Killer Nonfiction

Writing Lessons

I’m not exactly sure when the idea took hold but at some point when life was going well, my bank account appeared healthy, and I wasn’t feeling the need to redecorate every six weeks, I inexplicably got the urge to write a book.

Actually, it wasn’t inexplicable. I’d been living the writer’s life for years, happily turning out stories on a stimulating array of topics. I wrote about prisons and wine auctions. I interviewed inventors and CEOs. I discovered how to create a home-made swimming pool and learned about the sexual practices of dude ranch employees. I loved the variety of the work, the ability to poke my nose into places I didn’t belong, the challenge of turning experience into story.

But, alas, I had no book. And books are what writers are supposed to do. It’s what we do to give ourselves legitimacy. It’s what we do to give ourselves an answer when strangers ask—and they always do—if we’ve written any best-sellers lately. As writers, a book is our red carpet walk, our space launch, and the perfect excuse for dropping sixty-five bucks on a designer pen to use at bookstore signings.

* * *

Through some miracle intervention by the publishing gods, I managed to publish two books in two years. Each took much longer to create, but nevermind the details. All you need to know is that I loved the research, and when writing, I forgot to eat and other people’s opinions ceased to matter. Plus, I secretly knew when my second book came out, lights would flash, bells would ring, and Oprah would realize how woefully misguided her previous book selections had been.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

Yes, I acquired the ISBN numbers and Amazon rankings. Yes, I gave some interviews, received some fan mail, and my mother was proud. But alongside these over-in-an-instant firework highs crawled the shimmering snail’s trail lows.

I traveled across the country to a book festival and somehow mustered up the enthusiasm to speak to an audience of two who only came to my reading after being told they were too late for the “reading” by the legless wonder dog whose inspirational life story had been the rage on daytime television.

I spoke at a book club where few members had actually read my book and the person who gazed at me with the most rapt attention was also the one, I later learned, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.

I read reviews by critics who disagreed with my brilliance. I got notice my publisher filed for bankruptcy. I began to revisit old family slights.

But these exercises in character development were minor compared to the crack dealers who began hanging out in the dark alleyways of my mind, taunting me with all I’d done wrong with my life—namely, having the vanity to think I was a fancy enough to become a famous author.

Ten months passed. I taught, soberly extolling the virtues of the writing life to my students. I still gave an occasional reading, reacting perhaps a bit too eagerly to requests. What I didn’t do was write. Not a single word. Instead, I began dreaming of a more rewarding career as a Mini-Mart Touch-Key professional.

Seeking to distract myself from my misery, I planned a few days at my uncle’s cabin in Northern California. Upon arriving, he took me inside and pointed to a white cardboard box.

“I think you’ll be interested in that,” he said.

The next day, I opened the box. Inside was a stack of yellowing newspaper and magazine articles, on top of which sat an oversized journal. The first page of the journal was labeled “Stories Written Since January 1, 1920.”

* * *

The first column listed the names of stories written each month. The second listed the word count. The third, whether the story had sold or not, and to whom. I’d heard rumors of there being another writer in the family but no one seemed to know the details. Finally, here was proof that long ago it was my great-grandfather who’d lived the same life I do.

All morning, I dug through his box of clippings. He wrote for Sunday school publications like the The Boy’s Comrade, major dailies such as the San Francisco Examiner, and even published a couple of poems in the New York Times. I’d never known anything about my great grandfather, but his stories on Italian aviators, forest restoration and the Civil War revealed he was a person with eclectic interests. His stories also displayed an eerie similarity to my own style. How? Like me, he tended to insert questions into the middle of paragraphs. Like me, he also had a fondness for writing about people outside of the limelight, as evidenced by his story on the annual meeting of The Boy Corn Farmers of America. “Think of it!” he wrote. “Nine thousand boys whose sole qualification is that they know how to raise corn.”

What struck me most about his journal was the workman-like way he went about his craft.

* * *

In January 1920, he wrote eight stories ranging from 1,000 to 4,100 words, sold all but two, and earned an average of one cent for every five words, creating a monthly income of $25, minus the costs of postage and typing services. His output was similar every month that year. Until I decided to write books, I had the same kind of record on my own computer.

