Letters to a Young Writer

by Colum McCann

  Punctuation matters. In fact, sometimes it’s the life or death of a sentence. Hyphens. Periods. Colons. Semicolons. Ellipses. Parentheses. They’re the containers of a sentence. They scaffold your words. Should a writer know her grammar? Yes, she should. My husband and me, or my husband and I? Their or they’re or there? It’s or its or its’? Where you at? I’m doing good, thanks. Toward or towards? The pitfalls are just about everywhere.

  Don’t overuse the semicolon; it is a muscular comma when used correctly. Parentheses in fiction draw far too much attention to themselves. Learn how to use the possessive correctly as in most good writer’s work. (Oops.) Never finish a sentence with an at. (Sorry.) Avoid too many ellipses, especially at the end of a passage, they’re just a little too dramatic…(See?)

  Grammar changes down through the years: just ask Shakespeare or Beckett or the good folks at The New Yorker. The language of the street eventually becomes the language of the schoolhouse. It’s the difference between the prescriptive and the descriptive. And remember that if (or should we say when?) you are published, a copy editor will fix your grammatical errors, or at least suggest changes. So you do have a safety net of sorts.

  So much depends, as William Carlos Williams might have said, upon the red wheelbarrow—especially if the barrow itself stands solitary at the end of the line.

  But then again, a sentence can be over-examined. Good grammar can slow a sentence—or indeed a wheelbarrow—down. The perfect runalong of words can sound so stiff. Every now and then we have to disregard the serial comma, or leave our participles dangling, even in the rudest way. Sometimes we make a mistake on purpose. Perhaps knowing the difference between a main clause and a dependent clause doesn’t matter so much so long as you can intuit the difference. You might want to call the idea of capitalization into question. The sentence might look better with velcro rather than Velcro, or Hoover rather than hoover. On occasion we write a sentence that isn’t, in fact, correct, but it sings. And the question is: Would you rather be the ornithologist or the bird?

  Writers feel the grammar rather than knowing it. This comes from good reading. If you read enough, the grammar will come. In the end it’s the language itself—the shimmyshine of it—that matters so much more than the manners the grammar police want to put upon it.

  Word.

  There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

  —ALDOUS HUXLEY

  Research is the bedrock of nearly all good writing, even poetry. We have to know the world beyond our own known world. We have to be able to make a leap into a life or a time or a geography that is not immediately ours. Often we will want to write out of gender, race, time. This requires deep research.

  We must stretch toward the supposedly unknown. We must give ourselves access to more than one voice. And we must do so honestly and fairly. But how do we write about lives that are, at least on the surface, very different from our own? How can we create experiences that are imagined but true? How do we get outside of ourselves?

  Some of the answer lies in proper, deep, moral research.

  Yes, Google helps, but the world is so much deeper than Google. A search engine can’t hold a candle to all the libraries in the world where the books actually exist, live, breathe, and argue with one another, even in the dusty basement. So go down to the library. Check out the catalogues. Go to the map division. Unlock the boxes of photographs. A librarian loves nothing more than an almost impossible question. They’re the experts at finding experts.

  If you want to know a life different from your own, you better try to meet it at least halfway. Get out in the street. Talk to people. Show interest. Learn how to listen. Allow your ear time to adjust. Even if you’re talking about a different era, you must at least know where that era has led us. So if you want to know, say, about the life of a Hispanic shipbuilder in Florida in the 1940s, well, go to the library first, and then, if you have the chance, get down to Florida, go to a shipyard, ask around, find someone who knows someone, or someone who remembers someone, and, if not, you can still find someone in your imagination. If you try enough keys, you will eventually open a lock.

  You must find the divine detail: and the more specific the detail, the better. William Gass—the American author who says quite beautifully that a writer finds himself alone with all that might happen—once suggested, while invoking Maupassant, that we should never mention an ashtray unless we are swiftly able to make it the only one in the world.

  Art is a way of coping with the world by bringing it under the microscope of detail. Small intentions reveal the life of the large intentions. Most of us live in a small world anyway. And the tinier the particle, the more mysterious it is. Just ask any quark about its flavor, its color, its spin. The more mystery, the more potential for beauty. And while God is in the detail, the devil is too.

  Please remember that mishandling your research is also your potential downfall. At times we can pollute our texts with too much of the obvious. It is often a good thing to have space instead so that we can fill it out with imaginative muscle. Always ask yourself, How much research is enough? Don’t corrupt your texts with facts facts facts. Facts are mercenary things. They can be manipulated, dressed up, and shipped off anywhere. Texture is much more important than fact.

  Focus in on the small detail that reveals the wider world. The key is finding the odd detail that only the experts might know. The one tiny atom that reveals the rest of the structure. Find it, use it, but don’t draw too much attention to it…this is the magical pill of all research. Appear to be an expert, even to the experts.

  The cumulative effect of your attention to detail provided by your research is what will make your stories sing.

  “I have been working hard on Ulysses all day,” said Joyce. “Does that mean you have written a great deal?” I said. “Two sentences,” said Joyce. “You’ve been seeking the mot juste?” “No,” said Joyce, “I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of the words in the sentence.”

