On Being Smart

Over the weekend, I was talking with a friend about a particular writer who shall remain unnamed here for reasons which will soon become clear. She’s published quite a lot of books–fiction, essays, polemics–and in this case, we were discussing her fiction, which isn’t, in my opinion, very good.

“She’s a particular kind of too smart to be a good fiction writer,” I said.

My friend nodded in agreement. That was it. Too smart.

I’ve told my students for years that we need to be dumb like animals in order to write good fiction. What do I mean by this? To try to understand what I mean, I’ve been looking at my two dogs resting by my feet for the last few minutes. They’re relaxed but alert. Their ears are pricked, their bodies loosely spilled onto the floor, their eyes are open. They’re ready for anything–ready to leap to their feet at the slightest provocation. They see, smell, hear, taste, touch everything in their environment–or at least I think they do–but from a place of calm attention.

That kind of relaxed attention has a lot to do with writing good fiction. If I am thinking too hard, or too much–if I am layering thoughts and suppositions on top of the tender, frail beginning of story before I’ve barely begun, what I end up with is a collapsing heap of abstraction. When a writer is too smart for her own good, you can feel the weight of her thoughts on the page, like a truck straining uphill. You experience the author’s mental exertion, rather than the story itself.

The best writers, of course, are able to do both: feel and sniff their way through a story like a sure-footed animal through a thicket, and then, but only then, once there is a draft on the page, they’re able to think about it. To become first, willfully sensate and dumb like an animal, and then to become smart, lucid, clear-headed when approaching revision. We all know writers who are good at one or the other. The best writers are good at both.

It’s so easy to forget this. To think: I need to write something clever, something ironic, something The New Yorker might like. To think: but what’s the big picture? I need to know the big picture before I begin. The paradox of the big picture is that it’s only revealed one tiny picture, one small moment at a time.

On Self-Doubt

Sometimes I wish I could feel less uncertainty, less raging self-doubt about my work. Shouldn’t it stop, after a while? The questioning, the internal nagging feeling that I’ll never get it quite right? Seven books into this life, and I still sit down to write with a flutter of dread in my heart. You can’t do this, a little voice whispers. What makes you think you can do this?

I’ve been working on making peace with this voice. After all, it isn’t going away. Colette once wrote: “The writer who loses her self-doubt, who gives way as she grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for her to lay aside her pen.”

Many years ago, when I was at work on my second novel–which to my mind is the least accomplished of all my novels–I loved what I was doing. Oh, how I loved the music of my own words! I carried around pieces of my manuscript. I read passage aloud to friends. I read those pages over and over again, in the backs of taxis, while in cafes, or waiting in line. I wasn’t reading them with a critical eye, but rather, a blind and adoring one.

With each of my successive books, I have loved my work a bit less. And, interestingly enough, the work has grown better. It seems that loving my work wasn’t doing me any good at all. Grace Paley used to say that if she loved a sentence enough that she wanted to get up from her desk and walk into the other room to read it to her husband, she knew she had to cut it. At the time, as a graduate student, I wasn’t sure what she meant. Wasn’t it a good thing, to love one’s own sentences? But as with many of the remarkable bits of wisdom Grace shared, this has bloomed in my mind, over time.

So where, then, is the pleasure? If sitting down to do the work is hard–and it is hard, it should be hard–and if the process of getting that work into shape is hard–and it is, hard, it should be hard–and if bringing that work out into the world is a roller-coaster ride, full of ups and downs, unanticipated curves, elation and disappointment constant bedrellows–then what could possibly be the point?

As best as I can tell, the absorption, the single-minded focus, the hours that pass while most engaged in the work itself is the point. When I am deep into a piece of work, actually doing the writing of it, I am not thinking that it’s lousy, or genius, or anything in between. I’m not thinking about people reading it, or reviewing it, or responding to it in any way. I’m simply in the process–all the way down there in the trenches of the process–with my small, flickering candle, trying to tunnel through the darkness.

On the Bottomless Pit

It came to my attention, a few years ago when I started actually paying attention, that I am unable to accept a compliment about my work. Oh, I can smile and nod and say thank-you-very-much. But what I don’t seem to be very good at doing is taking it in.

I love your last book, someone might say.
It made me cry.
It made me think.

And me, I feel all squirmy and awkward. What is it that goes through my head in these moments? Part of me doesn’t believe what I’m hearing. Part of me just wants to run and hide. Part of me is bursting with joy but can’t allow that feeling in, because to allow that feeling is to believe the compliment, and somehow that is just plain unacceptable.

