IN THIS ISSUE
Writers Speak | Ernest Lehman on what writing is all about
Interview | 4 Questions with Madeleine D'Arcy
Craft Lessons | Knocking on doors
Writing to Savor | "When I Lost My Sense of Taste to Covid, Anorexia Stepped In," by Mallary Tenore, The New York Times
Tip of the Week | True and False Suspense: Know the difference
WRITERS SPEAK
“Before I came to Hollywood, I was a writer of short stories and novellas. I used to pace the streets of Manhattan wondering what he or she said next or what the next scene was. That's what writing is all about.” — Ernest Lehman
INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH MADELEINE D'ARCY
Madeleine D’Arcy/Claire O’Rorke
Madeleine D’Arcy is a fiction writer based in Cork City, Ireland. Her second book, "Liberty Terrace," a linked short story collection, was published in Oct. 2021. Her début short story collection, "Waiting for the Bullet" (Doire Press, 2014) won the Edge Hill Readers’ Choice Prize 2015 (UK). In 2010 she received the Hennessy Literary Award for First Fiction and the Hennessy New Irish Writer Award. Her work has been published in several anthologies and her short fiction has been listed in a variety of competitions, most recently the Craft International Short Story Award 2020 (US) and the Writing.ie An Post Irish Short Story of the Year 2021. She has also completed a novel. Since January 2017, she has co-curated Fiction at the Friary, a free monthly fiction event in Cork City, with fellow-writer Danielle McLaughlin.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
Talent is not enough. You also need patience and diligence. My advice to emerging writers is to take your time, learn your craft, read a lot, try to make your own work as good as it can possibly be – and don’t send it out until you’re sure it’s ready.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
In 2010, I won the Hennessy Award for Emerging Fiction and the Hennessy New Writer of the Year Award on the same night, with my first ever published short story. It was a surreal experience. I was absolutely shocked. To be honest, I was a bit drunk as well, because free cocktails were provided at the event and my reasoning was that I might as well enjoy the night and party on, since there was no way I was going to win.
Another big surprise was to win the Edge Hill Reader’s Choice Prize for my first short story collection, Waiting For The Bullet (Doire Press, 2014).
I never expect anything. It is probably best to have low expectations. A writer’s life will also involve fallow years, when life puts obstacles in your way. All you can do is persevere. The good times will always come around again if you don’t lose heart.
If you had to use a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be?
I figure I might be a bee. I buzz quietly around my own little patch of the world, taking an interest in what’s happening and quietly going about my own business. I am small and hard-working. It would be easy to underestimate me or ignore me, and I have had to deal with all kinds of drones and several obnoxious queen bees in my time, but I’m learning not to be such a push-over. Most importantly, in the end, after a lot of hard work, I manage to produce some fine honey.
What's the best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
I once did a workshop with the late, great Canadian writer, Alastair MacLeod (1936-2014). His novel, "No Great Mischief," won the 2001 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award). He was a truly wonderful man, both funny and wise. He said, "The best writing is specific in its setting, but universal in its theme." I think that sums up good writing perfectly.
CRAFT LESSON | KNOCKING ON DOORS
Let me begin with an epiphany. In 1973, I was a student at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, studying for a master’s degree. One day in the middle of a lecture, my professor, Melvin Mencher, casually said, ”If you’re going to be a reporter, you have to be counterphobic,” and moved on.
My hand shot up. “What does counterphobic mean?”
“You have to do,” he said, “what you fear.”
Mr. Mencher didn’t know it, but he had struck a nerve.
Before I went to grad school, my journalistic experience consisted of only a year on a very small newspaper in Connecticut, where I grew up. I had a big problem interviewing people, whether they were hostile police officers who wanted nothing to do with the media, or perfect strangers I had to talk to for a story whether it was at a Town Council meeting or for a feature. Knocking on doors was especially tough. Frankly, I was really scared. Scared of rejection, of doors slammed in my face, of angry shouts of, “Beat It!” Even physical violence. (I had an active imagination.)
After that day in class, doing what you fear became a sort of mantra for me that guided my career for the next two decades as a reporter and beyond as a writer, author, publisher, and writing coach. The fear—of harsh rejection and failure—has never gone away.
