The Writing Warrior

by Laraine Herring

  Don’t make this mistake with your writing project. Heed the words of choreographer and dancer Twyla Tharp: “Without passion, all the skill in the world won’t lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering.” Respect that your work is a craft. Understand that a hammer is not the only tool in the world, nor is it the tool that will do everything you need. Fiction, poetry, and memoir contain many elements. Your responsibility as a writer is to understand all those elements. What do they do? What can they do for your work? What elements are you strongest with? Weakest with? What do you rely on too heavily? Plotting? Dialogue? Characterization? Language and word choices? Where do you fall short? (Remember, look with soft eyes; be nonjudgmental.) Do an inventory of what you don’t know (and this, dear ones, can usually best be done by trying and failing, trying and failing, trying and failing). It’s darn difficult to know what you don’t know, now isn’t it? With each story or poem you write, pay attention to what you thought you wanted to do with it, but found you couldn’t. Why couldn’t you? Pay attention to where you struggled with the craft. Pay attention to where you struggled with content. Ask questions. Read other poems and stories and ask, How did the author do that? What in that novel filled you with tension? How did the beats work in the dialogue in that short story?

  Don’t be ashamed of what you don’t know. Writing is part intuition, part sound, part instinct. But it is also craft. A committed writer learns all the tools of the craft and knows how and when to use them. She does this by every once in a while painting her house with oil-based paint and watching it peel up at the edges. She does this by more than every once in a while writing a piece that just doesn’t work. She does this over and over and over again, until she recognizes what fits and what doesn’t. Until her voice emerges strong beneath the craft. Until her craft and all the tools she used to build her work disappear and it looks like she just sat down, picked up a pencil, and wrote. Until it looked like anyone could do it.

  CHAPTER 42

  Rhythm

  Everything has rhythm. Everything dances.

  —Maya Angelou

  A normal human heart’s rhythm crescendos and decrescendos in hills and valleys. A normal human heartbeat has peaks of power; it has places to pause; it holds the stillness before the crescendo begins again, and then it holds the thunder-cracking climax at the apex of the hill of electricity. A dead person’s rhythm is gone; the line is flat, the energy dispersed. It doesn’t matter whether the person died at the peak of power or in the pause; the flat line remains flat. Imagine playing a drum without leaving the space when you lift your hand above its surface. How would you distinguish sound? How would you know how to move your body to the rhythm? How would you distinguish rhythm from noise?

  Although there is no single rhythm for a story, all stories have a rhythm. You may think it’s exciting to have one car chase scene after another, followed by a murder and a rocket blast-off, but these events, when placed one after the other, form a flat line because they are all peak moments. Tension, that lifeblood of literature, is gone from the work. The extraordinary has become ordinary, and the reader adjusts to chaos as normal. How does one measure the depth of sadness if the entire manuscript has been sad? How does one measure the release of joy if the book has been one long skip through happyland?

  Sometimes in yoga class, we’ll do an exercise called Laughing Monkey. We lie on our backs with our arms pointed upward and our legs pointed upward. We begin bicycling our legs while using our arms to pull imaginary grapes down from the vines dangling in front of us. Then we’re instructed to laugh. First, we have to fake laugh. Then, the instructor will say something like, “Laugh like a witch!” which will result in goofy laughter that may actually result in real laughter. “Laugh like an old man!” “Laugh like a baby!” “Laugh like your mother!” “Laugh like a duck!” “Those of you too serious to laugh, laugh like a banshee!” And so on, all while pumping our arms and legs. The laughter forces oxygen deep into our bellies. The movement creates heat. The churning in our abdomens breaks up stagnation. And laughing of course feels good. It provides a break for people who were trying too hard to form the perfect warrior pose, or for people who were trying too hard to be a bit more flexible today than yesterday. Laughter grounds us. It makes our bodies shake. If you’re shaking and writing, your words will form natural slopes and slides, natural peaks and pauses, and the vibrations will tumble them down to the ground.

  Remember, you are asking the reader to take a trip with you. Make sure there’s time to rest, explore a little, and take an unexpected detour, before resuming the journey. The pointed edge of laughter will make the slice of sorrow that much deeper. Together, there is balance.

  CHAPTER 43

  Papa Don’t Preach

  Arrogance diminishes wisdom.

  —Arabian proverb

  In 1986, I drove a two-hundred-dollar 1972 rusted green Buick Century. I had dotted the bumper with feminist bumper stickers until Dad told me to take them off.

  “You never know who you might need help from one day,” he said. “No reason to make someone angry who could change a tire for you.”

  I was furious then, scrubbing the bright purple NOW stickers off with a razor blade in the relentless Arizona sun. I had every right to express myself. This was a free country. Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” blared from the cassette recorder in the driveway. I was in love with Billy Joel. One day he and I would meet and he’d dump Christie Brinkley on the spot. I was as sure of it as I was sure I should use my car as a billboard.

