When writers get blocked

In one of my favorite movie comedies, "Throw Momma From the Train," from 1987, Billy Crystal plays a writing teacher named Larry, who is stuck on the opening of his novel.  The movie opens with Larry at his typewriter.

Repeatedly, and with growing frustration, he types, "The night was. .  .dark," and then scraps that and goes in search of other equally silly adjectives, hoping for the perfect word that will get him going, as if a strong opening sentence will lead to another sentence, and so on.

What kind of writing teacher is Larry? Maybe he deserves the student from hell, Owen (Danny DeVito), who has a mother from hell; she must be seen and heard to be believed.  See the movie if you haven't.

Larry should know that trying to get it right the first time is pointless: there is no writing without revision, and the opening is usually one of the last things to be redone again and again. Equally missing in Larry's amusing notion of teaching is his stereotyped belief that writers must wait for inspiration, and also suffer, curse, waste paper and time, as if the perfect word and idea will magically appear.

Writers in movies often gaze at the stars, waiting for the Muse to inspire them. It doesn't work like that.

As I tell my students, it's normal and acceptable to write bad sentences; writing isn't brain surgery. It's all about redoing the sentences. The first draft is expected to be rough, and it is by forging ahead and "talking" it out on paper (or screen) that ideas emerge that can be shaped into something readable.

Hemingway, who says he revised the ending of "A Farewell to Arms" 39 times, wrote to a young would-be writer that if he completes ten stories, he throws out nine of them: only one is worthy of publication.

Even though Hemingway exaggerated a good bit, and lied, he was a good craftsman, a wide reader, and had sensible advice on the writing process, such as: Put the work aside until the next day. Know when to stop. And know that the draft will always be there for you to rework.

Writing doesn't have to be frustrating. It is not easy to think clearly, and it takes time and patience and an ability to sit still for a while. But it should be enjoyable, in the sense of fulfilling.  If it isn't, why do it?

Are the half-dozen unfinished stories, and the eight or nine finished but unpublished pieces in my files signs of wasted time? No, they were enjoyable to do because I take satisfaction in re-writing, line by line, until I have something fresh and worth a reader's attention.  I have begun dozens of articles over the years that never got completed, but the time put into them was a learning, and learning should at some level be enjoyable.

I worry about beginning writers who want to be published but don't really enjoy writing or have a sense of language; when they read, they do so for information rather than style. I suggest that they pay attention to the way skilled authors construct articles, stories, paragraphs, and sentences. Being a writer means immersing yourself for several years in the work of good writers before you even consider writing for publication.

Now, how do you know what writers are good?  Don't ask teachers like Larry, who, like Owen in that movie, is a wonderful comic invention with no clue about what writers really do.

Doing What Comes Naturally

Ethel Merman, known for belting out Broadway songs for forty years in a voice that never needed amplification, was a big star.  Along the way, apparently, a musician told her, "Ethel, never let anyone teach you to sing."

Why ruin natural talent?  Of course, some who remember Merman singing "Doin' What Comes Naturally" from Annie Get Your Gun and most of the songs from Gypsy, may question the quality of that talent.

When I heard this anecdote, I immediately thought of the teaching of writing and how, all too often, it has intimated rather than encouraged students, who grow up feeling they cannot write.  As one colleague once told me, "I don't remember the rules."  A friend in his fifties, who yearns to write, worries about punctuation, as if his hand will be slapped if he makes a minor mistake. The computer's Spell-check frustrates him, tells him he doesn't know enough to write.

I tell him that the "rules" have little to do with generating ideas and tapping on his rich experience in producing interesting sentences.  What he needs is freedom from the opinions of others, especially ones stored in his memory.

Is there such a thing as too much instruction? I suppose in music, the answer might be Yes.  Writers, who are more familiar to me, need guidance and helpful readers and practice; they do not need more prescriptive advice on what is wrong with their work.

It takes a patient teacher to nurture a writing student so that he or she is not prevented from using his natural talent, from remembering that he in fact has such talent. Good writing involves a confidence in oneself along with liberation from the old voices of past teachers and editors that haunt us by saying, "You don't really know enough."

If I waited to write until I "knew enough," would I ever write anything?

Letters and Longhand

The mail carrier brings a daily deposit of disappointment: amid the bills and ads and other junk mail, rarely is there a hand-written letter or card.  Except for birthdays and holidays, there is seldom a touch of the personal. Letter-size envelopes sometimes look promising until I see they are marked "Occupant" or something equally disspiriting.

All this came to mind as I read the book Script & Scribble by Kitty Burns Florey, who is literate, witty and informative as she makes a plea for the hand-written word, which seems about to go the way of the dodo.

It shouldn't be: as she notes, TV didn't kill off radio, cars did not displace bicycles, yet the prevalence of email, along with cheaper long distance calling, has made the art of letter writing extinct.

Of course, as etiquette experts Amy Vanderbilt and others remind us, thank-you and sympathy cards have to be in longhand; even Etiquette for Dummies insists on hand-written notes on quality stationery for such occasions.

But many people I know use the informal email to thank us for cards and gifts: it's cheap and fast. Who, Florey asks, needs elegant handwriting today, the kind the nuns taught her (and me)--except cake decorators?

