Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

by Roy Peter Clark

  You must create a system of support both wide and deep. If you limit yourself to one classroom teacher or one editor, you will not get the help you need. You must create a network of friends, colleagues, editors, and coaches who can offer feedback—and maybe an occasional feedbag.

  My support system changes as I change. I’m a different writer and person than I was twenty years ago, so I refresh the team I have assigned to help me. This should be a radical concept to you, especially if you are starting out as a writer. You may say to yourself, I’d be happy with any feedback at all. I am saying to you, don’t settle for what is given to you. Whatever it is, it is not enough. Work on developing the support system you need and deserve.

  Here are the kinds of people I need:

  • A helper who keeps me going. For years, my teaching partner Chip Scanlan has played this role for me, especially when I am working on a long project. Chip has a rare quality as a colleague: he is capable of withholding negative judgments. He says to me, over and over again, “Keep going. Keep writing. We’ll talk about that later.”

  • A helper who understands my idiosyncrasies. All writers have quirks. The fleas come with the dog. I find it almost unbearable to read my published work in the newspaper. I assume I’ll encounter some terrible mistake. My wife, Karen, understands this. While I cower under the covers with my dog, Rex, she sits at the breakfast table, crunching her Rice Chex, reading my story in the paper and making sure no unforeseen horror has appeared. “All clear,” she says, to my relief.

  • A helper willing to answer my questions. For many years writing coach Donald Murray has been willing to read my drafts, and he begins by asking me what I need from him. In other words, “How would you like me to read this?” or “What kind of reading are you looking for?” My response might be, “Is this too Catholic?” or “Does this seem real enough to publish as a memoir?” or “Just let me know if you find this interesting.” Murray is always generous, but it helps us both when he reads with a focus in mind.

  • An expert helper to match my topic. My current interest often dictates the kind of helper I need. When I wrote about the Holocaust and the history of anti-Semitism, I depended on the wisdom and experience of a rabbi, Haim Horowitz. When I wrote about AIDS, I turned to an oncologist, Dr. Jeffrey Paonessa. Such people may begin as interview subjects, but the deeper you get into a topic, the more they can turn into sounding boards and confidants.

  • A helper who runs interference. On fire with enthusiasm for one writing project, I’d wake up early, get into the office before daylight, and try to write for a couple of hours before my other work responsibilities forced an interruption. Joyce Barrett blessed me with her assistance for twenty years. I especially remember the morning she came to work, saw that I was writing, closed my office door, and put a motel-style Do Not Disturb sign on the handle. That’s good downfield blocking.

  • A coach who helps me figure out what works and what needs work. For more than a year, an intern named Ellen Sung edited a column I wrote for the Poynter Web site. In most ways, the two of us could not have been more different. I was older, white, male, with a print orientation. Ellen was twenty-four years old, Chinese American, female, and thrived online. She was well read, curious, with mature sensibilities as an editor. She could articulate the strengths of a column, asked great questions that would lead to revisions and clarifications, and framed negative criticism with persuasive diplomacy. Ellen now works as a newspaper reporter, but she still belongs to my network, willing to help at a moment’s notice.

  You may choose these helpers one by one, but over time they form a network, with you at the center. You may address them as a group via e-mail or ask them in various combinations to help you solve a problem. You can test the criticism of one against the wisdom of another. You can fire one who gets too bossy. You can send another flowers or a bottle of wine. It’s good, on occasion, for the writer to be the king—or queen.

  WORKSHOP

  1. Look at the six categories of helpers described above. Make a list of six people who might be able to serve you in these capacities. Rehearse a conversation with each with the goal of expanding your network.

  2. Make a list of the specific ways an editor, teacher, or friend has helped you improve a story. Have you approached that person to express thanks for such help? If not, go out of your way the next time it happens.

  3. Admit it. An editor or teacher is driving you crazy. Rehearse a conversation in which you describe the behavior that hinders your work. Can you find a way to communicate this with civility and diplomacy? “Jim, the last few times I’ve suggested a story idea to you, you’ve rejected it. I find this discouraging. I’d like to work on some of these stories. Is this something we can talk about?”

  4. Make a list of the members of your writing posse. Next to their names, list the roles they play for you. Who else do you need to accomplish your best work?

  TOOL 48

  Limit self-criticism in early drafts.

  Turn it loose during revision.

  As I peruse my collection of books on writing, I find they fall into two broad categories. In one box, I find books such as The Elements of Style and On Writing Well. These classics by Strunk and White and William Zinsser capture writing as a craft, so they concern themselves with toolboxes and blueprints. In the other box, I find works such as Bird by Bird and Wild Mind. In these works by Anne Lamott and Natalie Goldberg, I’m less likely to find advice on technique than on living a life of language, of seeing a world of stories.

  The standards for this second category go back at least to the 1930s when Dorothea Brande wrote Becoming a Writer (1934) and Brenda Ueland wrote If You Want to Write (1938). It is a blessing that both books remain in print, inviting a new generation into the community of writers.

