Category Archives: Notes on Craft

Voice Notes

by Andrew | Leave a comment

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

Clear Thinking

by Andrew | Leave a comment

To round out this short series of posts about the Four Elements practice in writing, let’s look at the fourth and final element: Air.

Air is associated with the mind: thinking, mental states, logic. At its best, it’s associated with clarity: strong ideas clearly expressed in conjunction with the other elements, e.g., conjuring up the senses (earth) in ways that prompt action (fire) and evoke feeling (water). In tarot, the element of Air is represented by the suit of Swords, and it’s useful to think of the image of a sharp blade ready to slice through the air with precision and power – imagine, in the photo above, a giant sword cutting through the clouds towards clear blue sky.

In other contexts, though, an ineffective presence of Air lies at the heart of some of the most frequently encountered weaknesses in undeveloped manuscripts: cluttered writing that’s trying too hard, or stodgy prose that’s hard to follow or care about.

Air can also mess with our process, allowing our monkey minds to, say, worry neurotically about finding an agent while we are still only on page ten of a first draft.

With the craft of writing, I particularly associate Air with ORGANISATION and STRUCTURE and FOCUS. With the bigger picture of a piece of writing, this could mean a well-plotted storyline, or the architecture of a book: how events and revelations are paced and presented through time to create suspense or simply keep the reader reading on.

At a more detailed level, Air can be found in the structure of sentences and paragraphs: effectively rendered SYNTAX that achieves a certain speed or mood, and is clearly understood. Mindful choices of words and verb forms and punctuation will make all the difference to a text.

And Air isn’t just found on the open surface of writing. I also think about the THEMES and IDEAS that work with the intellect, as well as FIGURES OF SPEECH that operate on subconscious levels: symbols, metaphors, similes. Bits of cleverness that engage active minds – though not, it’s hoped, in the process overegging things.

As with the exploration of the other elements, it is going to make sense if Air is balanced with Fire, Water, and Earth – grounded with earthly details, for example, to prevent the writing getting aethereal in a dry and inaccessible way.

As a writing experiment: looking back at previous writing exercises that tasked you on writing letters between characters (Compassionately Yours and Earthly Exchanges), plan a series of letters or exchanges that maps out a larger story. The letter is a form that instantly creates connections and draws us into some sort of agreement – or disagreement. Letters offer gifts, extend invitations, send refusals, or deliver news good or bad.

For example, consider how specific letters can be placed within a story as:

  • triggers or inciting incidents
  • causes or effects in a chain of consequences
  • moments of rising tension, or reversals: do we teeter from moments of hope to moments of despair before hope rises again? Or does fortune rise and rise before a deep dive – or fall and fall before an improvement in circumstances? See Kurt Vonnegut on the shapes of stories
  • obligatory scenes
  • a midpoint or point of no return, after which there is no going back
  • a climax
  • a resolution

To help with this, you might want to think about various theories of on plotting. Which are exhaustive – and can be exhausting! This is one of those points where overthinking can be a problem, and the clarity of Air can be achieved by committing to a simple known form. A few ideas about structure to help:

  • Map out your letters according to how they might fall with an established story structure. I often recommend Michael Hauge’s Five Key Turning Points and Six Stages of a screenplay (which can be adapted for prose too).
  • Or consider the twelve steps of Christopher Vogler’s Hero’s Journey.
  • Or perhaps place a letter in every gap for a version of the Pixar Story Spine: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___. And ever since that day ___.

Further posts on plotting: Plotting; Only Connect.

Make yourself a plan. List all of the letters or alternative forms of exchange. Note who they are sent between, and what is exchanged, and what might change in the world of those characters as a result: how do they end up feeling (water) each time? Also note how these letters might be grounded in the world of the senses (earth) with, e.g., settings or objects of desire.

Don’t worry too much (yet!) about gaps, or places where the story feels thin. You can flesh things out in the writing, feeling your way through characters’ intentions and yearnings. What goes on in these letters can’t always be planned, and sometimes you do have to keep on writing to see what emerges instinctively from your characters and settings as you spend time with them.

