Learning from Lin-Manuel Miranda

I just read a terrific article about Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the hit Broadway show Hamilton. The article focused – surprisingly – on his writing practices.

I find Miranda to be an enigma precisely because he doesn’t seem to be an enigma. I watched (several times – it’s wonderful) the PBS special about the making of Hamilton. I was surprised to discover that Miranda is so laid back and – well – young. There’s something puppy-like about him, as if he were just discovering that the world is a really neat place.

And yet he started filming segments for the PBS documentary years before the opening night of Hamilton. That required a lot of business savvy, along with immense confidence in a show that wasn’t close to ready for a Broadway audience.

I haven’t seen the show yet, but I spent about a month listening to disc 1 from the cast album. (I didn’t like disc 2 as much, since it’s about problems that Alexander Hamilton created for himself.)

There’s a lot to learn from the show. Who knew that so much interesting stuff was happening during the Revolutionary War? And that rap could be so much fun to listen to? (It helps that the musicians who back up the songs in the show are world class.)

Several ideas jumped out at me when I read the article about Miranda’s writing practices. I loved his description of the phases of writing (such as “I’m a Fraud” and “I’ll Never Finish”). Maybe more people would do more writing if they realized everyone has doubts during the writing process.

The second powerful idea concerned a friend’s birthday party. On the way there, Miranda had a breakthrough moment with a song he’d been struggling with. He went to the party, wished his friend a happy birthday, and then went home to finish the song. Miranda’s point: when you have a breakthrough moment, it has to take priority in your life.

I have a similar philosophy. Nothing – and I mean nothing – is more sacred to me than sleep. I’m a hopeless mess if I don’t go to bed at a decent hour. But I’ll get up in the middle of the night and write for a couple of hours if a writing project wakes me up and insists that it wants my attention now.

Miranda’s third point – ironically – conflicts with his story about the birthday party. He’s a strong believer in writing on a schedule rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. When he was writing Hamilton, he had be onstage every night at eight o’clock for another show. So Miranda had to make a writing schedule and stick to it.

Miranda’s experiences with writing sparked two thoughts of my own:

1.  Successful writers constantly bounce back and forth between inspiration and toil. Writing requires discipline – but if that’s all you have, you’re going to produce some pretty dull stuff. You need a system for recording inspirations that strike when you’re away from your desk.

Miranda had his notebook with him when he was riding the train to his friend’s party, but he also needed a piano to work out the music, and that required a trip back home. I do a lot of the preparation for writing while I’m driving back and forth to ballroom lessons. Of course I can’t write anything down. My system is to find a place to stop the car and then call my husband (who always says “Think about your driving, not writing!”) and ask him to write a few key words for me to read when I get home.

2.  (This is about Hamilton, not just Lin-Manuel Miranda): Don’t be afraid of formulas and standard plots. After I’d listened to disc 1 from the Hamilton album, I tried to figure out why I didn’t like disc 2 nearly as much. Here’s what I came up with: disc 1 is a traditional rags-to-riches story – actually two of those stories blended together: How an impoverished orphan became an important political figure, and how a ragtag army from a small colony defeated a wealthy empire. No wonder Hamilton is such a huge hit!

I find it comforting to know that famous writers share so many of the same doubts and have to work through so many of the same problems. That’s something I need to remember the next time one of my drafts is so awful that I’m ashamed to admit that I’m the one who wrote it. Persistence, inspiration, toil, discipline – they all have a role to play in our quest for writing success.

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                      Lin-Manuel Miranda

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

Never put a comma in front of parentheses. This is one of very few rules that always work!

We’ll hold the meeting on Tuesday (the conference room isn’t available on Monday), and then we’ll be finished with the project.  CORRECT

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