts that are the same are easy. You need subjects/characters that are well-developed, a structure that includes conflicts or obstacles, strong dialogue and a resolution that is satisfying and true to the story. In short, something has to happen in the story and everything that is included has to drive the reader to that conclusion. Additionally, both forms require a steady hand from the writer. You’re taking the reader along for a ride, so the reader has to feel comfortable — not that they won’t be saddened or joyful along the way, or that there won’t be any twists or turns. Just comfortable that you, the author, know where you are going and can get them there.
For me, a major difference is that with narrative nonfiction you’re often trying to take real life, the ordinary, and make it feel special or magical. In my Christmas stories, I’m trying to take the magical and make it seem ordinary. That is, grounding it in reality. For instance, in this year’s story, I knew I needed a few touchstone family decorations as a plot device. I knew one would be a snow globe because, well, my daughter has several that come out at Christmas time and it seemed to fit.
It wasn’t until I typed out what was inside the snow globe — a winter scene with a church — that the next line of dialogue popped into my head: “That’s our church. That’s where I got married.” It wasn’t until I put the snow globe into the mother’s hands and allowed her to shake it, that I realized it was a metaphor for things being jumbled and then settling. And, really, that’s the arc of the story itself.
What lessons can writers of narrative nonfiction draw from writing fiction?
I think there are lots of lessons to be drawn simply from trying something different.
A major lesson, though, is that to truly resonate with readers, a story has to operate on multiple levels. You need the strong characters and cliffhangers and twists to pull you along, but what’s the deeper thing the story is really about? Redemption. Forgiveness. Healing.
Once you settle on that, it should inform and shape the structure, plot and dialogue and everything else that goes into the piece.
Next week: Part Two
Tiraz textile fragment
TIP OF THE WEEK
"Teach yourself to work in uncertainty."
- Bernard Malamud
We write with the hope that we've got everything correct: theme: characters, structure, language, ending. But Malamud, winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer for his fiction, was known to go through multiple drafts — as many as 50 of a story. He understood that the writer is often flying blind and doesn't know what the story is for a long time, and must write their way to certainty. Accepting that uncertainty is part of the process should help when the going gets rough. Don't give up. Eventually, you'll come out on the other side.
BOOKBAG
To mark the 400th year since the first African slaves arrived at the English colony of Virginia, The New York Times Magazine created the "1619 Project," beginning with a series of essays "on different aspects of contemporary American life, from mass incarceration to rush-hour traffic, that have their roots in slavery and its aftermath," said editor Jake Silverstein.
Kicking off the project was "The Idea of America," an 8,000 word lacerating view on the way slavery took root in America, reverberating to this day. In "Four hundred years of history in 8,000 unflinching words," writer Nikole Hannah-Jones discussed the making of the story in an interview for Nieman Storyboard. The interview is a master class in magazine writing with penetrating lessons about structure, the challenge of discovering a story and the role of supportive editing.
MISCELLANY: This week's art
Between 991-1031 A.D., artisans in Persian royal workshops produced inscribed textiles called tiraz, the Persian word for "embroidery," using white linen and black silk. The striped textiles, famous throughout the Islamic world, were presented to honor officials and courtiers at formal ceremonies. The markings are inscriptions that name and bless the current ruler or caliph. All that is left after the passage of time are these precious fragments. Held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they were "a reminder to the recipient that they owed their allegiance to that ruler." A gift and a warning.
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"Excuses"/Olly Murs
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