Eventually it’s likely you will have to put your thinking gear back on to decide how to arrange your material, deciding where to cut or expand – that’s drafting. But too sometimes a good exercise in thinking about our stories lies in actively not overthinking them during the early stages of writing: a balanced sense of Air.

You can take your plan further by committing to a calendar for writing these letters: one a week, or if you have time one a day across the course of a week or so. See where you end up. This might be the whole or part of an epistolary work, or these letters might serve as anchors in the scheme of a larger story to be fleshed out with other scenes. Or they might simply serve as an outline of sorts for a longer work.

Also take a look at the overall energy (fire) charted between the letters: can you identify a clear, focused line (air) that summarises the story they tell in a sentence or two?

Additional elemental activity: set a timer for five minutes and meditate at your desk or wherever you write before you embark on this activity. Keep it simple: each time a thought arises, note it as a thought and then let it pass, and then return your attention to your breath – connect with the air you take in, and the air you send out into the world.

And a date for your diary in the new year: on Monday 11 January at 6pm I am the guest at the next Words Away Zalon, where I shall be talking to Kellie Jackson about the Airy topic of mindfulness in writing and publishing: Words In Action.

Earthly Exchanges

by Andrew | 1 Comment

Continuing our closer look at my Four Elements practice in writing, let’s think about Earth.

Earth is about the embodiment of the material world in writing: how we bring to life sights, sounds, tastes, smells, textures or touch – the slant of sunlight in November, the song of a robin, the anticipation of eating those fat beans stewing with bayleaf and onions in the pressure cooker back home. The smell of onions that will linger in every corner of the house for a few days!* The crispy – and soggy – leaves that your boots sink into.

Material objects often lie at the heart of a story too: a magic ring, or an inherited house, or a painting in the attic, or a gun over the mantelpiece. Objects can create a focus that serves up purpose and tension, and they can ground the writing in a concrete and specific reality.

These are earthly considerations in the FORM of our writing at a MICRO level: which tangible images and sense perceptions do we select for the characters and settings and objects that populate our stories, and which words do we choose to describe them and make them feel real?

The FORM that writing takes is also a consideration at a MACRO level. I recently blogged about Ursula Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory – what is the larger shape that contains the writing? And at a more detailed level, how might, for example, your book be organised into the narrative units of chapters? Or think about other forms, conceptual or more tangible: the Russian doll format of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, or the separate strands of a braided narrative, or the exchange of letters that makes up an epistolary novel.

Earth is also associated with ACTION: some physical gesture or action set in motion when we add the energy and purpose of Fire. Think about the acts of sex and violence that feature in so many stories, or more subtly the earthly gestures of a kiss or the signing of a contract.

As a writing experiment: bring some of these aspects of Earth together by writing a letter in response to the compassionate letter from the Water exercise Yours Compassionately.

Make this letter contain a material action as well as a material object that somehow serves as a focus to ground the writing: a thank you for a tangible gift, notification of an inheritance, the finding of a body, a ladder someone’s walked under or fallen off, a wrong envelope.

Importantly, think about the exchange created between these letters: what is sent and what is received? What is given, and what is taken?

 

*Update from tomorrow: the smell of onions lingering on the seal of the pressure cooker, and the tang of vinegar and the drying effect of bicarbonate of soda you’re using to try to remove said smell …

Yours Compassionately

by Andrew | 2 Comments

Looking at further examples from the Four Elements practice in writing, let’s consider Water, which is associated with emotion.

There are plenty of ways to think about evoking feeling in writing: shifts in tone can work, for example, through pacing, word choice, sentence length, and plenty of other techniques. Perspective and point of view can also make a difference in establishing an intimacy or detachment or a particular angle on events. These are tweaks or more radical changes we can experiment with during revising and self-editing: which way of telling the story creates a stronger emotional bond with the reader?

