The Grasshopper #49: Learning to Write?
It never stops and that is a good thing
Someone recently asked how I learned to write and the question threw me, momentarily. There were two answers that came to mind. One, by reading a lot (more on that in a bit) and two, by a lot of practice, daily practice.
I happened to go to undergraduate college as an English Major. There were basically two career paths, teaching and writing. Teaching didn’t interest me back then. I was there to write. And boy was I bad. I found a scrap of a novel I tried to write at eighteen or nineteen and it was laughingly awful, derivative and clunky.
Fortunately that education experience didn’t kill my desire to write. I was somehow mature enough to know my problem was lack of lived experience. I could make stuff up but it was shallow because I just wasn’t ready.
I was one of those kids whose nose was always buried in a book. I’d read at the dinner table, on the bus, on my lunch hour, late at night, pretty much constantly, and I read widely. If I latched onto a writer, I would read all their stuff, then try to read their influences, peers, and recommendations.
Sometimes this had the side result of making me an expert on some odd subjects. Like American expat artists and writers in Europe during the Depression (1929-1939). I was a Henry Miller fan and that interest led me to many important writers, notably Lawrence Durrell and his Alexandrian Quartet, still books I read and reread.
Reading the major writers is an education in itself but it does sometimes result in imitative writing, especially when you are young and inexperienced. My early writing was wildly derivative. But I was trying to emulate some heavy hitters like Hemingway (I know, that is a cliche), ignoring the fact that he had an extremely eventful life behind his writing. Wounded ambulance driver in WWI, newspaper reporter, etc.
I needed some experiences. Punk rock was coming into existence and the seventies were an exciting place musically. Fans realized we could buy instruments and just start something. I met some other musicians who needed a bass player so I bought bass and started playing and learned to write, arrange, and perform.
It turned out that we were pretty good at it and we quickly built up a following, got some indie record deals and went off to New York to play and see art. New York City in the seventies was a place to get a lot of experience, fast. I loved it.
What I did not realize is that I was learning how to really work at something creative that you are passionate about. We treated writing and practicing and performing as a full time job, on top of our actual full time jobs.
You have a lot of energy in your twenties. It was all a blast and led to other experiences like first real love and first heartbreak.
When I got back into the pursuit of writing, in my early thirties, I was much more aware of my shortcomings. So I zeroed in on writing how-to books about business and design. The subjects were mundane but they had advances, deadlines, and contracts, all ways to learn discipline.
After a half dozen books, the Internet came in and replaced a lot of that kind of writing. So, I wrote internet stuff and marketing stuff. I learned to crank out copy on demand, a habit that serves me well these days.
Eventually I was able to realize my goal of finishing a novel, and then another. Still working on that aspect of writing, along with my online work.
So, did I learn to write and how did it happen? Teachers played a limited role. I’m a loner when it comes to my creative writing, so classes and writer groups were unappealing.
The process seems organic now, especially during and post-Covid, when I really started producing a lot of writing. Now, even after thirty years of experience, I’m finding my work much more natural and intuitive.
It all comes down to two things, from my perspective: write, and publish your writing. It’s easier than ever these days. And when you read, read widely, avoiding crap. It’s up to you to define what that means.
I was learning a craft and I still am. Unfortunately I no longer play music because my interests moved on, but it did help launch me into adulthood. Writing needed me to be a grown person.
Intuition: pay attention
Things sometimes happen that have no explanation. You remember a person you haven’t thought about in years and then run into them. Nothing about that seems accidental to me. These little intuitive moments can add life to your writing.
Not everything in fiction needs to be possible or probable. In fact it’s all made up so it is likely intuition comes into play a lot. Coincidence is a very useful tool in writing. I’d probably make a case that coincidence plays a big role in my writing about politics and current events.
You gobble up information and try to make connections that lead to speculative conclusions. If I write about Trump’s indictments this week, as I have, I’m pushing events out based on something that hasn’t happened yet to opine about its possible after effects.
Intuition and coincidence are factors of time, especially in fiction. That friend I didn’t think about who shows up when I did could represent a warping of time, something we as writers have the right to mess with. Your selection of tense and perspective are ways of portraying time.
I did a lot of this in my first novel, shifting point of view from character to character in each chapter and using third person omnipotent, which lets the writer see the world from the character’s inner perspective. These switches were necessary as I was messing with the passage time, among other things.
In hindsight it was pretty risky to try and pull that off but I think it worked. And it was fun, which should be an aspect of any writing. It’s fun when something tricky works and I’ve learned that veering off course in a narrative is sometimes a turning point in a story.
Writer’s intuition is learning to follow things when they go to places you had not planned on. Just like in ‘real’ life. Stay open, the rules don’t always count.
This could be a pivotal week in politics, with the possible Trump indictments looming and China’s Xi Jinping meeting with Putin. That meeting, and China’s choice about arming Russia, could change the course of history. I’m already writing about these events which have not yet taken place.
My daily writing takes place in a very different mindset than this writing here. The time I have to play with is moving much faster with politics and climate stuff. Things can change fast. So the writing tends to be a little fast and loose, which is why I write observation and opinion rather than journalism.
It’s more fun in the short term because I can freely risk being wrong.
Did you write today? Tell us about it. Comments are always open, unless you abuse them. But I know you wouldn’t do that!
Martin Edic
1227 words
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Reading a lot is so important! I think I actually underestimated that bit as a young writer, back in college. I was reading, of course, but mostly whatever had been imposed on me.