Chip's Writing Lessons #67
IN THIS ISSUE
Writers Speak | Susan Orlean on Joan Didion. R.I.P.
Interview | 4 Questions with Paige Williams
Craft Lessons | 10 favorites
Writing to Savor | “The shadow penal system for struggling kids,” by Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker
Tip of the Week | Make your writing sing with similes
WRITERS SPEAK
“She truly proved that it’s all about the art of facts. She gathered the exact names of things, listened for the most telling quotes, and noticed everything.” — Susan Orlean on Joan Didion. R.I.P.
INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH PAIGE WILLIAMS
Paige Williams / New Yorker avatar
Paige Williams is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “The Dinosaur Artist,” which was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2018. She started her journalism career as a reporting intern at The Washington Post, then spent 10 years at the Charlotte Observer before moving into magazines. While at Atlanta magazine, she won the National Magazine Award for feature writing. She has taught journalism at a number of schools, most recently as the Laventhol Visiting Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Her work has been anthologized in multiple “Best American” volumes, including “The Best American Magazine Writing" and “The Best American Crime Writing.” Williams holds an MFA from Columbia University and was a Nieman fellow at Harvard.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
A colleague in broadcasting once declared that all I had to think about, on the job, was telling “a great story!” Not gonna lie: I cringed. The remark made me realize that it’s okay to care about deeper intention or purpose—about why we do what we do. I’m not talking about that industry construct known as “impact.” I simply mean: In a climate distinguished by the worrying combination of attention deficit and opportunistic bad actors in the “media,” it helps me to think of meaningful, ethical longform journalism that makes art of depth reporting as the North Star.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
That I enjoy, possibly to an obsessive degree, tracking down the granular as a way of exploring the universal. Instead of taking a landscape approach, I’m inclined to zoom in on the unanalyzed relationship of the flowers to the weeds. That said, it isn’t possible (or necessary or preferable) to handle every piece that way—for one thing, it’s time-consuming. I’m lucky to have found a home at a magazine that trusts me to gauge the right size of drill bit. I’m doubly lucky to have an absolute genius of an editor, Daniel Zalewski, who works himself nearly to death applying his rare, whole-brain blend of talents to an impressive variety of writers’ work. An earlier editor of mine with similarly formidable skills, and astonishing empathy to match, was Rebecca Burns, the former EIC of Atlanta magazine; she’s now the executive director of the Red & Black, at the University of Georgia—lucky students.
If you had to use a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be and why?
Equal parts Hoover + murder board + carpenter + archivist: vacuum it all up, connect it all out, draft-draft-revise, internalize the informational iceberg. I confess that I sometimes find myself in need of a purely creative outlet, but there are explorable genres outside of my journalistic interest area that may one day satisfy such urges.
What’s the best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
One of my early newspaper editors adopted a mantra from a high-wire artist who was asked the secret of his craft: “Don’t look down.” The phrase hung over this editor’s desk, in the features department, as inspiration. At the time, I interpreted it, within the context of a newsroom, as encouragement to write vibrantly. In our current political climate, “Don’t look down” also means getting out of your superiority bubble—you don’t have to agree with people in order to listen to them and assess what they’re up to. “Don’t look down” certainly, and most importantly, means being fearless in your rendering of fact.
CRAFT LESSONS | 10 FAVORITES
More than two years ago, I began posting essays devoted to the craft of writing. To kick off 2022, I offer this tidy collection of ten craft lessons that I think best suits the needs of all writers, no matter the genre, length, or deadline. May your writing go well in the coming year.
WRITING TO SAVOR | “THE SHADOW PENAL SYSTEM FOR STRUGGLING KIDS,” BY RACHEL AVIV, THE NEW YORKER
The plight of the mentally ill, abuse of children in foster care, and other invisible stories attract the attention of Rachel Aviv, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. (subscription required) Her latest story, published last October, trains its sights on Teen Challenge, an unregulated network of 1,000 Christian Schools across America. With Emma Burris, a 15-year-old girl as her protagonist, Aviv describes a system reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” where discipline easily morphs into abuse. Emma. guilty of nothing more than being unruly and interested in lesbian pornography, is snatched from her Florida home in the middle of the night by a “Juvenile Transport Agent “ as her adoptive parents watch silently by, and is taken to a Teen Challenge school where she will spend the next 15 months. Pregnant, she is forced to give up her baby for adoption. Expertly told at the intersection of narrative nonfiction and investigative reporting, Aviv describes an out-of control, taxpayer-supported system that acts with impunity. It meets Aviv’s standard, recounted in an interview for an upcoming Nieman Storyboard annotation, to examine “how social theories match up or fail to match up to actual lives,” she told me. “The way that systems are designed to treat troubled youths is one of those spaces where the mismatch can sometimes be particularly extreme.”
TIP OF THE WEEK | MAKE YOUR WRITING SING WITH SIMILES
A line in a New York Times story by Elizabeth Weil this week about the way fire has transformed California reminded me anew of the emotional power of the simile. “Wildfire was a constant,” Weil wrote, “with us everywhere, every day, all year long, like tinnitus or regret.” I love the way she balances the concrete--a tormenting auditory condition--with an abstract, universal emotion, climbing up and down the ladder of abstraction in the space of four words. If you’re not careful, you can go overboard with this figure of speech, which compares one thing with another of a different kind. Signaled with “as” or “like,” similes can render a description more vivid and emphatic. In the hands of great writers, they linger, haunting the imagination. To become a simile superstar, start collecting inspiring examples in your journal and try your own hand.
BEFORE YOU GO
NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK AND EBOOK EDITIONS
Published in December 2020, my two new collections of writing advice are available on my website writersonwritingbooks.com Note: Supporters of local independent bookstores can purchase my books through Tombolo Books, in St. Petersburg, Florida. Please spread the word to sign up for Chip’s Writing Lessons.
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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