Chip’s Writing Lessons #29:
In this issue:
Writers Speak: John McPhee
Interview: The details write the story: Four Questions with Susan Ager
Bookbag: The value of not writing
Tip of the Week: Libel protection
Writing to Savor: Lauren Markham on the perfect alchemy for writing
WRITERS SPEAK
“If you lack confidence in setting one word after another and sense that you are stuck in a place from which you will never be set free, if you feel sure that you will never make it and were not cut out to do this, if your prose seems stillborn and you completely lack confidence, you must be a writer.”
— John McPhee
INTERVIEW: The Details Write the Story: Four Questions with Susan Ager
Susan Ager
Susan Ager is a prize-winning journalist of many years, now freelancing for National Geographic. Getting her start at the Associated Press, in Lansing, Michigan, and San Francisco, for a quarter century she wrote and edited for the Detroit Free Press. She worked as a full-time coach, at the Free Press and dozens of other papers. For 16 years she wrote a thrice-weekly column and traveled the state of Michigan for a popular project she called “Tell Susan Ager Where to Go.” Her 1992 book “At Heart” is an anthology of her early work. She is a member of the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame, in part for pioneering coverage of the spread of HIV in her state. She lives in northern Michigan with her husband, Larry Coppard.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
The details write the story, and the details only get better the more time you spend with your subject or topic. Even on daily stories, a second phone call never hurts. Repeat interviews with profile subjects provide exponentially more insight and info. (I have often been quoted as instructing writers I’m coaching, “Go to the bathroom,” which means take time off to think about what you’ve got and your next step—but you never know what you’ll learn from the shower curtain or the magnets on the mirror.) Immersion journalism is, of course, my favorite: Live with your person or live in the place. If you live by these principles, you will know so much that you can write your story from memory, without checking your notes, leaving XXXs where you’ve forgotten a small detail. This is tremendously freeing.
What’s been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
That it gets both easier and harder. It becomes easier to craft sentences and paragraphs once you understand how readers consume words and ideas. It becomes harder to think through how a complex story should best be told. Which details to leave out is always challenging: You don’t want to over-spice your stew.
If you had to choose a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be, and why?
A great writer—a status I occasionally achieve—seduces readers. Take a walk with me, even though you don’t know me. Hold my hand. Let me lead you down a path you’ve never walked before. You might feel wary, or tired, or feel the faint beginning of boredom, but take another step with me, and another. Haven’t I surprised you with almost every step so far? I’ll take care of you. I’ll make sure the path is easy or, if challenging, at least worth the effort. In the end, you’ll be glad you trusted me, and will want to spend more time with me again.
What's the best piece of writing advice someone gave you?
“Write from memory,” mentioned above. And, “Just vomit.” Clean it up later. All that advice combined freed me from a bad habit of writing slowly, rewriting my first sentence three times, then rewriting the first paragraph endlessly—then flipping through my notebook and changing it all again. I tell writers now, “Get the clay on the table then shape it into the story you want.” Don’t check your notes until you’re done, then be cautious about including anything you had forgotten to include the first time. If it wasn’t important enough to remember, why add it now?
BOOKBAG: THE VALUE OF NOT WRITING
I want to make a sacrilegious argument. If you want to be a better writer, don’t write. At least, not for a while.
How can that be? How can you improve if you’re not consistently practicing your craft, day in and day out?
If you're like me, every day that passes without a word, a line, a paragraph written, seems like a day wasted. It brings to mind the French writer Simone de Beavuoir’s observation that I recently quoted: “A day in which I don’t write leaves a taste of ashes.” Not to mention that the motto at the end of my newsletters is “Never a day without a line.”
But there’s also something to be said, some writers argue, for letting the well of creativity fill up again after you’ve finished a story.
Whether you're writing full time or on the side, as many do, fallow periods may be just what you need, these writers say. Journalists and freelancers dependent on constant output may not have this option, of course, but they can take mini-breaks if they intelligently manage their time.
There’s an agricultural analogy that supports the argument of not writing. Not writing for a while, at least.
It’s not uncommon for farmers to plow their fields some seasons, but leave them unsown to restore their fertility.
The notion is reassuring because I’m suffering from an on-and-off spell of writer’s block. The days when I work productively on a fiction project are sadly outnumbered by those where I’ll do anything else. Incessant checking of my Twitter feed is a diverting substitute. Days have slipped by without my fingers touching the keyboard, except for producing my newsletters. The fog of self-doubt lifts some days, but even then my word count has amounted to just a few lines or scribbled phrases in my daybook.
As writers, we agonize over writer’s block, that occupational curse that holds our words at bay. But in “Maybe the Secret to Writing is Not Writing,” a provocative essay for Lit Hub I stumbled upon the other day, Kate Angus makes a persuasive case for taking a break.
“These days I’ve come to believe that it’s natural for many of us to go through periods when we put words to the page and times when we can’t. Maybe we can accept that we aren’t blocked at all,” she writes, “and that resting might just be part of our process.”
That’s what Roy Peter Clark, the influential writing teacher and my former colleague at The Poynter Institute, has been saying for decades. He turns the notion of procrastination on its head by urging writers to eschew negative self-talk when the writing machine spins to a halt.