But too I am always looking for the intuitive approaches – the things that work their magic naturally, that unspool feeling without effort. When I taught the Water Ways workshop with Words Away back in February, we looked specifically at letter-writing as an instinctive act of embodying feeling in writing.

Firstly, we read some of the real-life letters of Tove Jansson. Depending on who she is addressing – family, lovers, old friends – her tone can be gossipy, passionate, newsy, sincere. The writing is also very efficient – often lyrical in its description of life in her island summerhouse, often brisk, more than a bit scary in describing air raids during the war, grateful in saying thank you for gifts sent from a friend in America, no-nonsense but revealing in relating business matters about her beloved creations the Moomins. Letter-writing doesn’t usually give you time for fussing about language; you have a message and you have to get it across. There is a direct quality of exchange and communication.

We also read selections from Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a beautiful novel that takes the form of a letter to his mother – you can listen to the author read an extract at that link from his publisher. Again: a remarkable intimacy works through this direct quality of addressing someone – in this case a mother who has shared those experiences of being a first-generation migrant.  Also, in this instance, the writing has a real charge from knowing that the mother in the novel can’t read. There have been struggles, there have been difficulties in their relationship – but there is also great love.

As a writing experiment: write a letter from one character to another with a particular purpose. In this instance, give it focus by making it a letter that is compassionate in its intent.

I’m currently taking an online class in Mindful Compassion with my alma mater Naropa University. (More info on a self-paced version here.) It’s fascinating! Not least as I’ve only dipped my toe into the disciplines of religious studies and psychology before. The science underlying various studies on mindfulness training is compelling.

I’ve been particularly interested in various thoughtfully curated readings on altruism and lovingkindness, especially as they tease out the distinctions between empathy (sharing feeling for others) and compassion (extending feeling towards others in ways that alleviate suffering).

It’s also made me question the idea of self-esteem, which can place a premium on pumped-up or unrealistic senses of the self and others. ‘Esteem’ – respect and admiration. Are we doing good things to be respected and admired, or are we doing good things for the sake – and the need – of doing good things?

Lots to think about – and too lots for writers to consider in how they contain feeling in the words they choose.

So, put this into practice: write a letter between two characters in which one of them is doing good things by reaching out to alleviate someone else’s suffering. Consider the nature of that character’s suffering, and then consider its cause and what another character can do to make that suffering more tolerable – and then let that character reach out.

Additional elemental activity: Before you write your character’s letter, try thinking – or feeling – your way into both characters as you take a shower or have a bath. (Note: there might be a difference between the experience of running water in a shower, and the relatively still water of a bath.)

Alternative Water-based writing experiment: I Remember, because so much about memories taps into emotion.

The Four Elements of Writing

by Andrew | Leave a comment

In workshops and editorial mentoring I often use a Four Elements practice. It combines an intuitive sense of creativity with a practical grasp of craft and technique to offer a fresh way of looking at writing. I am planning online Four Elements workshops for the near future, so I thought it would be an idea to describe this in more detail.

I started exploring the Four Elements shortly after I moved back to London and began to focus my editorial work on developmental editing alongside teaching creative writing.

Something that often comes up with early drafts is that the writing often seems overthought, or cluttered; it can feel self-conscious, as if it is trying too hard, and it perhaps lacks ease of expression, or vigour, even though the basic idea might be a strong one. I wanted to help writers find approaches that would be more intuitive, growing naturally out of their own inspirations and taking shape authentically in ways that connect with readers. I felt that instead of thinking so much about writing, we need to find ways to feel our way into writing and also bring in other dimensions of experience. I usually invoke Ray Bradbury, who in ‘Zen in the Art of Writing’ tells us that a basic mantra of writing is: Don’t Think.

This of course presents something of a paradox, given that the very medium we work in as writers – words – requires some degree of cognition and thinking. And we also need to think through possibilities that help us in the task of Don’t Thinking!

