Author Archives: Andrew

Can and Can’t

by Andrew | 1 Comment

I often suggest that writers who are looking for fresh perspectives on their manuscripts take a bit of time away from their drafts and instead devote a little energy to some writing on the side: the same characters and settings and concerns, but approached in new ways.

Something that can be useful is a block of time devoted to I Remember exercises for different characters, using their voices or points of view. Stick with one character for a whole week, perhaps, adapting the prompt every day, e.g., I Remember School, She Remembers Her Mother.

I also suggest variations on this form of the list. A good One is I Can … or I Can’t …

Can: to be able, to have power to, to know. In this case, the simple verb form stresses a character’s powers – or limits. What strengths and talents or knowledge is the character endowed with, and what might that lead to? Or what is a character unable to do, and what are the consequences of that?

The cumulative energy of this form of writing, gathered at a pace in list form, sometimes like a chant, often taps into the unconscious mind and draws out powerful material. What surfaces is often surprising, or reaches whatever’s important quickly. It’s not always/often writing that goes directly into the project word for word, but it can help with focus, and also energise your writing with purpose when it is flagging.

As a writing experiment: For ten minutes a day for a week, use the prompt I Can for characters in your book. The following week, use I Can’t for the same characters. You can also try this as a one-off, when you get stuck.

Try the prompts as ten-minute sprints of free writing, without stopping, preferably writing pen to paper, connecting hand and shoulder and brain and heart and gut. Each Can is as long as it has to be: a couple of lines, a few words, a whole paragraph. And when that’s done, on to the next Can. Quick, quick – keep the pen moving, don’t stop; it’s just for ten minutes. Often some really juicy stuff comes around minute eight or nine – to be continued … Write for longer, if you wish.

And above: cookbooks, because I can cook. Sometimes I can follow a recipe, and sometimes I can’t. And sometimes I am successful, and sometimes I am not, and sometimes it’s related to being able to follow that recipe. But other times I can trust my instinct to, e.g., add add a pear but also less milk to pistachio-oat pancakes, and judging by this morning’s efforts I can safely say that trusting your own ability is a good thing to do.

Gnarliness and Writing

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Something we discussed earlier this year at a Words Away Zalon on mindfulness and writing was the idea of gnarliness.

I first encountered this term in the context of writing via Californian novelist Rudy Rucker at a Naropa University summer school. I learned that gnarly was a word used in surfing, and brought away the idea that a gnarly wave is a difficult wave – one that could kill you, but too one that could give you the chance to really prove your worth.

Rudy covers the subject in further detail in his essay What Is Gnarl?, where among other things he states that ‘a gnarly process is complex and unpredictable without being random. If a story hews to some very familiar pattern, it feels stale’.

I’ve perhaps adapted or simplified the idea a bit for my own teaching. I relate it particularly to the idea of seeking out whatever is difficult or challenging or unpredictable in your work, or something you’d prefer not to deal with.

I also relate the word gnarly to the idea of knottiness – a knot in a tree that’s craggy but just unavoidably there and a defining feature of it. Think of a gnarly piece of wood, and the personality contained in its shape and working.

From The Origin And Meaning Of The Word Gnarly on Surfer Today:

The name is often used to describe a person, a situation, or something that is simultaneously exciting or cool, dangerous or challenging, and even bad or gross … Within the surfing community, the adjective is mostly used to highlight a big wave, rough closeouts, or an extreme surf stunt.

Like many slang terms, it can embrace opposites of meaning.

The word “gnarly” can be used with both derogatory and negative connotations. It can be used to describe something or someone awesome, cool, excellent, wonderful, amazing, radical, incredible, tough, great, intense, extreme, or fantastic. On the opposite side of the spectrum, it’s a negative or derogative term to describe something or someone grotesque, gross, difficult, dangerous, treacherous, complicated, challenging, difficult hairy, or rapidly changing.

Which perhaps reminds us that many things in creative practice require us to embrace paradox, or take on board the idea of negative capability, where we grapple with uncertainty instead of taking the easy route.

I also relate this to many of the ideas that come up in the teachings of Natalie Goldberg. How the writing comes alive when we are handling scary material. Going for the jugular. From the chapter ‘Go Further’ in Writing Down The Bones:

Push yourself beyond when you think you are done with what you have to say. Go a little further. Sometimes when you think you are done, it is just the edge of beginning. Probably that’s why we decide we’re done. It’s getting too scary. We are touching down onto something real. It is beyond the point when you think you are done that often something strong comes out.

