What Writing Looks Like

At my job I'm supposed to be writing, but at one point I pushed the chair back from the desk, crossed one leg over the other, put my hands behind my neck, leaned way back in the chair, and stared at the plaster wall for a couple minutes toward the end of which I worried that someone might walk in and doubt I was earning my keep. Had anyone asked what I was doing, I would have wanted to answer, "I'm writing," but probably would have said I was thinking because so few people would believe that, staring at the wall, I really was writing.

The look of writing differs throughout the process, changes according to the kind of work and the tools employed, and varies according to the writer. It even sounds different. I talk to myself while writing, whispering the lines as I work through something difficult. Sometimes writing is a good pen moving across and down the page. Most of my writing has me sitting at a desk rapping too hard on the keys and beating holy hell out of the space bar with my thumbs. I'd hate to share an office with me. But writing is also staring at the wall, looking out the window, filling the water bottle or coffee cup, crumpling a sheet of paper, massaging the eyes, and sometimes going for a walk or a run. Aaron Sorkin writes in the shower. I doubt he brings the paper and pen or his Macbook in there, but he's not taking a break so much as advancing the process.

No one questions Aaron Sorkin at this point. Not anyone with half a brain. I'm a lot less established and feel the need to account for what I'm doing. Good people are paying me money to write and I'd hate to have them think my staring at the wall is a waste of all that. I want to explain that looking at the wall got me the fix for the paragraph on page three. I pretty much wrote it on that wall, my body reclined in the chair, hands behind my head, but the pen in my head writing, scratching, and rewriting words. I found the words as if they were written in the textures and patches on that wall. I just needed to see their outlines enough to begin hearing them drop into place one after the other, one sentence and then another.

Now that's writing.

No one caught me in the act of it and had to hear my explanation. Except you.

I've been staring now at the two-word sentence that precedes this one, wondering, how will this end? Check back with me in a while. I'll still be staring out the window, into the pattern of the carpet, or maybe even at the painted wall. You'll have to get my attention. I leave this world when I'm writing even without pen or keyboard involved. I hate to come back until I've found the words and have arrived at the period that finishes it off just so.

Maps & Legends

My friend John says nice things about me for some reason. I wrote about how I can't imagine hot to write a book. John wrote back with a post on his blog entitled The Compulsion. And now here I go again. You can eavesdrop on our conversation. We don't mind.

The last paragraph of John's post begins with this line that got me started:

I'm sure all of this sounds preachy and kind of sanctimonious. Take it for what it's worth."

John, it's crazy how often we excuse ourselves for having opinions about writing. You did it by saying that you haven't been published. I do that too. I say, "I'm a writer but not a real writer," because I just have a blog and write every day. I think this comes from a lifetime of English classes in which we've elevated the writer. We have for so long read writers who are far removed from our experience. It makes them feel otherworldly and that they are capable of the impossible.

I was reading The Sun Magazine and found two unbelievably good stories by a woman who, I saw in the author bios, lives in Central New York. Turns out I could walk to her house. (Don't worry. I have no idea which exact house is hers and only know because she told me that she is in the vicinity. I'm not a stalker!) She's an ordinary human being who lives just like I do. The difference is that she has had her words in print. That is seemingly miraculous but not a miracle and not the work of anyone but one of us mere mortals.

All we do is return to the work again and again.

I like what you said about goals bringing on regret and self-loathing, not much else. Scott Adams (a turd of a human who nonetheless has this good idea) says that "goals are for losers." Working toward a goal means we have failed at reaching it so far. So even when we're doing the work, with regard to the goal we are in failure. Maybe we achieve a goal, but that achievement often feels like a failure because there is no end. There's just the next thing. Focus on the goal also takes away from focusing instead on the work and the reward of just doing the work.

I'm thinking of Dani Shapiro who has been on the best-seller list for the last few weeks. I'm sure she has wanted to be on the best-seller list, but I doubt that was her goal or that she had any goal other than to do the work, become a better writer, tell her story, and do some more of the work. That's the returning that both of us are talking about. It's a circle of returning to the work rather than some kind of straight-line goal.

You mention that you're notoriously lazy. I wonder how often you were told that as a kid. I heard it a lot and read it on my report cards as "Brian is not working up to his potential." That sort of thing sinks in and sticks with a guy like me. It's about time we both said, screw that. I'm finding lately that when I feel lazy there's a reason and I'm trying to go with the feeling not to indulge in indolence but to see what not doing anything has to offer. This seems at least slightly better than beating myself up about it. I know you're not beating yourself up too much, but just for kicks count the number of pages you've written and see if you know ten other people who have written as much. Then go back to writing. Or, the hell with it, skip all the counting and just write some more.