What is this bottomless pit that exists inside of so many of us, into which all compliments, flattery, good reviews, pats on the back seem to fall? I can quote you chapter and verse from the negative reviews I’ve received over the course of my writing life. I can tell you who wrote them, and how they made me feel. But if asked to summon even a fragment from the (fortunately larger) pile of good reviews, I would draw a blank. Or–worse still–sometimes I’ll be trolling around on the internet and I will stumble upon something truly nasty. There are people out there in the great cyberverse who don’t like me or my work at all. Why is it that, in these moments, I think that these are the smart, all-seeing ones, the ones who really know the truth?

Here’s the only silver lining I can come up with for the problem of the bottomless pit. I think we writers need it. I think that the moment we start believing our own shit, if you’ll pardon the expression, the minute we start thinking that we know what we’re doing, we’re lost. I’ve read books recently by writers who–I can tell–took in the praise heaped on them over the years. They’ve become parodies of themselves. They’ve lost that uncomfortable sense of insecurity that kept driving them forward, as if with an electric prod. They may be happier people, yes. But they’ve lost their hunger, and along with their hunger they’ve lost whatever it was that made their work sing to begin with.

So I guess I’ll take the bottomless pit. I have no choice, really, but to reach down there and shake hands with it. After all, it helps keep me honest–even if, once in a while, I’d like to take in a compliment, and bask in its glow. Even for just a minute.

On Betrayal

I have a galley of my upcoming memoir Devotion sitting on my desk, waiting to be put into an envelope and mailed to one of my relatives. It has replaced the bound manuscript which sat in the same place on my desk, which replaced the actual manuscript, which also occupied that spot for months and months. I have padded envelopes in my closet, stamps in my desk drawer. The post office just a five minute drive down the road. So what’s my problem? Why haven’t I sent my relative an advance copy of my book?

Because I’m anxious. Because I’m scared. Because this particular relative is an important character in my memoir, and I want her to love the way I’ve portrayed her. In writing about my own attempts to find meaning in my everyday life, I have written about a member of my deeply religious family who has lived her life with tremendous spiritual clarity, and for whom I have bottomless respect. There isn’t a single unkind word about her in the book. Not one. So why am I afraid?

Janet Malcolm once famously wrote that every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what’s going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. Many times, while writing a story, I have an awareness of the way I am seeing my subject, as if all my senses have at once become wider, deeper, more discerning, more KNOWING–as if a lens inside of me has opened to its greatest possibly clarity. At these moments I feel a touch of Malcolm’s moral indefensibility–because quite suddenly my subject has become a SUBJECT. No longer simply a human being, but part of the larger tapestry of a story. “Oh, that’s good,” I’ll think to myself about a bit of dialogue. “I can use that.” Use being the operative word. We writers do use stuff. We take what we see and hear and smell and taste and make it ours on the page. What else can we do? It’s all we’ve got. Whether we’re writing fiction or non-fiction, this is the case. It’s not always a purposeful thing, or even a conscious thing–but it invariably happens. In fact, we lie in wait for those moments. Those are our instances of grace. We come across something–an image, a phrase, a slant of light–and we take it. Immediately, we appropriate it, and make it ours.

In the two years I spent writing Devotion, I had experiences I thought I would write about, but didn’t–or tried to, but they didn’t work on the page. And at other times, as I went about living my life, I had experiences that I had no particular intention of including, but there I found myself, widening, deepening, becoming hyper-aware–no longer just a person having an experience, but instead a writer, gathering, hording, pruning. Voracious. Thrilled. Ah–a little voice would whisper. This–this is perfect.

I suppose this is why I have that bit of trepidation about sending an early copy of Devotion to my wonderful relative. Will she think that when I was sitting with her, walking with her, having coffee with her, that I was really just a machine, taking internal notes? Will she feel betrayed? Is what I did, in fact, a betrayal of sorts? Is it possible to live inside a moment and outside of it at the same time? Perhaps that’s the lot of the writer. Perhaps we’re always hovering just a bit away from the center of things–feeling everything, perched on the periphery, taking notes.

On Taking Risks

It’s all a high-wire act, isn’t it? The writing? The sitting down to write? The thinking that we have anything worth saying? Every bit of good writing emerges from a wild place. Whether you are a person of faith or not, still, setting words down on the page is an act of faith. Whether you think you are a courageous person or not, trying to craft a narrative — in other words, trying to create something out of nothing — is an act of courage. Now, of course we writers aren’t necessarily faithful or courageous people. Not most of us. Not in our real lives. Not when we climb out of bed in the morning and meet our own faces in the mirror. Coward! The mirror might reflect back at us. Faithless one! You, there–brushing your teeth. Yeah, you. Why do you think you have anything inside you worth saying? Why do you think anyone will care?

