Writing Tips From Sean
For many, many moons (full, gibbous, blue or bleeding, etc.), I write. And I teach writing. God knows I read a lot of student writing and give feedback in a hopefully constructive way. Sometimes I don’t know what I am doing. Sometimes I do, maybe. Sometimes my head goes whoosh-whoosh and I stare at all the action figures in my office and think about the relentless warfare against the imagination. Sometimes students go, “Thank you for the help.” (Initially, I conjured up a pun here concerning the term, writing tips, some image of the tip of a pencil, or the tip of a writer’s tongue, but later deleted these sentences. This is my internal editor toiling. You should keep a writer and an editor inside of your body. The writer dresses in exclusively purple [socks, pants, shirt, tie—all purple] and lives in your pelvis, alongside the groin; the editor is naked and resides in your spleen. They knew each other once quite well, but are now divorced, and it wasn’t amicable. There was gunplay, infant-tossing, etc. So keep them apart, seriously; or, as William Faulkner noted: “When my horse is running good, I don’t stop to give him sugar.”) On December, 10, 1950, while experiencing withdrawal tics and tremors (He’d just come off a seven week bourbon bender), William Faulkner gave the best fucking speech in the physical cosmos as he accepted the Nobel Prize. You should read this: http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/faulkner/faulkner.html (There is a still-life painting in my office of blooming nasturtiums. Below the flowers, in large, neon letters, the artist added this phrase: SOMETIMES I WISH A CAR WOULD HIT YOU. I really admire this painting.) TIP TWO: Physical Activity. “The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.”
I have absolutely no interest in you writing like Agatha Christie, but listen: Faulkner shod horses. Hemingway shot protected eagles off telephone wires. Flannery O’Connor sewed colorful outfits for all of her chickens. Tennessee Williams liked to swim, and fuck. But that’s just me. (Contemporary writer Ander Monson introduced me to the fine sport of disc golf, and the quality of my physical and imaginative life has greatly benefited. Read Ander’s essay on the subject here: http://americannerdmag.com/LongCrush.htm You want to write? Do something physical. Let the mind go. Engage the arm, the leg, the lung, the heart. There exists a simpatico between the muscles and the brain. A slurry and tinsel of biochemistry. A professional understanding, a love. As you work, sweat, heave, the brain is engorged with synaptic crackle, with hush and sigh, sloshing cerebral wave—with creative agitation. You don’t believe me? I could show you studies; I could link you to studies right now, but I will not. I’m not in the mood. Ok, here’s one study: http://www.ric.edu/faculty/dblanchette/exercisearticle.htm (I just saw a great blue heron at the birdfeeder out my kitchen window. Herons eat birdseed? Who knew?) TIP FOURTEEN: Read Two Depressing Books per Week. “A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
A student enters the room a few moments before class. She wears Crocs, and a pink hat with a marijuana leaf in the center. An expression on her face like someone dropped her lollipop in the sand. I assume this visit is about mental illness, a car-struck dog, or maybe how a grandmother fell off the front porch and into an abyss. No, not this time. She says, “Professor Lovelace, I just realized something about my writing: I suck. Seriously.” Do I tell this young lady, “No, no, you don’t suck.” Or “Really, I found your use of flower imagery to be…” Uh, no. What I say is, “K_____, you just experienced of the biggest, most profound and necessary epiphanies for any writer, the day you realize an important truth: I am not very good at writing.” (This is also often the day a person will finally give up on writing poetry, and we all are better for it.) You’re not that good, ok? I am not that good. We are not that good. And that’s the correct attitude for any writer. I glance up right now, at shelves groaning with books from writers I know. Writers I’ve studied with, eaten with, stolen from, slept with and then betrayed, etc. You know what they all feel about the state of their writing? “I suck. Seriously.” And so they get back to grinding bones. James Thurber rewrote his essays for The New Yorker a minimum of 25 times. There are stories of him running down the mail truck to retrieve the envelope containing his essay. It needed just one more revision. You think Old Man and the Sea is a tight read? It should be. Hemingway revised that book over 100 times. This man was the baddest-ass writer alive. He was old and ill and exhausted. Half his body was broken bones and swollen liver and punctured eardrum. The other half concussion. You think he needed the soul-gnaw and rust-belt of revising a manuscript 100 times? Well, he did. You know why? Because the first ninety-nine times it sucked. Seriously. Now some writers just refuse to realize the true state of their situation. Way back when, their moms heaped praise on them like orange sherbet, or someone gave them a little award at the Lutheran elementary school; and to this day they still believe in that mysterious disease we call “talent.” Well, they don’t have any talent, believe me, and if they did, it wouldn’t matter. They need the truth, the awful, awful slouching truth. Here’s how: read authors exponentially better than yourself. Not a difficult task. Try for about two writers a week, or 104 books a year. I’ll give you two examples to begin: 1.) A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters by Julian Barnes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_World_in_10%C2%BD_Chapters Every chapter of this book is written in a different distinctive style. One is from the perspective of a flea; another from an actor on location in a South American jungle (and written in letters home); another the perspective of a man suffering from eternal boredom in heaven, etc. Every chapter with a fresh voice, a unique syntax, every sentence