McSweeney's Ultimate Guide for Writing Better than you Normally Do.

 
Read the article HERE

300 Words

After many months I have recently ended my on-again off-again relationship with Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.  For now.  I end it with sadness that it is over, fond memories and plans to repeat the whole thing again in the future at any time the inspiration (or lack there of) should strike me.  One of my favorite little tidbits from the book is Lamott's repeated prescription to write at least 300 words every day.  Just about one page of writing, 300 words is just enough to keep you moving through writer's block, inspiration block and motivation block.  It seems like such a reasonable expectation.  Just there, I'm already a third of the way done.

This week I quit my long-time job as your local neighborhood coffee slinger and worshiper in the house of Howard Schultz.  At the end of September I'll begin a new life as a full-time graduate student and writing teacher to college freshman at Portland State University (more on that later).  In the meantime I'm going to have a little bit of time on my hands.  You may know that my husband and I recently bought a fixer.  The house itself, as well as the blog that goes along with it, are sure to take up a good chunk of my time over the next several weeks.  But I don't want descriptions of garden photos and instructions on how to paint 1970's paneling to be the only writing I do during this rare era of freedom.

So for the next six weeks, and maybe beyond, I plan to fill Lamott's prescription (pretty much) every day.  Some of those days I'll write here.  As I mentioned, I'll be teaching writing for the first time this coming fall and there is a lot going on in my mind to that tune.  I also want to start keeping a journal of sorts about our new house.  It will be a good supplement to all the photos and memories that we will have of our first real home.  And then of course there is always the house blog.  I suppose any real content there will count, too.  So keep your eyes out for more here soon.  I'll let you know how it goes.

And just to illustrate how easy this is... I just wrote 370 words.

Keep it Personal

If you read this blog you probably know that I write for a local blog here in Portland but did you know that I write two other personal blogs in addition to this one?  In addition to my love for all things reading and writing, I have a small passion for all things domestic.  On These Good Ideas I share (you guessed it) good ideas about all things that are happy and helpful for everyday life.  I share everything from new recipes to DIY projects to art and music finds.  The blog functions as a way for me to keep track of the things I want to remember and share them with others at the same time.  Multiple passions in life have a way of intermingling, don't they?  I have this little passion for design, but I notice that my design choices are often informed by my love of books and writing.  I am really into bookcases and decorating with books.  I also love to see pictures of typewriters and similar writing and reading inspired art.  Check out this picture I recently bought from 20X200.com:

I love this photo and I can't wait to frame it and hang it right over my writing desk.  Anywho, lately I've been thinking about personal writing.  I have most recently started a third blog, this time with my husband.  We are beginning the process of searching for a new home and (we hope) diving into the world of homeownership.  I do most of the actual writing for the blog and I've been working on keeping it really personal.  It is, after all, directly about my personal life.  I've come to realize that personal writing is not something that happens just because you decide to do it.  Really personal writing is something that you have to come into; it is a response to an emotional state that you have to find a way to get yourself into.  You have to really feel something about your subject or else it will come out dry and boring.  For most purposes I use free-writing to try to get into the right state of mind.  I find that if I write long enough, and more importantly without pressure to write certain things or in a certain way, I can usually get to the right place.  For blogging purposes, however, I've found a different tactic.  I find it really helps to imagine that I'm writing to someone.  Not a general audience but a specific person, anyone who might be reading and try to imagine what I would say to him or what I would write to him if he were the only one who was going to read it.  For the new blog I imagine that I am writing to my mother.  We live on opposite sides of the country and since she can't be here to help with the house search the blog is a great way to keep her up to date.  I definitely notice that when I stay in the mindset of writing to her my posts are shorter, clearer and easier to read.  I don't ramble as much, I just tell her what I think she would want to know and I write it just like I would write it to her.  I've been transferring this tactic over to my other blogs too and I hope it makes a difference.  Let me know what you think!