  —JAMES JOYCE WITH FRANK BUDGEN

  You should write your work as if you are sending it to your reader one careful sentence at a time. Prose should be as well written as poetry. Every word matters. You must test for the rhythm and precision. Look for assonance, alliteration, rhyme. Look for internal echoes. Vary your moves. It’s as close as you’ll get to dancing. Listen to it create itself. Never allow it to become elevator music. It is your ability to push yourself one step further that will set you apart.

  All writing deals with limits, but there should never be any sentences without at least some direction. Sail close to the wind. Be there when the bread comes out of the oven. But never forget that certain metaphors can die with overuse. No more hot tears please. No more milky-white thighs. No more dream sequences. No more blood-red sunsets even. No more visits to the literary souvenir shop. Instead of your character walking blandly down the road, have him jaunt, or slump, or clop, or hobble (knowing every now and then that sometimes walk is the perfect word).

  Remember that to dress up a simple word is sometimes to take away its power. Its repetition—if repeated enough—will have the right effect. Just ask Hemingway or Chatwin or McGahern. Find the sentence that surprises you and then surprise yourself further by inserting even more surprise into it.

  Put together words that nobody ever cobbled together before. This is how we achieve the unique. There are times you might spend weeks on a single sentence. Months even. No kidding.

  Sometimes, in a series of spectacular sentences, insert one that is truly banal. Or within the banal, insert the spectacular. On occasion you must respect the purposeful boredom of a sentence.

  Whatever you do, make it inescapably personal. Imitate, yes, but don’t replicate. And imitate only to lose the original voice. Only Carver could write like Carver. Take Carver and recarve. Change those sentences which previously seemed unchangeable.

  And then send those sentences to the r
eader you love, one envelope at a time.

  Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.

  —TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS

  Find your life—beyond your writing life—worth living. Be in the habit of hoping. Allow yourself a little joy, even in the face of the world’s available evidence. In fact, try to create the evidence just about anywhere you can.

  If the novel is successful, it must necessarily be wiser than its author.

  —MILAN KUNDERA

  You don’t write in competition with anyone. There are no Olympics in literature. No gold medal, no silver, no bronze, even if the literary awards suggest that there might be. You will soon find out that the word best is not part of the true endgame vocabulary, though the word better can be accommodated. What you want to do is to write better: it’s as simple as that.

  Your energies should be directed entirely at your own work. The success or failure of others will not make a new sentence appear from your fingertips. Just because someone else got a good review will not take away from your own possibility of a good review: it’s not as if there is a limited supply. Just because they wrote a good book doesn’t mean that you can’t also. Just because they got a big advance doesn’t mean that there is less possibility there for you.

  Don’t moan about other writers even if you hear them moaning about you. Let them. They’ll get up at dawn with a sore throat. You, on the other hand, will have a chance to at least hit a high note or two. No need for revenge. A good sentence is revenge enough.

  If you’re writing to beat someone else, then you’re writing with invisible ink. Watch it disappear.

  Instead, keep counsel with dignity. Remain humble. Keep your gaze straight. Praise them if they deserve praise. And keep your mouth shut as much as possible if they don’t.

  This does not mean that you don’t want to be better than another writer—being better is part of your job. But be better in a better way. In a way that forces you into competition with yourself. Be tough and be honest. If you’re going to throw a punch, try your own jaw first: get a taste of how it might feel, then walk away from it.

  The most destructive force in your life is liable to be the unwritten story. If you don’t write, you’re not a writer. You’re avoiding the competition of yourself. Simple logic, but it’s a kick in the chest when the page is empty. Too much white space is not a good thing. Empty is empty. And empty haunts.

  Still, don’t paralyze yourself by constantly overthinking. You can be too hard on yourself also. Know this: every writer will achieve at least one very bad book. Most of us achieve many. But even bad work is an achievement. It is not the end of the world. In fact it’s the natural pattern. You still have to get up the next morning. And the morning after.

  It’s only for a short while that you, young writer, will have such brazen confidence as to think the morning lasts forever. It’s only for a short while that you can be as optimistic as you currently are. Because, like it or not, eventually the younger writer becomes the older one, celebrating the joyful shuffle.

  The whole idea that people have a clue as to how the world works, is just a piece of laughable metaphysical colonialism perpetrated upon the wild country of time.

  —LORRIE MOORE

  How old is the young writer? Seventeen, sixty, forty-six—who cares? The youngest of young writers always wants that book out before they’re eighteen or at the very latest twenty-five. It’s a noble ambition and not one to be scuppered, but if you don’t make it, don’t fret. Thirty is okay. Fifty’s not bad. Sixty-four years old is as good a time as any to start: just think of Frank McCourt. And nine years old is not bad either.