The underlying educational implications of students who never learn to write but only print, the subject of a previous post, is a more serious and bothersome issue. The day may already be here when youngsters cannot even read longhand, much less write it.  Instead, they must always be dependent on an external power source.  Even in classes or at meetings where jotting down notes rapidly requires the speed of longhand.

As Florey and others remind us of the many authors who, even in today's world, write by hand, we realize how much is lost by the refusal of teachers to teach penmanship or cursive writing.  Even a mixture of the two, as I sometimes find myself doing for the sake of legibility--half-printing, half-writing--is better than no cursive writing at all.

Having puzzled over far too many illegible student essay exams over the years, I know how difficult some handwriting can be to read; but that is no reason to abandon it. 

Florey's solution to the classrooom problem is to teach kids "one good, plain, solid, simple, easy, basic, legible, attractive--and fast--method" from the beginning, rather than teaching printing, then (in many cases) moving on to cursive.

Like me, she is concerned not only with efficiency but with aesthetics. Her elegant book is filled with examples of beautiful handwriting, with information on italic writing, pens, calligraphy and a fine discussion of those many authors, including J. K. Rowling, William Boyd, Martin Amis and John Updike, who have insisted on longhand in the digital age.

For years, I have begun most of my essays and other works on a legal pad, with a ball-point pen (the kind frowned on by our teachers in the 1950s: too messy). Revising, of course, is made pleasant and even enjoyable on the word processor, but nothing can replace the look and feel of my own handwriting: I am inscribing on paper a part of myself. It is a physical act and it focuses my attention on the words as they tumble out of my mind in a personal, intimate way that machines (whether typewriters or computers) cannot match.

So I am glad to read in this book about studies--and teachers who agree with these studies--that good handwriting can influence academic performance for the better; they insist that our advances in technology do not eliminate the need for the teaching of handwriting. We remember what we commit to paper, by hand.

Since writing this (10-27-12), I have discovered news about Philip Hensher's recent book, The Missing Ink, which poses the question: As handwriting disappears, will "some part of our humanity disappear as well?"  According to the reviews, his book is a personal response to this question.

I am glad to see him making his point that handwriting reveals individuality in an age of text messaging and other electronic forms of typing.  (update 1-23-13).

Slow Reading

"I am the slowest reader you will ever meet," writes novelist Benjamin Percy in a recent issue of The Rumpus.

"After taking in a paragraph, I might pause and stare into space for fifteen minutes." He goes on to say that he will read it again, maybe two or three times, if it's good, examining its construction with his legal pad handy. It might take Percy two to four weeks to complete a novel, but the time is well used. He knows it completely, the way readers in earlier times, having few books to choose from, read and re-read and re-read the classics again, making these texts part of themselves.

Percy is not only a writer but a teacher of writing who believes, as I do, that good writing begins with reading. He has no patience with aspiring writers who say they have no time for reading or don't want to be influenced by another's style because they want to find their own voice.

You find your voice, first, by immersing yourself in Flannery O'Connor, as Percy did, or Hemingway, then writing a short story imitating the pattern and style of the original. You are trying out various voices, Percy says, until you find your own.

You will never find it in isolation.

This is refeshing for me to hear. In my own workshops, students, overly anxious to become published before they know their craft, look puzzled when I emphasize reading and paying careful attention to other stylists. They are unaware that all of us write in the company of other writers, past and present, whose web of influence is essential if you are to develop an ear for what works in dialogue or description or structure.

Do they think you can make a film without having seen and studied thousands of classic movies?

Underlying this advice is the more general need to slow down and remind ourselves to be patient, both with ourselves and with our craft. I have written about the slow movement in food and other areas before, along with the problems that come with the face pace of everyday life in which reflection becomes impossible. Reading, I have said, is a spiritual act, type of prayer; and writing, too, can be contemplative.

I am always learning more about slowing down--and more about writing, having been at it for more than 50 years; I am always finding stylists that entertain, impress or delight me, whose work becomes part of the well I dip into. I am grateful to Mr. Percy for coming my way and sharing his experience of slow reading.

Are we cheapening our language?

Is the use of texting, tweeting, e-mailing, and blogging ruining the English language? The question is a recurring one in the media, and just recently I saw an editorial in the magazine N+1 posing the question: does writing on the internet and other electronic media cheapen our language?

The answer is yes, but in two senses: the good sense (writing is more available to all, with publication more democratic) and the bad (ease leads to carelessness and confusion). Bloggers, says the editorial, write off the top of their head and in the conversational rush produce sloppy prose. There is no time for revision.

If all online writing takes on the quality of blogs, it is said, to write well--indeed, to write anything--will seem "pretentious, elitist, and old-fashioned."

Well, there's nothing like hyperbole to catch the reader's attention. The blogs I read do not seem especially careless, rushed, unedited nor do I see a connection between blogging and texting, tweeting, etc., though my exposure to these last two has been purposely minimal.

I confess that my posts on this blog are done under a self-imposed deadline and are less carefully revised than other writing I do for publication, but I naturally revise and edit everything, keeping in mind my admiration for interesting, original sentences, not to mention the demands I place on my writing students.

