Chip's Writing Lessons #56
IN THIS ISSUE
Writers Speak | Thomas Boswell on finding a story's central idea
Interview | 4 Questions with Norma Watkins
Craft Lesson | Time is on our side
Writing to Savor | "The Watcher at the Gate," by Gail Godwin
Tip of the Week | Listen for dialogue instead of quotes
WRITERS SPEAK
"The most important thing in the story is finding the central idea. It’s one thing to be given a topic, but you have to find the idea or the concept within that topic. Once you find that idea or thread, all the other anecdotes, illustrations and quotes are pearls that you hang on this thread. The thread may seem very humble, the pearls may seem very flashy, but it’s still the thread that makes the necklace.”
- Thomas Boswell
INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH NORMA WATKINS
Norma Watkins
Norma Watkins grew up in Mississippi and came of age during the civil rights struggles. Her award-winning memoirs, "The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure" and "That Woman from Mississippi" describe the anguish of being a liberal in that troubled time. She studied writing under Eudora Welty and is professor emerita at Miami Dade College, where she held an endowed chair. Her upcoming novel, In Common, follows two women who sacrifice talent, spirit, and wellbeing for love. She lives in northern California with her woodworker husband.
What is the most important lesson you've learned as a writer?
Perseverance is the most important lesson I've learned as a writer. Perseverance and its sister, patience. I work for years on a book. The one I'm doing a final revision on now began in 2010. I tell myself it doesn't matter how long I take to get it right, or better, though I am impressed by people who can turn out one a year, and death may catch up with me.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
I love feedback. I belong to a small writing group and their observations continue to surprise me. We've met long enough to be frank with one another. Compliments are nice, but constructive criticism is better. I've found, to my surprise, that I assume too much from the reader. I see a scene so clearly in my head; I see the characters as they speak, but frequently neglect to describe what they do physically. Thinking: Can't the reader tell by what they're saying? Evidently not.
What metaphor would best describe you as a writer?
During the pandemic, I let my hair go white, which is amazingly liberating. As a writer, I am a white heron, observing patiently, and willing to go deep for tasty morsels.
What's the best piece of writing advice anyone gave you?
John Dufresne once said: You get three exclamation points in a lifetime (Meaning, your words should express the emotion, not punctuation). I haven't used an exclamation point since.
CRAFT LESSON | TIME IS ON OUR SIDE
“When do you write?” asks a writer friend who juggles family, a demanding university teaching job, and studying in an MFA program.
Implicit in the question, I believe, is another, more pressing one: “How do you find time to write?”
That's a question I've often been asked, not because I'm the most productive writer in the world.
I am not.
But the question misses the mark. It's not about finding time to write, but making it.
For inspiration, I turn for inspiration to busy people who have made time to pursue writing dreams that may lie outside their day jobs or family lives.
Best-selling author Scott Turow also had a demanding day job — as a federal prosecutor in Chicago — when he wrote the first 120 pages of his first novel, "Presumed Innocent."
"I used to write on the morning commuter train," he told an interviewer in 1986. "It was sometimes no more than a paragraph a day, but it kept the candle burning."
Anne Tyler sat down to write her early novels in her Baltimore home after her children went to school.
In the 19th century, Anthony Trollope wrote novels in the morning before he set off to work from the English countryside to his job as a postal official in London. His discipline was astounding.
"I finished on Thursday the novel I was writing, and on Friday I began another," Trollope wrote in 1880. "Nothing really frightens me but the idea of enforced idleness. As long as I can write books even though they be not published, I think I can be happy."
Many years ago, influenced by Scott Turow's commuter approach, I adopted it on my morning Metro ride from suburban Maryland to the National Press Building in Washington, D.C. The early '90s was the busiest time in my life. I had a consuming job as a Washington correspondent, and at home, my wife Kathy and I had a toddler and infant twins. I suggested Kathy and I wear tee-shirts emblazoned with the title of the Warren Zevon song, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead."
Instead of trying to make up sleep on the subway, however, I was able over a period of several weeks to draft and revise a short story about a Mom forced to take over as coach of her daughter's Little League team. "Calling the Shots" was published, after a year of waiting, in 1998 in Elysian Fields Quarterly, a literary baseball journal.