After hours spent reviewing my grandfather’s stories, I went outside, eased onto a lawn chair, and began writing in my own journal about the experience of finding his. I wrote about the passions he followed into print, the worlds he entered simply because he wrote, the legacy he left with his words. The more I wrote about him, the more I began to get that feeling I always get when inspired by another writer. It’s a feeling that starts with admiration, is followed quickly by envy, and then culminates in determination, in knowing that if I just put my mind to it, I too could write about forests or farmers or aviators or whatever else happens to snag my curiosity.

Reading my great-grandfather’s journal allowed me to recall what I love most about writing and that is the process itself—the doing, the pursuit, the held-breath anticipation of a new idea followed by the exhaled satisfaction of a finished piece. My passion for writing lies in the execution not the accolades, nice though they are, and somewhere along the line I’d forgotten that. It was time to get busy.

As the afternoon wore on, I began making a list of stories I’d been wanting to write but hadn’t because I’d too busy being disappointed in myself for not writing. To date, I’ve written five of the stories on the list, have started two others, and may even have the seedlings of a new book idea.

My great-grandfather’s journal helped me to understand that this passion for writing is in my DNA, and I can’t ignore it any more than I can change my height. I can, however, work to manage my expectations and focus on what I love most about the work as opposed to what it lacks. It’s not always easy. But it’s always been worth it.

This essay originally appeared in 5280:Denver's City Magazine.

Thinking Like a Writer #2: Managing Fear and Doubt

“Fear ringed by doubt is my eternal moon.” ~Malcolm Lowry, novelist and poet

At some point or another, in almost every single project, writers will confront a massive wall of uncertainty. The writer will start to question the subject or the way she’s telling her story. She’ll begin to doubt she has anything original to say, or that anyone will care.

If she’s written a lot, she may feel the material spinning wildly out of control. Instead of writing a tidy little essay about, say, travel, she might discover she’s also writing about fear and loss and that trip she once took to Scotland and the tiny old woman she met in a train station late at night who took her home and gave her vanilla cake and a glass of brandy. This, in turn, will make the writer wonder about her own mother and how she would never feed cake to a traveler and why it is, exactly, that her mother keeps showing up on the page.

Alternatively, if the writer hasn’t written much, she may regard it as a sign she has nothing valuable to say. Never has. Never will.

These negative thoughts—whatever form they take—lurk like gang members in the dark alleys of a writer’s mind. They taunt. They cause the writer to question. They make her feel afraid, or ashamed.

I’ve been in that dark alley too many times to count, and so have my clients. And what I’ve learned is this: fear and doubt and uncertainty are a completely normal part of the writing process. Let me repeat: Fear and doubt and uncertainty are a completely normal part of the writing process. Instead of trying to ban these emotions, or take them as proof you should hand over your laptop, learn to listen to them. Here’s what they may be telling you:

1. There is a problem that needs to be solved. You may need to approach the subject from a different angle; your original thesis may be incorrect; you may be emphasizing the wrong details; the structure you’ve chosen may be flawed. Typically, doubt is a sign your writer’s intuition is working. Pay attention to the problem it’s trying to highlight.

2. Slow down. You could be working too quickly through the material. The words might be falling flat because you’re not giving them enough thought.

3. You’re misleading yourself. Many writers, myself included, think they shouldn’t move forward with a project unless they know exactly what a story is going to be about, or how it will be structured, or what voice the author should use. The truth is that the ONLY way to understand exactly what you want to say, how a book should be structured, or what voice to use is by writing. Don’t wait to answer questions of form before you start writing; the writing will create the answers.

4. That you care. Read an interview with any accomplished writer and they’ll likely reveal the ongoing battles they wage with doubt. Doubt is healthy and a good sign because it forces you to engage on a very deep level with your material.