There are road maps and we can use them without having to think about destinations and goals. My current map is like some pre-Columbian map where there's this mysterious section far from home that is blank except for a drawing of some sea monster and an ominous line about the edges of the known world. I can never fold those maps up again, so I leave them spread out on my floor or tacked to the wall, reminders of where I want to go and all the possible routes that could get me there. Stare at them long enough and the squiggly lines of rivers, roads, and borders almost resolve into letters, words, and a story.

Thanks for writing that post, John. You're a good guy. Write on.

Other Writers & This One

I've been listening to other writers. Listening is something I need to work on anyway and it might as well be to other writers. Not knowing as many writers in person as I would like (not yet anyway), I played an old podcast with David Sax who wrote the wonderful The Revenge Of Analog . He talked about some of the ways in which he works and how he feels about writing.

An illuminating moment came in part two of the episode when he described how some writers just love the act of writing but for him it's much more that he loves gathering the information, doing reporting and research, and then, well, what else is he going to do but write it? Once he gets going with the actual writing the process works for him, but he's not the type who says, oh boy, I'm just going to write for the hell of it!

That's my line and people tire of hearing me say it.

Students at school can't get how I enjoy banging away at a keyboard for twenty minutes, an hour, or the entire morning and into the afternoon. "You don't even have an idea you're working on," they say. I tell them that I'll have an idea once I get writing. Then I turn to the keyboard or pick up my pen and go to work. The writing comes to me through the writing. That's just how I write. Well, it's one way I write.

Lately I've been thinking, okay, so I enjoy the act of writing, but what do I have to say? It's a good question but the answer in my case comes not from deciding too much before I write but is a result instead of hitting the keys, pushing the pen, and seeing what happens. Still, I'm often asked what kind of a writer I want to be. It's a good question and I ought to have an answer.

Mostly, I want to be an essayist in the mold of E.B. White, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, and others who write what they see, hear, and experience in the world. Sure, Berry writes mostly about conservation and the natural world, but his essays range all over the place. Their one unifying quality is that they are all Wendell Berry essays. There's a feel and texture to these people's work that just pulls people along. It sure as hell has worked on me for thirty years even if I can't exactly nail it down. Who needs it nailed down?

I mean, what does David Sedaris write about? Whatever it might be it's great and I can't get enough. I've paid good money almost half a dozen times to hear him read his stuff in person. He's an essayist and I follow him like he's a rock star and I'm a groupie.

My thinking about writing is this: it comes down to finding what each of us has to say and either saying it or turning away from it to watch Entertainment Tonight. Maybe there are shades between those extremes of light and dark. Whatever the case, I'm figuring things out slowly. Pretty much one word at a time. My own words and the words of every good writer I can listen to and whose pages I can turn.

John Z

My friend John has a blog I enjoy and to which I wish he would post more often. This might get in the way of him having a job and a family, but really, shouldn't he be thinking of what I want? His entry from last Friday is a good one about the look, feel, and influence of mass-market paperbacks on who he has become as a writer. I stole the picture above from that post.

John often says nice things about me in emails and sometimes on his blog. I'm glad because I'm vain (he likes me, he really likes me!) but also because he's a guy who churns out whole novels and has agents. This sort of thing floors me. I've been writing forever and have hardly even sent anything out to be considered for publication, let alone worked with an agent. And John writes books. Not just essays, short stories, or poetry, but big freaking books. In other words, he has taken this writing thing to the next level. A level I imagine but have not done enough to achieve.

He's also an English teacher. We met at a summer institute for teachers years ago. I remember thinking then that he couldn't stand me, that my writing was absolute drivel to him. It surprised me when he said otherwise. We don't see each other much in person, but he sees my kids in the halls of that school, we follow each other's blogs, and we have kept a steady trickle of correspondence going.

Knowing John helps me feel like a writer by association. Maybe it works that way for him too,though I can't imagine he needs the reassurance.

Sometimes the power of association is what I need in a friendship. Sometimes that's what I can give in return. Though we hardly ever see one another, the friendship works and reminds me of times long ago when distance was so much more difficult to bridge and letters took weeks to go between.

We used to connect some on Facebook and Twitter, but I quit social media this summer. That may mean less contact with him and I'd be bummed about that but instead I'm encouraged to get together in person and buy him a beer. I've got a lot to learn and I want to know what he's working on now. We could talk a while maybe, to get things going, but pretty soon I imagine we would both be itching to get to our laptops and get back to writing. Writers have that effect on each other.

Go read John's blog. Follow him on Twitter too. Just because I'm off social media is no reason to miss out on his stuff. You can thank me later.