"Say It Like You Eat It"

I have recently submitted my application to the Masters Program in English at Portland State University.  For the second time.  There were a few different reasons that I didn't get in to the program last year, but among them, I believe, was a not-so-strong statement of purpose.  Not that it was a terrible piece of writing, but I was absolutely terrified when I wrote it.  I remember looking at those how to write a good statement of purpose articles online.  First of all, they wanted me to come up with some great story about why I wanted to go to grad school; something to get the reviewers attention and make them pick me above all the other candidates.  Well I didn't have some big story about why I wanted to go to grad school, I just wanted to go learn.  I wanted to be an English teacher and a Masters in English is a step in that direction.  What else could I say?  Second of all, these how to articles suggested that two months and ten to twelve drafts is a normal way to write a statement.  Multiple drafts I'm okay with, but I wouldn't be a very good English student if it took my two months to write ten to twelve drafts of a two page essay.  I started it the night before it was due.  Probably not the smartest idea, but mainly because as a result I was determined that I had to get it right on the first draft.  I remember specifically thinking that I just didn't want to make myself look bad.  Just stick to the basics, don't try anything fancy, there isn't enough time to worry about saying something stupid.  I think I succeeded in this goal, but the result was probably the most boring statement of purpose ever written.

Photo credit: Lindsay Brown

This year I didn't do much better on the time issue.  I sat down to write the morning before it was due instead of the night before, giving myself only a few extra hours.  This time, however, I sat down to write overflowing with emotion.  The application process brought back all the feelings of rejection, the feeling that I was misunderstood, that I hadn't presented myself properly.  I had continued taking graduate classes after I wasn't accepted last year and while I have definitely grown over the course of the year, I felt like this just proved that they should have let me the first time I applied.  I wanted to find a way to convey in writing that I have grown, that I have shown that I deserve to be in this program, but still that I am the same person I was last year.  I wanted to be honest, to be myself, and to not concede that there was any reason why I shouldn't have been in the program right along. 

So I decided to just write it all down.  Instead of sitting down to write a statement of purpose, I just sat down to write about what happened, why I wanted to go to grad school, how I had changed and how I hadn't changed, how I felt about not getting in last year, whatever.  I figured I'd end up with at least five pages, which I would then work down to a more appropriate two, but it turned out that I hit on some inspiration pretty quickly.  I got going on a train of thought and just kept going.  It turned out better than I could have hoped.

I asked my sister to read my statement and she responded with something amazing.  She said that she liked the way I told my story.  I hadn't even realized it, but I had a story after all.  Maybe it wasn't a story about a life-changing event that made me want to go to grad school, but it is my story.  I think in any piece of writing you have to tell the story.  In a cover letter you have to tell the story of why you came to want the job and how you are qualified for it.  In an essay you have to tell the story of your subject.  Even in story writing, where this would seem obvious, maybe we have to remember that we're not just sitting down to write a novel, we have to tell the story.

I am currently about halfway through my first reading of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love.  I say first reading not because I plan on reading this particular book multiple times but because yes, I really haven't read it until now.  In case you were wondering.  I bring this up because of a moment in Gilbert's story that I would like to channel.  She is in Italy and trying to explain some complicated emotions to an acquaintance:

...I'm still having trouble figuring out how to talk.  Giovanni smiles and says encouragingly, "Parla come magni."  He knows this is one of my favorite expressions in Roman dialect.  It means, "Speak the way you eat," or, in my personal translation:  "Say it like you eat it."  It's a reminder -- when you're making a big deal out of explaining something, when you're searching for the right words -- to keep your language as simple and direct as Roman food.  Don't make a big production out of it.  Just lay it on the table.

This is my process.  It's the only way that I can write really successfully.  I can't sit down to write a cover letter or an essay or a statement of purpose.  I have to sit down with the intention of telling the story; I just have to get it all out there, say it like it is without worrying about the purpose that I'm writing for.  Sometimes this requires lots of editing later, picking through pages and pages trying to find the good stuff.  But a lot of times it just seems to work itself out as I go.  Either way, like my good friend Lindsay says about writing and life: you have to trust the process, whatever that may be.  If you do, good things will come.

A Good Idea

My mind hasn't been with this blog for the last couple of weeks.  I think that the Phil and Danny interview was on my mind for so long that when I finished it I automatically switched gears.  I could once again focus on things that I had been putting off because I was (or felt that I should have been) working on the interview.

