Chip's Writing Lessons #65
My apologies for the tardy sendoff of the latest newsletter. I’ve been consumed by my new book, “Writers on Writing: Inside the lives of 55 distinguished writers and editors,” which goes on sale on Amazon later this month as an e-book and paperback. After unhappy experiences publishing three books with traditional publishers, I decided to take control. I am now the owner of Euclid Grove Publishing, which is publishing my book, a collection of “Four Questions with...” conversations drawn from my blog and newsletter. More on this journey in an upcoming issue.
Many thanks,
Chip
Many thanks.
IN THIS ISSUE
Writers Speak | Gish Jen on the curse of time
Interview | 4 Questions with Valerie Boyd
Craft Lesson | Keeping a writing workshop’s spirit alive
Newsletter to Savor | Sunday Short Reads
Tip of the Week | It’s hammer time
WRITERS SPEAK
"There is never enough time for writing; it is a parallel universe where the days, inconveniently, are also 24 hours long. Every moment spent in one’s real life is a moment missed in one’s writing life, and vice versa.”
— Gish Jen
INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH VALERIE BOYD
Valerie Boyd / Photo by Jason Thrasher
Valerie Boyd is a professor of journalism and the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of Georgia, where she founded and directs the low-residency MFA Program in Narrative Nonfiction. She is author of the critically acclaimed Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, which was hailed by Alice Walker as “magnificent” and “extraordinary”; by The Boston Globe as “elegant and exhilarating”; and by The Denver Post as “a rich, rich read.” Formerly arts editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Valerie has written articles, essays and reviews for The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Bon Appetit, Creative Nonfiction, The Oxford American, Essence and Atlanta Magazine, among other publications.
Boyd is currently senior consulting editor for The Bitter Southerner magazine. She has spent the past several years curating and editing a collection of the personal journals of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker. “Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker” will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2022. Valerie’s edited collection, “Bigger Than Bravery: Black Writers on the Pandemic, Shutdown and Uprising of 2020,” also will be published in 2022.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
The most important lesson I’ve learned as a storyteller—as both a writer and an editor—is to be quiet enough to let others speak. Even if I am the narrator, or the lead storyteller, every character has a story, every person in the room has a voice—and every story deserves space to unfurl, every voice deserves a listener. My job is to listen, to amplify, to synthesize, to distill.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
The biggest surprise of my writing life has been my development as an editor and a teacher of writing, alongside being a writer myself. Writing is often a solitary pursuit, and one stereotype of the writer is that of an isolated, anti-social hermit. A genius perhaps, but still a lonely hermit. Yet I revel in my connections with others and I deeply value collaboration and community. So I have pleasantly surprised myself by fashioning a writing-adjacent career that allows me to preserve my precious solitude as a writer while also calling forth community. In this way, I can be selfish with my writing time and simultaneously generous with my offerings to others as an editor and teacher. For me, this is so gratifying. In 2015, writer/filmmaker/world-changer Ava DuVernay tweeted something that became instantly quotable T-shirt material, and it certainly resonated with me: “If your dream only includes you, it’s too small.”
If you had to use a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be and why?
I think of myself as a producer. Whether I’m working as a writer or editor, my role is to bring all the cooperative components together to produce an amazing, moving, memorable show.
What’s the best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
The best piece of writing advice I ever received was also wonderful life advice. I was about to go on my first book tour, and the novelist Tina McElroy Ansa advised: “Always eat breakfast.” A book tour, like a life, can be so unpredictable, she suggested. Who knew if you’d have time to eat along the way? So feed yourself—whatever that may mean for you—before you rush headlong into the day. That advice has resonated with me through huge challenges in my life: If I can just feed myself, first thing, I’ll make it through whatever the day brings.
CRAFT LESSON | KEEPING A WRITING WORKSHOP’S SPIRIT ALIVE
Over the years, I’ve attended dozens of writing workshops. I’ve taught at some, while at others, I sat in the audience, scribbling furiously as craft tips tumbled from the lips of accomplished writers and editors.
I’d come home, pockets crammed with business cards, piles of handouts, scraps of paper with jotted emails and reading lists, a notebook bulging with quotes and a contact high from a day or weekend surrounded by inspirational talk about my craft.
Invariably, however, the excitement would wither, and I’d forget the great lessons I learned.
The other day, I came across a column I wrote for Poynter Online after a National Writers Workshop in Hartford, in 2003. Until the early aughts, Poynter teamed up with newspapers around the country to stage these weekend-long gatherings that brought writers and speakers together to share crucial lessons about writing and editing. Reading over the piece, I realized that keeping track of a speaker’s central message could keep alive the spirit of those heady two days. Here are ten lessons that stuck:
1. Identify an ambition. For Mark Bowden, author of “Black Hawk Down” and other best-selling narrative nonfiction, the secret of success lies in his habit of thinking big and doing stories that scare him. Try his method and pick a story “you’re not sure you can do.”
2. Figure out what your editor wants. “Editors are looking for ways to say yes,” said Debra Dickerson, who told the story of her rise from sharecropper’s daughter to best-selling author. One easy way: ask your editor what she wants from you.
