Category Archives: Writing

My friend Cal Newport, with whom I am collaborating on a new writing project, has a post on his blog titled, "How to Get a Book Deal: Lessons From My Adventures in the World of Non-Fiction Publishing." Cal is a successful multi-book author and has a great perspective on things, especially if you’re young. His steps:

1. Don’t write the book first.
   
2. Become a non-bad writer.
3. Identify a first-timer compatible idea.
4. Pitch the right agent.
5. Practice proposal yoga.

Check it out if you’re trying to write a book.

The editors of the Willesden Herden posted an interesting list of 27 reasons why short stories can fail. They recently held a writing competition and didn’t select a winner; presumably all of them fell prey to at least one of these ailments. Required reading for anyone interested in writing. My favorites below, the bold is my own emphasis:

8. Throat-clearing openings. A build-up to the fact that we are about to hear a story, what it’s not about, what it is about, the fact that it starts here, the fact that it starts with something, the fact that it’s of a particular kind, the fact that you’re going to tell it. Cut, cut, cut. Then we come to the line where it really starts, but by then it’s too late: for something to get on a short list, it has to be virtually flawless and you’ve just started with a whopping great flaw.

18. Poor dialogue. Exposition of the story in dialogue is a common failing. “We must be very careful, as it is raining now and visibility is low.” “Yes, and it is cold. Ooh, look at the traffic there,” said Pinky. “Yes, there is a lot of it, isn’t there,” said Perky. “Look out! Elegant variation dead ahead”, muttered Pinky and exclaimed Perky simultaneously. Maybe you’ve heard somewhere that there has to be dialogue. What they didn’t add was, “not at any price.” If there is dialogue, it should be something that people really might say. Do not make your characters into ventriloquists dummies to tell your story through. There can be long passages without dialogue or there can be lots or a little dialogue. What there must not be is phoney dialogue. Another thing, if your characters are well enough defined, you should find that hardly any attribution is needed.

23. Faux jollity. Particularly faux jollity centred around pubs, and particularly around pubs in Ireland. Industrially extruded quantities of guff about distant histories in small town life. Standing jokes that should have been left where they toppled. Weird spastic prose as if the task of writing the story had been given by a writer with a good idea to the former class dunce, now barman. I think humour only ever exists in something that sets out to be serious. Anything that sets out to be humorous is doomed.

25. Clichéd. I’m thinking mostly of clichéd expressions. If I said I’m thinking "by and large" of clichéd expressions, that would be an example in itself. It’s usually little clumps of words that always seem to go together, but also whole concepts that go unquestioned. Cities are always bustling, sunsets always golden, looks always stern etc. The Irish poet Jean O’Brien said (in a workshop I attended) "Beware of the bits that seem to write themselves." In avoiding clichés it is the underlying assumptions that have to be dispelled. A "translated cliché" would still be a cliché.

26. Unspeakable. "Actors call some lines pills to swallow, for they cannot be made to sound genuine" is an example of this syndrome. Maybe it’s just me, but I find the use of the word "for" instead of "because" archaic and laboured. I tend to think that if I wouldn’t use the word in speech then I shouldn’t in writing. I wouldn’t say "I think it’s very cold today for the pond is frozen" so why write it? Anything that would sound laboured if read out has to go. You probably recognise the dismal effect when somebody says something and "it sounds like they’re reading it out". If I write: "The solution to this problem is to read everything aloud first" that in itself contains an example of the problem. If I read out that sentence, it sounds like I’m reading it out. Maybe it’s acceptable in an after-dinner speech, but it’s death to a story. It breaks the spell.

