Do you procrastinate? Here’s a clever solution. According to James Surowiecki in his New Yorker article on procrastination, Victor Hugo would write in the nude and tell his valet not to give him any clothes until he finished for the day. Of course, in order for such a plan to work, one would need a valet. What are your tricks for avoiding procrastination?
“Inside Sedaris’s left shirt pocket, he keeps an omnipresent notebook, a little spiral-bound one, in which he writes down everything that happens that might later be of use. If he walks out of the house and realizes he’s forgotten it, he turns around and goes home. “I might see a worm attacking a centipede. I might see a bumper sticker,” he says. “I don’t know how to turn off that part of myself that exploits everyone and everything that I come into contact with.”
I love this juicy bit from Monica Hesse’s article about writer David Sedaris in The Washington Post (October 4, 2010). When I’m doing school visits, I tell kids that if they see me on the street, they should stop me and ask me if I have my writer’s notebook-that’s because I always have it with me. Wouldn’t go to the grocery store without it, which is why I like pocket-sized notebooks. Writers are essentially spies.
One of the recurring problems I see when I’m critiquing a story is the lack of an obstacle or nemesis. William Gibson calls it “the barrier” in his excellent book about writing titled Shakespeare’s Game. Something must get in the way of the main character’s yearning or else there is no tension and ultimately no climax. Writes Gibson: “…if Hamlet at once marches off to stab the King, what have we lost? –the play.”
It seems obvious and yet many writers create stories without an obstacle or nemesis. I do it myself. I get caught up with the main character and allow him or her free reign when I should be causing problem after problem for the poor thing. Only after a hundred pages or so, when I’m wondering why the story isn’t working, does it hit me. I’m being too nice.
We spend our lives trying to avoid creating obstacles for other people, so why should it come easy when we write? It’s scary to close the door on our main character’s desire; but if we do, if we dream up a fantastic barrier, then our hero will have to work hard to get what he or she wants, and therein will be the story.
In Matilda, Roald Dahl’s characters discuss the need for humor in children’s books; Matilda begins:
“I think Mr. C.S. Lewis is a very good writer. But he has one failing. There are no funny bits in his books.”
“You are right there,” Miss Honey said.
“There aren’t many funny bits in Mr. Tolkien either,” Matilda said.
“Do you think that all children’s books ought to have funny bits in them?” Miss Honey asked.
“I do,” Matilda said. “Children are not so serious as grown ups and they love to laugh.”
Let’s say you’re reading a book, and you come across a sentence that blows you away because of its poetry or cadence or economy or expansiveness. Mark it. Then at some point, come back and don’t just read it again. Write that sentence down in your writer’s notebook, word for word, comma for comma. In doing so, you will get the feeling of that sentence in your muscle memory–the clauses, the pauses, the rhythm. When it’s time for you to write, what you learned will come out to play.
Here’s one that I wrote down recently from Elizabeth Strout’s excellent book, Olive Kitteridge:
Olive, years ago, had taught math at the Crosby Junior High School, and while her emotions at times had attached themselves fiercely to particular students, Andrea Bibber had never seemed to her to be anything more than a small, dull, asseverating mouse.
Perhaps this exercise is akin to the idea of the artist who learns by copying a much-admired painting, brush stroke for brush stroke.
If you want to learn something, one of the best ways to do it is to be conscious of what you are learning. That may sound ridiculously obvious, but life has a way of flooding the mind with too much information and sweeping the newly-learned or almost-learned stuff out to sea.
The best way for me to be conscious of what I’m learning is to literally write what I’m learning down. After every class that I teach (or take) I force myself to sit and write down at least one thing that I learned. Sometimes it’s easy; sometimes not. Usually, the act of writing helps realizations to occur.
I put myself through a course in humor writing by watching funny movies with an agenda: each time I watched, I had to write down at least one thing I learned about why it was funny.
If you’re taking a class, create a ritual for yourself (a mini notebook? a set of 3×5 cards? a dedicated blog?) to write down what you are learning.
One of the students in my Fiction for Young Readers class asked what she should focus on when she’s reading the novels I assigned.
First of all, I read for enjoyment, of course; but I do analyze books as I read, and I do it on two basic levels. Think of a house. You’ve got the individual planks of wood (those are sentences); and then you have the entire structure (the story). When I’m reading on the sentence level, I’m looking at the quality of the writing: fresh metaphors, rhythm, sentence construction. When I’m reading on the structure level, I’m thinking about whether or not the story works and how it was constructed.
On the story level, I analyze by asking myself questions: What is the heart of the story? If you boil it down to its most basic form, what is the story about? Try to define this in just one or two sentences. Usually, the heart of the story comes from looking at what your main character is yearning for and what gets in the way of him/her. This is basic Aristotle.
Then I look closely at the climax. Stories that work have climaxes that spring forth in an organic and inevitable way from the story’s heart. Identifying and analyzing how a writer moves from heart to climax is a simple and excellent way to get STORY into your bloodstream.
Some great books that emphasize the importance of understanding basic story structure:
William Gibson’s Shakespeare’s Game (yes, plays work the same way)
Darcy Pattison’s Novel Metamorphosis
illus by Ethan Long for Amato's Riot Brother series
I’m riding on the metro, writing up my syllabus for a graduate course that I’ll be teaching (Fiction for Young Readers) at Johns Hopkins University; and I’m working on my lesson called “Audience: Age and Gender” when two boys hop on. Their moms quickly take a seat and chat. Although plenty of seats are free, the boys (ages 8 or 9) stand on either side of a pole and engage in an epic, slow-motion battle.
“My finger weighs 45 pounds,” one boy says as he sets his finger on top of the other boy’s head.
Obligingly, the victim acts as if his head is being crushed, but he is not going down without a fight. “My finger is as sharp as the sharpest sword,” he exclaims and menacingly moves toward his opponent’s face.
“But my face is the thickest thing in the world!” the first boy replies.
A series of slow-motion jabs, punches, and wrestling moves come next.
“Sit down and be quiet,” one of the mother’s says.
While all types of behaviors can be seen across gender lines, I have no problem identifying typical boy behavior when I see it.
So, when I write, do I consciously write for boys or for girls? I think the answer is tied to character. The character drives the story and will ultimately speak to the audience. My Riot Brother series is about two inventive and fun-loving boys, and those books are filled with non-stop action and humor. They definitely appeal to your typical boy, but girls are in the Riot Bros fan club, too. And my new book is about a poetry-loving boy named Edgar Allan who is radically different from Orville and Wilbur Riot.
The important thing is to be a constant and conscious witness to the wide range of behaviors that kids exhibit. Bring your observations to your writing and you’ll achieve authenticity.