The old tricks have been exploded, and I think the language needs to find new ways to pull the reader…A lot of it has to do with voice, and a feeling of intimacy between the writer and the reader…Given the atomization and loneliness of contemporary life–that’s our opening.”
-David Foster Wallace
I print out and tape quotes in the front of my journals as I’m working on my book. I cut and paste making a deranged scrapbook of sorts. The first part of writing is the idea, getting it down. Then we clean up the messy bits, the squiggly bits as Anthony Bourdain would refer the food equivalent.
Somewhere in there though comes the part where I realize I have a story, but it isn’t there. The soul is missing. Let me try to explain it another way.
You meet a new friend and she is fantastic and interesting and you have so much in common. Then perhaps the two of you start sharing some secrets, but they’re B-level secrets. It still goes well, and you feel the intimacy grow. You start to trust your new friend, and something happens in your life as these things are want to do, and you share an A-level secret. You know the ones. You barely admit them to yourself and here you are sharing the nuts and bolts of your inner ugliness with the new friend. And you’re met with platitudes. Perhaps a story of commonality, but one that is B, not A. You wish you could take back the sharing, but once out there, it’s out there.
I think what we’re all trying to do is give our reader the A-level secrets. The problem arises when you need to dig harder and further just to unearth them yourself. Then you have to write it down, and get it right. The genre doesn’t matter. It’s about writing as true as you can…for an entire book. You can’t not return e-mails, you can’t screen your phone calls. You have to be honest, write your heart out, and dig deeper so that every person who reads your book feels that level of intimacy, that you are entrusting them with a piece of your soul.
And really, isn’t that what we’re doing after all? It may sound like I’m being hyperbolic, but what would you call being possessed by a story? The need to get it down, to get it right, to write it over and over again until you can do no more?
People are lonely in crowded rooms. Some turn to reality television to feel a connection to other people’s lives that I believe was more common before the rise of the internet, text messages and e-mail. We used the phone. We sat down for coffee in diners. We met people in church, at block parties, at weekly card nights.
People are lonely. They are searching. We’re all searching. Our job as writers is to make them feel a little less alone, to help them cry, to make them laugh. The gift we have isn’t the writing. It’s the desire to tell a story, to make something out of nothing. It’s the fact that we have an idea.
The rest is just hard work.
” Our job as writers is to make them feel a little less alone, to help them cry, to make them laugh. The gift we have isn’t the writing. It’s the desire to tell a story, to make something out of nothing.”
This is going in my notebook, Lyra— thanks for the reminder!
And you ain’t kidding about the hard work . . .
And eventually, I will learn how to close a %&# italics bracket.
When you learn how, Sarah, could you please teach the rest of us!
Hey, I love seeing my name in italics! I gives me extra emphasis.
I can’t write a thing unless I’ve got voice. Otherwise it’s me swimming against the tide, exhausted and not going anywhere.
You’re absolutely right, m’dear. It’s the need to tell the story that’s key. If you’re worried whether there will be an audience when you’re done, don’t. We’re not going anywhere.
MSB,
You toucked a nerve. That crosses my mind as I watch people who can get so many stories out and down while I’m still on the same one. Thank you. I’m going to hold you to it.
The need to tell a story. Yes. And your kicker says it all. “The rest is just hard work.”
Downith,
Isn’t that just it? Hard work to get it right, and harder work to keep making it better. But all of these stories? They will get told. I have faith in that.
You pointed your arrows right into my recent WIP issue. Until the last month or so, I’d been trying desperately to give the B-level story and hoping it was enough for an A-level response. It wasn’t. The soul (my soul) has been missing. I was coming so close, but then backing off.
Now I’m pushing it further. I think I needed to write the B version first, sit with it, and shore up some much needed courage, before I could do it. I wasn’t ready then; I hope I’m ready now.
Nail on the head. “I wasn’t ready then.” Yes, oh yes, but we’re ready now. Trust me on this.
