In my Thinking Like a Working Writer class, in which myself and a handful of other graduating seniors stare at each other asking excitedly and not without a hint of fear, What do we do now?, we're supposed to gather a bunch of quotes that will guide us to an Amazing Body of Work.
What's an Amazing Body of Work? It's a lot of work. For me an Amazing Body of Work means being prolific, because if you're prolific that means you're getting a lot of practice, and if you have a lot of practice then, very probably, you're writing is good. It is the best sort of self-fulfilling prophecy—write a lot, be good a lot, rinse, repeat.
How do you become prolific? Besides the obvious answer—Just suck it up and write already—it means becoming Unstuck. Becoming Unstuck means getting out of the way of your own writing, it means letting things flow freely and often and always. Becoming Unstuck means listening to your Inner Voice and letting it do the crazy things, because who knows in what strange and wonderful places you'll end up. Becoming Unstuck means removing the filter, it means go go go, it means writing habits and it means looking at the world with genuine wonder.
An Amazing Body of Work begins with writing—a lot. And it means turning the filter off, and it means making a mess and worrying about it later. Maxwell Perkins said, "Just get it down on paper, and then we'll see what to do about it," and that's useful. It takes the pressure off, let's you go and go without waiting for the inner editor to catch up and whisper murky doubtful things in your ear. And then you have to be hard nosed, you have to press yourself and get tough. Stephen King said it best in his wonderful book On Writing, "Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work."And there's no way around it—an Amazing Body of Work means a lot of hard work.
And we must have courage. And we must be sincere.
Tim O'Brien gave a talk at Stanford last year. And Tim O'Brien writes about war. And Tim O'Brien said that he doesn't write about war—that war was the vehicle he used to write about the human heart. And we all write about the human heart, in one way or another, and we use our own vehicles to get at some Truth. And Truth means describing something deep in our chest to the best of our abilities. What I mean is—we must have courage to write about the things close to our heart, and we must be sincere in writing about them. Kurt Vonnegut said, "Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style." And that is advice that is true now and will be true when we are middle aged and when we are old and when we are long gone.
Michael Chabon said, “Nothing is boring except to people who aren't really paying attention.” I think we, as writers, not only should see things differently but I feel it is our charge, our obligation to do so. Roald Dahl said, “Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.” And Albert Einstein—who was not famous for his writing but is certainly one of those sorts of people—said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
All of this is to say, our eyes must be Open. We must see things in a way no one else does. And actually this is easier than it sounds, because you are you, and no one else is you, and if you simply look at things in your own natural way then it will be different than the way others see them. To be more reductive—be yourself. If you want an Amazing Body of Work it will have to come from you. And not from you-who-is-trying-to-appease-others, and not from you-who-is-writing-to-the-market, and not from you-who-is-trying-to-offend-no-one. An Amazing Body of Work comes from the essential you, the one deep down, from the Inner Voice, and nowhere else.
I think that's what it takes. We must become Unstuck. We must have courage. We must be sincere. Our eyes must be Open. And, above all, we must write a lot.
Here are a few more quotes. They didn't quite fit in to my post as I was writing, but they're too good not to pass along.
"Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading, or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic." Stephen King, On Writing
"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open." Stephen King, On Writing
“One of the few things I know about writing is this; spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.” Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Here's a link to Kurt Vonnegut's 8 Rules For Writing Fiction. These I love.
This is essential viewing: Maurice Sendak on the Colbert Report. (And don't miss part 2.)
And a great TED Talk on writing and creativity by Amy Tan.
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