There are numerous ways to approach Don’t Thinking, in fact. I’ve studied and taught creative writing at Naropa University, the birthplace of the modern mindfulness movement, and have a strong grounding in contemplative approaches in the arts. The simple task of slowing down and paying attention to the everyday and listening to yourself are strong foundations for any creative practice. I’m also a big fan of Natalie Goldberg, and her Writing Down the Bones and her emphasis on free writing have been a profound influence on my teaching.

I also began to explore the distinction between the left and right sides of the brain, for example through the work of artist-teachers Lynda Barry and Betty Edwards. Though the two hemispheres of the brain are interconnected, the left side is associated with verbal and analytic skills – words, numbers, and structures – while the right is linked with visual and perceptual skills and with intuition. We could perhaps say that some of those overthought manuscripts are a bit too left-brained, and could gain from opening up more of the right side – though we don’t do brain surgery in Four Elements workshops; we just consider these ideas about the brain as a symbolic framework.

I took myself in other directions too, particularly when I signed up for a class in tarot at Treadwell’s bookshop at its old location in Covent Garden. I was already familiar with the symbolism of the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana, which offer powerful archetypes for storytelling, such as the Fool starting on his Journey, the mentor figure of the Magician, and the unexpected reversals of the Wheel of Fortune.

I now found myself drawn to the four suits of the Minor Arcana, with their elemental associations: Fire (Wands), Water (Cups), Earth (Pentacles), and Air (Swords). I began to explore the meanings and associations of the Four Elements in greater depth, and started to understand the range of their value to writers and artists. Through time they have come to play an important role in my teaching as well as my editorial work.

Sometimes it helps to focus on the elements individually, and sometimes to consider them in combination.

Fire is associated with energy, with the vital spark that brings writing to life and keeps it burning until the last word – we can think of this as the fuel for our writing, which can resonate in every sentence. I particularly associate fire with intention and theme: what are the ideas that inspire your writing, the passions that compel you to write? What do you want to achieve in your work? Sometimes, politics is involved in some way or other – and if it isn’t, what might that lack say? Paying closer attention to the craft of writing, I relate fire to developing the voice as an instinctively grown vehicle energising our stories. I talk about syntax, especially how we select grammatical subjects and verbs for the ways they can bring pace and charge to our sentences. I also like to think about the energy created through the conflicts, reveals and twists of dynamic plotting. What are the drivers of your story?

Water is related to the world of emotion. What does the writing make a reader feel? How does it move the reader? What lasting impression does it leave? I particularly relate this to the ways in which writers craft the inner lives of characters and work with point of view. On a sentence level, I consider how we can shift the tone with, for example, word choice, pronouns, repetition, rhythm, or sentence variety – the music in our writing.

Earth represents the material realm of experience, and its embodiment in words. Settings and the outer worlds of characters are obvious associations for earth: how are the sense perceptions that bring them to life evoked on the page: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures? Also, how does the story move forward with action and gesture (we bring in some fire here too), and what might be the roles in the writing, for example, of bodies and spaces, or sex and violence? I also pay attention to the grounding power of nouns relative to the moving energy of verbs.

I often discuss the practicalities of publishing and making a living as a writer as earthly concerns too.

Air brings us back to thinking and the world of mental formations – not as cluttered or overthought writing, but for its clarity of expression and ideas. I usually talk about the strength of its organisation: narrative structure, and the shape or form of the piece (here also bringing in some earth). And I often discuss symbolism and figures of speech, and return to theme: how has that initial spark of inspiration developed a consistent focus throughout the piece? What does the writing shed light on?

The Four Elements is a dynamic system. Elements do not work alone, but need to be cultivated in balance, and different pieces of writing emphasise different elements. A punk song might be all fire, whereas a boyband ballad might be a blend of water and earth (lots of feeeeelings, and the promise of S E X).

When reading manuscripts, I often think about the balance of the Four Elements too – even if I end up translating this into a different language for the uninitiated! For example, I can think of unpublished works of fantasy and science fiction that were really strong in their world-building and high concepts (earth and air), but lacked pace and emotional connection (fire and water) – they didn’t work so well as a story, but felt static, like a tableau. And sometimes intention (fire) is not apparent beyond an insistent urge to write about a particular topic, and focus and clarity emerge with a structured writing practice (air) that helps to fan those flames and stop them going out; writing prompts and exercises can also add layers of emotional depth (water).