27. Pastiche. There can be cases where the whole story is a cliché, if you see what I mean, which is usually to say that it is derivative in the extreme. If it’s not a simple case of writing to a formula, this is more seriously a lack of a genuine "voice". What I usually say about pastiche is that I’m very impressed by people who can emulate other writers to a tee, because I find it difficult enough just to write like myself. Here’s a little story: When I was a kid I used to sing myself to sleep at night. One Sunday I went to see The Jolson Story (I think I saw parts 1 and 2) at the Casino cinema in Finglas and memorised some of the songs. That night I began to sing them in bed, and trying to sound like Al Jolson. Lying back in the dark, after a while I asked my Grandad, who slept on the other side of the room, if he liked my new voice. I’ll always remember his answer because it said so much. He said, "I prefer your own voice."

(Hat tip: Omnivoracious)

What is a “lyric” essay? Well, if you Google the phrase, virtually every result includes the name John D’Agata, the noted young writer who’s written a couple books which show off experimental essays. D’Agata teaches at the University of Iowa, the best writing school in the country, but this semester he is on-loan to Scripps/Claremont, and I’m taking his class called “The Lyric Essay.”

The class focuses on the experimental aspects of the craft — in other words, the weird stuff. Essays which blend poetry and prose, which emphasize emotion over fact. Long essays which might contain only one sentence, for example, or an essay with a million footnotes, or an essay with only footnotes. When I first learned how to write, formality ruled the day. I’ve loosened up since, but I still cherish the plainness and clarity that is characteristic of good, formal writing that attempts to advance an explicit point. So reading “lyric” essays can be frustrating: they usually challenge the boundaries of grammar and organization and try to transmit their point not from the words themselves but through an emotional effect the words create. The hardest point about reading experimental stuff is figuring out when the wackiness is a shallow cover-up versus an inventive way to communicate something meaningful. When famous writers break all the rules of writing, we praise it as innovative and interesting. When no-names do so, we wonder if they’re just dumb or confusing.

In class, we recently read (viewed?) the book Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy, an historical essay / collage of text and photographs. In the introduction, Lesy makes the following point which I think captures the spirit of a lyric essay:

This book is an exercise in historical actuality, but it has only as much to do with history as the heat and spectrum of the light that makes it visible, or the retina and optical nerve of your eye. It is as much an exercise of history as it is an experiment of alchemy. Its primary intention is to make you experience the pages now before you as a flexible mirror that if turned one way can reflect the odor of the air that surrounded me as a I wrote this; if turned another, can project your anticipations of next Monday; if turned again, can transmit the sound of breathing in the deep winter air of a room of eighty years ago, and if turned once again, this time backward on itself, can fuse all three images, and so can focus who I once was, what you might yet be, and what may have happened, all upon a single point of your imagination, and transform them like light focused by a lens on paper, from a lower form of energy to a higher.

If you read it slowly, it makes sense and is a beautiful way of celebrating how art can affect you on different levels — sometimes independently, sometimes all at once.

John Scalzi posts awesome advice for writers on the topic of money. Why?

Because it very often appears to me that regardless of how smart and clever and interesting and fun my fellow writers are on every other imaginable subject, when it comes to money — and specifically their own money — writers have as much sense as chimps on crack. It’s not just writers — all creative people seem to have the “incredibly stupid with money” gene set for maximum expression — but since most of creative people I know are writers, they’re the nexus of money stupidity I have the most experience with. It makes me sad and also embarrasses the crap out of me; people as smart as writers are ought to know better.

Here are his top 10 – read the whole post for the details:

1. You’re a writer. Prepared to be broke.
2. Don’t quit your day job.
3. Marry (or otherwise shack up with) someone sensible with money, who has a real job.
4. Your income is half of what you think it is.
5. Pay off your credit cards NOW and then use them like cash later.
6. Don’t have the cash for it? You can’t have it.
7. When you do buy something, buy the best you can afford — and then run it into the ground.
8. Unless you have a truly compelling reason to be there, get the hell out of New York/LA/San Francisco.
9. Know the entire writing market and place value on your own work.
10. Writing is a business. Act like it.

I continue to be amazed at how many people romantize the writing trade. John does a good job cutting to the brutal realities.

(hat tip to the always-provocative libertarian Coyote Blog.)