During these past few weeks, however, I forgot one lesson.  I haven't been writing because I've been focused on things other than what I normally write about.  But I should have been writing all along; just writing about what was on my mind.  So from now on I'll be taking my own advice.  And for some of the things that I write that aren't compatible with this blog, I've started another.  Check it out at www.thesegoodideas.blogspot.com.

Don't worry, I'll still be sticking around here, too.  I'll just have to start working on this kind of inspiration.

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Phil Geffner and Danny Cardoso (Part 1)

Usually these interviews are a piece of cake.  Send out an email with some questions, throw together a short introduction about the person, edit their answers for spelling, post.  That's it.  So when Phil insisted that we do his interview in person I knew it would be a little more involved than usual.  Then we threw Danny into the mix on top of that.  I ended up with a LOT to work with.  What was so overwhelming about it was not so much the quantity (although it did take me hours to transcribe the whole thing) but what was in there.  There was so much great stuff in this interview that I wanted to make sure I was doing it justice; I didn't want to just throw it together like usual.  So instead I did nothing.  For weeks I was paralyzed by the thought of working on this thing.  

As usual, I learned my lesson.  You just have to dive into it.  You decide that this has taken way too long to get done, you have to do it.  You sit down and start writing, you force yourself to get into it.  And before long, great things begin to happen.  Then you get excited about what you're doing and you actually want to sit down and do it.  It's a great thing. 

In the end though, I try not to put too much pressure on myself.  Maybe this interview wouldn't have come out the same if I had sat down and done it right away.  In fact I'm sure it wouldn't have.  Maybe it would have been just as good, maybe it wouldn't have been.  Maybe the weeks of procrastination, in which this interview was constantly turning over in the back of my mind, formed the way I thought about the interview and thus the way I wrote about it.  I suppose that's why they call it marinading.  

Regardless of how I got here I'm here now.  Part 2 is still to come, with a lot of insight and inspiration, the real heart of this interview.  But for now enjoy the first half of my interview with Phil and Danny, local celebrities of the NW 23rd neighborhood.  Get to know a little about their backgrounds, their sense of humor and how they got to where they are now.

Find this and past interviews at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com

For a direct link to Phil and Danny (Part 1) click here.

Thanks for reading!

A Month Later...

No one ever said that being a writer would be easy.  Vacation may not have been best time to try to build a writing habit.  Especially on a vacation with family there is always something to do and someone to talk to and never as much free time as you imagine there will be.  In just under two weeks we hopped from Portland to Rhode Island, New York City, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina and back to Portland.  We saw sisters, best friends, family friends, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and parents.  Needless to say there did not turn out to be a lot of reading or writing time.  On the beach in North Carolina, however, I did manage to sneak some time for One Hundred Years of Solitude and a little bit of writing.

I am still picking my way through One Hundred Years of Solitude and I am loving it.  It is a beautiful story of the rise and fall of the Buendia family over the course of, appropriately, one hundred years.  What is surprising me, and pleasantly, is the whimsical quality of the story.  The superstitions and beliefs of the isolated culture in which the Buendias live defines truth in the novel.  It is fantasy and reality in one package and it is exciting to watch the development of the small culture with changes and discoveries in science and world knowledge.

I am also still slowly enjoying Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and am currently inspired by her thoughts on character description and dialogue.  It makes me think that I should have done more writing while I was with my family or that I should begin paying closer attention to the array of characters that I encounter so frequently at Starbucks.

While on the beach my thoughts were more on description, and of course the natural focus was the rolling waves, the shadows that the seagulls cast as the fly and fight their way along the shore, long lines of pelicans parading over rooftops, white crabs with huge eyes that scurry fearfully trying to blend in to the sand and fishermen with their poles stuck in the sand who may or may not have been compensating for something depending on how important it seemed to make them feel.  Additionally, a common theme was that writing doesn't just appear out of nowhere... you have to actually do something.  I feel like often when I am not writing it is because I'm waiting for some great idea to hit me so hard that it's all I can do not to write it down on the side of a coffee cup or a napkin or my arm if it's the only thing that's handy.  I'm starting to get that it doesn't always work like that.  Maybe it did in school after weeks studying a topic or days of research and agonizing over a subject, but that's not the same as pulling something out of thin air.  You have to do the work and the work means pages of pages of worthless writing before something great starts to flow.  I'm still working on that.

