Shut Up & Write!

by Judy Bridges

  Confidence

  This isn’t egotism. When egotists ask for feedback, they listen for compliments and dismiss critiques. If they don’t hear high praise, they’ll walk out of the writing group and complain about the other participants. When confident writers ask for feedback, they listen for ideas they can use. They know they own the writing; it is theirs to adjust or improve or keep just the way it is. They own the good and the bad of it. That’s confidence.

  Courage

  It takes courage to write with the kind of gut-level honesty that makes for good writing. When you write deeply, it makes you vulnerable. You don’t know for sure what people will say about you or your writing, so it takes courage to put it out there. This does get a little easier with experience, but the truth is, if you are a writer who cares—which is the very best kind—you may always be a little nervous when you write and when you open those pages to others. You just do it anyway. That’s courage.

  Communication

  If I had only one rule to live by, it would be this: Write to communicate, not to impress. My bulging file on the topic of communication contains a dog-eared poster:

  Jesus said to them: “Who do you say that I am?”

  And they replied: “You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being; the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our interpersonal relationship.”

  And Jesus said: “What???”

  I’m with Jesus on this one. I hate it when people try to sound fancy. I see strength in plain, simple language. In an essay that appeared in Ms. Magazine, Alice Walker describes her mother as a woman “with a look that could make you sit down.” Nine simple words, that’s all, and you not only see Walker’s mother, you hear yourself saying, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Craft

  My big sister used to play the violin, or thought she did. Mostly she chased me around the house making horrid screechy noises. One night she had a dream that I died and they buried me in her violin, my little face barely visible behind the strings. That freaked her out enough to make her quit playing.

  To play well, my sister would have had to study—the sounds, the music, how to tuck her chin and draw the bow. You don’t just pick up a violin and make good music. You don’t just pick up a pen and make good writing. There’s no way around it; you have to practice. You have to study the craft.

  You Are Never Too Young, Never Too Old

  Alice Raymond was raised in an orphanage. When she was in third grade, she wrote a story, and a boy in her class grabbed her paper and read it, out loud, to the other kids. They laughed, and she never wrote again until she was in her eighties.

  The first time she read one of her pieces to me, she read so shyly I could hardly hear her. Two years later, with a lot of encouragement and pushing, she stood on a stage and read to an audience of 250 enthusiastic fans. When the applause died down, she turned to me and said, “This is the best day of my life!”

  Alice kept writing and sold every copy printed of a small, handmade book of stories and poems about her life. When she died, at eighty-seven, I had the honor of reading her poem, “The Rogue,” at the service celebrating her life.

  Oh. Yes. You. Can.

  If you really want to write, you can do it. You can close your email, open a blank page, and put some words on it. You can take a notebook with you to the coffee shop, the doctor’s office, the football game. You can learn the skills you need, and you can see your words in print.

  Oh, Yes You Can

  THE ROGUE

  by Alice Raymond

  A rogue rapped on my door last night,

  The time, ten-past-two.

  I impishly admitted him—

  A daring thing to do.

  He said, “My, you look exquisite

  In head scarf and flannel gown.”

  Pleased, I smiled as I

  Took my curlers down.

  I offered him a cooling drink.

  We each drained our cup.

  He whispered to me hoarsely,

  “Delicious Seven-Up.”

  I mutely asked the watching moon,

  “Well, what is it you think?”

  You won’t believe it,

  But I saw the fellow wink.

  (Please, angels, help me

  With this villain and his scheming.)

  He touched my withered cheek and said,

  “Goodbye, my dear, you’re dreaming.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  IN A NUTSHELL

  The Writer’s Process

  I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

  —Steve Martin, actor, comedian, writer

  Writers have very different work habits. Some write every day, others only on deadline. Some use outlines, others wing it. Some write slowly and deliberately, others slap dash to the finish line and then rewrite. Some rewrite easily, others fight it every step of the way. A lot depends on how our brains are wired, but if you could blend all the habits into an ideal pattern, you would:

  Write every day

  Get an idea

  Mull it over

  Try some preliminary scribbles

  Decide if it is a story or information

  Organize your thoughts

  Do a warm-up exercise

  Write from the inside

  Revise and rewrite

  Edit

  Get published

  Go spend the big bucks

  The Ideal Pattern

  Write Every Day

  Should you write every day? Sure.

  Will you? Probably not.