In Wild Mind, Natalie quotes Ernest Hemingway: ‘Write hard and clear about what hurts.’ The point of suffering could be something that’s personally painful. Handling pain truthfully is going to make your writing richer and more authentically felt; you might choose to edit or adapt it before sharing the writing, but you probably have to go there first. Tackling the gnarly material will force you to go deeper in ways that will enrich your writing and extend you as a writer.

And sometimes the gnarly issues are more everyday: unresolved technical issues that have solutions waiting to be found. That extraneous character who might need pruning (put them in another book!). Or that scene of dialogue that’s not working but could be rewritten as reported speech in first person. Or that lack of a clear focus that demands a different form, or maybe a more obvious central character. Or that dip in pace that calls out for a total restructuring that really going to make everything stronger.

As a writing experiment: make a list of the gnarly points in a piece of writing – points of difficulty you’ve encountered in the writing, things you’ve avoiding saying, technical problems, unresolved matters, annoying bits of feedback, things that feel complicated or grotesque or extreme or exposing, things that make your heart beat faster.

Then take the gnarliest point, and write through it. Ride it like a gnarly wave! Make it even more complicated or grotesque or extreme, let it make your heart beat even faster. Identify its force – then tame it, and really use it as a powerful strength in your writing.

You don’t have to make a big deal out of this. A timed write of ten minutes might flush out something alive and interesting. But too, think about giving over an hour to gnarliness, or maybe even the revision of a whole draft. You will still have the un-gnarly version to go back to – though maybe you’ll see that in a different light now.

You might also like to refer to my post on Field Work, which offers writing topics that cut to the heart of many of these gnarly matters.

*

My monthly blog posts seem to have become quarterly. Maybe they’ll become more frequent again in the near future. What funny times we are living through – what gnarly times.

But while I’m here: a note that on Wednesday 21 July (5pm-6.30pm, London time) I’m leading a workshop on The Four Elements of Editing for The Literary Consultancy’s Being A Writing programme, and a limited number of tickets have just been released for non-members. I’ll be talking about the Four Elements practice I often apply to writing, and specifically talking about ways to use it in revising and self-editing.

 

Suffering For Your Art, aka Pull Yourself Together

by Andrew | 2 Comments

As a guest at a recent Words Away Zalon on mindfulness and writing, I made a passing reference to Kellie Jackson about the manuscript as a site of suffering. It was a bit of a throwaway remark, but I’ve been thinking about this idea since.

First, and most simply: as an editor I see a lot of writers suffering over their writing. Uncertainty about technique, confusion about feedback, frustration and even anger about rejections, envy at the success of others, doubts about the very idea of the book in the first place, sales figures for the last book. Angst, worry, fretting, the workings of Monkey Mind: these are very real obstacles that writers suffer, whether they are at the beginnings of their careers or experienced authors.

Weren’t we supposed to be doing this because writing is fun?!

Secondly, I’ve recently been taking a series of classes on Buddhist philosophy. The foundation of Buddhist practice rests on the four noble truths: suffering is a basic fact of life; suffering has causes; those causes can be alleviated or ended; and there is a path to that end of suffering. Simple principles, simple observations.

I found it hard to relate to this idea of suffering back when I first encountered it – in some encyclopedia, I think – in primary school in the 1970s. That Victorian notion of progress and the forward march of history with a certain Judeo-Christian tinge: that still carried weight then, and a midcentury faith in the future offered all sorts of technocratic utopias.

But as I get older, I understand the relevance of this teaching about suffering on both global and personal scales. The innocence of Ladybird books about Kings and Queens and Marco Polo gives way to way to the truths of history and the threats of the anthropocene. And we all experience losses, or struggle with challenges. I still have that habit of seeing the glass a quarter full, but at times life really does suck.

Which does remind us that all things are relative. Yes, you might be struggling with this book you’re writing. But take a look at the sufferings in the world around us: disease, hunger, the climate emergency, grieving communities, grieving families. I’m rationing the news and social media at the mo, so who knows what today brings, but it will include some or all of the above. And then there are all the losses that don’t make the headlines too.