 

Thinking Like a Writer #1: Know Your Reader

I know. There are so many things associated with writing that are way more fun than thinking. There's raw creativity. The promise of fame. The opportunity to work in your pajamas. But the truth is that nothing original or memorable ever gets written unless the writer has done the hard work of thinking deeply about a subject.

It doesn't matter if the subject is personal experience (designed to be shared in a personal essay or memoir), or knowledge gained in the workplace (for, say, a how-to book). All writers need to go beyond their easy, first impressions of a topic to understand what it is they want to say and why.

Today, I'm going to start a semi-regular blog column (a blolumn?) called Thinking Like a Writer, which will offer periodic advice on how to peel back the layers in order to write in a fresh, meaningful and thoughtful way.

The first step toward understanding what you want to say and why is understanding who you are writing for. Understanding your audience may sound obvious, but many writers I've worked with overlook this crucial first step. Here are some questions to get you thinking:

--Who is your ideal reader? (Be specific: How old are they? Are they well educated? What makes them happy, afraid, worried? Are there important demographics associated with your audience--i.e., marital status, income, geographic location.)

--Why would they want to read your book?

--What promise are you making with your material? What problem are you solving with your story?

--Why would someone choose your book over the other 650,000 titles published every year?

--How will your book affect readers? (Will they laugh, take action, feel less alone, understand something in an important new way?)

Dig for the answers. Look for the differentiators. Search to find the ways your topic is in demand by readers, but also how your approach will be unique.

 

Writing the Big Book

Every writer has a book he needs to write—the one that has been keeping him up nights, invading his dreams, teasing him with scraps of scene, dialogue, fact, invention, idea, image, memory. The book that in some way speaks profoundly to the core of his beliefs, the emotional and spiritual and intellectual center of his life. The book that will take the best that is in him and every bit of craft he can muster.

The Big Book.

It may be rooted in personal experience—Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes was inspired by a terrifying childhood that haunted him into middle age. It may be inspired by an encounter with a public phenomenon—John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath grew out of his immersion in the world of the migrant worker in California, climaxing as he witnessed whole families starving to death during the great floods of 1938 in Visalia.

Both, in very different ways, write about injustice. Both books won the Pulitzer Prize.

The Big Book is so close to our heart that its very importance flusters us, makes us doubt our own ability to write it as well as it deserves to be written. The event to be chronicled is large, the ideas complex and controversial, the issues public, the themes so universal they make our head spin. We feel ourselves standing on the verge of something significant, yet
reluctant to take on a project so overwhelming.

We’ve been thinking about it for months, years perhaps, the last thing before we fall asleep at night and the first thing when we wake up. We daydream about it when we’re supposed to be doing other things. We’ve lived with it, the great distracting shadow that looms over our other projects. We may have notes, jottings, sketches, even an abortive beginning, tucked away in our drawer. We just can’t seem to get it done. We back off, divert our effort into other stories, other books, other activities outside of writing altogether.

We keep running up to the high bar, afraid to leap.

We know it will be big inevery sense—demanding great resources from us, a large imagination, a big soul. Huge blocks of time. The mental and emotional stamina to see it through to the finish. It’s no exercise. A lot is at stake: If we fail, we fail big. It matters that we succeed.

We put it off. We’ll get to it, we tell ourselves. Some day.

It is common—and a healthy sign—for the writer to approach a great subject with humility, uncertainty, doubt. He wants to get it right, and he’s smart enough not to underestimate the challenge.

But a writing project begins not just in doubt but also faith—that if your passion is genuine, if you have mastered the elements of your craft, in the act of writing you will learn the rest of what you need to know in order to do justice to your subject.

As Steinbeck writes in Journal of a Novel, “A good writer always works at the impossible.”

From "Writing a Book That Makes a Difference," by Philip Gerard.

The Three Things Every Essayist Needs

Recently, I was reading Psychology Today (it's what I read on airplanes; I don't know why), and came across an article about weathering failure. The story opened with an anecdote about Philip Schultz, a poet who was dyslexic and exiled to outsiderdom as a kid. This experience--the loneliness of having so little expected of him and the pain of being overlooked and forgotten--gave the poet plenty of time to pay careful attention to his interior life. And this, in turn, is what allowed him to become a poet.