  In all these years, I’ve known only one writer who actually gets up at five every morning and writes for two hours before he goes to his day job. If you want to feel guilty all the time, promise yourself you’ll start writing at five every morning. If you don’t want to feel guilty, acknowledge that there are days and weeks when you’re just not going to do it. Cut yourself some slack. Say, “My shoulder hurts,” or “I’m tired of this.” Set a date when you’ll get started again and reassess if necessary. You make the decision. That way you don’t need to feel guilty or put upon. You are in control.

  When it’s time to start again, set a goal you can reach. In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron says to write three pages a day. That’s a decent goal. If you’re having a good week, write three perfect pages a day. If the dogs are barking, write three lousy pages. Do whatever you have to do to meet your three-page goal, and count everything—drafts, journals, emails, reports, and letters to the editor. Write bigger if you have to. Use wider margins or smaller sheets of paper. Just make sure you write three pages.

  When you write three pages a day, you keep the system oiled. You get used to making words, to crafting your thoughts into sentences, to feeling the “ink” flow. For example: I’m an on-again/off-again writer, so I make sure I write three pages a day the week before I start a project. The first pages are pathetic, but by the time I need to get serious, I’m warmed up and writing better.

  The important thing is to make a habit of writing as much as you say you will. It doesn’t have to be wonderful, it just has to be writing.

  Get an Idea

  A former Dutch spy told novelist Shauna Singh Baldwin she should write the story of Noor, an Indo-American woman who served as a spy in Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War. Shauna was busy with another book, so she put the idea on the back burner for a few years. Eventually she started wondering how it feels to be a racially and culturally hybrid person in a war zone. That wondering led to several years of research and the writing of the Canadian Giller Prize finalist, The Tiger Claw.

  If you are like most writers, you have more ideas than you have time to write. If not, look to your bookshelves or magazine rack for clues. You will do your best if you write the type of thing you like to read. Why? Because you know so much about it—length, topics, tone, what’s been said way too often, and what hasn’t been said often enough.

  Find a
book that lists story starters. Thumb through a newspaper for headlines that set your imagination rolling. Rifle through your idea box. Don’t have an idea box? Start one. Use any kind of box. Keep it handy, and fill it with clippings, photos, toys, scraps of wallpaper, anything that stirs you.

  When it’s time to start working, focus on an idea that calls to you, one that’s just a little more appealing than the others. Don’t get too serious about the decision just yet. This is a flirtation, not a wedding.

  Mull It Over

  Live with the idea for a few days. Let it soak into you. Let your imagination play around in it. Run a few phrases in your head. Imagine it printed . . . where? In a magazine? A collection of short stories? A letter to your kids? A how-to book for CEOs?

  Or maybe you see it as private writing, just for you. Are there people in it? What are they like? Is there a setting? Have you ever been there? Would you need to do a lot of research? Would you enjoy doing the research? Is the information available to you?

  If a character stays in your head or your idea still attracts you after a few days, you’re on to something.

  Try Some Preliminary Scribbles

  Preliminary scribbles are “sloppy copy” writing. Take a few of the thoughts you had in the “mull-it-over” phase and put them on paper. No need to be fancy or even accurate—you are just seeing how things feel to you. Does the idea hold your interest? If you hope to write a book of either fiction or nonfiction, you will have to live with the characters or topic for a long time. Do you think you can do that? Is the idea big enough for a fully dimensional story, or is it merely an anecdote? Does your imagination fill with possibilities? Do the preliminary scribbles get you excited about writing more?

  Decide: Story or Information?

  Once upon a time the writing world was divided into two categories, fiction and nonfiction. College programs, how-to books, and seminars were devoted to one or the other. There were subcategories like “novels” and “articles,” but basically writing was either make-believe or factual, fiction or nonfiction, and you approached the process accordingly. Fiction was filled with characters. Nonfiction was filled with information. The fiction writer daydreamed. The nonfiction writer got down to business. It was luscious creativity versus dry bones. Zero paycheck versus food on the table.

  The trouble with this two-party system is that it’s confusing. If you want to write about your life or the lives of others, you stand at the crossroads between fiction and nonfiction, or at least you did until the advent of New Journalism and Creative Nonfiction. Then, finally, there was a home for those who use the techniques of fiction to write true stories.

  But even with that, we have confusion in the language. The term “story” is used to mean everything from literary fiction to newspaper articles. You’d think that as wordsmiths we’d do a better job of smithing.

  There is a simpler way to look at things. If we re-divide the world of writing into “story” and “information,” we have a cleaner, more natural way to approach both the writing and the marketing. Stories—real or imagined—are created, organized, written, and marketed in one way. Informational works are created, organized, written, and marketed in another.