Recently I was going through a list of small pieces, short fiction and essays that I’ve written over the past few years. The list is pretty long, actually. And I had a moment, looking through that list, of realizing that every single one of those pieces had begun with the same process of resistance, wildness, faith, doubt, and ultimately just enough courage. Here goes nothing, the little voice in my head whispered again and again. Here goes nothing. But still–in the faith of that potential nothingness–I plunged forward anyway. Doggedly, determinedly, forward. That small kernel of wildness aglow inside me.

Here goes nothing?
So what.
Maybe it will turn into something.
Maybe not.

Almost all of those pieces worked out. They were published here and here and here. I have to remind myself every day that it’s a risk–all of it. Every day brings small satisfactions, small disappointments. Because my husband and I are both writers, our household is full of those ups and downs. The phone rings at dinner time with some crisis or another (the life of a Hollywood screenwriter). An email brings news that something I had hoped for is happening–or isn’t. That roller coaster that is the life of two people who create. Sometimes, when I’m aware that our young son is watching us, I wonder what he sees — and whether it looks good to him, or whether some day he’ll opt for a more stable life with fewer ups and downs. A life with clear parameters, predictable days, concrete results.

Or maybe, just maybe–I’d like to think that he sees two people who are wrestling with their fears and insecurities, who hear their own internal censors, whispering Here goes nothing…but plunge forward despite our cowardice and faithlessness and uncertainty. Taking that daily risk despite ourselves.

On the Importance of a Room of One’s Own

As I write this, literally as my fingers move across the keyboard, one of my dogs is banging against the kitchen door downstairs. The reason he’s banging against the kitchen door, hurling his whole little body with all his might against the dining room chair that I placed on the other side of the swinging door, is because he has–how shall I put this delicately–a bit of an intestinal issue this morning. I have spent the last several hours on my knees, scrubbing carpets and floors.

A good way to start the week? You tell me. But it’s the price I pay for working at home. That, along with the ringing phone, the UPS truck, the FedEx packages, the occasional Jehovah’s Witness ringing the doorbell. I used to have an office outside of my house. When we lived in New York City, I worked at a place called The Writers Room, a large loft space divided into many cubicles. Cellphones weren’t allowed. Silence was the rule, except for in the kitchen and library, where a writer in search of conversation could always find a colleague taking a break. If it sounds like heaven, it really was. I loved that place, and it is the single thing I miss most about the city. It was the perfect environment for this writer: solitude without loneliness.

When we moved to the country, I rented an office in town. It was a retail space on the main road, with a picture window that overlooked a front yard and the street. I worked there for several years, wrote Black & White there, but then I gave it up. Every day, people told me that they saw me in there, through that picture window, sitting at my desk. It felt odd to be on display like that: resident writer at work. So I went back home, and over the last few years I wrote Devotion here in my small office on the second floor of our house. I like working at home–I really do. I can get up and stretch, do my yoga practice, take a shower in the middle of the day, go outside with the dogs (when they’re feeling well). Except…when it feels like a domestic disaster. When the guys show up to clean the air filters, or the exterminator arrives for his monthly appointment. Or when the sheer encroachment of the rest of my life–the school medical forms, soccer schedules, food shopping–suddenly seem like too much. And I wish, fleetingly, for an office, but not just any office–a office in a warren of offices where writers (not just any writers, but my favorite writer friends) would be next door, near a good cafe with just the right music playing, and just enough bustle, and good cappuccino and biscotti. Does this place exist? If it did exist, would it live up to my expectations? Would I be more productive here? More content?

Here’s one thing I know to be true. I have gotten some of my best writing done in less-than-ideal circumstances (on the subway, for instance) and often have had lousy writing days when circumstances are ideal. The possibility is always there for either scenario. Good writing day or lousy writing day; it almost seems as if we’re in control, as if it’s our choice. And to some small degree, it is. But to a larger degree, we writers are at the mercy of our own human selves: cranky, tired, happy, over-excited, grieving, nervous…whatever it is we’re feeling, whatever it is that brings us closer to, or farther away from, the page. And perfection of environment is only one very small part of all that.