As the article's author, Bruce Grierson, brilliantly summed up:

All a writer really needs are the self-knowledge to decipher his feelings, the judgment to recognize the original ones, and the courage to make them public.

If only it were that easy...

Finding Meaning

Robert Root is a friend, a terrific writing instructor, and author of several nonfiction books including The Nonfictionist's Guide To Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction. I love what Bob has to say about the process of finding meaning in writing -- something that is especially relevant to writers of essays and personal memoir:

This is what a writer knows about writing:
 
Writing comes out of the writer.

The hardest writing is the writing about things you know nothing about. Sometimes the things you know nothing about include yourself and your attitudes and opinions.
 
The most rewarding writing is the writing that takes you to a place you haven’t been before in your understanding, your knowledge, your comprehension. Much of the time the place you haven’t been before is inside yourself.
 
There isn’t only one way to write anything, let alone only one way to write everything. Most of the time new writing requires new strategies or revisions to old ones.
 
The writer writes by ear, by instinct, by intuition, not by rote, by rule, by requirement. Like riding a bicycle, writing takes practice in order to develop a sense of balance. Like tuning a guitar, writing takes repetition in order to hear when a work is in tune.
 
Not everything you write will be as good as the best thing you could write. Even record-breaking home-run hitters strike out; even gold-medalist skaters fall down.
 
Writing is a process. Sometimes even the most experienced writers forget to give themselves room to experience the process. 
 
Most of the time meaning doesn’t emerge until the end of the process.

An excerpt from “Double Life” by Robert Root

The Art of Storytelling: What's Your Big Idea?*

A good story needs more than interesting characters and dramatic moments in order to work. It also requires a big idea. A good story makes a point. It says something. 

Imagine that you are listening to a friend go on and on about the latest problems with her boyfriend. The problems are dramatic¬the two of them fight like cats and dogs¬but the drama doesn't go anywhere. They fight, make up, fight again¬ all for no good reason or purpose. Soon you get tired of listening. What's the point of these stories?

On the other hand, another friend tells you about a date that she had with a guy she didn't expect to like. He was too short, too nice, too nervous. And yet, in conversation she finds that he likes her favorite baseball team, the Cleveland Indians. That he cooks a terrific risotto. That he loves Russian novels. None of these details are terribly dramatic, but her story has a point: you can't judge a book by its cover. Love lurks in the most unexpected places. You listen to her story from beginning to end because you feel that she is going somewhere with it. Her story is satisfying because it makes a point. 
   
Consider the movies you like best, and why you like them. Think about what they "say" to you. Love conquers all; love doesn't conquer all. War is necessary; war is waste. Anybody can be a hero; the world needs a hero. All of these ideas are familiar: in fact, we've all heard stories that make these points. And yet, somehow, without a familiar point, a story just doesn't seem like a story. It seems like a rambling, pointless waste of our time. 

In fact, all story ideas come from a handful of structures. Different people have different ways of defining these plot structures, but for our purposes we define them as follows:
 

• Coming of Age Plot: The young character matures to understand something about the world he lives in, and his role in it.
• Redemption Plot: The character is saved, or saves someone else.
• Punitive Plot: The character is punished for his wrongdoings.
• Testing Plot: The character is tempted or challenged, but retains his values.
• Education Plot: The character makes a deep change in his view of life, almost (but not) always from the negative to the positive.
• Fulfillment Plot: The character achieves his heart's desire.
• Moral Plot: The character learns a moral lesson. 

A good story will use one of these plots to get to its big idea. The "big idea" is your own particular point¬it's your "take" on one of the common plot structures above. For instance, if you are writing a coming of age story, your "big idea" might be that coming of age means coming to terms with the fact that your parents are imperfect. Or you might be arguing that coming of age means finding your purpose in the world. Or you might say that coming of age means finding out that you can change nothing in your world except yourself. When you have your "big idea," you can begin to work out the particulars of your own unique story. 