  To create a story, you reach deep in your belly to find the narrative drive and the scenes that push it forward.

  To write an informational piece, you plan a logical, easy-to-understand placement of facts and supporting material.

  You use characters (real or imagined) and scenes (real or imagined) in both forms. You also might include information with your story, or a story with your information—but the story rules in one case and the message rules in the other.

  “Story” includes all things that have a narrative drive: novels, short stories, your grandfather’s trip down the Amazon, and the day you fell out of the plum tree. You may include information, but the emphasis is on the story.

  “Information” includes all things written to help people understand: letters, reports, articles, essays, profiles, or how-to books. You may include stories, but the emphasis is on the information.

  Organize Your Thoughts

  Some writers say they start with an idea, one nugget or scene, and proceed through the writing like a train going through a dark tunnel with no view of what’s ahead. Their characters take over; the authors go along for the ride. If this works for you, fine. But most writers find it easier to have at least a skeleton outline.

  My favorite tools for creating bare-bones outlines, the Bubble Outline and the Alligator Outline, are both described later in this book. If you are writing a story (fiction or nonfiction, imagined or real), you can rough out a plot line using the Bubble Outline (Chapter Four). If you are writing an informational piece (an essay, article, or nonfiction book), you can use the Alligator Outline (Chapter Eight). Bubble and Alligator Outlines may look like kid’s games, but they are extremely efficient ways to structure your work. When you have your thoughts organized, your imagination is free to do the writing.

  Do a Warm-up Exercise

  If you’ve been writing three pages a day, you won’t have to spend much time on warm-up. If not, write at least a few pages to loosen up and get your imagination and words flowing. Start with the words, I love . . . , I hate . . . , or I wish . . . , and write three pages.

  Or take an object out of your idea box and write about it. Tell your truly accepting writing friend (mine is a stuffed gorilla named Alfred) why you chose this object or why it chose you. Write plainly and simply, as if you are writing a letter. Do it quickly. Don’t lift your pen from the page. If the exercise starts feeling like the dumbest thing you ever did, write: “This is the dumbest thing I ever did, this is the dumbest thing I ever did, this is the dumbest thing I ever did . . .” until your imagination (or impatience) moves you off the dime. The point is to make words, not sense.

  Write from the Inside

  “Write from the inside” has two meanings. You write from the inside of you, and you write from the inside of a scene. When you combine the two “insides,” you write naturally and powerfully.

  Writing from Inside of You

  The best writing comes from deep in your belly. It’s powerful. You can feel the liver and the heartbeat. At this point, the writing is between you and the page. It’s intimate. You give your life to it. You stuff the idea, the characters, the setting, the action, and your memories and imagination into your belly. Let it enter your bloodstream and flow through your fingers onto the page.

  Writing from Inside of a Scene

  This approach to writing uses your imagination and all the knowledge you’ve collected over the years to write a vivid scene. You select a scene from your rough outline, decide on a point of view, envision yourself entering the scene, and use your deep imagination to spur the writing.

  Revise and Rewrite

  The revision process includes early rewrites, feedback, re-keying, letting it sit, and then doing more rewrites. People use different labels for the steps, but the process is similar.

  Early Rewrites

  Reread your work and fix what you think needs fixing before you show it to anyone. Don’t marry the text at this point, just try to feel the tone and flow, and look for obvious clinkers. If you would like a barometer of how much time other people spend doing this, I can tell you that it’s common for me to rewrite the same paragraph ten or twelve times. Other writers see few errors in their drafts and do more of the fixing later, after they get feedback.

  Get Feedback

  This is where your writing group steps in. These are the wise people who struggle as you do to make music of the written word. They can spot a wobbly point of view. They wonder if this story might be better written in first person. They find civilized ways to make suggestions and you find civilized ways to respond. Do you love them? Not always. But you need them.

  Re-key

  This means literally re-type, re-enter, or re-key the words. Put the hard copy next to your keyboard, use what you want from it, but re
-enter the entire manuscript, fixing and changing as you go.

  “Why?” Because this way it will get better, faster.

  “Can’t I just cut-and-paste?” Yes, but it’s a question of time and quality. Writers who take the time to re-key get to the finals faster, with more grace. When you re-key, you change something on page three that causes a shift on page six, and that in turn causes an exciting development on page ten. You go deeper into your words and into the story or topic.

  You get to skip re-keying if you are writing on the firing line. Reporters working on breaking stories and students writing exams do not have time to re-key. They barely have time to write.

  Let It Sit