The Craft of Writing

It is a reminder I gave to the research students who I advised at university. It’s an assurance I give to the writers I work with today. And it’s something I heard author and memoirist Dani Shapiro say recently.

“We never finish books.”

She doesn’t mean that we never read all the way to the final page (although sometimes that can be the case too.) Rather, it is the books we write that we never really finish. What happens instead, according to Dani, is this:

“We reach a point where we have made them as good as we can with the tools we have at the moment we have them. And so could any book benefit from being put in a drawer for another year and then pulled out again and looked at with cold eyes? Probably. But at a certain point you say, ‘It’s time for this to go into the world. I’ve taken it as far as I can.’”

Writing can turn into a endless process if we let it. There are always more tweaks to make, more details we could add, and more words we might shuffle, shift or discard. It is devastatingly easy to come up with reasons why our manuscript is still not yet ready and to justify our inability to finish it. If we just had a bit more time, if we just did a little more research, if we just keep working on it then surely we will get it right. Eventually. Won’t we?

Despite your heartfelt efforts, it will never be definitive, never conclusive nor complete. All it ever can be, and all it really needs to be, is a reflection of a moment in time, crafted with the best tools you have.

Of course you will do everything you can to make your book as good as possible. Yet even so, you may find that after taking the brave step of sharing it with the world, you will suddenly see a whole other way you could have done it. There’s a decent, if disappointing, chance that after all your labours, you may still look back on it someday with a sense of dissatisfaction or even embarrassment.

Friends, that happens. It is part of being a writer. Sure, it’s not the best part. But neither is it a compelling enough excuse for us to not to write and not to publish.

We are never really ready. Or we are already ready. Either way, at some point we must just trust – closing our eyes first if necessary – that we have taken our writing as far as we can and to realise that it is time to let it go into the world.

That can be a scary moment for any writer, yet it is one that we must face and embrace again and again, for it is only in the world and in the minds of our readers that our words truly come alive.

Do you struggle to finish writing your books? Is it hard for you to send them into the world? What holds you back from sharing your writing and what helps you decide when it is ready?

I know I’m not the only one. I know it has happened to you too. It happened to one of my clients just the other day. We have been working together for over a year now on a project which is almost ready to be published. As we were discussing the final stages of the work, she said to me:

“When I look back now at the draft I first sent to you, I am so embarrassed by it.”

I had to laugh, because I’ve been there too and so have you. Sometime or another, we have all read back over something we wrote a week, a month or a few decades ago, and yes, we are embarrassed by it. And so we should be.

That is what I said to my client, the moment I stopped laughing. I told her it was wonderful that she felt embarrassed about her earlier writing, because it shows how much she has developed since then. Over the past year, both her voice and her vision for her book have become clearer, keener, more precise and more refined. Her style has changed and she has become more confident, which is a beautiful thing.

I remember once hearing the Australian writer Peter Carey give a reading of his work at a literary festival. He began, inauspiciously enough, with an apology for any awkward pauses that might occur during his reading.

“I can’t read my own work in public without wanting to change some bit of it,” he explained.

Know the feeling?

I can’t help thinking that editors are particularly guilty of this proclivity to want to revise everything they have ever written, but my guess is that most writers are susceptible to it. We could choose to read this discomfort as evidence that we are genuinely inept at our craft. Or we could see that our tastes change, our talents evolve and our insight into our written expression alters over time.

That is not to say, however, that there is anything wrong with revisiting some earlier work only to find ourselves pleasantly surprised by a deft turn of phrase, an arresting metaphor or the sincere emotion evoked by our prose. It doesn’t mean we have not advanced beyond that shining moment; only that there are times in our lives when we write with a certain elusive grace, and that we sometimes cannot truly see the beauty in our words until our eyes and minds are older.

Either way, I encourage you, as I did with my client, to embrace your embarrassment but let yourself find delight in your own writing too. You are allowed both to be proud and to progress.

That is, in fact, exactly what you need to do.

Go on, admit it. You’re among friends here, so go ahead and share the story of some occasion on which you glanced back at a piece of your writing and felt that little bit of a cringe inside. Or, if you prefer, tell the tale of a time when your words filled you with a flush of pleasure. I’d really love to hear it.

How did I not discover this until now?

Paint chip poetry. Utterly wonderful!

It seems there are a couple of  ways to play this game – and I do invite you to play.

Start by gathering a spectrum of paint chips or colour cards. Then use them to make poems. You can do this by arranging the chips so the paint names make a sort of poetic sense, as I’ve done in the image above. Or you can write tiny poems on the cards that relate in some way to the colour or name or… well, anything at all, really. Another approach invites you to combine these two techniques by incorporating the name of the poem into the lines you write.

