The marine air is still blanketing the sky, a pale pewter color and I woke up late—any time after 6 is late for me since I like to start writing by six, but I was awake after midnight reading a memoir by J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar. Most memoirs are about dysfunctional families and the pain thereof, and this book is no exception. However, at the heart of the book is a bar and the men who work there, the patrons who drink there, and the lessons this camaraderie teach a boy about how to be a man. In fact, the theme is about what makes a man and I cannot recommend it enough.
In a voice that sounded like old whisky, this morning on NPR Annie Dillard talked to Paul Simon about writing and how as a mature writer she now eliminates every unnecessary word. She read a segment from her new novel, The Maytrees. She also said, “Everything we know about writing we know from Hemingway.” When Simon asked her about writing habit she said you have to slow down and think. She’s against using computers to write because they dilute and spread out the story and spent 10 years on her latest novel. Don’t you sometimes feel that every time you blink you hear about another book you need to buy?
A few days ago I was teaching my critique group for our final session and one of my students, a lovely man and talented writer, started talking about his writing process. A few years ago he took a course called Dangerous Writing. Tom Spanbauer started the Dangerous Writing concept and according to Wikipedia, “The emphasis is on writing "dangerously" — writing what personally scares or embarrasses you in order to explore and artistically express those fears honest.” Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame is probably the most famous alumnae.
Anyway, I’ve heard a lot of great things about Dangerous Writing classes over the years and since I never attended one, I cannot comment on them except that writers who have attended seem like born-again Christians—full of the light of minimalism and edginess. Back to my class--as were wrapping up for the summer and this student accused me of having a formula for writing, meaning that I believe people should outline and know their characters before they write fiction. Twenty years ago he wrote a novel where he did a lot of outlining and the one he’s writing now is coming from a deep place, but he started by writing the middle of the story.
I countered with the only formula I believe in is that writers need to stay close to their stories, writing every day if they can so that their characters speak to them. But I doth protest too much. I work with writers who want to get published. And over the years I’ve read so many dreadful half-baked and poorly conceived novels that I have longed to charge for pain and suffering. There are lots of people who are typing away calling themselves writers, but I prefer to work with people who are serious about what they do and who read a lot and analyze how other writers work their magic. This is purely selfish on my part because dabblers are extremely difficult to work with and they’re usually thin-skinned to boot…… In the years I’ve been teaching and editing what I’ve witnessed is that writers who know the ending of their story before starting out on the long journey of novel writing have an easier time of it and spend less time rewriting and reorganizing. I’ve also figured out that the more you know about your characters, the easier it is to bring your characters to life and shape a story around them. So if that’s a formula, guilty as charged.
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