For while your "big idea" may be archetypal and familiar, your story has to be unique. When you combine your big idea with your character, you've taken a big step in making your idea a story - in short, you've taken an age-old issue like "redemption" and put it to work in a very particular moment in a very particular person's life. The story of redemption will be different depending on your character's gender, socio-economic class, point in history, and so on. Different forces will be at work, and these forces will play out in different ways. The more vividly you portray these forces, the better your story. 

*From http://www.dartmouth.edu/~shortflm/process/exercises.html

The Inside Scoop on Writing for The New Yorker

Dan Baum, former staff writer for The New Yorker, dishes on what it's really like writing -- and then not writing -- for The Magazine That's Every Writer's Dream: http://www.danbaum.com/Nine_Lives/New_Yorker_tweets.html.

Bad Metaphors

When struggling to come up with the perfect metaphor to bring a scene to life, here are examples of what you should not do. (These allegedly come from high school student papers.)

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a thigh master.  

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.  

He spoke with wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.  

She grew on him like E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.  

She had a deep throaty genuine laugh like that sound a dog makes just before he throws up.  

Her vocabulary was as bad, as, like, whatever.

Writing Prompt: Can you do worse? Share your bad metaphors here.

Truth in Narrative Nonfiction

There is great debate today about truth-versus-fiction in works of creative nonfiction. Some writers feel that getting at the emotional truth of a story is enough – and that they should have license to invent dialogue, rearrange chronology and create composite characters. After all, they claim, it’s “their” story.

Others believe that literal truth is just as, if not more, important. All writers have to decide for themselves where they fall on this spectrum.

That said, there are several good reasons for doing the hard work of uncovering both the emotional and literal truth in a story:

1. Legally, truth is an absolute defense in this country. If you are writing about events involving real people, and you make up a scenario that defames another person, you have no legal leg to stand on. But if you tell a story accurately, and someone merely disagrees with your portrayal, you are in the clear.

2. Ethically, when you label a work “non-fiction,” you have a responsibility to your publisher and your readers to stick with the truth. One need only look to the James Frey (“A Million Little Pieces”) debacle to see what can happen when writers play fast and loose with the truth.

3. Your credibility can suffer, when you don’t do the due diligence to make sure your work is completely accurate. If a reader catches an error or fabrication in one part of your work, they will begin to question the rest of it.

4. Artistically, the challenge of writing creative nonfiction is the challenge of making art while also dealing with the inconvenience of facts.

One Writer's Tax Return -- A Critique

This is something I wrote recently for a fundraiser at Lighthouse Writers (and, if you must know, for the Shouts and Murmurs column of the New Yorker, which rejected it before it even arrived -- or so it seemed). So, in the just-for-fun category...

Dear Taxpayer

In keeping with the national spirit of renewal, the Internal Revenue Service recently started providing personalized critiques of selected federal tax returns. As Peter Kabibble, IRS commissioner, explains: “We believe everyone has the talent and ability to become a better taxpayer. Yes, some people are more naturally talented in this arena. But with a little support and feedback, we believe every American can acquire the skills necessary to craft the kind of return that would make their grandchildren proud.”

Dear Taxpayer:

Thank you so much for your recent submission to the 2008 tax fund. After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that your return does not meet our needs at this time. While your submission was admirable in its reach – we especially enjoyed the clever juxtaposition of the words “writer” and “income” -- we ultimately felt the United States Treasury would benefit most from returns in which actual taxes were involved.
 
However, because you are clearly a taxpayer with promise, we thought it might be useful to provide specific feedback on your submission.
 
For the most part, we found the characterization of your taxpayer to be quite convincing. Given the taxpayer’s job classification as a writer – known in federal parlance as an “LMNOP” – we felt it fitting that your taxpayer would not claim any interest income, investment property or offshore oil leases, but that he would list several changes of address, including one poetically referred to as “the streets of Laredo.”
 
