The incredible shrinking journal (or, why I don't write)

[AuntieEmma[$]]

I wrote this originally as a journal entry, but am putting it here too because I think it applies to all sorts of writing (or at least all sorts of neurotic writers) and I thought it might be an interesting thing to discuss:


I keep on writing things and then deleting them, writing more, deleting more. I look at what I wrote and then feel that it's too embarrassing, I don't want anyone to see it, it puts me in a bad light, or that it's too private, or often simply that I just haven't figured out quite what I'm getting at yet, but I know that what I already wrote isn't it.

And if I'm this neurotic about a journal ... I'm starting to see why I get so little writing done in general.

I think there's something about the process of writing itself that meets some need, and then after that, I don't need to have what I've written hanging around any more -- just as I wouldn't feel the need to record and save a conversation, no matter how satisfying a conversation it had been. Just getting stuff into words helps clarify things for me, and then reading it over afterwards helps in a different way, and then knowing that at least one other human being has read it too also helps. And then, often, I'm done, I've gotten what I need out of the process, and I just want to wipe the slate clean.

I guess there's nothing wrong with that -- except as I said, it makes it very hard to write anything, if it's stories or epinions or whatever. So maybe I either have to say I don't really want to write stories or epinions or whatever, I just thought I did for some reason -- or I need to deal with this in some way.

It's not even that it's impossible to be neurotic and self-censoring and still get some writing done that doesn't end up in the electronic or physical trash can. I remember a writing teacher who said he routinely did 25 drafts of a story, and then there are all those Famous Writer stories about the 50 false starts on a novel (usually accompanied by pictures of wadded pieces of paper overflowing from the trash can). But maybe for me it's not exactly that -- maybe I just want to do the 24 drafts but I'm not really all that interested in the 25th one that would be deemed final??? Or maybe it's the opposite, that I've got some block and need to push through, after draft 24, so that I finally get to draft 25??

[Redlass]

I think you and I must be polar opposites when it comes to writing. I'm a pack rat. I save every snippet and every draft. Last night, after I spent three hours cleaning our computer of a worm virus, my husband insisted it was a feature not a virus because it forced me to delete all of our e-mail files (some dating back to 1997 discussing shower arrangements for my then-impending child).

I save every draft of chapters and seminars I'm writing at work until it threatens to fall over me on my desk and I have to throw it away.

Even with journals, I worry more that I don't think enough about privacy and what should be kept out of the public eye.

So, do you think there's a happy medium for us? Or should we not worry and just do what fits our style the best?

[CurtisEdmonds]

Auntie said in post # :
I think there's something about the process of writing itself that meets some need, and then after that, I don't need to have what I've written hanging around any more -- just as I wouldn't feel the need to record and save a conversation, no matter how satisfying a conversation it had been. Just getting stuff into words helps clarify things for me, and then reading it over afterwards helps in a different way, and then knowing that at least one other human being has read it too also helps. And then, often, I'm done, I've gotten what I need out of the process, and I just want to wipe the slate clean.

Fine. If you're writing as therapy, or something. But if you're writing commercially, this way lies bankruptcy. You've got to get it out to the mass market somehow or other, else you're just futzing around. And keep in mind, there are a lot of neurotic readers out there.

"For me, the acme of graceful prose style is exemplified in that simple phrase: Pay to the order of." -- R.A.H.

[owling]

Auntie said in post #1 :
I think there's something about the process of writing itself that meets some need, and then after that, I don't need to have what I've written hanging around any more

I think this is what you need to decide--why are you writing?

I think more people would be happy if they knew the answer to this question.

Maybe what you have going here is just a block against finishing. But maybe it's a problem with expectations.

Most people just think of themselves as writers, and they don't make a distinction between whether they're trying to write for publication or write for themselves. So they write as though they're writing for themselves (never quite finishing anything, never writing that 25th draft, never bringing anything up to actual publication standards or being willing to listen to criticism from others), but they try to get things published. And these things just don't go together.