“Turn your little quirks into something productive,” Clark says in “Writing Tools,” his best-selling guidebook. “Call it rehearsal or preparation or planning.”
It’s a potent solution, one that removes the stigma of writer’s block, replacing it with something positive.
Clark’s got a point. Your mind doesn’t shut off when you’re not writing. You’re still observing, an actor rehearsing a role, watching people and soaking up insights into the human condition — the subject matter of all great literature. Your mind still teems with story ideas, echoes with dialogue and creates possible characters. Like police officers, the writer is never really off-duty.
Angus quotes poet t’ai freedom ford, who says there are “large swaths when I’m not actually writing, but I am doing lots of things to stimulate my muses and so I count it as writing. In that way, I don’t really believe in writer’s block, because when I consider the elements of my process, I’m most always writing (even if it’s only in my head).”
There are some who take the merits of not writing even further.
Poet Ada Limón feels “like there should be a permission slip for writers. Something you can sign for someone that says, ‘You don’t always have to write,’” she says. “You have permission to just be in the world and grieve and laugh and live and do your damn laundry. Writing comes when it comes, and it’s not the most important thing. You and all the little nuisances and nuances of life are what matter most. Don’t miss this gorgeous mess by always trying to make sense of it all.”
Taking a break isn’t without its risks. Ceasing regular writing may make it difficult to restart the habit.
Part of my problem is that I put aside my project while I finished a long short story besides my regular compendia of writing advice. I found it hard to regain my momentum, especially in the times of trouble we’re all living through. It’s hard not to be distracted and depressed by the steady drumbeat of tragic news, the pressures of pandemic and the gnawing uncertainty of life under quarantine even if, like me, you’ve been lucky enough to be spared personal loss. For those who haven't please accept my deepest sympathies.
To deal with the fact that I’m writing less than I want or should, I’m reading more.
I’m savoring the acclaimed “Collected Short Stories of John Cheever,” 61 stories by the 20th-century master stylist called the “Chekhov of the suburbs.” Rarely does a page go by when I’m not copying out phrases, sentences or whole paragraphs to cherish, learn from and try to imitate. Reading generates writing. It amounts to a slow re-entry. I recommend it highly.
I may not generate hundreds of words at a stretch right now, but on walks with my dog, Leo, or by myself, I’ve been trying out scenes and staging imaginary plot points. They circulate in the back of my mind, where I hope they will grow into something potent.
After reading Angus’s essay, I’ve been trying not to beat myself up if I deviate from my writing schedule, even though I still fear I’ll lose velocity and, heaven forfend, give up.
In the meantime, I’m learning to trust my subconscious. And I think it’s paying off. In recent days, I have found myself writing again, feeling excitement and energy rather than despair and inertia. The other morning I woke and couldn’t wait to start writing. I soon hit my daily word count and then nearly doubled it. And for the first time in a long time, I liked what I saw. Even a short break had topped off the tank of my creativity.
I think Angus and Limón make a valid point. Eventually, that farmer who lets his field go fallow for a season or more will plant again. With the soil replenished by time and the cattle and horses who graze upon it, the crop will be greater, richer. Who’s to say that won’t be the case if you set aside your writing, to soak in the “gorgeous mess” of life? You’ll have a wealth of material to draw on when you return to your desk and the chance for a harvest far greater than what came before.
WRITING TO SAVOR
"Once upon a time train travel was the epitome of luxury, an invention so monumental it dazzled (as is the case with many dazzles of empire, it was also built thanks to unconscionable labor practices and land theft). Now, though, the train’s only real luxury is its slowness. On the train I wrote and wrote. Time opened up, the train worked its magic. For many hours we followed the path of a river, and I watched the places where the water rushed untroubled and the places where it had slackened and cooled toward its final posture of freeze. I had the terribly unoriginal but still comforting thought that no matter where I am or what I’m doing, there is this river here, this hushed snowy mountainside, this cloistered train track. At home in the world. The messy threads of my thoughts untangled. The perfect alchemy for writing."
"The Last Train Trip Before Everything Changed" by Lauren Markham in Freeman's.
Favorite bits:
"its many dazzles of empire"
"the train's only real luxury is its slowness"
"the places where the water rushed untroubled and the places where it had slacked and cooled toward its final posture of freeze."
"The messy threads of my thoughts untangled."
"The perfect alchemy for writing."
147 words, 11 sentences.
Notice how the writer varies sentence length for pacing.
The longest: 38 words.
The shortest: three words.
TIP OF THE WEEK
The best defenses against a libel action are truth and documents to support your story.
A libel suit is a writer’s worst nightmare, putting them and their publication at risk of a costly lawsuit and, if upheld, often a punishing financial settlement. Libel is the publication of false statements that expose someone to public hatred, contempt or ridicule in writing or pictures. Libel is written defamation, slander its form in speech, although since the emergence of radio and television, broadcasts are usually considered to be libel rather than slander.
There are ways to protect your story and yourself. Have you attributed the information in your story to reliable sources who are willing to be identified by name? Are you relying on public records, transcripts, court papers and other “privileged” information? Have you summarized information fairly and accurately? Have you given subjects an opportunity to comment? Have you made sure that headlines, promos and artwork are fair and accurate reflections of your story?
BEFORE YOU GO
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May the writing go well and may you be well.
Nulla dies sine linea / Never a day without a line