Chip's Writing Lessons #73
Newsletter
IN THIS ISSUE
Correction
Writers Speak | Bernard Malamud on the true pleasures of writing
Interview | 4 Questions with Anne Janzer
Craft Lesson | Trust the process
Writing to Savor | “The Jessica Simulation: Love and loss in the age of AI,” by Jason Fagone, The San Francisco Chronicle
Book World | Prepare to launch
Tip of the week | Take fuller advantage of Google
A way to support Ukrainian’s brave paramedics
CORRECTION
I don’t know if it was a combination of auto-correct and shoddy proofreading, but in the previous issue, I misidentified the author of the classic, eminently useful and inspiring text, “Bird by Bird.” As her tons of fans know, it’s not Annie Lott, but Anne Lamott. I regret the error.
WRITERS SPEAK
"First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it. D.H. Lawrence, for instance, did seven or eight drafts of "The Rainbow." The first draft of a book is the most uncertain--where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better. Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing."
- Bernard Malamud
INTERVIEW | 4 QUESTIONS WITH ANNE JANZER
Anne Janzer is the author of multiple award-winning books on writing, including The Writer’s Process and Writing to Be Understood. She is fascinated by human behavior and cognitive science, and uses that lens to figure out how we can communicate more effectively through writing. As a nonfiction writing coach and developmental editor, she works with authors to get their best work into the world.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned as a writer?
My single most important writing lesson has been learning to trust my process. It’s taken many years (and writing a book on the subject) to truly internalize this lesson.
My personal writing process evolved over years of freelance writing. Because I worked on a project basis, paid for results instead of time, optimizing the process made financial sense. I identified the steps that led to my most productive and successful projects. These included:
Diving into research as early as possible in a project
Using freewriting to explore what I already know and don’t yet understand
Practicing intentional incubation to get new insights
Giving myself permission to write an imperfect first draft
Committing time and energy to revision
These steps deliver the best results, most consistently, in the shortest time.
But it’s taken me years to learn to trust that process. It’s always tempting to think that this time is different, that I can go faster by skipping a step. I nearly always regret it when I do.
Only after writing a book about the inner game of writing (The Writer’s Process) did I commit myself entirely to it. Even so, I sometimes find myself tempted to try a shortcut. But now I resist.
What has been the biggest surprise of your writing life?
When I was younger and dreaming of being a writer, I never envisioned my current path. I imagined myself working with publishers, publishing in magazines, going to bookstores, and being an “author.”
Instead, I’m an indie author, which means I am also a boutique publisher, a project manager, a book marketer, and more.
So, that’s been a surprise. The bigger surprise is how much fun I’m having! I love the challenge of operating in an industry that is in flux, looking for creative ways to reach readers, and helping other authors do the same. A couple smaller presses have approached me about doing books, and I realized that I don’t want to give up the control. I’m having too much fun.
If you had to choose a metaphor to describe yourself as a writer, what would it be?
Writing, for me, is like baking bread, so I suppose I am a baker.
I follow a general recipe, but don’t have complete control over the results. Unseen processes contribute to the final result, like the yeast in a healthy sourdough starter.
My job is to gather the ingredients, work them into shape, and then set up the right environment. For example, while bread dough is rising, we keep it away from the cold to protect the delicate yeast. Similarly, when a first draft is coming into being, we need to keep it safe from the cold judgment of the inner critic. At some point it will be ready for hard critical work, like dough being pounded and reshaped. And we must know when to put it in the oven of revision, and when to pull it out.
The better you get at managing these steps, the greater your success rate. Yet it still, sometimes, feels a bit like magic.
And it’s messy. (I’m not a neat baker.)
What's the best piece of writing advice anyone ever gave you?
Late in my senior year of college, after four years as an English literature major, I enrolled in a journalism class. I had some time in my schedule and figured that it would be fun and easy. After all, I was good at cranking out term papers and literary analysis, so how hard could it be?
[Cue maniacal laughter.]
The teacher (whose name I have tragically misplaced) kept bouncing my drafts back to me for another pass. He challenged me to pare everything down, to cut to the essentials. Without remembering the exact words, this is what he taught me:
The reader may not get past the first paragraph. Tell them what they need to know—clearly and quickly.
What?
For someone steeped in academic writing with its captive audience, the idea that someone wouldn’t even bother to read my words was a shock. It felt like someone pulled the rug out from under my writing desk, scattering pens and papers everywhere. It changed everything.