  Never forget that the young writer cannot stop time. (Only in writing can we ever stop time.) Just because they’re younger than you doesn’t mean they will last. It’s okay to put pressure on yourself—that’s where your competition with yourself lies. But it’s not okay to whine about it. It’s not okay to start thinking that you’re too old or that your time has gone. You can’t give up on it. There is nothing worse than a talented writer who regrets his life, and especially one who allows that regret to knock him into silence. You can still pick up the pen long after everyone thinks that you’ve given up. That’s the beauty of it all. You’re an athlete of a different type. Your mind doesn’t have to retire. So, get back to it. Resurrect it. Unfail it. Rise an hour earlier in the morning and get the work done, even secretly.

  It’s okay to get upset that someone else younger than you just got published. Go to the bookstore, pick up a copy, stare at their flap jacket. Dissect their bio. Whisper a very quiet curse of admiration: Damn, she’s young. Then say: So what? Go home and write with a renewed fever.

  And herein lies another piece of advice for a writer who might think that time has passed her by: Don’t tell too many people that you’re working on a book. Don’t give them the chance to ask you if you’ve finished yet. Don’t let them torture you at parties. There’s almost nothing worse than the question, How’s that book of yours coming along? (It’s second to hearing that someone else has actually finished a book.) Most people don’t know how long it actually takes for a book to get written. Just say it’s on its way—even if it’s not exactly on its way.

  Keep working, keep shaping. Eventually it will happen. Maybe even sooner than you think.

  Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.

  —HENRY JAMES

  Hey, you. Over there in the corner. Yeah, you, with that half-assed grin. Don’t turn away, I know that grin, I’ve worn it myself. Listen up. Yeah, you. Half-listening but pretending not to. Don’t get too attached to the romantic illusions of yourself. You hear me? Yeah, you over there with the tilted chin. Listen up. Save yourself from yourself.

  Being a writer is not about cocaine or the White Horse Tavern or the tab of acid or the Crazy Horse Saloon or the vial of laudanum or the late night of bottled-beer bravado. It’s not about the hangover. Or the warehouse party. Or the jacket photo. Or the Facebook entries. Or the tweets or the twats or whatever they’re called. It’s not about the shirt you wear or the hat or the scarf or the white suit or any other ridiculous affectation, mea culpa. It’s not about the spotlight. It’s not about gloating. It’s not about reaching around to slap your own back.

  In the end nobody really gives a shit about the writer’s life unless the writing is there first. That’s all that matters. That’s the endpoint. What appears on the page is what makes your life interesting.

  Too many young writers think of themselves as writers rather than that which they have written. Get used to this: it must be on the page. So don’t walk around thinking of yourself as a writer. Nothing worse than an author constantly obsessed with himself. Don’t prop up the corner of the party with announcements about your brand new story. Don’t go into workshop prattling on about your new opening salvo. Don’t draw attention to any part of your life as an artist, or, even worse, an artiste. If someone genuinely wants to know, they will ask. Say nothing. At least until you need to say something.

  Don’t get me wrong: I’m not advocating a clean rap sheet or an empty liquor cabinet or prissy behavior. You don’t have to live a mannered life. You don’t have to be sober (but be sober while you write, please; don’t fall into that trap). You don’t have to be obsequious. You don’t have to kowtow to anyone. You don’t have to listen to older writers spouting their rubbish either. In fact, forget this letter—go, get lost, go write. Rip it up. Go write your own. See what it takes. A writer writes.

  But first allow me four words of the sagest advice I know: Don’t be a dick. At the party. In the bookstore. On the page. In your own head. Don’t call people names. Don’t insult your colleagues. Don’t tell people how great you are. Don’t drink all the wine. Don’t complain that there’s nobody listening. Don’t ignore your friends. Don’t smirk. Don’t think yourself better. Don’t relegate your humility and allow it
to become arrogance. Don’t smoke when you’re asked not to. Don’t drop the silverware from the balcony. Don’t gossip. Don’t get sick on the carpet. Don’t insult the host. Don’t condescend. Don’t leave your partner stranded. Don’t talk about your contract. Don’t mention your advance. Don’t sigh. Don’t yawn. Don’t scratch that public itch. Don’t dismiss. Don’t scan the room. Don’t lie. Don’t fawn. Don’t drop your publisher’s name. Don’t make a fanfare of yourself. Don’t patronize. Don’t humiliate. Just don’t. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t be a dick.

  Don’t let yourself slip and get any perfect characters…keep them people, people, people, and don’t let them get to be symbols.

  —ERNEST HEMINGWAY

  Happy families are all alike, said Tolstoy, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. So ask yourself these questions: Are you making your characters too nice? Are they too sincere? Have you given them rough edges? Have you “flawed” them up? Is there something truthful and awful (and truthfully awful) about them? Can we relate to their demons?

  Our characters have to have fingerprints. Don’t be afraid to push them into difficult situations. They can be mean and unreliable and racist and lonely and lost and foolish and messed up—just like the rest of us. This is, after all, real life. Or at the very least its re-creation.

  And don’t have your characters stand alone. Don’t let them represent singular ideas. Always make sure there’s something solid behind the metaphor.

  As regards your own life (which really is your fiction), there are always going to be pitfalls. There will be flare-ups and divorces and the street corner brawls. Insincere words, deceit, treachery, double-dealing, and acres of bullshit to wade through. Get used to it. That’s life.