wonderfully wrought, memorable, thought provoking, imaginative, smart. Most writers haven’t developed even one measly style. You know why? Because they’re not that good. 2.) La Disparation by Georges Perec. Here’s a book to crush any ideas of your own verve and originality. Perec’s 311 page novel tells an engaging detective story, but with a little twist: he never once uses the letter e. Then Perec writes a sequel, La Disparition in Les Revenentes, a novel allowing the use of the letter e, but without a single appearance of the vowels a, i, o, or u. Try to write a story without using these vowels. A flash fiction. Hell, a haiku. I wish you well. In my own attempts at novel writing, I allow myself every word in the alphabet. All 26. I also regularly abuse Dexedrine. Yet still, at about page 14, I either swoon or have a seizure; and my manuscripts collapse into themselves like soggy soufflés. I have yet to finish one novel. I don’t ponder why. I know why. Because I’m not that good. TIP NINE: Write One Decent Sentence. It’s tough to write a decent sentence. I try, “One eye bulging, she cured my ham.” Then, “The unstrung coast of China is falling asleep.” Then, “Do you know why Batman has a dog?” Finally, I write, “Your sister is a fine wine I’ve tasted.” That does it. Now I grant myself permission for a tall vodka tonic, a handful of jalapenos, and an afternoon of disc golf. TIP FIVE: Don’t Try. Charles Bukowski has these words on his tombstone: DON’T TRY. That’s either very sad or very Zen, I’m not sure which. My favorite tombstone engraving can be found in Round Rock, Texas: I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK. But I digress. Was Bukowski’s soul destroyed by all the cheap beer and ugly women? No, those two things restore a soul. What about his years working at the United States Post Office? Now you’re talking sense. Either way, his epitaph seems the best philosophy for a writer. For some ungodly reason, a lot of people want to be writers. They are seeking something, some miasmic state just over the oily horizon. They need to cease. To cease trying. They should instead lock themselves into a deep cave and write. Then write some more. Like a clam. A microwave cloud gathering. A Muzak, or a mural. And so on. TIP THIRTY-FOUR: Alcohol “I like to drink a beer before writing, to prime the engine.”
If you don’t drink, please start. For five reasons: 1.) Material. 12% of all serious literature is about a protagonist coming to town. 12% is a protagonist leaving on a journey. 1% concerns itself with nachos. The remaining 75% is adultery, in all its delectable/detestable forms. One of the best ways to stumble into an adulterous situation is to go around drunk. Trust me. 2.) Speaking of Faulkner, he once wrote a 43 page sentence. There’s no way you even attempt that unless under the influence. 3.) Baudelaire suggested, “Be drunk.” An obvious metaphor, but it’s a good idea to occasionally extend figurative language all the way, balls-2-wall, into concrete reality. Years ago, in Colorado, I had a young lady hit me in the forehead with a trekking pole and then tell me “go take a fucking hike.” I spent weeks doing just that, meandering up the Boar’s Back, then working higher into the Copper Mountain range, camping in pine forests and alongside gurgling streams. Fuck it was cold. The only items I brought were antibiotic cream, a sleeping bag, a brick of Velveeta, and a flask. I didn’t hold a telephone in my hand for seven days. A mostly miserable time, now that I think about it. Or maybe happy. 4.) There is no number four. I just went into the kitchen and filled a coffee mug with one part Guinness, one part merlot. Don’t try that yourself unless a professional. It’s so cold outside today the earth crackles. The wind is a stiletto of ice. I’m indoors, with wine, and these scraggly words. I’ll tell you one thing: the broken self cannot fix the broken self. That’s illogical. 5.) Drinking will kill you, no doubt. Then again the most fascinating authors in the world are the dead ones. TIP ONE HUNDRED SIX: Have a Good Title. Trashy magazines can teach writers a lot about titles. Let’s say I develop a brand of potato chips. I call them Lovelace Triangles of Little Laughing Men (they are nacho chips). I want them in the grocery store, right? But, like love-making or operating a tank, it’s not so simple. Assuming I can even get the store to carry my chips, I must then pay a considerable sum for optimum placement on the shelves. Do I want my delicious chips at foot level, near the dusty floor, in the middle of an aisle? Or do I want them at eye level, on an end row? The best (and most costly for my chips) location is the checkout line, where all shoppers must gather, and pause, like cattle in a chute (that line clearly ripped off from Updike). Here we have an opportunity for an impulse buy: batteries, lip gloss, chocolate bars, condoms, trashy magazines. What techniques do magazines employ to quickly capture us, our passing dollars? Bizarreness: MICHAEL JACKSON’S FACE LOCATED ON MOON. These same techniques are useful for titles. A good title gets me to your first sentence, your first page. I’m afraid the rest is up to you. TIP SIXTEEN: Gamble I had a whole section here about Dostoevsky and roulette and one-eared rabbits (a gaming term) and the proper perspective on money and something about writing, the creative act itself, as a form of gambling, a form of vital and necessary risk, but my dog just snapped its leash, ran barking out the back door, and headed for the creek. Its waters are flooded with runoff ice, a swollen maw of jagged teeth. Dread descends like a poor tired sleeping man. The dog is attempting to fly! I have to go now.
Sean Lovelace is standing in a river right now. He has a spinning rod and a beer. Other times he teaches at Ball State University. His flash fiction chapbook arrives summer 2009, by Rose Metal Press; and his works have appeared in Crazyhorse, Diagram, Black Warrior Review, Willow Springs, and so on. He blogs at seanlovelace.com
SHELFLIFEMAGAZINE : issue #006
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