Gosh, I really shy away from giving myself “a job as a writer,” or at least I do in regards to the reader. I’ve spent most of my life writing without the intention of publishing. I didn’t do it for anyone else. I did it for the story, and that remains the only thing I feel accountable to.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the sentiment. It’s just not a helpful one for me. The idea of writing something for The Readers would likely paralyze me. For others, like you, perhaps it is just the right motivation.
I don’t think any meandering thought is one size fits all. I just like to share things that occur to me that might be interesting to someone else. That’s it. No hard fast rules or jobs.
“The Readers” sounds like a fantastic Dr. Who villain.
Ha!
Great quote and the B vs A level talk is a useful idea. I’ve been thinking a lot about intimacy and engaging the reader as an editor recently told me some of my stories weren’t ‘close’ enough which made me feel like crap.
Endless feverish hard work.
The upside of the comment would be that the editor knows that you have written stories that did have the intimacy, and therefore knows you can do it. Right? Yes!
May hard work ensue.
Grazie mille!
From different comments I have received, I notice many people read my words and enjoy them on the “B” level. So far, only one person has made comments that made me think they got the “A” level stuff out of it. I don’t know if that is me or the reader. Most likely the genre which I think most people only want to enjoy on the “B” level. I can read into it that I took the easy road, but I still feel I said what I wanted.
As long as you’re happy with where you’re at, the rest is just chatter. I think people go to different things at different times and get different things out of it. At least that’s true of me.
The As and Bs are confusing me, Lyra, I can’t tell them apart.
I think your writing is all A. You write and no matter what it’s on, you hit a raw nerve. Maybe it has to do with being a true introvert, or maybe it’s because you have a pseudonym so you can be honest. Or maybe it’s because you’re just a fine writer.
The B would be all the rest: work life, talking to people you don’t know, the busy stuff you have to do, but that keeps you from the A stuff.
Eh, but what the hell do I know…
God, that pseudonym’s no help at all. I’ve got my mom reading it, and my sister, and Drew’s sister and my brother-in-law. . . . I’m an ostrich who’s got her head in the sand, pretending no one can see her ass in the air!
ha! Oh, the visual. Priceless.
I’m all A all the time. My lack of filter makes me exhausting and exhausted.
Or maybe I’m all B all the time and I’m so afraid of my As that whenever anyone says “dig deep” I hide the shovel and go looking for the candy.
xoxo
The second half rings truer than I would care to admit…
Nah, not everyone is lonely and who says writer’s are required to make people feel less alone. In fact, I can think of a bunch of reasons for writing and loneliness isn’t included.
Starting with … I write to entertain myself, I like sharing stories, I like sharing information, my x-ray glasses give me vision worth a word or two, writing is just another creative outlet, pass it on – who knows where it will lead and … I can make money writing books.
Besides, A or B really don’t matter … there’s a zillion nervous types thinking their sins and their worries are big deals when they are not. All those in-doubt eddies are just that – sloshing places with no forward progress. Unless, that is, angst is the point, the writer’s schtick.
I’m flattered that you think I’m powerful enough to require a single thing from all writers of the world. Also that I could possibly know that everyone in the world is lonely would be quite a godly feat, no?
May I suggest, though, that you head over to the nearest train or bus depot and have a seat. People watch. If you don’t find many lonely people, people searching for connection, then I don’t believe you are looking for it. They are there every day.
The beauty of writing, the beauty of writers is that there is room for all of it. I believe in connection, but I also believe in entertainment. I also believe in those nervous types you reference. Sometimes other people’s problems are a big deal. It’s a big deal to lose a job, to lose a lover, to lose a best friend…to me. That doesn’t mean there’s no forward progress, it just means it doesn’t matter to you. It is a schtick to you.
I think there’s room for all of it, and Bill, thank you for your thoughts.
I love the concept of A-level secrets. I’m going to keep that in mind as I continue revising my novel.
One of these days, you should put together all your writing advice blog posts and make an e-book or something so people could enjoy them all together.
I went to a wonderful book signing last night, and some of that may be useful for you too. that post should be out tomorrow.
So sweet of you to say…maybe one day I’ll get around to organizing this space better. Kind of like doing a outline.
Some days I manage an A; other days it’s all I can do to hover around a C-. And other times I don’t even seem to know the secrets myself.