So beside any of those things, let’s place the worries permitted for writing a book. Sometimes, in fact, the Buddhist concept of suffering is translated more subtly as dissatisfaction, and that might be a more useful way of looking at things.

Of course, we seek support and guidance in our writing. But at a certain point we really do have to gather our energies, and regroup, and maybe ask why we are doing this, and what we can do to help ourselves further, and take a long hard look. Pull Yourself Together: that is the title of my own as-yet unwritten self-help guide (a family joke – I’m not always known for being patient with the moaning sorry suffering of others). I’m in the middle of Natalie Goldberg’s online Way of Writing at the moment, and she says we have to grow a spine. At a certain point, we have to cut through the worries and the struggling, and listen to ourselves and just write.

With that rather hard-faced perspective, try this as an exercise in writing or revision: write for at least ten minutes for each of the following prompts:

  • How is your writing suffering?
  • What are the causes of your writing’s suffering?
  • How can those causes of suffering be ended?
  • What can you do to help end that suffering? Maybe think about: craft, process, further studies or training, feedback, other forms of guidance and support? Break these aims down into a list of tangible tasks: pull yourself together (this might take more than ten minutes as an ongoing exercise in planning and list-making).
  • Also: translate the word, and consider your sufferings as  dissatisfactions, and ask yourself how you can be satisfied.

You might want to try these as free writes, Natalie-style: write without stopping, keeping the pen moving, following your mind and getting it down on paper. Then maybe, later, read it aloud – read or send as a voice note to a writing buddy.

No harm was intended to any religious faith in the writing of this post! I don’t profess to be a Buddhist, or anything else other than someone who loves books and the world of writing. For what it’s worth, I also have four planets in Aries. I never used to think much about astrology until someone explained what that means to me (shocked at how accurate!).

Happy Easter! My favourite pagan holiday, full of Aries energy for fresh starts and cutting through. My birthday usually falls nearby, and I consider it an international festival for eating well, enjoying the garden, and thinking about books and bunnies and birdsong.

Voice Notes

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I am currently taking The Way of Writing, Natalie Goldberg’s new online class with Shambhala Publications. It was truly exciting on Saturday evening to sit among a body of 2,181 students beaming in from all over the world via Zoom. Natalie makes it work – her teaching and her spontaneity and her big heart make for a powerful transmission.

When it comes to writing practice, Natalie tasks writers on writing using prompts in, e.g., ten-minute sprints, and then we read our work out aloud to other people, in this case via Zoom breakout groups. This weekend I read and listened to writers from British Columbia, Connecticut, and Florida. It was thrilling: raw, confessional, direct. Some of the best writing I’ve ever heard has been in such contexts.

One of the things that is so special, I think, is that we just listen without giving feedback. In fact, feedback is not allowed, though we usually smile or offer a hands-together bow of thanks.

I have blogged about this before: Express Yourself Without Feedback: feedback has a time and place. It can sometimes bolster your confidence or direct your attention to ways to improve technique, but maybe that comes later; sometimes it pumps up your ego or derails you with criticism or in some other way waylays you. As Natalie said on Saturday, you have to build your spine as a writer, and voicing your own work is one of the best ways of achieving this. There is great strength in the simple act of expression.

Sometimes this listening is combined with a ‘recall’, where the listener simply tells you afterwards what they remember at the end of listening to your piece. Even their misrememberings can be interesting, valuable. Recalls can help focus the practice of listening too. It’s an act of receiving, which is one to cultivate.

So: several friends are also taking this class, and because we are writing every day we thought we’d share some of this work too. Organising another Zoom is a bit like, well, organising another Zoom – maybe we can organise that later?! So for now I have been exchanging WhatsApp voice notes with some of my fellow writers. They are short – just two or three minutes. What a treat! The things I’ve heard. And shared!

And I also found myself playing my own voice notes back to myself. Just once to start with, then more frequently.

Now, I have a thing about my voice. I hate listening to my own voice: I think I sound too nasal, too whiny, too Midlands, too gay. All of that tripe from the monkey mind.

But, actually, this time, in playing back, I liked what I heard. It’s still nasal, whiny, Midlands, and gay – but hey, that’s me. And it felt authentic, and the writing felt true. And somehow what I am hearing in these voice notes is feeding what I am writing day by day too. At some deep preverbal level I feel my awareness of what I am writing and how I am writing it, and it’s coming out on the page. It feels natural, strong.