  Brande expresses her preference for coffee, a medium-soft lead pencil, and a noiseless portable typewriter. She offers advice on what writers should read and when they should write. Her concerns include meditation, imitation, practice, and recreation. But she is most powerful on the topic of self-criticism. To become a fluent writer, she argues, one must silence the internal critic early in the process. The critic becomes useful only when enough work has been done to warrant evaluation and revision. Influenced by Freud, Brande argues that during the early stages of creation, the writer should write freely, “harnessing the unconscious”:

  Up to this point it is best to resist the temptation to reread your productions. While you are training yourself into facility in writing and teaching yourself to start writing whenever and wherever opportunity offers, the less you turn a critical eye upon your own material the better—even for a cursory survey. The excellence or triteness of your writing was not the matter under consideration. But now, turning back to see what it may reveal under a dispassionate survey, you may find those outpourings very enlightening.

  Four decades later, another writer, Gail Godwin, would cover the same territory in an essay titled “The Watcher at the Gate.” For Godwin, the Watcher is the “restraining critic who lived inside me,” and who appeared in many forms to lock the doors of her creativity.

  It is amazing the lengths a Watcher will go to keep you from pursuing the flow of your imagination. Watchers are notorious pencil sharpeners, ribbon changers, plant waterers, home repairers and abhorrers of messy rooms or messy pages. They are compulsive looker-uppers. They cultivate self-important eccentricities they think are suitable for “writers.”And they’d rather die (and kill your inspiration with them) than risk making a fool of themselves.

  Like Brande, Godwin draws her central images from Freud, who quotes Friedrich von Schiller: “In the case of a creative mind… the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in… and only then does it review and inspect the multitude.” Schiller chides a friend: “You reject too soon and discriminate too severely.”

  Brenda Ueland fights the battle against internal and external criticism with the passion of a warrior p
rincess and the zeal of a suffragette. She titles one chapter, “Why women who do too much housework should neglect it for their writing.” In another chapter, she argues, “Everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.”

  She notes that “all people who try to write… become anxious, timid, contracted, become perfectionists, so terribly afraid that they may put something down that is not as good as Shakespeare.” That is one loud critical voice, one bug-eyed watcher.

  And so no wonder you don’t write and put it off month after month, decade after decade. For when you write, if it is to be any good at all, you must feel free,—free and not anxious. The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny; whose attitude is:

  “Tell me more. Tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out.”

  And if you have no such friend,—and you want to write,—well then you must imagine one.

  For Godwin, weapons against the Watcher include such things as deadlines, writing fast, writing at odd times, writing when you’re tired, writing on cheap paper, writing in surprising forms from which no one expects excellence.

  So far, I have emphasized only one side of the equation: the value of silencing the voice of the internal critic early in the process. You have a right to ask, “But when the Voice speaks out during revision, what should I hope she says to me?” The Voice will be a more useful critic, I say immodestly, after exposure to this set of tools. Armed with tools, the Voice might say, “Do you need that adverb?” Or, “Is this the place for a gold coin?” Or, “Isn’t it time for you to climb down the ladder of abstraction and offer a good example?”

  The important lesson is this: the self-conscious application of all writing advice will turn you to stone if you try to do it too early, or if you misapply it as orthodoxy. Dorothea Brande, Brenda Ueland, Gail Godwin—these writers have the right idea. There’s enough hard critical work to do and enough criticism to face. So begin with a gift to yourself, maybe that first cup of coffee.

  WORKSHOP

  1. Be more conscious of those moments when the critical voice shouts or whispers in your ear. What is the Voice saying? Make a list of the negative things the Voice is likely to say about you. Now burn the list and flush the ashes.

  2. Have at least one person in your circle of helpers who praises you without reservation, who is willing to tell you what works in your story, even when you know that much work remains to be done. Can you play this role in the life of another writer?

  3. Be aware of the moment in the writing process when you are ready to call the critical voice onstage. Make a list of the kinds of questions you’d like the Voice to ask you. Consult these writing tools to form the list.

  4. Godwin writes that she fools the Watcher by disguising the form of the writing. So if she is working on a draft of a short story, she may disguise it in the form of a letter. The next time you struggle with a story, put a salutation at the top (“Dear Friend”) and write a message to your friend about the story. See what happens.

  TOOL 49

  Learn from your critics.

  Tolerate even unreasonable criticism.

  I’ve saved one of the hardest lessons for near the end. I don’t know anyone who enjoys negative criticism, especially of creative work. But such criticism can be priceless if you learn how to use it. The right frame of mind can transform criticism that is nasty, petty, insincere, biased, and even profane, into gold.

  This alchemy requires one magic strategy: the receptive writer must convert debate into conversation. In a debate, one side listens only to find a counterargument. In a conversation, there is give and take. A debate ends with a winner and a loser. A conversation can conclude with both sides learning, and a promise of more good talk to come.