These days, as a freelancer and retiree, of course I have much more flexibility. I check the news, listen to The New York Times podcast “The Daily,” and then write several times during the day, juggling assignments, drafting content for my newsletter, hanging out with three precious grandchildren, dog walking and working on fiction and memoir.
By the evening, I'm usually too tired for anything but YouTubeTV. That was the case years ago in Washington, too. I never had the energy to look at the short story that captured my attention that morning.
Still, brief daily sessions of 15-30 minutes, as Turrow proved, demonstrate the value taking advantage of every free moment to write.
Writing regularly, even if only a single paragraph at a time, develops critical mass over time.
So what are ways to make time to write?
Use the mass-transit or another incremental approach. You don't climb a mountain with one step, but with many.
Decide what matters — watching, for the tenth time, the "Soup Nazi" Seinfeld episode, or taking the half-hour to write.
I've always loved this quote on the subject from essayist Annie Dillard (who wrote "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"). "You can take your choice. You can keep a tidy house, and when St. Peter asks you what you did with your life, you can say, 'I kept a tidy house, I made my own cheese balls.' "
Exercise. Even a brisk 15-minute walk can pay off with relaxation-producing endorphins and an energy boost.
Lower your expectations. Large blocks of time you dream of can prove useless if you agonize over the quality of what you're producing. Every time you realize your fingers are poised over the keyboard, start banging away. It's called freewriting and is best done in timed bursts, anywhere from a few minutes to, my preference, a screenfull.
Manage your time, as I wrote in the most recent "Chip's Writing Lessons.". Examine your schedule, daily, weekly, even monthly, for pockets of time and energy. Be mindful of your circadian rhythms, those times of the day when you have the most energy.
Wake up 15 minutes earlier. Take a bite out of lunch.
At the beginning, quantity, not quality, rules. What sounds counter-intuitive — to write well, I must first write badly — reflects the reality that the writer, especially at first, is not the best judge of the material.
Writing is a process of discovery. You need something to revise, however awful you think it is. Writing can't take its final shape until you have enough distance, psychic or temporal, to see the holes, the flaws, unanswered questions and flabbiness that can be stripped away with a writer's helpful friend: the "delete" key.
Take heart from the words of Robert B. Parker, the late master of detective fiction.
"There is no one right way. Each of us finds a way that works for him. But there is a wrong way. The wrong way is to finish your writing day with no more words on paper than when you began. Writers write."
WRITING TO SAVOR | "The Watcher at the Gate," by Gail Godwin
This brief essay, by the prolific novelist and essayist Gail Godwin, for the first time helped me understand writer's block, mine and others. In it, Godwin posits that there in all of us a "Watcher at the Gate," which bars us from unleashing our creativity by "rejecting too soon and discriminating too severely." The Watcher is our inner critic who seems determined to see us fail. But there is hope, Godwin says, offering several valuable tips she offers to silence the Watcher before it slams the gate. Her piece is a must-read on any wrtiers's reading list.
TIP OF THE WEEK | LISTEN FOR DIALOUE INSTEAD OF QUOTES
Most writers pose questions to sources about past events, whether it's the aftermath of a hurricane ("It sounded like a freight train") or a City Council hearing ,and print their answers. These, says James B. Stewart in "Follow the Story,"his essential guide to successful nonfiction, are "contemporary quotations."
But narrative writing demands "narrative quotations," better known as dialogue. The pure narrative story uses no contemporary quotations at all. Instead it relies on dialoge that may have been uttered in the past, but not to a reporter, and are used in narrative reconstrutions. But there are golden times when a reporter listens as sources talk to other people.
These are moments that can bring a story to life. "If description enables readers to visualize a scene," Stewart says, "dialogue lets them hear it." Keep a sharp lookout for dialogue by having your notebook or audio recorder ready and follow the cardinal rule of observation: Shut up and listen. The payoff: stories that crackle with the dramatic sounds of people talking with each other.
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May the writing go well, and may you be well.
Nulla dies sine linea / Never a day without a line
Black Lives Matter.