The reader didn’t owe me their attention! I had to earn it, to make their effort worthwhile.
Even though I didn’t go into journalism, that insight has stuck with me, growing more relevant with every passing year. It applies to nearly every kind of writing I’ve done: business writing, technical writing, marketing copy, and nonfiction books.
This piece of advice eventually matured into my philosophy of servant authorship. It’s inspired by the servant leadership concept, in which a leader serves the team and the community. As authors, shouldn’t we adopt the same goal of serving our readers?
Whether I’m working with my own projects or other writers, I begin with two simple questions: who am I serving with this work, and what do I hope it does for them? This philosophy streamlines and simplifies everything, from deciding what to write and how to approach it to navigating publishing and promotion. Better yet, it de-stresses the writing process by keeping my focus squarely on the reader rather than on myself and my writing ability. It’s not about me at all. It’s about the reader.
CRAFT LESSON | TRUST THE PROCESS
Growing up, I thought writers were magicians and I was screwed because I knew I wasn't.
Writing a news story as a cub reporter felt like hacking my way through a jungle. Panicked, sweaty, I flipped through my notes and flailed away at the keyboard, desperate to make deadline and convinced I wouldn't. I kept my editors waiting, which frustrated them, but they got my copy eventually, flawed though it was, and it made it into the paper. It was a painful process without any clear direction behind it.
As the years passed, not much changed, until one day in 1981 when Donald M. Murray was hired as the writing coach at The Providence Journal-Bulletin, where I had gotten a job after journalism school.
“Writing may be magical,” he told us at the first workshop, “but it’s not magic.”
I sat up straight and started scribbling in my notebook as he went on. “It’s a process, a rational series of decisions you make and steps you take, whatever the assignment, length or deadline,” said Murray, a Pulitzer Prize winner who taught journalism at the University of New Hampshire.
That lesson was the most important element of my education as a writer. I didn’t have to be a magician after all.
By following the steps that produce effective writing, you can diagnose and solve your writing problems. Reporters and editors who share a common view and vocabulary become collaborators rather than adversaries.
THE WRITING PROCESS: STEP BY STEP
1. IDEA
Good journalists get assignments or come up with their own ideas. Editors expect enterprise and rely on reporters to see stories that others don’t.
Tip
Look for ideas in your newspaper and others. Look online, in social media and in discussion boards. Ask yourself, what would I want to read about? Ask people you meet what’s missing in your paper, in your broadcast or on your website.
2. REPORT
Collect specific, accurate information. Not just who, what, when, where, and why, but how. What did it look like? What sounds echoed? What scents lingered in the air? Don’t be stingy with your reporting. (See #8 Iceberg Right Ahead!)
Tip
Look for revealing details. “In a good story,” says David Finkel of The Washington Post, “a paranoid schizophrenic doesn’t just hear imaginary voices, he hears them say, ‘Go kill a policeman.” Use the five senses in your reporting and a few other ingredients: place, people, time, drama.
3. FOCUS
Confronted with a wealth of reporting, journalists can get lost in the weeds, as I did. Good stories contain a theme—best expressed in one word, like loss or corruption—that leaves a single, dominant impression. Everything in the story must support it.
Tip
What’s the news? What’s the point? What does my story say about life, about the world, about the times we live in? What is it really about— in a single word? Your answers point you forward, frame your story and tell your audience why it matters.
4. ORGANIZE
Generals wouldn’t go into battle without a plan. Builders wouldn’t lay a foundation without a blueprint in hand. Yet organizing information into coherent, appropriate structures is an overlooked activity for all too many journalists.
Tip
Make a list of the top five elements you want to include. Number them in order of importance. Structure your story accordingly. Or, organize to build dramatic tension. Identify the beginning, an introduction of a problem or challenge. Then establish the middle, where conflict increases. Finally, establish the ending, a climax and resolution to the conflict.
5. DRAFT
Discover by writing, learning what you know and need to know. Freewrite your first draft without your notes. Go back and fill in the blanks.
Tip
Pulitzer Prize winner Lane DeGregory stashes her notes in her car before writing. “The story isn’t in your notebooks,” she says. “It’s in your head. And heart.“
6. REVISE
Circle back to re-report, re-focus and reorganize. Good writers are never content. Find better details, a sharper focus, a beginning that captivates and an ending that leaves a lasting impression.