Curtis is right--if you want to write professionally, you just have to break through that block in whatever way you can and write. But there's another side to this that most people don't think about, which is that if you don't want to write professionally, you need to stop trying to write that 25th draft and just enjoy what you're doing.

That's a perfectly valid way to write, too.


If it is just a block, there are various ways you can work on getting up the enthusiasm to push on through. I'm not sure if it will help--it's something I wrote about working through burnout, which is a bit different--but I did write an article some time ago on getting your enthusiasm back up for digging into your writing.* It might at least give you some ideas.


*I don't get paid in any way for page reads to that article, so I hope this won't be considered pimping. [Err, edited to add, I forgot about the affiliate links to Barnes & Noble. OTOH, everyone buys from Amazon, so I don't think I've ever actually made any money on those. ]

[rmthunter]

Coincidentally, I'm just going through another read on Betsy Lerner's The Forest for the Trees. She has a couple of chapters that deal with your very issues -- particularly the one titled "Good Child," which talks about the "what if my mother sees this?" syndrome (which I find myself falling into with writing much more than I ever have with art). If you're serious about writing, that will kill you. If you're not serious about writing, don't worry about it. Just delete it when you're done. Lerner quotes Gore Vidal (I think -- it might have been John Updike) that taste is a social criterion having vanishingly small relevance to art.

The constant revision is an old bogey -- it's an excuse not to write.

It strikes me, though, that one of the valuable things about a journal is the possibility of going back and looking at where you were in the past (says he who has boxes of little notebooks and journal books, journals on disk, thoughts on scraps of paper -- you get the picture). Same question applies, I guess -- if it's for you, how much do you want to edit yourself, and are you really doing yourself any favors if you do?

Bob
________________
Who has been his own most-photographed model, but is still having trouble writing sex scenes.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

me said

keep on writing things and then deleting them, writing more, deleting more ... And if I'm this neurotic about a journal ...

Sometime since that was written, the journals here just disappeared. So I guess that solves that problem.

(Speaking of things disappearing, while I understand why Amy wants to cut down on server bloat, it's too bad that old threads are going to be purged -- I always like it when someone digs up an ancient thread from the archives, as Bob did here, and gets the conversation going again. One of the most interesting things about internet communication, IMO -- conversations can span years.)

Curtis said

But if you're writing commercially ...

Which now (though not when I started this thread) I do want to do.

I came across something yesterday, that might be a key to that. It was an interview with Anne Rice. She was saying that she created characters that both she and her readers would fall in love with. And that struck me, because when I've written stories in the past, people generally disliked the characters. They thought the characters were vivid and three-dimensional and lifelike and all that -- but they didn't like them. So maybe that's a key to writing sellable commercial fiction -- or, for that matter, writing that has any sort of reason for being -- to create characters that readers fall in love with.

(Even as I wrote that, I can think of counterexamples, where the characters are all unlikeable, and the books are still good. But maybe that's harder to pull off, and in any case would seem to have less immediate commercial appeal.)

Bob said

Coincidentally, I'm just going through another read on Betsy Lerner's The Forest for the Trees. She has a couple of chapters that deal with your very issues -- particularly the one titled "Good Child," which talks about the "what if my mother sees this?" syndrome

Ha ha ha ha ha. I'll have to get that book.

heather said

I did write an article some time ago on getting your enthusiasm back up for digging into your writing.

Good article. Thanks. I've bookmarked it.

[rmthunter]

AuntieEmma said

I came across something yesterday, that might be a key to that. It was an interview with Anne Rice. She was saying that she created characters that both she and her readers would fall in love with. And that struck me, because when I've written stories in the past, people generally disliked the characters. They thought the characters were vivid and three-dimensional and lifelike and all that -- but they didn't like them. So maybe that's a key to writing sellable commercial fiction -- or, for that matter, writing that has any sort of reason for being -- to create characters that readers fall in love with.