Although a relatively new auditor might dismiss this taxpayer as a stereotypical LMNOP, your pinpoint details – especially in the itemized deductions -- kept the character grounded in reality. Among the deductions that rang true:

• --Four Koosh balls
• --Six bottle openers
• --A case of Kleenex (although in the future you should probably use the non-brand specific “facial tissues”)
• --The entry fee for writing contests sponsored by Mrs. Hardy’s Microwavable Chicken; and,
• --127 books about writing, including one titled, “Why God, Why?”

Added to the long list of strengths, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the believability of your taxpayer’s voice. Although we’re not accustomed to receiving handwritten addendums, this taxpayer’s pleading tone rang true, particularly when trying to convince us of the deductibility of three whistles and a gondolier’s shirt, which the taxpayer claimed were necessary to “get in the mood.”
 
While all this shows great promise for future submissions, here are some things you may wish to consider for next year:

1. Secondary Characters: While the hero of your return was memorable, we questioned the believability of your secondary characters – what we call “dependents.” The IRS does not consider dogs, snakes or mynah birds to be legitimate deductions, nor would we allow you to write off your “muse,” even if, as you explained, your muse answers to the name Babycakes and once convinced you to buy a boat.
2. Setting: As an ardent supporter of virtual work, the IRS is happy to allow legitimate deductions for home office expenses. That said, it is assumed that the “office” indeed be in the “home” and not, as you claim, in the employee breakroom at Turntables R Us.
3. Tense: Generally speaking, tax returns record a narrative of events that have already occurred. Thus, the simple past tense usually works best, as in, “I drove 678 miles for work.” We found it a bit disorienting and overwrought when you jumped into the past perfect with such statements as, “I would have driven 678 miles for work if I had a car like you people.”

We sincerely hope our feedback has been useful, and that you will consider resubmitting to the IRS again next year.

Sincerely,
The United States Department of Internal Revenue

The Writer's Muse

I’ve been thinking about the writer’s muse lately – where it comes from and how to stay on friendly terms with it.  (This could be because we are not currently on friendly terms, but that’s another story.)

There are two general schools of thought about writers and inspiration. The first says that the most creative breakthroughs come in the form of Eureka! moments. These are the fully formed creative breakthroughs that wake you up in the middle of the night -- or while showering – and give you all the clarity you’ve been seeking on a project. I’ve been writing all my life and I’ve had less than five of these Eureka! breakthroughs.

The other school of thought regarding inspiration is something called Variations on a Theme. This approach says that creativity tends to arise as an offshoot of a creative endeavor already underway. Variations occur when you are working on a story and a new – and better – structure presents itself, or when you’re slaving away on an essay and it gradually, through consistent effort, becomes much funnier or insightful or engaging.

While the Eureka! moment is the most prized form of inspiration, in my experience, Variations on a Theme is the most common.

How can writers capture the muse – in both its forms – so that you can gain its help when necessary? I wish I knew. The only things that have worked for me is to: a. keep writing; b. go for a walk; and c. read the work of other writers who inspire me (this is usually the most effective). These aren't terribly sexy suggestions, I know -- which is why I’d love to hear your thoughts about how you capture your own muse.

In the meantime, here are some thoughts from other creative people about their muses:

“The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.”
--Stephen Nachmanovitch, musician and educator

 “Spend time every day listening to what your muse is trying to tell you”
--Saint Bartholomew

“When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go . . . The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back!”
--Judy Collins

“So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.”
--William S. Burroughs

Why Take a Writing Class?

Ask people why they are taking writing classes and most often you'll hear it's because they want to get published. Which makes sense. The better writer you are, the greater your chances are of being published. But publishing is such a tough game that focusing on publishing as the sole reason for taking writing classes is like focusing on Carnegie Hall as the sole reason for learning the piano.

For years, I've been telling my students that it would be healthier for them to focus on other rewards -- besides publishing -- that they get from writing classes. But I don't think I articulated the reasons why very well. I certainly didn't articulate them as well as Barbara Moe, a current student, who recently wrote this fabulous list:

The Elixir List (or some reasons why it's nice to take a writing class):
1) It's enjoyable to get creative with words (at least as much fun as doing the crossword puzzle).
2) Writing keeps your brain in gear.
3) Classes put you in touch with like-minded people.
4) Learning to write shines new light on your reading.
5) Writing gives you a new way of looking at the world.
6) If you keep writing and revising (and writing and revising) and finally dare to send something out--over and over and over again--someday you might get published.