Making poems in this way can be a prompt for all kinds of writerly creativity. If you’re a novelist, you may find a certain colour evokes one of your characters. Could the poem you write on that chip tell part of that person’s story?

For non-fiction writers, the (let’s face it, sometimes lurid and even ludicrous) paint names may stir images or associations that encourage different ways of thinking about your topic. Or just different ways of thinking, which might also help with your writing.

Indeed, for writers of all kinds, a frolic with paint chip poetry can be a spark to awaken the imagination. You might like to make it part of your writing ritual, sort of like a warm up. Alternatively, you may simply enjoy playing with words and colours. Either way, I encourage you to give it a go.

Have you ever played with paint chip poetry? Care to share your fabulous creations? What other fun writing prompts can you recommend?

So, Elizabeth Gilbert has a podcast. And that’s fun because she has a lovely voice and valuable insights to share. Take, for instance, this gem from her first episode.

“There is the book that you must write, and then there is the book that you can publish. And those may be two different books.”

This exact thought has been on my mind lately. It is an issue that often arises among writers, especially those penning memoirs and life stories.

Being brave enough to tell your own tale and communicate your truth is one thing. But what about the other people who may be embroiled in your story? What right do you have to write about them? And, perhaps more pointedly, what are people going to think if you open up and express what you really feel?

The understandable fears of being judged or causing harm to others are enough to convince some writers to stay silent. Yet I believe it is possible to tell difficult stories with integrity and still protect ourselves and others. More than that, I think it is important for us to do so. Not easy, but important.

It’s where writing a conflicted thing. On the one hand, it can be intensely intimate; an act so personal it allows us to glimpse the deepest, most secret and sacred parts of ourselves. But it can also be about as public as you can get. Words can communicate anything to anyone who has the ability to interpret them.

This is why we need to be careful, even respectful, of our writing. We need to appreciate its dual nature and utilise it wisely.

The way I see it, and the way I talk about this with my clients, is that there is the story of what happened and the story you tell about it. There are the words you choose to use, with consideration and precision, and the images and metaphors you decide to place around them. There are structures, perspectives and approaches you can adopt that enable you to narrate your experiences honestly but without exposing anything too perilous or tender.

In short, there are ways to say what you need to convey both truthfully and thoughtfully, and this is what makes the difference between the book you must write and the one you can publish. Of course, the trick lies in navigating your way between the two.

My advice about this is to listen to what Liz Gilbert says and begin by writing the book you need to write. All of it, however rough or raw and sore it may be. Write it for yourself first, with no other reader in mind. Be courageous. Be tenacious. Be unflinching.

After that, give yourself some time. Put your work away and only look it later. Find a mindful reader and perhaps a sympathetic editor. See your story through new eyes.

Then take a deep breath, remind yourself you are a writer and get to work on the book you can publish.

What differences do you think exist between the book you must write and the one you can publish? What strategies do you use to move from one to the other?

I received an email from one of my wonderful clients recently. It went something like this:

Feeling worried about this book. I am not going to give up, but it’s so hard to be consistent with the tone and keep it simple and interesting. Not feeling confident tonight…

My response?

That’s wonderful! The fact that you’re not feeling confident, while certainly uncomfortable for you, is actually a good thing. It means you care about your words and your work, and you want them to be good. So do I. And between us, that’s exactly what we’re going to make them.

Sharing our words with others can be intimidating. We can feel raw, awkward and exposed, especially if we believe in the value of our message but know we haven’t quite written it as gracefully as we’d wish.

Even so, something prompted – or perhaps inspired – us to write. We devoted our time and thought to it, and in most cases, we’re still hoping that someone, someday, will read and respond to it. But no one can do this until it is published, in whatever form that may take. If getting to that point means you need to trudge through discomfort for a while, then so be it.

Often our lack of confidence derives from the (um, maybe not so realistic) expectations we have of ourselves, or from our concern about the opinions of others. That’s why the other message I gave my client was this:

My principal role as your editor is to ensure your writing is as clear, consistent and correct as possible. That’s it. I simply see what you say and then work to make certain you have expressed your intention effectively.

So if, like my client, you’re feeling concerned about your words, be glad. I’m impressed that you care. Just don’t dwell too long in that doubt. Instead, remember this: You need your book to exist in the world and so do your readers. Handing it over to me is the next step in making that happen.

So take a breath.

Hit send.

Then let me do what I’m good at, ok?

When you do feel most assured about your writing and when do you feel least so? What techniques do you use to give your confidence a firm but friendly nudge when necessary?