I Answer Some Questions About Writing

I often have students post written questions about the readings or the class or about writing in general. I did that this week, and the answers are below. Just the answers—not the questions. (I didn’t ask the students for permission to use their questions!)

If you like questions so much, you can make up your own questions….
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• Me, I go with a lot of dialogue—probably too much dialogue. But then I will slow things down with more exposition.
• You're a young writer, so I would advise you to try different things, to not overthink the perfect balance, to discover how you see the world and what works for you....
• Plot is just not that important. Writing is what is important. And most short stories do not have rising action, etc. That said, you can do a lot in six pages....
• Six to eight pages is a very compact narrative space. Start by making a good outline before you write.
• Character and setting are both far more important than plot. Come up with them first.
• Name the place. Always (almost always) name the place. Use google streets. And google in general. Creative writers do research!
• This might sound sarcastic, but I'm totally serious: try writing a romance story about two people who are clunky and awkward.
• Observe your friends who are in relationships—what do they do? How do they behave? Use that material.
• You're writing a story, not an idea. Nobody wants to read a concept.
• The best book I've ever read on writing is The Midnight Disease, by Alice Flaherty.
• I keep going hard because I know I won't live long enough to tell all the stories I know. Got to get them on the page while I can.
• But also look at the stories we read—they are all fine.
• You don't have to worry about those weird commas when you write an essay….
• You can learn this. It just takes practice....
• Me—I’m an oddball. I'm a writer.
• My job is to bear witness to the world I was born into. I have to pay attention—I have to tell the stories I witness.
• I assume my first drafts won't be any good—that's why revision was invented.
• But that's me—everybody needs to find their own individual path.
• Are you a better writer now than you were when you drafted the older stories? You probably are. Why not apply your steadily increasing knowledge and skill to new work?
• Make every sentence 25 words or longer. Make every sentence 5 words or less. Do a story entirely in dialogue. Write a story with no dialogue....
• My former teacher and friend, the late novelist Larry Heinemann, said that "revision is where the money is." Revision is your chance to make sense out of what you've written....
• Try writing in the first person. And then just look through the character's eyes and see what they see.
• The great crime novel writer Elmore Leonard said that he always cut anything that "sounded like writing."
• You could try that.
• Just write the way you talk.
• My very first creative writing teacher was a novelist named Shelby Hearon. Shelby once told me, "It's never the book in your head." It took me years to realize how true that was! That the brilliant idea you have in your head for the story or poem or book, by the time it travels out your fingers to the keyboard, is not the idea that was in your head. It never is.
• That's one answer to your question.
• Another is really boring: treat your writing like a job. Ignore inspiration.
• Do the work of writing and learn to take pleasure in the work.
• This might sound boring, but it's real.
• I know a lot of writers, and I've never met one who talks about inspiration.
• But! We can take this in a different direction. Think about what inspires you. Then work toward filling your life with whatever the heck that is.
• What you're feeling is normal. At some point your true writerly self will emerge.
• (Hint: something BIG is always going on).
• It takes time and practice. Be patient with yourself.

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