In 1994, I left the newsroom for the classroom to teach at The Poynter Institute, a school for journalists in Florida. One of my responsibilities was running a six-week reporting and writing program for recent college graduates. I soon realized that many of my students were afraid of the same things I had been as a reporter. So, I assigned them to head out onto the streets and interview five strangers. They had to get their name, address, age, and a comment on a current story. I could see the fear in their eyes, but to their credit, they did what they were told.
When they came back, I had them answer three questions, 1. What did they learn from the experience? 2. What surprised them about it? 3. What did they need to learn next?
Their answers were terrific. Here’s a sample. “I was surprised the most by the fact that I was able to get over my fears of doing the actual reporting. No matter how the writing of the story turned out, in my mind it was secondary to the fact that I knocked on all 18 doors on 56th Avenue S. I felt a little bit like an encyclopedia salesman, but I got over the nausea in the pit of my stomach by the fourth or fifth house.” That student, Steve Myers, went on to a sterling journalism career, leading investigations at USA Today and a month ago, moving to ProPublica, the outstanding nonprofit investigative reporting group.
Many writers, working ones as well as students, experience the same fears, not only about interviewing strangers, but the entire writing process, from coming up with story ideas, pitching their editors, getting enough information, writing and revising the story, and being edited.
But I noticed something different when I spent a year as a visiting professor at my alma mater, Columbia Journalism School, in 2009-10. More than a few of my reporting students were more comfortable surfing the Web for information, happier in front of a computer than going outside. To be a reporter. I told them, you have to talk with people, whether they’re experts or ordinary folks caught up in the news, whether it’s on the phone or the best route, in person. I love the internet, but it’s no substitute for coming face to face with a human being where they can look you in the eye and decide whether to open up. That’s the way you get great quotes and compelling details.
“Basic reporting is not about looking things up on the Internet,’ says Carl Bernstein, who with his partner Bob Woodward at The Washington Post. helped drive President Richard M. Nixon from The White House in 1974 after uncovering his entanglement in the Watergate scandal.
“What we need to be doing now is knocking on doors, getting out into the communities we cover, persistence, perpetual engagement with the story, not taking no for answers,” he said in a recent podcast about his new memoir, “Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom.”
“Not going to easy places like people in their offices where there are other people around and they’re liable to tell you a tale that isn’t true, but knocking on people’s door at night like we did on Watergate.” (Learn more about their shoe-leather reporting methods in their book about reporting the Watergate story, “All the President’s Men,” later made into a classic movie.
When I would interview someone in their home, I always asked for a tour. No one ever objected. I got one when I was interviewing the widow of a man who smoked all his life and died of lung cancer. She took me into her bedroom. I was scanning the room for a detail I could use. There was a small photo of him stuck into the mirror, but that wasn’t enough. Suddenly Marie DeMilio said, “You know, at night, I sprinkle his aftershave on my pillow, just so I can feel close to him.” I had my ending and a moment I believe would never have happened if I wasn’t counterphobic and gone to her home. Certainly not something I could get on my computer.
Journalism demands courage and that’s one of the aspects that makes it such an honorable profession. You can always tell safe stories, and there are safe stories all over the paper and all over the broadcasts. Think of a tightrope. Every day, walk across it. Who’s the one person you’re afraid to call? Where is the one place in town you’ve never been because you’re afraid to go there? It may be a poor neighborhood or the top floor of a bank. Ask yourself every day, “Have I taken a risk?”
Be honest: Are you spending too much time at your desk instead of being out in the community or the area covered by your beat? If you’re not on deadline, get out of the office right now.
People ask how I cope with fear.
I take deep breaths, sucking in as much air as I can into my lungs, and slowly let it out. That relaxes me. I take a hot shower. I prepare, or over-prepare. I’ll record my fear in my journal and then make a point of checking back, only to learn everything turned out okay. Some reporters drink chamomile tea to soothe their nerves
I remind myself that it’s always gone well before and of something my wife has told me for 40 years when I’ve been anxious. It’s going to be fine. She’s never been wrong. That doesn’t mean I don’t face fear anymore. Most of the time, I just remember Prof. Mencher’s words.