Next on the reading and writing agenda is more reading and more writing... But isn't that always the goal.  This week I'll get Mockingjay, the third and final book of The Hunger Games trilogy in the mail.  Of course I won't have any trouble getting through that ten times faster than I've read anything recently, but just maybe after that I'll get on a role.

Taking the Time to Write

Yesterday my mom asked me about Joyce Carol Oates' writing style.  While I happen to be quite inexperienced with her writing, I was explaining to my mom what I know about her writing habits and the habits and writing styles of other prolific writers.  This got me thinking about the amount of dedication and time that writing, whether as a career or hobby, requires. 

In The Midnight Disease, Alice Flaherty describes writers who suffer from hypergraphia, an uncontrollable compulsion to write usually caused by high temporal lobe activity such as temporal lobe epilepsy and bipolar disorder.  People with hypergraphia write constantly and extensively.  For example, Lewis Carroll, who is believed to have had temporal lobe epilepsy, wrote 98,721 letters from his late twenties to his death at sixty-five.  Flaherty also talks about "normal" but prolific writers, such as Joyce Carol Oates, who do not have abnormal temporal lobe activity, but who write almost as extensively as writers who do.

It's not easy to put that amount of time into writing.  For me, the difficulty is putting aside all the other things that need to be done, or could be done.  There are always dishes to do, mail to sort, stuff to look at online or out the window.  A long day working at the job that actually pays is always a good excuse.  In Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott describes writing constantly, every day, even when she was working full time.  This is what is really hard, the commitment to just do it, just keep going.  Lamott follows the advice of her father, who was also a writer:

"Do it every day for a while," my father kept saying.  "Do it as you would do scales on the piano.  Do it by prearrangement with yourself.  Do it as a debt of honor.  And a commitment to finishing things."

I have friends who write, too and I think we all have the same trouble with it.  One has been writing for years, has even been published.  She tells me, "I'm going to start writing again," and weeks later she's still telling me the same thing.  Another says to me, "let's go somewhere and just sit and write" so we go to the park and we sit and we talk and we people watch with our notebooks and pencils in the grass beside us.  I think that there is value in the desire to write and in the intention to write, but at some point you actually do need to just sit down and write.

See also:  The Inner Manic

Thinking Backwards

I love discovering the ways in which different creative media influence one another.  Among other greats of the fashion and art world that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen interview in their book Influence, Mary-Kate talks to interior architect and designer David Collins.  He tells her that he is inspired by Gone with the Wind because of the way it was written.  Margaret Mitchell wrote her manuscript beginning with the final chapters and worked her way through the story backwards.  In fact, the manuscript was accepted for publication before she had even completed the first chapters (Blair Rouse).  Collins explains how this style of writing has influenced his work:

You have to know the ending; how you got there is the story--because there are so many things that are a series of accidental happenings.  That's why, when I'm approaching a design project, I've got to figure out what it's going to feel like in the end.  I need to think about the ending first.  You don't always know what it's going to look like totally, but you have to think of what its going to feel like at the end.

I think this is often true in writing.  Not that you always need to or even can know the ending, but that it often helps to know what it is that you are trying to accomplish.  The mood, the tone, the style; what you want it to feel like at the end; the effect you want it to have for you and for the reader.  For me, the first draft usually doesn't come out feeling like I want it to, so I have to reread, rewrite, revise and sculpt it into something that serves the purpose that I meant for it to serve.  This is what people in the writing world call the "felt sense," among other names. It is what you keep coming back to when you get stopped, or when you just need to make sure you're staying on track.  Without it, writing can go everywhere and be anything; with it, writing can be effective, focused and meaningful.