Getting Started on the Personal Essay

So, you've got a personal experience you've been wanting to write about but don't know how to get started. Try this:

1.  Make a list of vivid personal experiences you’ve been wishing to write about.

2.   Next to that list, in another column, write down a word or two (or three) that describes the conflict inherent in each experience. Try writing it this way: This is a story about Me versus X. The best stories have conflict and tension at their core -- if an experience doesn't have any tension, it probably won't make for a good story.

3.   In yet another column, write what larger truth the story is about. At this point, this “larger truth” will be your best guess. More often than not, the larger truth will change as you write the story. Another way to look at the larger truth is to consider what kind of transformation the narrator undergoes as a result of the experience. All stories record a pattern of change -- it's your job as the essayist to determine how an experience changed you. (Hint: Usually the transformation in a personal essays is the narrator's realization of something new.)

4.   In one final column, make a list describing who you were and how you acted during each experience (i.e., fearful, conceited, proud, anxious, etc.). The idea is to become more objective about your actions prior to writing about them.

Finally, after you’ve made your list, choose the experience that has the most inherent conflict, and write a page or two wherein you begin to explore the experience, develop yourself as a character and hint at the larger truth of the story. Don’t worry if the story is not complete. The idea is to get started generating some new material.

Avoiding the "L" word, and the "H" word, and the "E" word, and the...

There's a lot of talk in writing workshops about the difference between "showing" versus "telling." The best writers are those who don't tell the reader what a character was experiencing (e.g. He got mad.). Instead, they show the reader the character using vivid detail. (His jaw muscles tightened, his face turned the color of canned ham and slowly he began to clench and unclench his left fist.)

The idea behind showing versus telling is two-fold: 1) When readers can visualize exactly what is happening on the page, they become more involved in a story. They feel as if they are there. And, 2) When readers are allowed to interpret someone's actions (Ohhhh, he must be getting angry) they feel smart and engaged, as if they are there interpreting the scene.

All storytellers want readers to become engaged in their stories, and they do this best by withholding generalized descriptions of emotions. Instead of telling the reader that a character is in love, they depict it through action and dialogue and character description. Instead of saying that a character hated someone, they show that character action out his hateful tendencies. Instead of labeling someone as envious, they show what envy looks like, in action.

As you work on your new story, see if you can cross out thosebig emotion words -- Love, Hate, Envy, Lust, Happiness, Sadness, Anger, Anxiety, etc., --and replace them with action and scene and dialogue and description. Chances are good, the story will be much richer for it.

And by the way, the technique of showing versus telling works regardless of whether you're talking about a story told on the page, a story recited to an audience, or a story sung in song. In fact, E.Y. Harburg, who wrote the lyrics for the "The Wizard of Oz," used to pride himself on being able to think up as many different ways as possible to write about love without actually using the word.

Writing Beyond Your Comfort Zone

Over the last few weeks, I've had several conversations with students that dealt with the issue of writing and fear. Fear of disclosure. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation. Fear that they are just not good enough to make it as a writer. To which I say... Bravo! All that fear means they are taking the writing seriously.

In the midst of thinking about fear, I came across this quote by one of my favorite authors, John Irving:

"If you don't feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn't very vital. If you don't feel like you are writing somewhat over your head, why do it? If you don't have some doubt of your authority to tell this story, then you are not trying to tell enough."

Confessions of a Procrastinator

Let's say it's Friday morning and you have some type of creative project due Monday. You've postponed the project for weeks because the right ideas weren't forthcoming. But now, the deadline is looming, you feel as if you've been living on diet pills and black coffee, and you're trying to determine how to generate the creativity you need in such a short time frame. Let's say the project is something like, oh, a personal essay.

Seeking an environment sure to stimulate creativity and concentration, you decide to join a friend in the mountains for the weekend. While she attends a conference, you'll have long, uninterrupted hours of joyful productivity.