  When I first began writing seriously and having my work produced and published, I thought I should (indeed, thought I had an obligation to) use my writing as a bully pulpit. What I discovered pretty quickly was that I wasn’t changing anyone’s mind about anything. I wasn’t opening up the world to a new way of thinking. I was preaching to the choir. Think about it; most people don’t go to hear speakers whose views they don’t already agree with. So all the shouting, weeping, and gnashing of teeth I thought I was doing for the betterment of mankind fell on the same ears over and over again. I won’t deny it felt good to my newly awakened writer’s ego to be praised for my “brilliance,” but some wiser, far quieter part of me knew I was only shouting, not examining anything deeply or critically. Applause is sweet and seductive, and it’s easy to get it when you tell people what they want to hear. But the sweetness dissolves quickly, and you’ll find that not only have you become a preacher, but a writer who has been pigeonholed. What if the day arrives in your life (a day you cannot imagine at twenty-two, but I promise will likely come) when you have a change of heart about something you once felt passionately about? Then what? Then your audience no longer receives from you what it expects and turns on you.

  I’m not suggesting you avoid exploring issues that are near and dear to you. Indeed, you can’t help but do that. I’m not suggesting you ignore controversial issues or avoid making a concrete statement about anything. I am suggesting that when your characters are merely mouthpieces for your viewpoint, readers will spot it right away. Then, if they agree with you, they might carry on reading. If they disagree with you, they’ll close the book. Unless you’re writing propaganda pieces or actual sermons, leave the moralizing and politicizing to other venues. When readers feel they’re getting a message shoved down their throats, they will generally respond by closing off their hearts. Place your characters in situations that are challenging, believable, and full of possibility with no clear right and wrong answers. Then let your characters and the situation duke it out and see how everything changes. Allow readers the space to form their own conclusions about your story’s outcome. Your job is to tell the story. Your job is not to implant a particular moral or political agenda.

  Leave that to the bumper stickers.

  CHAPTER 44

  Who Hears You First?

  Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it a
nd the writing will be just as it should be.

  —Mark Twain

  A title is a seduction,” said Dad. We were still in Charlotte. I was in the seventh grade, working on my story for the school’s short story competition. “A title should have layers of meaning.”

  I sat on the beige and black tile floor next to his La-Z-Boy chair. He had my typed pages in his hand. I had written about a black cat whose family had moved away and left him. He walked all the way across the country and found them, only to die in the driveway before the family knew he was there.

  I wanted to win the competition. This was my first contest, and I’d be the youngest entrant in the field of seventh through ninth graders. Dad had always read my stories first.

  “What do you think the story is saying?” he asked.

  “That you can’t always get what you want.”

  “What else? What did the cat want?”

  “His family.”

  “And what happened to the cat?”

  “He died before he got it.”

  Dad wrote something on the cover page. “What do you think of this?”

  A Heartbeat from Happiness.

  “They sometimes call the vice president a heartbeat from the presidency,” he said. “He’s close, but not close enough for it to count. Or you could look at it like there’s something as fragile as a heartbeat that could change the course of events. And it has two hs in it so it sounds good.”

  We laughed. I used the title and I won first place in the competition, a construction paper blue ribbon fastened to the front of my orange binder.

  My first workshop leader in graduate school told me to stop writing. He told me I had no idea what I was doing. I was in a group with all men, and I had turned in a scene from my novel in which one of the protagonists was raped by her husband. “Men don’t do that,” he said.

  If this man had been the first one to read my work, he might well have been the last. However, I knew he was wrong. I didn’t think I had perfected the craft or structure—I knew I still had more to learn—but I also knew he was wrong about my writing. I knew because my first reader had been my dad, and I knew because I had been writing as long as I could hold a pencil and that I loved writing more fiercely than anything. One teacher’s opinion could not alter that love. This was an extremely valuable experience for me, though. I learned to trust myself first—not blindly in the “everything I write is brilliant” way, but in the solid, rooted “I am a writer” way. I hadn’t defended that person in me before, and it was important for my career that I do so.

  I am always the first reader of my work. The reading must be done with unconditional love. Not blind love, not obsessive love, not jealous, angry love. Detached love. With an eye that sees beauty even under a deformity. An eye that loves enough to prune what is choking the vine and to water what is dying. When I have shaped a work to the best of my ability, given my own blinders, I let it go to others who see with fierce and brilliant love the heartbeat of the work.

  Choose your early readers carefully. They must respect the craft. They must respect the story, and they must respect you. If they love you from a place of ego, it will not work. If they are envious of you, it will not work. If they want to be you, it will not work. If they are frustrated writers, it will not work. An early reader must step aside and step into the work in front of them. An early reader must hold your work like a newborn kitten, amazed at both the delicate nature of its precious young life and at the awesome potential of the full-grown work. An early reader must see both. When you find yours, you will have found the greatest treasure in your writing life.