Writing is Hard

Most of us would agree that writing is not easy. Someone was recently talking about the "struggle" of writing. I often use the word "agony." You have to find the best words to say what you mean; you have to make it interesting; you have to keep it organized; it has to make sense; you have to figure out how to transition to the next paragraph; you have to worry about whether your readers will get it; and so on...

Take this as a good sign.

One definition of a professional writer (a definition which much of their own testimony implies) might be this: one who finds ways to write in spite of, not without, the discomfort of writing.
- James Seitz

Experts on writing say over and over that a sure sign of an immature writer is one to whom writing comes easily. Immature writers write what comes to mind, assume that it's the best they can do, and are satisfied. Mature writers know that writing is hard, that they must struggle through it, even agonize over it, and that they may still never be fully happy with a final product.

Of course, this struggle is part of what makes great writing so great, and it is part of what does make writing so satisfying. To have worked through it, to have come up with something that you feel is worth something, or to have discovered something that you didn't know you had to say makes it all worth it.

Topic Block

Can you have writer's block if you haven't even started writing? What if the question is how to begin writing? or where to begin? or what to begin writing about? Whenever this question arises in my mind, my answer is simple: start anywhere. Just think of something, anything, and start writing. This tactic can have surprising results, as evidenced by the author E. L. Doctorow:

Well it can be anything. It can be a voice, an image; it can be a deep moment of personal desperation. For instance, with Ragtime I was so desperate to write something, I was facing the wall of my study in my house in New Rochelle and so I started to write about the wall.... Then I wrote about the house that was attached to the wall. It was built in 1906, you see, so I thought about the era and what Broadview Avenue looked like then; trolley cars ran along the avenue down at the bottom of the hill; people wore white clothes in the summer to stay cool. Teddy Roosevelt was President. One thing led to another and that's the way the book began, through desperation to those few images.

I also like Anne Lamott's advice:

Start with your childhood.... Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O'Connor said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just start getting it down.

I find this helpful in academic writing, too. I just start writing about whatever I find interesting about the subject matter, and before long a topic begins to form. The most important thing, as Anne Lamott points out, is not to worry about how "good" the writing is. I remind myself that I am not committed to the words on the page, that they are changeable and that I have that power. I try to remember that there will be time to revisit it later, to sort the good from the bad and to rewrite if necessary. I repeat my simple mantra, again and again each time my writing begins to slow: just keep writing. just write.

Writer's Block. What the Heck Does That Even Mean?

I'm not sure that I believe in writer's block. It is, at the very least, an over-diagnosed affliction. You mean you can't produce an entire essay/novel/poem/whathaveyou off the top of your head at a moment's notice? How surprising.

I have come across far too much information on the subject to deal with at one time, so I'll start with a favorite. This is the introduction to "The Essential Delay: When Writer's Block Isn't" by Donald M. Murray:

Morison isn't writing. He's a professional writer, published and anthologized, but he's not writing. He goes to his typewriter and jumps up to find more paper. He organizes and reorganized his notes, makes a third cup of tea, visits the stationery store to buy a new pen, hunts through the library for that one elusive reference. He makes starts and notes and more notes and folders and outlines, but he does not produce a draft.

He wonders if he has writer's block. He clears writing time on his schedule, shuts the door to his study, and watches a tree grow. Slowly. He makes neat work plans, types them up, pins them above his desk, and doesn't follow them. He drafts letters - in his head - telling the editor he cannot deliver the piece. He considers going into real estate, or advertising, or becoming a hit person. He composes suicide notes - in his head - that are witty, ironic, publishable. He grumps at his wife and lies awake at night wondering if there is a treatment for writer's block.

But Morison knows he doesn't have writer's block. He's been writing for almost 40 years. He is passing through the normal, necessary, always terrifying delay that precedes effective writing.

Murray goes on to explain that this "essential delay" is just a period of waiting that writers must go through before they have collected all the necessary elements of writing. He identifies five of these elements: information, insight, order, voice, and of course, a feeling of need to write. These may seem simple enough but we should all know that they don't turn up overnight.

While Murray doesn't offer much in the way of a solution to this waiting game, I find it gratifying to know that my procrastination is not (necessarily) ill-spent. At least I know I'm not the only one.