1. Be willing to write bad. No one writes good before writing
bad. In other words, be willing to suck for a while. You’ll need to suck before
you learn your craft. You’ll need to suck once you’ve learned your craft too,
even if you’re writing as a pro. Good writing almost always follows bad
writing. Writing is rewriting.
2. The best way to know if you should be a writer is by how
much you WANT to write. If sitting down with your pad or computer feels like
home, then you’ve got as much a claim to be a writer as anyone in the world.
3. When the voice in
your head says you suck, keep writing anyway. Generally that voice comes up,
not because you suck, but because you fear others will think you suck. Not
writing is simply your mind’s solution for avoiding that pain: if you don’t
write, no one will see your work or be able to criticize you. At least that’s
how the mind sees it. Just know this: it is by far better to suck and to be
told you suck, then give up on your dreams out of fear. Sucking beats not
trying by a million miles.
4. Expect to fall in love with your work. These words or some
variation will probably form in your head. “I am the best writer ever. People
will read this and know that. Everyone who ever didn’t love me will now know
I’m really wonderful.” Don’t hate yourself afterwards, when you read over what
you’ve done and realize it’s not as good as you thought. And don’t hate others
when they don’t love it as much as you. Every writer falls in love with their
work, unreasonably so. Which is why…
5. Be willing to realize that what you’ve created isn’t
necessarily the best thing in existence. It doesn’t mean you suck. No one gets
anywhere without killing some ideas. All writers fall in love with their own
work. Good writers are willing to see past that and look to let go of what’s
not working as well.
6. Be skeptical. Of people who adore your work. Of people who
deride your work. Of yourself when you think you suck or think you’re great.
Everything we do is a work in progress, including your writing. To that end:
7. Find people who will give you feedback on your work. And
take it all with a grain of salt. Knowing how to sift through feedback to glean
what’s useful is itself an art form. Become that artist. It will help you
enormously.
8. Distance is almost as good as working. Stepping away,
putting the pen down, coming back later, taking breaks, all this is as
important to your writing process as writing.
9. Don’t feel bad if you need to put down a project. Not all
ideas are really able to sustain a full story. Even an idea you love initially
may not have “legs” or the potential to be a fully realized venture. By the
same token:
10. Don’t be afraid to keep at a story against all
common sense and long after others think you’re out of your mind. My new novel,
“The Man Who Came and Went,” began as a screenplay that I wrote and rewrote for
over 25 years. I had come to feel like the world’s biggest loser for keeping at
it. Objectively, I might have been just that. But pivoting from screenplay to
novel brought the story to what I had been after all that time. Keeping at it
is sometimes the thing to do.
Excerpt
That day, the day Bill arrived, my mom was serving up eggs and complaints.
“Dammit, that daughter ‘a mine,” she yelled to Dolene, across the diner. “She’s like walking birth control. Does she think I’m trying to have babies? ‘Scuse me, Darlin’” Maybell gave Clover’s bubble walker a little kick, sending it between tables 4 and 6 so she could get by and dump a load of dishes behind the counter.
Dolene was homegrown, like the tumbleweed, with eyes like a golden retriever that never quite looked at you directly. She was smart enough to add up a check, but you could tell she was never getting out of Hadley. “I take it you didn’t get laid last night.”
Maybell pointed to her sour puss. “Does this say ‘laid’ to you?”
There was a ‘harrumph’ from booth 5 by the window. That was Rose. Rose was an old woman by the time she was 30. Now she was in her late 60s, a widow since before I was born—in other words, forever. She liked to spend her afternoons at Maybell’s Diner, reading her book and keeping an eye on the goings on around her, as if she was the town’s homeroom teacher.
“Look at Saint Rose,” Maybell said, stuffing dirty plates into the plastic tub under the counter. “Thinks she smells better than Mentos. I ain’t running a library here, Rose. Next time bring Reader’s Digest!”
There was another sound from Rose, something between a ‘well’ and a ‘pfffft.’ She never took her eyes off her book.
The door opened with a DING from the bell that hung on it. No one noticed Bill entering. He was about average in height, but his skinny frame made him look taller. You could tell from his face that he was in his mid-20s, but those were hard years he had lived, and his body looked frail and geriatric. His clothes were old and clung to him like an extra layer of skin, with a smell that would never wash out.
The angles of his face were sharp and careworn. But his eyes, those were different. His face was hard and weathered, but his eyes were soft. They seemed brand new.
No one in the diner even looked. If they did they would have seen those eyes taking in every little detail: the people talking, forks carrying food, the string lights behind the counter, Dolene ringing up a check. But what drew Bill more than anything else was the grill. Harley, the grill cook, must have had four meals going at once, each with its own set of sounds and smells. Most of those meals involved eggs. His spatula made a metal-on-metal scrape as he turned them. Bill was riveted. He went to sit at the counter to watch.
Down the counter, a porkish-looking man named Earle—probably one of three men in town who had never slept with my mom—raised his empty cup. “Can I get a refill, Maybell?”
Maybell stopped and faced him. “Seriously, Earle? Is it so goddam much trouble for you to get up off your ass and get it yourself? Can’t you see I’m working here?”
“Well…” he stammered. “I just—was I—I was—”
Maybell pointed to the coffee pot. “How far away is that? Two feet?”
“Sure, I guess…”
“Am I your personal slave, Earle? Is that why God put me on earth?”
“No, I don’t think you’re—”
Maybell grabbed the pot and sloshed coffee in his Earle’s cup. “There. You happy now?”
He nodded meekly.
While she had the pot in her hand, Maybell filled the cup sitting in front of Bill. “I’ll be by to take your order in a minute, hon.”
Maybell walked on. Bill just sat there and stared at the coffee. For him, there was no diner anymore, no Maybell, no clanking dishes or dumb conversation. He leaned closer to that cup like it was the only thing in the world. And there he was, smelling coffee for the first time. And it smelled like life. Like a whole world. Like this is how a planet smells if you’re up in space and could take a deep breath. Bill was motionless for who knows how long. And then, when he was good and ready, he took his first sip.
Those eyes, the ones that didn’t belong on his head, they closed as if he was praying. No, more like he was hearing a prayer. The coffee was praying to be heard, and Bill heard it.
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