In Everyday Magic and other Four Elements workshops I’ve taught at Words Away and elsewhere, we put these ideas into practice with readings and discussion as well as meditations and, of course, prompts and writing experiments. Writers seem to appreciate the new lens through which they can see their writing and experience it as a felt practice. Breakthroughs occur – writers often know at a subconscious level what needs attention, and a fresh approach that emphasises intuition helps them to experience their writing beyond just thinking about it or going round in circles or scrolling down a screen.

I should stress that in this context of writing and teaching we don’t dwell on the fortune-telling reputation of tarot; I know some people are spooked by esoteric practices, or have backgrounds in religious traditions that perceive the tarot as dangerous – in which case perhaps I should have put this paragraph at the very start to calm the fearful! And some writing friends have, I suspect, felt some of this is a bit woo woo and indulgent, with Andrew entertaining his inner hippie a bit too much. But, in fact, I no longer hide or qualify this; many, many people in creative and artistic fields have a deep-seated curiosity or experience with tarot or other fields such as astrology or the Kabbalah, and are open to their power as intuitive tools.

And, importantly, the arts need ways in which we can explore creativity freely, beyond the market and the grasping for a book deal, and the Four Elements offers a practical framework that is open to personal interpretation and meaning. Lately I’ve been reading a lot of ecological literature, and I’ve been finding the Four Elements resonating (of course!) in wonderful books such as Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane.

(That thing about grasping for a book deal. I mean: yes, we want you to get published. But I propose that that comes simply from writing a book that someone wants to read, and so often that sort of energy – that fire – is transmitted by an authentic book that is written from the heart rather than an agent or editor’s second-guessing of the market.)

In fact the Four Elements have a much wider reach than esoteric fields. The Four Elements appear in both classical and medieval philosophy. Then we also have the four humours and the four temperaments, and let’s not forget the four winds, the four gospels, and the four seasons (reinterpreted for literary studies by Northrop Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism).

Traces of the Four Elements can also be found in fields of psychology. The questions in Myers-Briggs tests, for example, ascertain how you make decisions or interact with other people: At parties do you enjoy getting into the action on the dance floor (fire), or do you prefer to have intellectual discussions one on one over a glass of Merlot in the kitchen (air)? And, notably, Carl Jung’s ideas about the quaternity identifies the four psychic functions of intuiting, feeling, sensing and thinking, which roughly correspond with the values of fire, water, earth, and air.

And of course there are many other systems of working symbolically. Buddhists add to the four a fifth element – Space – while the Chinese have a Five Elements philosophy too, though the elements are different ones: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. Seven chakras are found in Indian culture. I also invite writers to think in terms of other frameworks: how might you find qualities of animal, vegetable or mineral in your writing? External categories do not need to define us, but are structures that help us in looking at the world – so why not make your own?

Perhaps consider your own intuitive powers: if you are a cook, for example, how might you relate to your writing in terms of ingredients (veggies, sugars, raising agents), method (baking, slow-cooking, flash-fry), presentation and form (snack, midweek meal, tasting menu, banquet). Writers will usually find strength from working with points of reference they respond to intuitively.

Whichever symbolic system you follow, it will possess its own alchemy – your capacity to create something from your own creative spirit. I like the simple balance of the Four Elements – and also the fact that four different qualities are about the most I can hold in my head at one time.

I often hold workshops and masterclasses in person and online too – some draw on aspects of the Four Elements, and some have more of a craft focus. If you are interested, subscribe to my blog or drop me a line via my Contact page.

And if you’d like to explore the Four Elements in your own writing, take a look at this simple exercise: Looking For The Four Elements. Or try one of these specific exercises devoted to Fire, Water, Earth, or Air. Or try some Field Work.

You can also read this interview about the Four Elements practice.