On Writer’s Block

I should begin with the question of whether it exists. What does it mean to be “blocked”? It’s a term that fills writers with dread; a steady flow of creativity suddenly stopped cold by an enormous boulder tumbling from the depths of the psyche. Writer’s block has always struck me as having a bit of magical thinking connected to it. Blocked? I mean, really? Have an espresso. Do yoga. Take a long walk. Smoke something. Switch the channels–get yourself out of it. But on the other hand, I have my superstitious side, and even as I write this I feel, just a little bit, like I’m asking for trouble by even thinking about it. Writer’s block. How is it different from a bad day, or stretch of days? How is it different from a fallow period? I have a feeling it must be very different–like the vast chasm between common unhappiness and a major depressive episode.

John Gregory Dunne once said that writer’s block is a failure of nerve. I’ve always loved that quote–I used to keep it on the bulletin board above my desk, along with a cartoon from The New Yorker, titled Writer’s Block, showing two frames of a bespeckled man. In the first frame, he’s is standing in a book-lined office, looking out a window. Temporary, the caption reads. In the second frame, the same man is standing in front door of T. Roger Claypool’s Fish Store, wearing a white apron. Beneath it, caption reads: Permanent.

Dunne’s definition of failure of nerve has helped me immeasurably over the years. It has staved off the other voices in my head–the ones that tell me I’m wasting my time, on the wrong path, taking the wrong risk (or not enough of a risk). If writing is, as I believe it to be, an act of courage–the daily triumph of faith over doubt, willingness over insecurity, hope over cynicism–then the inability to do so for days on end is a failure not of character, nor of biochemistry, but of nerve.

Each morning, when I sit down to work, my demons are lined up, waiting for me. There’s the one who tells me that nothing will ever come of whatever it is I’m working on. There’s another who tells me that I’m a horrible person for writing about my family. Still another one who tells me to fold in my towel, go back to school, do something else with my life–this, after seven books! I’ve come to realize that these demons are with me for a lifetime. Some demons whisper, some shout. Some go away for a while, then return. Futility, guilt, self-flagellation, self-consciousness, insidious doubt; all these hop up on my shoulders as I sit down to write. So it is nerve, nothing more, nothing less, that helps me to swat them away. Nerve that allows me to recognize those unwelcome visitors, to make peace with them. “Good morning,” I silently say to them, even as I push them away. I think of T. Roger Claypool’s Fish Store. “Good morning. Now, go away.”

On Impatience

It has always struck me as paradoxical that we writers–who are among the most impatient people on the planet–spend our days doing work akin to watching water boil. What could possibly involve less instant gratification than writing a novel? Or working for months (or years) on a single short story? Or slowly, painstakingly picking our way through piles of research looking for the right detail, the perfect gem, only to discard the rest? We have minds like fireflies, attention spans that wander…how else would we dream up our characters and their lives? And yet the harnessing of that light, that attention, requires an almost physical effort to stay in one spot, to work slowly, carefully. To whittle, to carve, to chip away at the words on the page. To remain dissatisfied. To throw away perfectly good work if it isn’t serving the story. Not to leap ahead — to daydreams of publication, of glory, of book parties and appearances on Charlie Rose.

Here’s the thing–and believe me, I speak from hard-won experience: That’s not the best part. The publication, the glory (such as it is), the parties and the media frenzy (hah!) of a book’s publication is not the best part–far from it. I know this is hard for those who haven’t experienced it to believe. I know there’s some eye-rolling going on out there. But it’s true–and not only is it true, it’s the worst possible thing for the work itself to leap ahead to what might happen to it out there in the world. I remember, years ago, working on my first piece for The New Yorker. It was a personal history piece about my father–a story I had wanted to write for a long time–and after I got the assignment, I became completely and utterly stuck. I was–even though I hate the word–blocked. Each morning, I sat down at my desk and instead of working on the piece, I thought about The New Yorker. Which issue would it come out in? Would there be an illustration? A photo? I pictured my words in New Yorker font before I had even written them.

I had to shock myself out of that mental torpor and into a creative state. I played tricks on myself–writing in the middle of the night, which is something I never do. Writing before that first cup of coffee in the morning. I pushed myself past the wall of impatience and into that place where all that matters are setting down the words on the page. After all, in the hermetic, odd, often lonely and certainly out-of-step existence of the writer, setting the words down on the page better be the best part. The other stuff is too fleeting–if it happens at all–and unreal.

On Doing Nothing

It’s hard for writers to remember that doing nothing is as important–perhaps even more important–than doing something. I was reminded of this last week by Ian McEwan, who spoke eloquently at the Sun Valley Writers Conference about how essential it is for writers not to feel like we must be busy (or at least give the appearance of being busy) all the time. How are we going to feel that tap on the shoulder–or see Didion‘s shimmer around the edges–that leads us to new stories, new subject matter, if we’re scrambling the hamster wheel of busy-ness?

