Hi Friends.
I can’t stop thinking about the not very kind joke about an actress (reported not to be very kind herself) who couldn’t read. The idea was itself ludicrous—how might she learn all her lines? What underlings would provide such services for her?—and this of course made it funnier, maybe less cruel, because it was simply impossible to do that job without being able to read. I mean, of course it wasn’t true! Or was it? I’m thinking of this joke because lately it feels like I cannot read, and that, as a writer, seems ludicrous. And yet.
A few definitions before I go on with my confession.
Lately: The better part of this year, perhaps reaching back into last year, if I look at it closely enough, which I don’t want to.
Cannot Read: Cannot sink my teeth into anything with absolute immersion. Cannot be enthusiastic about sentences, plot lines, ideas, characters, literature as a whole. Cannot turn to someone and say “read this now!” with any conviction.
I’ve had decent luck with re-reads (Hamnet, The Animators, currently, Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home), a couple of nonfiction audio books. But for the most part, it’s been like this: my nightstand or desk corner stacked with books with bookmarks in them, 15, 50, 100 pages in. Novels, short stories, poetry, nonfiction I’m truly interested in. This is mirrored in the digital list I keep of books I’m reading, all the DNF1 notations at the end.
It’s a classic case of it’s not you, it’s me. Though what is wrong—or perhaps, even, and I will get to this, right?—with me is the bigger mystery. Is it that I am too deep in my own work to allow in the craft of others? Too brain-addled by my scrolling habits? Grumpy about contemporary fiction? Preoccupied by a host of things one might be preoccupied by? I don’t know. I don’t know what’s causing this general meh feeling towards the activity I hope others will do when my own writing efforts are done, only that it’s been persistent, long lasting, and seemingly incurable by any good book. It feels at once like my darkest secret—a writer who doesn’t like to read?!?—and also, maybe this is the real dark secret?, totally fine.
Worst case scenario: I’m a fraud. So many of us teach writing by pointing to the work of other writers and using them as models. Here’s how a typical writing workshop goes: we read other writer’s work, both published and unpublished (student manuscripts). We look at what someone has done to learn what we can do, examining the machinations of it, the choice made in every line, every word. The work that was once a wonder to us becomes less mysterious but usually more impressive. We see the feats of craft, how every word is a choice that has created a reaction in us as a reader. It’s not that I can’t do this noticing anymore. It’s that I’m not finding it useful. I cannot apply what I see to my own work. I cannot seem to learn this way anymore—right now? Again, I don’t know—which is the way I was taught writing. I can still teach this way, but it can feel like a lie to do so. It feels, at times, like I am somehow managing to teach a foreign language I don’t actually speak.
Best case scenario: I’m making space for my own book, which is about to undergo revision, and I’m so deeply in its universe, its logic, its particulars, I am out of room to bring in outside influence. I am in the part of creation that is about finding my own way, a fierce and perhaps ill-advised self-reliance. I have a coaching client who was working on a project and she didn’t know if it was memoir or fiction, was preoccupied by the decision of it. And while I did counsel her that she would of course eventually have to decide when she was beyond the first stage of laying it down, I discouraged her from trying to find a precise model for it as the only way she could make such a decision. I told her that in all likelihood she was writing her version of whatever it was, and that her book was likely a new thing that could only come from her at this moment in time, that the important thing was getting the story out without overthinking what it was or would be, which can really get in the way of things. Not that my book is entirely new, but it does need to be mine, from my brain, and maybe that’s the thing my brain is rejecting all books that aren’t created in my brain in pursuit of. And later, maybe, I’ll need to drop into those models and examples, but for now, I’m not working that way and I’m not fighting it, either.
This is precisely the thing I’m always telling clients and students: to trust the way they work, to pay attention to it and work with it rather than against it. But of course keeping that trust, especially when it’s only in the sense of things in your head, that’s the truly hard thing to do.
Why yes I have buried the lede here: I finished my novel draft about a month ago. If you follow me on Instagram you likely already know this from when I posted my current word count and photos from the floor (my process involves a lot of being on the floor in various states; it’s a real writer thing, absolutely legit). Performative accomplishment is what social media was created for. But now, soon—next week, perhaps the following one—after a brief break to palette cleanse my brain2, I am going to get back to it, do the work work, again.
Social media is also great for crowd-sourcing, so I asked the collective brain if they had any tips on revision. Here’s some tips I got, and please, if you’re a writer who has any more, send them my way by replying to this email! (Maybe I’ll finally use one of the bazillion new Substack features to share, like Notes?) I have taught classes on revision and have methods but I’m always looking for something new and shiny to try to calm my nerves.
Revision Tips, from Other Smart People3
Write one draft chronologically
Categorizing each scene by theme and reshuffling order based on theme rather than chronology (just to see what new connections happen)
Beg a friend to read and ask them to tell me to keep going
Ask, of every scene, what’s the narrative purpose? (This one made me put my head in my hands; it’s a very good check)
Identifying and tracking every spot that feels “sticky”: things that are placeholders or not pulling their weight, and working through those areas in isolation
Retyping from the top (I have done this; it’s awful and great)
Don’t put pressure on to do big cuts; remember you’ll have readers like agents, first readers, editors, and they can do some heavy lifting (and slicing for you)
Using Helen Rubenstein’s Radical Revision Worksheet
Work in small blocks of time
Use index cards to note the purpose/summary of each chapter; examine this as an external catalog of the book as a whole
Printing and reading, but with a pen far from you
Take a walk, ffs
As for me: I’m actually going to dip into my favorite craft books from Graywolf’s The Art of series: The Art of Time by Joan Silber, The Art of Perspective by Christopher Castellini, and The Art of Revision, of course, by Peter Ho Davies. All of these are collected on this list at Bookshop. I’m going to listen to the draft via voice over function, and consult a list of things I knew I’d want to layer in on this draft that I started some time ago and see where they might fit in. I’m going to make a revision list and plan, and try to take my time. I’m going to think of the person who wrote in the comments on the above post: Courage!
Where to Find Me
I have a fair amount of teaching coming up around the bend. In full disclosure it has been very hard to enroll folks post-Catapult shut down, so if you are game for circulating these classes to anyone you think might be interested, I’d be appreciative. And of course, you can sign up for my Course Offerings newsletter to get the straight up course listings infused directly into your veins/inboxes without all this other nonsense that accompanies this version of the newsletter.
Next week on June 8th I’m teaching my Essential Processes seminar. It’s two hours on how to get through a project from conception to completion with confidence and (relative amounts of) calm. Yes, I did decide that all those words had to start with c.
On Saturday, June 10th I’m doing a FREE Q&A for folks considering applying for an MFA this year. Sign up here.
On June 15th, I’m starting a run of my 6 week Generative Fiction class. It’s a workshop-free space to get going in a fun and expansive way and kindly tell any blocks you have about writing to shut the hell up.
On July 17th, I’m doing a hands-on craft intensive on the reverse outline, which is my number one revision tip. On July 18th, the original date of this class which I definitely absolutely did not forget about, I’m going to see Jenny Lewis in concert.
Remember, a beach read is just a book you don’t mind getting sand on.
Talk Soon,
Danielle
Did Not Finish (you’re welcome!)
This went poorly, in all honesty, another newsletter or perhaps a footnote that is just the one you’re reading now
This includes my sisters in law Pippa Shulman and Jodi Sperber, the writers Rachel Lyon, Jessie Chaffee, Miranda Beverly-Whittmore, Sarah McColl, Kasia Nikhamina, Sarah Elaine Smith, and Lindsay Hatton (whose cry and consider your poor life choices advice is valid and in the rotation).