You check into the hotel, your friend heads to her workshop, and you wander around the hotel room. You spin the dial for the ceiling fan trying to figure out which direction makes the fan go slower. You look out the courtyard window convinced you'd be more creative if only you had a river view. You eye your folder full of notes on the coffee table and feel like you're back in college avoiding a term paper on the history of journalism. 

White noise! That's what you need to stimulate the creative juices! You gather your notes and trek down to the lobby. On the way, you see a sign for the hotel spa and before you know it you're inquiring about a hot stone massage. Relaxation! That's what you need to be creative! You hear the price and quickly calculate you can either purchase one, 50-minute massage or two pairs of on-sale shoes. You opt for the shoes, thank the muscular blond woman behind the counter, and continue your search for a creative work spot. 

You round the corner into the lobby where you see, of all things, a hotel library complete with dark floor-to-ceiling bookcases and overstuffed chairs. That, for sure, is the best place to get your project done.

You settle into a wingback chair. It's a little drafty on your ankles so you move to another chair where the pillow is too big so you move once again. Finally, you settle onto a couch and smile faintly at a middle-aged woman who is reading a paperback on the loveseat nearby. She seems upset with you for some reason.

After reviewing your notes, you close your eyes and try to settle your mind in an effort to let the best creative ideas emerge. Instead, you become distracted by a conversation about a lost luggage tag.

First Lede, Real Lead

In its current issue, the journal Creative Nonfiction has published three edited essays along with the original versions. The journal is asking readers to review the published pieces -- in which the original beginnings were eliminated in favor of starting the story a few paragraphs or pages later -- and ask themselves: Did these changes make the stories more effective? What was lost in the editing process? Read what the authors have to say and join the discussion here.

Putting Your Personal Myth to Work

In the last post, I talked about how each of us creates a personal myth to explain the stories of our lives. Understanding these personal myths helps us understand the lens through which we view the world.

Understanding mythic structure can also help you in your work as a writer. Once you understand the different forms, you can:

• Understand what you might be leaving out of a story. A romantic hero, for example, will lose her allure if the obstacles she faces aren’t challenging enough.
• Get yourself out of writing rut. For instance, if you find yourself continually drawn to ironic stories where ambiguity rules, try experimenting with another genre where the theme or moral or message is more clear-cut.
• Overcome writer’s block by analyzing the genre you’re working in to see how other writers have approached it.
  
• Understand the lens through which you critique others. Don’t push fellow workshoppers toward a happy ending (your myth), when a tragic outcome is more fitting.
  
• Identify the biases of agents, editors and publishers, and in the process, avoid shopping your story places where it won’t be appreciated.
  
• Accept the fact that not everyone will like what you write – not because your writing sucks (and I mean that politely, of course), but because people have different ideas about what constitutes a good story.
  
• Finally, and most importantly, understanding your personal myth can help you become more self-aware of what drives you as a writer and a human being.

Understanding Your Personal Myth -- Part I

Human beings have a tendency to make sense of subjective experience by constructing stories about the events in their lives. My first marriage failed because of X. I got cancer because of Y. Lindsay Lohan is more famous than I am because of Z. But the way we choose to interpret events is often heavily influenced by the myths we’ve created about our own lives.

Think about the way you talk about your childhood. Do you paint a portrait of a dysfunctional family? An idyllic youth? A childhood filled with obstacles to be overcome? As Dan P. McAdams explains in Stories We Live By, each of us creates a personal myth whose details are like no other story in the world. This myth, this narrative we’ve put down about our lives, helps us find meaning and create our own identity.

Although our personal myths can take many forms, they are not unlimited. Literary scholars believe there are four general story forms – comedy, romance, tragedy and irony – that can be used to describe our myths. As writers it’s important to understand which of these we most identify with. Why? Because many of us choose to read stories that relate to our own individual myths, and are drawn to writing stories that follow a similar narrative arc. 

As you read the descriptions below, think about which mythic form you most identify with. Chances are good that particular form is also reflected in the books on your nightstand and the stories in your computer.