People often ask me how many hours of the day I spend writing, and I never really know how to answer. How many hours of the day am I actually setting words down on paper? Not many. On a very good day, perhaps three? Four at the most? But those three or four hours require several other hours cushioning them. They require hours spent reading, running the dogs, doing yoga, meditating, shopping online for boots (just kidding). The work is at the center–way deep down at the center–of that puttering time. We writers are not machines. We can’t just sit down and do it. Or maybe some writers can–but not this one.

The subtle distinction, though, is in the difference between good/useful doing nothing, and destructive/counter-productive doing nothing. And the distinction is, indeed, difficult to make out at times. Bouncing around the internet can be energizing and kind of fun — but more often than not, it leads to a fizzy, buzzy, attention-deficit that can’t be good for the writing. Ditto for talking on the phone. Over the years, I have become truly phone-adverse. Reading (as in, an actual book) is invariably good. Meditating, oddly, is not always helpful. An overly calm mind can sometimes shrug and just give up for the day. As a friend of mine once said, it removes the grit. Yoga, however, has never failed me. If I unroll my mat and do my practice, I sit back down at my desk afterward feeling clear-headed and refreshed. I would imagine this would be true for any form of physical exercise–or at least solitary exercise.

But there’s another, more difficult kind of doing nothing, that exists in the months or even years between books. A writer finishes a book…and then what? Trollope was known to draw a line beneath the last sentence of a manuscript, and instantly begin anew. I love the idea of doing this–it does remove all possibility of self-doubt and fear–but somehow I know I never will. When I finish a book, I have nothing left inside of me. Nothing left to say. This used to bother me. (On bad days, it still does.) When I finished my last novel, I turned to a friend and said: “I’ve got nothing.” But then I realized that having nothing was exactly what I should be feeling. It meant that everything had gone into the book I had just completed. And now I had to allow myself to do nothing. To understand that, for a writer, doing nothing is doing something. I had to push away the impulse to look busy, and instead allow the space and time for that tap on the shoulder, that shimmer.

On Writers Conferences

I’m heading to Sun Valley, Idaho tomorrow, where Michael and I will be speaking at the Sun Valley Writers Conference. This particular conference is unusual in that no teaching is involved. Writers–some very famous writers–come and give talks, and the audience is made up of smart, literate people who may or may not aspire to write. It seems to model itself more closely on something like The Aspen Institute than say, a Breadloaf, or a Tin House–discussion, rather than implementation. Dialogue, rather than honing craft. I’m excited about this conference for lots of reasons: seeing old friends, gorgeous dry mountain weather, possibly even some white-water rafting or fly-fishing. But more than anything, preparing for my talk there gave me a chance to deepen my own thoughts about memoir. I’ve been thinking a lot about memoir lately, on the cusp of the publication of my new one, as well as the reissuing of a new edition of my first one. But musing is not the same as giving a talk. Giving a talk forces one to articulate ideas into a clear narrative. (It also involves being entertaining and funny. And the wearing of decent shoes.)

Sometimes writers ask me what I think about conferences, given that I direct one. It falls into the same general query about whether writing can be taught. Honestly, I don’t think writing can be taught. I think craft can be taught, I think books can be suggested, minds can be opened to new writers, new vistas. But whatever that thing is–that combination of gift and tenacity and capacity for story-telling–that makes someone a writer, that, I’m afraid, can’t be taught. Or at least I’ve never figured out how to teach it. So why go do these things? Why apply to Breadloaf or Tin House or Sewanee or Sirenland? Some aspiring writers go because they think they’ll meet editors or agents, and while they very well may get a ten minute audience with any of the above, most of the time, nothing will come of it. Other writers go to network, to meet other writers, which is a completely valid reason–it can create a sense of community, reduce the sting of isolation. Other writers to go study with a particular writer they admire, or to workshop a story that isn’t quite there yet. They go to be together. They go to validate what it is they do with their hours in front of the page.

As I pack my bags for Sun Valley, it occurs to me that no matter how different these conferences are–large, small, exclusive, exotic, intimate, businesslike–they all have one thing in common. In this time of doomsday reports about the decline of serious readers–when iphones and ipods and webisodes and an endless stream of apps vie for our attention–attendance at conferences is booming. We have a hunger, an appetite, a desire to understand how words, when put together in a certain order, create music.