Role-play the reader. Does the lead make you want to keep reading? Does it take too long to learn what the story is about and why it’s important? What questions do you have about the story? Are they answered in the order you would logically ask them? Make a printout. Cut, move, add. Make the changes on your computer.
Trust the process. The magic will happen.
WRITING TO SAVOR | “The Jessica Simulation: Love and loss in the age of AI,” by Jason Fagone, The San Francisco Chronicle
A poignant, astonishing story, “The Jessica Simulation,” just won the Deborah Howell Award for Writing Excellence from the News Leaders Association (formerly the American Society of Newspaper Editors). The premise is simple: a young man grieves the death of his fiancee. The story takes a “Dark Mirror” sci-fi turn, however when Joshua downloads software that taps into the most powerful artificial intelligence program that generates human speech. He creates a chatbot simulating Jessica, his lost love, and before long they are communicating in ways that are, frankly stupefying, in their verisimilitude. In Fagone’s expert hands, this three-series will keep you glued to your screen. You can read how he did it in this annotation I contributed to Nieman Storyboard.
THE BOOK WORLD | PREPARE TO LAUNCH
My new book, “33 Ways Not To Screw Up Your Journalism,” arrived today from the publisher, formatted as a PDF.
It’s beautiful to behold and I can’t wait to share it with you and the rest of the world. This week’s Craft Lesson is a taste: Chapter Six.
It’s a short book, deliberately so, part of a “#33 Ways” series with 500-word chapters. The discipline it required for this longform veteran brought to mind a quotation, often attributed to Mark Twain, but which in fact made its first appearance in a letter written by French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662).
I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.
Soon it will be available in e-book and print editions. But first, there’s spadework to be done to plan the book launch, which my friend, fellow 33 Ways author and marketing expert Anne Janzer, has tasked me with.
N.B. Whether you’re with a traditional publisher or self-publish, this is the kind of groundwork every author should lay if they want success. So here’s the process for those contemplating either route; of course, you have to first write the book.
Spread the word to the 1,125 subscribers to this newsletter; couple of thousand subscribers to my blog, Chip on Your Shoulder; 1.5k Facebook friends; 500+LinkedIn connections, and on Twitter, just shy of 100 followers. Help a writer out and follow me there!
These numbers are small pickings, I know, compared to writers with Twitter followers in the tens and hundreds of thousands (looking at you with green eyes, Susan Orlean), but everyone good enough to follow my work matters a great to me.
Assemble an email list of industry contacts (editors and journalism professors I can send an advance review copy.)
Assemble a “launch team,” i.e. , people who are willing to help me promote my book by merely posting about it on social media and spreading its availability by word of mouth. I’d love to have you join me. If you're interested, drop me an email @ chipscan@gmail.com
Devise a Twitter campaign. ProPublica reporter J. David McSwane got lots of buzz with this irresistible Twitter thread, which is a great example of short storytelling and compelling marketing.
TIP OF THE WEEK | TAKE FULLER ADVANTAGE OF GOOGLE
Twenty-five years after its launch, Google remains the portal to the internet. It dominates the search engine market, connecting millions to content every hour. For journalists, it’s an indispensable research tool, but one that’s often underutilized. Advanced search options—booleans, quoted searches (this one has transformed my searches), site and filetype-specific searches, date-range searches and more—can unlock great power, connecting reporters to previously undiscovered public documents and information snippets that can transform their stories.
A WAY TO SUPPORT UKRAINIAN’S BRAVE PARAMEDICs
You have nearly two weeks left to donate to Brave Ukrainian paramedics https://facebook.com/hospitallers/posts/3152910124993874… who save lives every day. I'm donating all royalties for http://bit.ly/chipwow (ebook and print edition) to Hospitallers. Close to $200 so far, which I will match. Thanks.
BEFORE YOU GO
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Thanks.
NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK AND EBOOK
Writers on Writing: Inside the lives of 55 distinguished writers and editors
“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, The Poynter Institute, “Writing Tools”
"A marvelous book for writers, people who have a passion for writing, or simply, who want to become writers. Yet what strikes me about this book is that it is not just for writers only." The Blogging Owl
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chipscan@gmail.com | +1-727-366-8119
Thanks for reading. See you in two weeks.
Love the Donald Murray quote!
Great take-away for the revision process: "Role-play the reader."