Assertiveness reflects a belief in yourself and your role as a journalist in a democracy. You have the right to knock on doors, to ask questions, to approach someone for an interview, to request information. The flip side, of course, means that the person you’re asking has the right to say no. Assertiveness also demands empathy. You have to understand that you wield power as a journalist. Your press pass will get you places the general public can’t go. As a reporter, I’ve watched doctors try to impregnate a woman through in-vitro fertilization, sailed on a freighter, followed police on a drug bust and a seven-year-old blind boy through his day.
What may surprise you is knowing that many people are terrified of journalists. Although it may be hard to believe, most people will be more afraid of you and the power you wield as a reporter than you are of them.
Consider what J. C. McKinnon, a burly, stern-faced St. Petersburg police officer, told my reporting students at Poynter:
“I carry a can of pepper spray, a Glock pistol and 51 rounds of ammunition. But you’ve got something that can destroy me: a pen and a notepad.”
When writer’s block—again, fear of failure—surfaces, my counterphobia attacks it with freewriting, letting my fingers race across the keyboard, never stopping to correct spelling or punctuation or even gibberish. Soon, something magic emerges: a coherent thought, a story idea, or an insight that I can follow and revise until it makes sense and grows into a story. It never fails.
Whether it’s talking to strangers or facing a blank screen, don’t be afraid. Or, rather, be afraid, but do it anyway.
(Adapted from a Jan. 13, 2022 talk to introduction to reporting and writing students at Duke University taught by Stephen Buckley.)
WRITING TO SAVOR | "WHEN I LOST MY SENSE OF TASTE TO COVID, ANOREXIA STEPPED IN,” BY MALLARY TENORE, THE NEW YORK TIMES
A brave, moving personal essay about one of the little-noticed side effects of the COVID pandemic. (Subscription required, a few free stories a month permitted.) Tenore, who teaches journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is the associate director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas, discovered that losing her sense of taste to the virus triggered an eating disorder that she had developed as a child. First diagnosed at age12 after her mother died of cancer, Tenore endured multiple hospitalizations and a 17-month rehab stay.
"Now, at 35, after 20 years in recovery,I’m far better than I’d ever thought I’d be. But some days, my mind still flirts with anorexia. The disorder secretly seduces me, satisfying my affinity for control and order. It always lurks in the background and I have to make a concerted effort to keep it cornered. Without taste, anorexia beckoned me, reminding me that I could shed even more weight off my already slender frame if I skimped here and slacked there. When I would make my breakfast in the mornings after losing my taste, I’d forgo frothed milk in my coffee, opting to drink it black instead. I’d put one and a half slices of cheese on my grilled cheese sandwich instead of two and a half. I’d start to place granola on top of my yogurt, but uncomfortably familiar questions would stop me. Do you really need to eat that? Why waste the calories?'
Tenore makes an important distinction between "full recovery," and what she frames her thinking around now, "what I call ‘the middle place,’ that sticky space between sickness and full recovery." Rich with affecting detail, insight, and surprising factoids--one of Ben & Jerry’s founders, Ben Cohen, has very little sense of taste and no sense of smell and focuses on the texture of their signature ice cream, Now at work on a memoir, Tenore introduces us to the unforgiving world of anorexia, only now amplified by the pandemic. She’s turning her experiences into a memoir.
TIP OF THE WEEK | TRUE AND FALSE SUSPENSE: KNOW THE DIFFERENCE
Often I coach stories that begin with a pronoun instead of a proper one. "She rose from the stretcher, her face pale and smeared with tears," or "It began with a slow rumble..." In both these examples, the writer has withheld critical information: Just who is on the stretcher, and what began with a rumbling sound? Both are examples of false suspense. It's often the deluded move of a writer who mistakenly believes that readers will be desperate to learn an identity shielded by the pronoun and will keep reading.
Readers want to know what happens and what happens next, but they will respond only to true suspense "that arises organically and authentically from characters and their actions as conveyed to us through a firmly established, consistent viewpoint," according to Peter Selgin, author of "Your First Page: First Pages and What They Tell Us About The Pages that Follow Them." Whether it's a novel or a feature story, suspense must be generated naturally and serve the reader's expectations. Leaving out a proper noun generates confusion, not suspense. Reserve that tension for the real deal.
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