I'm a little late getting started, but I've been traveling again this week. Here's the first essay in the installment. (I am trying to keep them to less than a thousand words -- this one went a little longer. Sorry.)
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CHOOSING A TOPIC [OR WHY WRITE AT ALL]
A few years ago, when I was still spending my nights running the streets of South Bend, Indiana, and my days sleeping through early morning English [or Philosophy] classes, one of my professors managed to do something pretty amazing.
He woke me up.
You see, one of my reasons for majoring in English was that no matter how difficult the class, I usually managed to pull a pretty good grade with a minimal amount of effort. By my junior year, I had slipped into a habit of losing myself in my own thoughts and daydreams shortly after class started. There I remained until the professor either dismissed the class or invaded my daydreams by asking something earth-shattering like, "Mr. Shadow, please comment on Coleridge's use of symbolism in the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner."
Sigh. Sit up. Time to talk some nonsense.
On this day, however, the professor did neither of those things. In fact, he didn't even speak to me directly. But what he said struck an icepick of fear through my heart. More importantly, it affected quite a few decisions I made afterwards. This is what he said:
"If you don't anything to say, don't write. And for God's sake, don't write fiction!"
He went on to make some other comments about the importance of writing "seriously," while I shifted in my seat, trying to pretend I hadn't heard him. After all, I wanted to write. But did I have something to say? Anything at all? Anything that hadn't already been said better by someone else?
I sighed. There sucking sound in the background was three years of my life and about a forty thousand dollars in tuition going down the drain.
It took me a long time to learn this guy was wrong – to really learn it, in my heart where it matters. Along the way, I wasted some more years and some more tuition in law school, trying to come to terms with the fact that there just wasn't anything else new to say and maybe I wasn't the person to say it.
Eventually, I came to my senses. There were a lot of reasons for this, but the most important was I never really stopped writing. Not seriously and not for long. Writing was in my blood.
Meanwhile, I've learned a lot about writing and why we, as human beings, write and the way we write (or create). Some of what I learned I experienced in books I loved by people I admired. Some of it I read in books about writing written by people who actually wrote -- and were published! Some of it I learned by writing myself. These last were the best lessons.
I share a few with you:
1. You don't know what to say? So what?
Seriously, my professor's theory has been completely disproved by the real life experiences of more than a dozen great writers including Ray Bradbury and Margaret Atwood. Bradbury told an interviewer once that he lay in bed every morning until the conversations started in his head and then ran to the typewriter to get them down on paper. At this point, he was merely transcribing whatever story was playing out of his mind.
The same with Margaret Atwood. She's started entire books with nothing more than a single scene or piece of dialogue in her mind.
The real question – and this is truly the key – is do you enjoy the act of writing? Do you really enjoy it? Do you love it? When you're done, to you feel better about yourself and the world around you? If you can't answer THESE questions with a yes, THEN maybe you shouldn't be writing.
2. You should write about what you know.
You only need to study writing about ten minutes to run across this kernel of truth. I think every writer who ever lived, from Mark Twain (Mark My Words, Mark Twain on Writing) to Stephen King (On Writing) has carved this commandment in literary stone.
The truth is writing is like sex. You can't fake it. Not and enjoy it or, even more important, do it well. And writing is too hard to do it for any reason other than you enjoy it.
[Okay, someone in the back of the class is about to ask me about vampires, the surface of Mars, or life after death. How can you know about these things? Really?]
Okay, some examples are in order. Stephen King writes about vampires and other impossible beasts, and sets his novels in Maine, where he lives. H.G. Wells wrote about Martians in spider machines, and set The War of the Worlds in a sleepy little community in, of all places, England. Homer took a panorama of Greek Gods and Goddesses and placed them in the bickering, emotional environment that he was probably all too familiar with -- Greece in a time of war.
In every case, each of these people made their stories real by adding the once ingredient anyone ever brings to their stories: their experience with human life.
[I recently read that Mark Twain noticed everything about the people around him and would comment, in his journal, about the way someone's fingernails were cut or how they wore a vest on certain days but not others. These little details eventually found their ways into his writing.]
Writing about what you know means writing about your reality. This alone won't make you a great writer, but without it, you will never be more than a fake.
3. Write for yourself.
Okay, I've already said you should write because you love (or enjoy) the act of writing. Don't ruin a good thing by then writing what someone tells you to write. After all, if your Uncle Clyde and Aunt Bertie really think legal thrillers are the wave of the future, why the hell don't they write one?
Write what you want to write. It's that simple. Mysteries, horror stories, war stories, stories with overused endings, stories with deep morals, men's stories, women's stories, erotica – whatever you truly enjoy writing, that's what you should write. Nothing else is going to satisfy you. Ever.
Now this may seem obvious, but think about it the next time you try to get something published or try to win a contest. Are you writing what you want to write or are you writing to win (or get published)? If you are truly writing what you want to write, it will make other's rejection of your efforts a little less painful (but only a little – sorry).
Writing for yourself will show in the quality of your writing. If you're enjoying yourself, your readers probably will, too. If you're not, well, they'll be gone as soon as a better offer comes along.
4. Try this.
Okay, when I suggested these essays, I said that I would put a little exercise in each one that would help you implement the idea of the essay. This is one of the best ways that I know to find topics to write about.
Get up half an hour early. (I know, I know, but it really works better while your mind hasn't been shaped by the clutter of the day.) Get your caffeine of choice. Now sit down and write steadily for fifteen minutes without stopping -- not to correct, not to think, not answer the phone (another good reason to do this early in the morning). Just write steady at your favorite typing or writing speed and without stopping. If you can't think of anything to write, write that! But write for fifteen minutes and do it every day.
Trust me, within a week or two, you'll start to see results. Do this for the rest of your life and you'll never run out of topics to write about.
And each one will be yours. Truly.
The Writing Class - The Art of Storytelling
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