(Even as I wrote that, I can think of counterexamples, where the characters are all unlikeable, and the books are still good. But maybe that's harder to pull off, and in any case would seem to have less immediate commercial appeal.)

Actually, I just wrote a review of Michael Bishop's Unicorn Mountain (still figuring how where to post it) and one thing that struck me about that book -- which is brilliant -- is that the characters are not particularly likeable. They're not awful, they're just not necessarily very nice to each other, but you do get really involved with them.

Also, keep in mind that Rice is writing very commercial fiction -- not in itself a bad thing, just another genre, as far as I'm concerned -- so she's hitting an audience that wants to get involved with her characters in a certain way that a more "literary" author -- such as Steven Sherrill in The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break or Jim Grimsley, or even Jamie O'Neill -- doesn't do but will still have a spellbinding story, albeit without Rice's commercial success.

Some old threads are worth reviving.

Bob

[rmthunter]

I might also add that the actual writing makes me crazy, particularly fiction. It's the damned "what happens now?" that keeps doing it to me.

Bob
_________________
Who is known for storming around the place talking to himself.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Also, keep in mind that Rice is writing very commercial fiction -- not in itself a bad thing, just another genre, as far as I'm concerned -- so she's hitting an audience that wants to get involved with her characters in a certain way that a more "literary" author -- such as Steven Sherrill in The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break or Jim Grimsley, or even Jamie O'Neill -- doesn't do but will still have a spellbinding story, albeit without Rice's commercial success.

Thing is, I never did too good with literary fiction (and god knows, I tried), so now I'm thinking maybe I'd do better with commercial fiction? I agree, it's a whole different genre, but maybe a genre that might be more congenial for me?

Plus, I'm really, really, really, really, really motivated by money right now.

Also, I'm feeling some kind of a shift in my interests. When I was studying writing, which was really the last time I actually did any, Raymond Carver was very big. And I was influenced by that. It's not that I set out to write Carver-imitation stories, exactly, but I did think that the coolest thing was to be understated, to write stories where people had to read between the lines, where the important things were never stated outright.

A few days ago, I was reading an article about movies, which was talking about how in old movies, acting was bigger -- that today, the greatest compliment you can give an actor is that his/her performance is understated, but it wasn't always that way. And the writer (I think it might have been Mick LaSalle, in the Chronicle?) said something about how the performances weren't larger than life -- they were big because life is big.

And that struck me too, the way the Anne Rice interview had struck me -- I think all this stuff is catching my attention now because it's reflecting a change in what I'm interested in and what I'd like to be able to do.

Maybe I'm just a slave to fashion trends -- and minimalism does seem to have gone out of style -- but in any case my interest in writing painfully-crafted stories with little epiphanies at the end is about zero, at the moment.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

P.S. Just to be clear, that last post wasn't meant in any way to knock Raymond Carver, who was a wonderful -- at his best, a magical -- writer. It's just that I'm not very good at doing that kind of stuff.

[rmthunter]

AuntieEmma said

Also, I'm feeling some kind of a shift in my interests. When I was studying writing, which was really the last time I actually did any, Raymond Carver was very big. And I was influenced by that. It's not that I set out to write Carver-imitation stories, exactly, but I did think that the coolest thing was to be understated, to write stories where people had to read between the lines, where the important things were never stated outright.

I love writing like that -- Grimsley, and even a lot of SF writers -- Patricia McKillip, early Zelazny. (Grimsley and McKillip being very high on my list of people to learn from -- astonishing craftsmen, but not obvious about it.) I'm finding that it's a good foil for some lush exposition and scene-setting. I'm in favor of economy in art, so even "lush" is a relative term here. I keep remembering somebody's dictum, whether it's David Gerrold or he was quoting someone -- "evoke," which to me translates as tight and subtle, maybe even a little elliptical. (I also have a history of producing a number of very lean and ambivalent photographs, which I consider my best.) As for doing X-imitation stories -- you can tell who I've been reading by looking at this week's drafts. It gets cleaned up pretty quick, but I learn a lot by doing it. Mary Oliver made a point of that in talking about learning to write poetry -- it's a useful learning device and can give you a solid grounding in technique.