  I long ago made a resolution that will sound like an impossible task: I never defend my work against criticism.

  Not defend your work? That sounds as reasonable as not blowing out a match as it burns toward your fingers. The reflex to defend your work is a force of nature, the literary equivalent of fight or flight.

  Let me offer a hypothetical example. Let’s say I’ve written this news lead out of a city council meeting: “Should the Seattle police be able to peep at the peepers in the peep shows?” Now say I receive this criticism from an editor or teacher: “Roy, you’ve got much too much peeping going on here for my taste. You’ve turned a serious story about privacy into a cute play on words. I was expecting Little Bo Peep to show up any minute. Ha, ha, ha.”

  Such criticism is likely to make me angry and defensive, but I’ve come to believe that argument is useless. I like all that peeping. My critic hates it. He prefers a lead such as “The city council debated whether the Seattle police should be able to go under-cover as part of the effort to see whether adult businesses are adhering to municipal regulations of their activities.” My critic suffers from omnivorous solemnity. He thinks I suffer from irreversible levity.

  One of the oldest bits of wisdom about art goes like this, and please excuse the Latin: “De gustibus non est disputandum.” There can be no arguing about matters of taste. I think Moby Dick is too long. You think abstract art is too abstract. My chili is too spicy. You reach for the Tabasco.

  What, then, is the alternative to a donnybrook? If I don’t fight to defend my work, won’t I lose control to people who don’t share my values?

  Here’s the alternative: never defend your work; instead, explain what you were trying to accomplish. So: “Jack, I can see that all that peeping in my lead didn’t work for you. I was just trying to find a way for readers to be able to see the impact of this policy. I didn’t want to let the police action get lost in a lot of bureaucratic language.” Such a response is more likely to turn a debate (which the writer will lose) into a conversation (in which the critic might convert from adversary to ally).

  My friend Anthea Penrose issued a criticism of the short chapters of my serial narrative “Three Little Words.” She said something like, “It wasn’t enough for me. Just when I was getting into it, you were finished. I wanted more.”

  How could I possibly change her mind? And why should I? If the chapters are too short for her, they are too short. So here is my response: “Anthea, you’re not the first one to respond that way to the short chapters. They do not work for some readers. By using short chapters, I was trying to lure time-starved readers who say they never read long, enterprising work. I’ve received a few messages from readers who told me they appreciate my concern for their time, that this is the first series in a newspaper that they have ever read.”

  Another critic: “I hated the way you ended that chapter after Jane was tested for HIV and didn’t tell me the results of the test right away. I wanted to know now. But you made me wait until the next day’s paper. I thought that was really exploitative.”

  My response: “You know, Jane was tested a number of times, and back then she might have had to wait a couple of weeks for the results. I came to understand how excruciating it must have been to wait that long, with life and death in the balance. So I thought if I made the reader wait overnight for the results, it would get you to better understand her plight.”

  Such a response always softened the tone of the critic and tore down the wall between us. Knocking down that barrier created openings for conversation, for questioning, for learning on both sides.

  In summary:

  • Do not fall into the trap of arguing about matters of taste.

  • Do not, as a reflex, defend your work against negative criticism.

  • Explain to your critic what you were trying to do.

  • Transform arguments into conversations.

  Not long ago, I found myself in a large bookstore where I stumbled on what turned out to be a writers’ group. About a dozen adult writers sat in a tight circle, listening to a young man read a pass
age from his recent work. After the reading, the other members picked it apart. They accused the writer of misusing words, of writing too much description or not enough. I resisted the powerful urge to jump into the circle and indict them for their petty negativity. What stopped me was the reaction of the writer: he gazed into the eyes of each critic, nodded in understanding, jotted down the remark, and offered thanks. He was grateful for any response that would help him sharpen his tools, even when that response bordered on the insensitive.

  Take a lesson from this earnest young writer. Even when an attack is personal, in your mind deflect it back onto the work: “What was it in the story that would provoke such anger?” If you can learn to use criticism in positive ways, you will continue to grow as a writer.

  WORKSHOP

  1. Remember a time when someone delivered harsh criticism of your writing. Write down the criticism. Force yourself to write down something you learned from it that you can apply to future work.

  2. Using the same example of criticism, write a memo to your critic explaining what you were trying to accomplish by writing the story the way you did.

  3. Be your own harshest critic. Review a batch of your stories and write down ways that each could have been better, not what was wrong with them.

  4. People tend to be harsher and more insensitive when they deliver criticism from a distance via e-mail. The next time you receive criticism this way, resist the urge to fire back a response. Take some time to recover. Then practice the advice offered above: explain to your critic what you were trying to accomplish.

  5. Writers often know what is wrong with their work when they hand it in. Sometimes we try to hide these weaknesses from others. What would happen if we began to express them as part of the writing and revising process? Perhaps this would change the nature of the conversation and get writers and their helpers working together. When you hand in a piece of writing, write a memo to yourself. List weak elements you can strengthen with the help of your editor.