  CHAPTER 45

  Loneliness

  I live with the people I create, and it has always made my essential loneliness less keen.

  —Carson McCullers

  There’s no way around the fact that writing is a solitary activity. Yes, you can go to classes. You can join critique groups. You can lurk in writing forums online and read writing blogs. You can hang out in bookstores and cool coffee shops and libraries. But you will realize at some point in your career that peace with being alone is key to your ability to write well and consistently.

  I wish I could be pithy and cute here, but I can’t be. There’s you and your work, and whether you dress it up and take it out to Starbucks or Martha’s Vineyard or a Super 8 Motel in a tiny town in Kansas, there’s only you and your work. Your critique group mates can only take you so far. Your teacher can only go with you so far. You’ll never know what you’re made of until you sit long enough with the writing to move through the pulls for companionship (whether virtual or “real”). How long can you sit still before you check your e-mail? Your cell phone? A website? These are ways of reaching out to the world (and that’s an important thing), but they are also ways of distracting you from your work.

  I don’t feel lonely when I’m working. I feel the loneliness when I am avoiding working, when I’m distracting myself from the story or essay. When I am distracted, I’ve let my mind move in and take over. When I’m in the flow of the story, there’s no room for distraction. My characters feed me like friends, and they demand my time like relationships.

  The writer’s loneliness is strongest when we feel we’re most separated from our work. Remember that you created that separation. You can tear it down. Use your tools—your breathing, shaking, and writing practices. These tools help prevent the wall between you and your work from going up in the first place. These tools help maintain your balance, your open energy channels—in short, your flow. When you’re in flow, you realize there’s no separation in the universe. When you forget you’re in flow, you suffer with ideas of loneliness, fear, and tension. It really is the writing practice that keeps you in motion. The consistency of showing up for your work that eases the suffering of loneliness.

  Yes, you may be alone in your room writing. But you are connected to everything, every writer who is currently writing or who has written in the past. Every ancestor in your lineage. The animals and plants that have nurtured you. You are part of the continuum, not an isolated part watching on the riverbank. You contain everything within you that you will ever need.

  Just sit still long enough to uncover it.

  CHAPTER 46

  Betrayals

  It’s always our touches of vanity

  That manage to betray us.

  —Christopher Fry

  So here’s the good news. You can’t betray what you don’t care about. Here’s the not-so-good news. You only betray the ones you love. This betrayal is going to happen in your relationship with your writing. At least once. Probably more than once because the first few times you’re not going to realize what it is. You’re going to call it something else, like writer’s block, or busy-ness, or family obligations. You might call it laziness, or falling in love, or a change in priorities. But what’s happened is that you’ve betrayed your writing in some way.

  Here’s more good news. Writing is very forgiving when you step up to the plate and make amends. However, writing is very vengeful when you don’t acknowledge what has happened.

  Don’t stop reading now. I know this may sound a touch more punitive than you would like. Hang with me for a story.

  I worked for a time at a local black box theatre in Phoenix called Planet Earth Multicultural Theatre. It was a warehouse theatre in the part of town no woman went without her mace. I spent most evenings there, after working my nine-to-five job in a different part of town. I would pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a slew of Diet Cokes and settle in to the theatre/gallery space where I first heard my work performed. I was a playwright-in-residence there for a few years, and I taught some classes in playwriting and fiction writing. I was learning the craft of writing. I was learning how to be a teacher. I was learning just exactly how badly I wanted to write.

  Many opportunities presented themselves to quit, not the least of which was the nineteen- and twenty-hour days I was putting in between the theatre and my “real” jo
b. I loved sitting in the Goodwill-find chairs, watching the actors and director rehearse my plays. I loved rewriting on the spot when I heard the lines fumble in the actors’ mouths. I loved the actors’ input into the characters’ development, but I’ll be honest, I really loved it when audiences would come and want to talk to the playwright. Yes, yes, it was me. Yes, I am young. Oh, twenty-four. Oh, thank you! I’m so glad you enjoyed it. My ego loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it, and true to an ego’s job, it wanted more. When the opportunity arrived to sell a script to a director I respected, I jumped at the chance. It was a small sum, just one hundred dollars and a 15 percent share of the door, but it was the most money I’d ever earned off my writing, and I was sure I was well on my way to the career I’d always known was coming.

  At first, everything was fine. I had input in casting and was happy. Before long though, I watched my script turn into something I didn’t recognize. The director (as directors do) had his own opinion about the play’s direction. He had his own vision of the arc he wanted to see and the themes he wanted to emphasize. Today, I look back and I have no idea why I thought someone would reproduce my play verbatim. It just doesn’t happen that way for anyone. I watched the way the director was cutting the play. The way he was rewriting. The way he was taking what seemed like only the names of my characters and turning them into something unrecognizable. For a hundred dollars.