And that struck me too, the way the Anne Rice interview had struck me -- I think all this stuff is catching my attention now because it's reflecting a change in what I'm interested in and what I'd like to be able to do.

Maybe I'm just a slave to fashion trends -- and minimalism does seem to have gone out of style -- but in any case my interest in writing painfully-crafted stories with little epiphanies at the end is about zero, at the moment.

Fashion-shmashion. If you like doing it and it comes relatively easy for you, go for it. I don't think pain is a requirement.

(I don't believe this -- it's January 2nd in Chicago, 50-something and raining. Go figure.)

Bob
________________
Who tried very, very hard to read Interview with a Vampire and just couldn't.

[rmthunter]

AuntieEmma said

P.S. Just to be clear, that last post wasn't meant in any way to knock Raymond Carver, who was a wonderful -- at his best, a magical -- writer. It's just that I'm not very good at doing that kind of stuff.

Betsy Lerner has some really interesting observations on Carver and his relationship with his editor, Gordon Lish. It seems that revelations of Lish's real contribution to Carver's published work damaged Carver's reputation, as well as Lish's, and destroyed their relationship.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Fashion-shmashion. If you like doing it and it comes relatively easy for you, go for it. I don't think pain is a requirement.

What I was trying to say is that I think this time, fashion may be working in my favor. Minimalism was painful for me, and didn't come easily at all. (It's just that I wonder sometimes, when I do things that I swear feel like they are internally motivated, and then look up and see everyone else is doing pretty much the same kind of thing -- then it seems I'm not at all as immune to fashion as I'd like to think I am.)

somebody's dictum, whether it's David Gerrold or he was quoting someone -- "evoke," which to me translates as tight and subtle, maybe even a little elliptical.

My problem, when I used to try to write this way, is that I think I was using the elliptical-ness as something to hide behind.

Also, I think that Carver, and Hemingway, who seems to have been a big influence on him, were coming out of a strong silent man type of persona -- and that's just not me. Maybe the reason I didn't do so good writing in that style is that I just don't have the kind of personality that the style would spontaneously arise from.

All I can say is that when I read that thing by Rice about creating characters that she and her readers would fall in love with, I thought, YES! That's it!

One of those "eureka" moments.

Now whether I can actually do THAT any better than I could do the understated literary story thing, remains to be seen.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

rmthunter said

Betsy Lerner has some really interesting observations on Carver and his relationship with his editor, Gordon Lish. It seems that revelations of Lish's real contribution to Carver's published work damaged Carver's reputation, as well as Lish's, and destroyed their relationship.

Now you're REALLY piquing my interest in the book. Gotta get it, gotta get it ...

(I don't believe this -- it's January 2nd in Chicago, 50-something and raining. Go figure.)

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

[rmthunter]

AuntieEmma said

What I was trying to say is that I think this time, fashion may be working in my favor. Minimalism was painful for me, and didn't come easily at all. (It's just that I wonder sometimes, when I do things that I swear feel like they are internally motivated, and then look up and see everyone else is doing pretty much the same kind of thing -- then it seems I'm not at all as immune to fashion as I'd like to think I am.)

You're just very much in touch with the Zeitgeist

My problem, when I used to try to write this way, is that I think I was using the elliptical-ness as something to hide behind.

I can see where someone might think that way (and/or use it that way); it's extraordinarily difficult to do it well, as I'm learning -- for me, the key point is that the clues have to be there, but they can't be lit in neon. It's the way someone like Jim Grimsley does exposition in Kirith Kirin -- it's there, it's enough to paint the picture, but there's no one lecturing at you. The narrator seems to assume that you know it all already, but manages to bring up the relevant details so that you get the picture. Part of my enthusiasm, I think, is that for me as a reader, I find that sort of writing really brings me into the story very deeply.