One of the classic tips for revising your writing is reading it aloud: see where you stumble, catch your mistakes, note where you get bored, or where the sap rises. I also know of writers who ask other people to read their work back to them. That to my mind sounds as good a use of a writing group as any. It’s also useful to record yourself reading your writing and to listen to those recordings.

I remember my teacher-friend Bobbie Louise Hawkins getting excited about some recording accessory you could attach to an iPod for overheard dialogue exercises; this was about 2004, and she’d been getting by for decades with Dictaphones and those miniature tape cassettes. We were thrilled when Sony came out with some pen-sized recording device.

Now digital technology and smartphones make this all so easy.

As a writing experiment: Write for ten-minutes without stopping, using a prompt.* Use a notebook and a pen that writes easily, and (as Natalie says) keep the hand moving – follow your thoughts.

Then, using an app on your phone or computer, record what you wrote and send it as a voice note to a friend or writing partner, e.g., on WhatsApp, or send Voice Memos via a messaging app. If you wish, ask them to do a short recall of what they remember at the end, without playing it again.

Then: listen to this too. Perhaps you can also listen to and acknowledge some writing of a writing partner too.

Give yourself fifteen minutes to do this every day, if you can: ten to write, and five to share and/or to listen. You might also want to make arrangements for sharing with a writing partner for a fixed span, e.g., of a week or a month. (And make sure you choose a writing buddy you trust!)

Just: be listened to. Be heard. Listen to yourself, hear yourself. Build a spine. There is perhaps no greater practice for growing your intuition as a writer.

 

*If you need a prompt, use one of the following:

  • A year ago …
  • The wind
  • What’s on my bookshelf
  • Flags
  • The clock
  • Prayers
  • Something for your work-in-progress – maybe take a random line and write off it

Acknowledgements

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At a recent Words Away Zalon, Words In Action, I talked to Kellie Jackson about mindfulness in relation to creativity, writing and publishing. Mindfulness covers a wide range of ideas and practices, and in 2021 I plan on blogging about specific topics that might have a bearing on our writing. 

At the Zalon I mentioned the idea of the monkey mind, or the loop of mental chatter that creates negativities that undermine our work: doubts, resentments, imposter syndrome. That monkey mind just needs to shut up, really!

Though that’s easier said than done. We can try meditation (more on that another time), but there are also simple writing practices that can ground us in mindful ways: present; clear, authentic.

Something that I suggested at the Zalon was to write the acknowledgements for the book you are writing now, before you finish (or even start!) writing that book.

This seems quite fanciful, but in fact I think it could be really grounding as well as affirming.

I was inspired to suggest this by reading the acknowledgements in the recently published novel The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr. So recently published I’ve not yet had chance to read the book! But – like the good publisher I’ll always be at heart – the first thing I looked at was its acknowledgements section. And these acknowledgements are long! And very beautiful: ten pages of names and recognitions and reasons to be thankful. Family, friends, teachers, writers, singers, artists, professionals, supporters of all types.

Let me share the gorgeous credit he gives to St Toni (Morrison):

It was my dream for you to read this book, believe that it has merit, offer your blessing, and perhaps invite me for a cup of tea at your house so that I could tell you how without you, this book could not have been because it was your holy scripture, your complete indictment and rearrangement of the English language that inspired me to write it. You said if I couldn’t find the book I wanted to read, then I must write it. So I did. Wherever you are in the universe, it is my sincerest hope that you are pleased.

(I do love that idea of writing the book you want to read. It’s powerful.)

Writing acknowledgements is a bit like that practice of writing lists of gratitudes, though here I see subtle distinctions in some of the additional meanings of the word acknowledge: ‘to recognise the importance or quality of’, ‘to recognise as true, genuine, valid, or one’s own’.

I am also reminded of an exercise I once did at Naropa where we drew a constellation of influences on our writing like a star chart.

So as a writing experiment: give yourself half an hour and sit down at your computer or notebook and think of all the people who’ve inspired you or given you support in your path of writing in some important or quality way. People you know, people you’ve never met, people who’ve been true, genuine, valid, and one of your own. Acknowledge them.