3. Put a snatch of dialogue in your next story. “Dialogue makes you feel like you’re actually there,” said literary journalist Walt Harrington. Start listening to—and writing down—what people say to each other, whether it’s two council members battling over a proposal or two kids talking about their favorite Harry Potter Bertie Bott’s jelly beans. You can do the same with physical description, a scene, or any of the other elements of storytelling.
4. Dig out your copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird." Lynn Franklin advised writers to do what scientists do: “stand on the shoulders of giants.” Harper Lee’s classic tale of racism in a southern town is full of lessons about how to write about characters and place; John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” can teach you how to foreshadow and William Faulkner’s short story “The Barn Burning” is rich with lessons about symbolism, rhythm and pace.
5. Think like a storyteller. Ask the kinds of questions that Lisa Pollak, the former Pulitzer Prize-winning feature writer for the Baltimore Sun, poses to herself:
Who in this story has something at stake?
Who is most affected?
Whom is nobody paying attention to?
What about this story moves me? (Pollak’s favorite)
6. Get in the game. More than one writer that weekend in Hartford asked “How do I break in…on a magazine, writing creative nonfiction, the job market, writing a risky personal story?” There’s only one way, and that’s to take the first step—submit a story or a pitch—and not be deterred when you get rejected. Rejection is part of the writing life, and may not have anything to do with your story; your piece may really not meet a publication’s needs at this time. One Hartford speaker, small press publisher and novelist Ira Wood, counseled against heeding criticisms in rejection letters: Consider rewriting only if you see a definite trend in editors’ responses. So write that pitch, finish that story even if you worry no one else will care or pick a subject that interests you and start reporting.
7. Become a document freak. That’s what helped Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Kiernan, who teaches at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, share the award for explanatory journalism with her colleagues while at the Chicago Tribune. Follow the paper trail—court records, police reports, transcripts—and then mine them for the details that are a storyteller’s gold.
8. Stop introducing the person with the camera as “my photographer.” R-E-S-P-E-C-T for your newsroom’s other craft disciplines, said Poynter’s visual journalism leader Kenny Irby, is the key to better collaboration and news storytelling.
9. Pick a perennial. Want to take a stab at the kind of riveting storytelling that Oregonian Pulitzer winner Tom Hallman Jr. talked about? Lower the risk by volunteering for one of those assignments journalists grudgingly have to write about every year (post-Thanksgiving shopping day, the day-after Christmas stampede to return presents, the circus comes to town, etc.) and use the occasion to try a narrative—a story that follows a store manager, or a bored husband or a circus first-timer. (Make sure you file a sidebar with the obligatory numbers, Chamber of Commerce quotes, etc.)
10. Before you write, ask The Washington Post’s David Von Drehle’s four focusing questions.
What’s the point?
Why does it matter?
Why is this story being told?
What does it say about life, the world, the times we live in?
Add one more: What is my story about in a single word? When you’re done, you’ll have a theme for your story and will likely have the first draft of a nut graf that sums it up for your reader.
The next time you have the good fortune to attend a writing workshop, take good notes. After the bloom fades, the lessons that captivated you but that you may have lost track of are there again for the picking.
NEWSLETTER TO SAVOR | SUNDAY SHORT READS
If you’re looking to read—and learn from—high-quality long-form narratives, there’s no shortage of options. Look to the Sunday Longread, Longform.org, Nieman Storyboard and The New York Times Magazine’s Sunday Read podcast. Hunt for shorter—and less time-consuming—narratives, and the pickings are slim. That’s what I thought until I learned about Sunday Short Reads, a free newsletter that every Sunday delivers flash and micro essays no longer than 1,000 words. They’re selected from previously published work by the editors of Creative Nonfiction and its partner publications Brevity, DIAGRAM, River Teeth, and Sweet Literary. It features compelling memoirs and serendipitous musings on life, love and death. The publications also offer respected outlets for your own brief essays. (Full disclosure: a short essay of mine will appear in an upcoming edition.)
TIP OF THE WEEK | IT’S HAMMER TIME
The best piece of advice anyone ever gave author and journalist Ben Montgomery was “More hammer.” When I asked him to explain the phrase, he wrote back that it means “Write your best material like it’s the most urgent, important thing in the world at that moment.” Ask yourself: is that what you’re doing as a writer? If not, think about why and what you can do to change the situation.
BEFORE YOU GO
COMING THIS MONTH ON AMAZON: A new book, drawn from my “Chip’s Writing Lessons” newsletter’s “Four Questions with…” interview series. I’ve edited a variety of these brief, but instructive and inspirational conversations into a collection titled “Writers on Writing: Inside the lives of 55 distinguished writers and editors.” They include Susan Orlean, David Finkel, Kelley and Tom French, Lane DeGregory, among others.
Questions follow each chapter that you can address in your journal. With a foreword by Roy Peter Clark, author of “Writing Tools.” It will be available in December as a Kindle ebook and a paperback edition for $9.99. The perfect holiday gift for you and the writers, editors and readers in your life looking for ways to improve their skills and achieve their writing and reporting dreams or are interested in how great writing is made.
“By asking four questions to 55 of our finest writers and editors, Chip Scanlan has hosted one of the greatest writing conferences you will ever attend.”
— Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools, Help! for Writers, Murder Your Darlings
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Interested in personal coaching? Reach out to me at chipscan@gmail.com
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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