Also, I think that Carver, and Hemingway, who seems to have been a big influence on him, were coming out of a strong silent man type of persona -- and that's just not me. Maybe the reason I didn't do so good writing in that style is that I just don't have the kind of personality that the style would spontaneously arise from.

I'm not so sure about that part -- sure in Hemingway, and from what I know of Carver, it seems to fit, but Grimsley is this nice little gay boy from North Carolina writing in a pretty Southern gothic vein, and McKillip is a woman writing very poetic fantasy. Although, thinking about it, I'm not sure either of them is so terse as Papa, but they do use that sort of pared down technique a lot and to great effect, and neither comes anywhere close to the kind of lush manner of someone like Jamie O'Neill or C. J. Cherryh or James Joyce. I think of it as incorporating the lessons of haiku into prose fiction -- you really have to write like a poet to pull it off. (Hence my constant polishing.)

All I can say is that when I read that thing by Rice about creating characters that she and her readers would fall in love with, I thought, YES! That's it!

One of those "eureka" moments.

Now whether I can actually do THAT any better than I could do the understated literary story thing, remains to be seen.

Well, go for it!

[rmthunter]

AuntieEmma said

Now you're REALLY piquing my interest in the book. Gotta get it, gotta get it ...

It's much more about the writing life than about writing, but it's pretty interesting -- she was a well-known editor who started off as a poet and finally became a literary agent. She seems to have a good take on the way writers relate to the world, and some really good insights on the things that make you think you're writing when you're not, not to mention, of course, a very good section on publishing and what to expect.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop, although we could be headed for another San Francisco winter. Let's hear it for that bend in the jet stream.

Bob

[AuntieEmma[$]]

rmthunter said

You're just very much in touch with the Zeitgeist

Well, that's a nicer way of putting it. (Still think of it as slave to fashion, myself.)

-- ... I think I was using the elliptical-ness as something to hide behind.

I can see where someone might think that way (and/or use it that way);

What I'm thinking now -- not totally sure I'm right -- is that different styles of writing go along with different kinds of personalities. Someone who is naturally concise when they talk might find the elliptical writing style comes more naturally for them.

Also, my gut feeling is that because I do tend to try to hide in my writing -- and I think this may be a lot of the reason why writing gets painful, all that struggling between showing and hiding is hard -- aiming at being more direct, more emotional, and more open might be a good way to counteract that tendency. Not that I would actually get all the way to the other extreme either, or even very far at all -- just that aiming in that direction might be helpful.

it's extraordinarily difficult to do it well, as I'm learning -- for me, the key point is that the clues have to be there, but they can't be lit in neon. It's the way someone like Jim Grimsley does exposition in Kirith Kirin -- it's there, it's enough to paint the picture, but there's no one lecturing at you. The narrator seems to assume that you know it all already, but manages to bring up the relevant details so that you get the picture.

Who's Jim Grimsley?

Part of my enthusiasm, I think, is that for me as a reader, I find that sort of writing really brings me into the story very deeply.

I like it too, as a reader. Don't think I can reproduce it well, though, as a writer.

I'm not so sure about that part -- sure in Hemingway, and from what I know of Carver, it seems to fit, but Grimsley is this nice little gay boy from North Carolina

A nice little gay boy can't be a strong silent type?

writing in a pretty Southern gothic vein, and McKillip is a woman writing very poetic fantasy.

Who is McKillip? (It's been a long time since I've read much genre fiction -- except for mysteries, which I'm still gobbling up.)

I think of it as incorporating the lessons of haiku into prose fiction -- you really have to write like a poet to pull it off. (Hence my constant polishing.)

Yeah.

Well, go for it!

Yeah. That's the hard part.