The Grasshopper #65: Clarity and the Clouds
Tales of the search for redemption
“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.”
―Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“Characters are not born, like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor, containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility,” Mr. Kundera wrote, interrupting the book’s plot to explain his own literary process. “The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them and equally horrified by them.”
Milan Kundera died this week after a long and controversial career as a novelist and essayist. Read his extensive obit in the Washington Post. His best known novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being was kind of a literary marker for me as a young writer. And I just love that title!
Doing a little reorganization
I have been doing numbered editions of the Grasshopper on Wednesdays, regular Sunday Editions, and random editions of The Witness Chronicles. I think that’s a bit much and I’m revamping my publishing schedule. Now Sundays will be the pub date for The Grasshopper and The Witness Chronicles will be a regular Wednesday thing.
Current issues of both remain free but after two weeks they go into archives for paid subscribers.
I think this is going to improve The Grasshopper as instead of writing two issues a week, I can now spend a week doing one good longer one. The Witness Chronicles, my selection of Medium articles, has proven more popular than expected, controversy and all. Change is good.
Clarity
I mentioned my addiction issue a few weeks ago. I drink martinis in expensive bars and it is both a health issue and a financial one. Time has come to deal with this, long overdue. You’re not going to get a blow by blow, as it is personal and not the subject of The Grasshopper.
But I know it is affecting my writing and my health (and my wallet). I’m pretty functional but that should mean I can deal with this. It won’t come up again unless it weaves into my theme of the writing lifestyle. Last year I did an issue on the topic of mythology around writers and drinking, mythology that has damaged a lot of young writers emulating their heroes.
Remember, legendary drinker Ernest Hemingway killed himself and his buddy F. Scott Fitzgerald drank himself to death, depriving us of two of the greats in modern literature. Cautionary tales.
And the clouds
The newsletter world is both weird and wonderful, with people writing about every conceivable topic from a zillion points of view. Substack gets a lot of credit for this and I’m happy to be a participant in what is a kind of renaissance for writers.
Blogging was supposed to offer a similar ability to freely write about anything you want and put it out there in the digital world. But what blogging lacked was discoverability. Too many bloggers put their work out there only to find no one was reading it because there was no means to find it.
This, along with the rise of online ads, led to search engine marketing or SEM, the practice of gaming search engines, principally Google, to get your titles or ad sites to the top of search results. A whole cottage industry of self-proclaimed SEO ‘experts’ arose, many of them selling patent medicines guaranteed to bring oodles of traffic to your site.
As part of my role as a marketer I practiced this stuff but I limited myself to following the preferences of the search engines for good content. These were designed to filter out junk and scams. I’ll be honest, no one needed those experts. What worked was common sense. Good, informative titles and subtitles. Valuable in-depth content. Product information without hype. Things you should be doing in any case.
As a writer, I don’t think much about search engines these days. I’m more reliant on platform algorithms to get my work in front of readers. And in the case of Substack, subscriptions. These models are based on giving readers what they want based on what they read. To me a follower or subscriber is more valuable than a search engine page ranking.
When a reader selects a writer by following or subscribing, it is usually because we have seen more than one example of their work and we see something that is interesting to us. This is why more frequent publishing and a unique voice are so important. We don’t want generic or imitative writing, we want originality.
One aspect of originality is focus rather than generalization. It wasn’t until I focused on specific topics on Medium that I discovered an audience and began to hone my voice for that audience. It is a lesson more new online writers need to consider. Too many write what they think will be popular rather than what they are truly passionate about.
And they find themselves floundering because too many others are doing the same thing with the same topics. In my opinion this imitation of perceived success is a fatal mistake for new writers. And some with a lot of experience. So, how do you break out?
The same way any artist or business does, by following your own road, not the beaten path. Doing something uniquely your own. If you are fortunate and persistent readers will follow you down that path. Otherwise you’ll be lost in traffic.
(I apologize for stacking metaphors in that paragraph but they do say what I mean)
I don’t read a lot of Substacks, maybe a half dozen on a regular basis. Honestly I have too much in my inbox. So if a writer doesn’t grab me after a few reads, I drop them. It doesn’t mean they are bad or boring, it just means it wasn’t my thing. That’s why I don’t think about unsubscribes too much.
To me, when someone subscribes or follows, it is an honor and I hope to keep their interest. But you can’t take it as rejection when someone leaves, unless you are seeing an exodus of unsubs. Then maybe you have a problem.
Substack offers their writers a weekly forum thread where people ask questions, provide insights or experiences, and others respond. It’s a great community building tool. Probably the most common question is how do I get subscribers? Unfortunately the answer, in my experience, is persistence and the things mentioned earlier, focus and voice.
Those things require time and doing the work, like almost every other skill we learn in life. And patience.
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!”
~ Henry David Thoreau
In a 2014 article (possible paywall) New Yorker writer Ferris Jabr looks at the relationship between walking and writing, not only on a physical level, but in the way it changes our ability to focus. I’ve always been fascinated by this relationship.
I’m a walker, in fact I do not have a car anymore, so it is one of my principal means of transportation, along with Uber. Last April, after a bout with Covid did a temporary number on my balance, I fell and got a compression fracture of my lower spine. It was not a surgical thing, it took time to heal and walking was part of my therapy.
But it took a long time to get back to the ability to walk more than a mile or two. During that time my walking mind experience was hampered by the need to keep my eye on the sidewalk to avoid stumbling and falls. So gazing up at the tops of trees and the light at sunset required stopping and making an effort.
The first time I noticed I could look up without worrying was just recently, over a year after the accident. And with that ability, my walking once again became a way to let my mind wander around a problem I might be seeking to solve or an idea just out of grasp.
I’m not sure a lot of people understand how precious this is. It’s not uncommon when I walk to a party or an event, someone says somewhat incredulously “you walked all the way here?” as if it were either a little crazy. I always take pleasure in saying something like “it’s only two miles” “But there’s a blizzard outside.” My answer might be something like “I like weather”, which is true.
But for the last year that was mostly beyond reach. So regaining the ability to walk without thinking about it is a gift. And not thinking about it means I can put some subconscious energy into problem-solving.
When I’m asked about what to do about writer’s block my answer is likely to be “take a long walk, it will sort itself out”. And it often does. That’s my tip for today.
Read that Thoreau quote above and see how it applies to you.
Did you write today?
Martin Edic
1594 words
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I became wistful reading your comment about the therapeutic value of walking and being aware of your surroundings while doing so. I'm 78 years old, and condemned -- most likely for the rest of my life -- to using a miserable walker to get around. A dance card of ailments shot the hell out of my balance, and thereby my ability to walk, ride a bicycle, and a host of other activities which flavored my existence. I've learned, too late, what it meant simply to trek along an old canal towpath not far from my home. I wish you joy in your ability to walk. Do it as long as you can, with gratitude to the Universe (God, if you will) for each step.
I wish you the very best, Martin. A person CAN give up alcohol, but only after THEY decide to quit. It took me years (of heavy drinking) to get to the place where I knew I had to make a choice: Either 1) stop drinking and live to see my son grow up, or 2) continue to enjoy my drinking until my health (and me) are gone. The first option is hard, the second is easy. It sounds like you have arrived at that decision point.
Best of luck to you.