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January 7 - January 7, 2020
For most of my life I haven’t balanced my checkbook. The result was too depressing, to find out how little money I’d saved. What little the years of my life had amounted to. So long as my checks cleared, I’d no interest in figuring down to the penny how poor I always was.
My education consists of a kitchen-table MFA,
A tough-love manual with more practical information than a dozen price-gouging writing gurus would typically provide.
I love knowing a lot of people, but the downside is that means going to a lot of funerals.
If you’re dedicated to becoming an author, nothing I can say here will stop you. But if you’re not, nothing I can say will make you one.
“For anything to endure it must be made of either granite or words.”
if you came back another day and asked me to teach you, I’d tell you that becoming an author involves more than talent and skill. I’ve known fantastic writers who never finished a project. And writers who launched incredible ideas, then never fully executed them. And I’ve seen writers who sold a single book and became so disillusioned by the process that they never wrote another.
writers must be smart enough to hatch a brilliant idea—but dull enough to research it, keyboard it, edit and re-edit it, market the manuscript, revise it, revise it, re-revise it, review the copy edit, proofread the typeset galleys, slog through the interviews and write the essays to promote it, and finally to show up in a dozen cities and autograph copies for thousands or tens of thousands of people…
being an author is nothing if not a small business.
Think of a story as a stream of information. At best it’s an ever-changing series of rhythms. Now think of yourself, the writer, as a DJ mixing tracks. The more music you have to sample from—the more records you have to spin—the more likely you’ll keep your audience dancing.
It’s only in porn that the talky parts work better at the beginning.
Avoid making your reader feel foolish at all costs! You want to make your reader feel smart, smarter than the main character. That way the reader will sympathize and want to root for the character.
83 percent of what people understood came via body language, tone of voice, and speaking volume. The actual words spoken accounted for only about 17 percent of the information passed between people.
We need…something to hide the seam between topics. A bland sorbet. Films can cut or dissolve or fade to. Comics simply move from panel to panel. But in prose, how do you resolve one aspect of the story and begin the next?
Cut fiction like film.
To add a new texture to any story never hesitate to insert a list.
My guess is that people haven’t a clue how to get along. They need a structure, rules, and roles to play. Once those are established, people can gather and compare their lives. They can learn from each other.
It’s possible no one is as lonely as writers.
recognize that reading is a lonely pastime. Don’t shy away from inventing rituals in your story. Invent rules and prayers. Give people roles to play and lines to recite. Include some form of communion and confession, a way for people to tell their stories and find connection with others.
In this world where so many fraternal organizations and religions are disappearing, if you were my student I’d tell you to use ritual and repetition to invent new ones for your readers. Give people a model they can replicate and characters to emulate.
Even in dramas, it’s the background tragedy that makes the foreground dramas bearable.
“Why is it that so many successful plots begin at the family plot?”
To create a story in which the reader never thinks to criticize the characters, kill the mother or father before the first page.
The job of the creative person is to recognize and express things for others.
The best writers seem to read our minds, and they nail exactly what we’ve never been able to put into words.
“What dogs want is for no one to ever leave.”
Armistead Maupin invented Mona’s Law. It states that of a great lover, a great job, and a great apartment, in life you can have one. At most you can have two of the three. But you will never, ever have all three at the same time.
Outside of stand-up comedy, there’s not much oral storytelling left in America. But it’s thriving in 12-step support groups.
Among the easiest ways to establish your authority is to steal it.
Welcome to America, our never-ending, great popularity contest. And to capitalism, where likability trumps everything else.
Instead of writing about a character, write from within the character. This means that every way the character describes the world must describe the character’s experience. You and I never walk into the same room as each other. We each see the room through the lens of our own life. A plumber enters a very different room than a painter enters.
Getting inside a character might seem like a vacation from being you. But face it, you’re never not you. No matter what world you create you’re always dealing with your own shit. Same shit, different mask. You’ve chosen to explore a certain character because something about it resonates with you. Don’t pretend for a moment that writing as a different person is evading reality. If anything it allows you a greater freedom to explore parts of yourself you wouldn’t dare consciously examine.
if writing from within a character, you should “burn” the language. Customize it to the speaker. Even when writing in third person, make the language reflect the character’s perspective and experience.
The pros: Books are cheap to write. They cost little more than time. And they’re cheap to produce and distribute, especially compared with films, which require huge consensus to come together. Books require a certain level of intelligence to consume so they’re less likely to fall into the wrong hands: a child’s, for example. Thus books can tackle topics not suited for children, whereas films can be so easily consumed that they must always self-censor.
The cons: Books take an enormous amount of time and energy to consume, compared with films. Prose can’t convey the spectacle that film can. Most books fail to viscerally engage the audience. They might act upon your mind and emotions, but they seldom generate a sympathetic physical reaction. Compared with video games, books offer no way for the audience to actively control events. But video games are less likely to explore the full spectrum of emotion and ultimately break the audience’s heart.
If you were my student I’d tell you to write the most outlandish, challenging, provocative stories. Take full advantage of the complete freedom books provide. To not take advantage of that freedom is to waste the one chief strength of the medium.
The linguistic anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath has said that readers value surprise above all else in a story.
So direct and misdirect your reader, but don’t tell her the meaning of anything. Not until she gets it wrong in her head.
The theory goes that stories told in the first person carry the greatest authority because someone assumes responsibility for them. The storytelling source is present, not just some omniscient writerly voice. The trouble is that readers recoil from the pronoun “I” because it constantly reminds them that they, themselves, are not experiencing the plot events.
The fix is to use first person, Peter taught me, but to submerge the I. Always keep your camera pointed elsewhere, describing other characters. Strictly limit a narrator’s reference to self.
people measure stuff—money, strength, time, weight—in very personal ways.
our past distorts and colors how we perceive the world.
I said, “No.” In truth, you never say no. You say some polite version of “Thank you for thinking of me. This sounds like a terrifically exciting project; however, I’m overcommitted. Please keep me in mind for any future work…” Because you never know. This year’s advertising designer is next year’s movie director.
When Anthony Bourdain’s people emailed my people and suggested I escort Tony—insiders called him Tony—on a tour of Portland, Oregon, sights, I agreed. Trouble is, to be on location with Tony was to find yourself a small float-y bubble in the surging sea of energy that rushed and broke around Mr. Bourdain. As we walked past restaurants, the wait staff would rush out and grab him, dragging him bodily in, settling him into a seat and delivering every item on the menu. If you watch the reruns you might notice me hovering in the edge of some frame. If you look closer you can tell I’ve taken two
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If you were my student I’d tell you to watch what people do unconsciously. Collect the stories they tell to explain their behavior.
So if you were my student, I’d tell you to listen to your body as you write. Take note how your hand knows how much coffee is left by the weight of the cup. Tell your stories not simply through your readers’ eyes and minds, but through their skin, their noses, their guts, the bottoms of their feet.
I’m really not a tactless dick, but maybe I ought to start to think more things through.
In real life writers are lousy at dealing with tension. We avoid conflict. We’re writers because we like to deal with things from a distance.
Writing fiction will help you deal with tension and conflict in your real life.
A good clock limits time, thus heightening tension. And it tells us what to expect, thus freeing our minds to indulge in the emotion of the story.