The 40-character limit of tweets limits itself to the trite and superfluous, at times, as when people chat about what they had for lunch (one respondent asking, why eat anything if you don't write about it?). Yet maybe the next Oscar Wilde, the next Dorothy Parker, masters of epigrammatic wit, are waiting to be born on Twitter. Who knows.

What concerns me is that young people reading and writing only condensed, abbreviated slangy chit-chat will assume that other forms of writing, including business e-mails and blogs, should be equally informal and so all their writing will take on the style approximating that of the late David Foster Wallace, which I would describe as controlled verbal chaos.

Writers often overlook the central role of reading as they shape sentences and choose words. And they forget that there is no writing without rewriting. My advice: read good stuff to counterbalance the tweets and always produce carefully revised prose when you write, no matter who your audience is, especially if your work is "out there" for the world to see.

Good writing will never be pretentious, elitist, or old-fashioned.

Where does good writing come from?

Listening to four short plays performed last night, the work of a friend, Lenny Roland, led to a brief discussion with the playwright.

Where do your ideas come from? she was asked. It was obvious that they come from having a good ear for the off-beat and interesting potential of everyday life. Driving to the airport, dealing with the frustrations of telephones, or trying to cope with hospital bureaucracy can provide a writer with material. As Lenny said after the performance, "There is material everywhere."

She meant her family, with its various crises, which she turns into comedy; or her friends, which are also the stuff of close observation, notetaking, and writing. There is a popular myth about writers waiting for the muse of inspiration to strike them--and being frustrated when it doesn't. All we have to do is look and listen to the world around us and write.

And rewrite. Like every writer, Lenny emphasizes what the audience could not guess: that each line of each play was altered, moved, and recast as it was read aloud and performed.

Why write plays, I wonder--the most difficult of literary genres? Fiction allows the writer to explain and describe characters, setting, and action that the playwright must convey solely in dialogue. Having written in various genres over the years, Lenny, a great lover of Broadway shows, wanted the challenge, I suppose, of bringing her characters to life through speech. This requires a discerning ear and a wide exposure to various types of people and speech patterns.

Every writer has his or her own reasons for writing, his own method and approach, yet we all share the need to be read or heard. I am glad that Lenny Roland, whose plays were performed by professionals from the Mad Cow Theatre in Orlando, had an appreciative audience as well as skilled readers.

For the rest of us, who work alone with little recognition, often for years, the best reward can be satisfying ourselves that we are enjoying the process of creating something new. And there is always the possibility that a friend or two will comment on the pleasure our work has afforded them. This, not publication, is all that matters. Well, most of the time.

Ignoring the Critics

Anyone who wants to go public with their writing or other art form faces the inevitable audience waiting out there to evaluate it; this includes reviewers and critics, many of whom are not helpful. The terror of the blank page that faces many writers owes something to the past (the echo of harsh English teachers), it seems to me, and something to the future: what will the reviewers say?

As one who has been on both sides, as writer and critic, I know how easy it is to let fear paralyze the creative process and how tempting it can be to unleash one's frustrations in a piece of negative criticism. If you have read a movie critic's trashing of a particularly bad film, you know how enjoyable it appears to have been for the critic to be cynical, sarcastic, and smug, and how many readers can enjoy reading a savage review, as if it were a type of witty entertainment. Some of the same thing, in more sophisticated form, takes place in academia.

Robert Pinsky, in a recent Slate article, talks about this, using an especially venomous (and famous) review of the verse of John Keats in which the critic, assuming a sneering pose, admits he has not read the work, although "we have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it." By dismissing the work of this young Romantic poet as unworthy of even being read and honestly evaluated, the critic (it was said) hastened Keats's death, which was actually due to tuberculosis. But his chilling words ("tiresome and absurd") can still sound like a death knell to many insecure young writers encountering that 1818 review.

For those with such fears, I recommend searching for Rotten Reviews (there was once a little book of that title) to see how wrong-headed the critics often are. And how often they overlook their evaluative function and become like attack dogs, discouraging the author and any of his or her fellow would-be writers.

Criticism should be, after all, a balanced judgment, based on solid criteria; its aim is to illuminate the text under review and show its strengths as well as possible flaws. It is not a self-serving opportunity for the reviewer merely to toss off his or her opinions and tastes. It should not determine the way the book or other composition is received by the public, who should make up their own minds.

Luckily, as the following examples indicate, many critics can and should be ignored since they have been proved wildly wrong.

1. "Stick to your teaching, Miss Alcott. You'll never be a writer." This from a publisher in 1852 to Louisa May Alcott, author of the most famous and popular children's book of the 19th century.
2. A few years later, a French critic wrote: "M. Flaubert is not a writer." This would come as a surprise to the millions who have read the classic novel Madame Bovary.
3. Critics in 1922 attacked T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" and even The Great Gatsby, called by one "an absurd story."
4. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 was called "an emotional hodge-podge" by one idiot masquerading as a reviewer; even Dr. Seuss had his first book rejected by 23 publishers. The 24th company made $6 million on the book.

I've focused on writing since that is my field, but I know performance artists, especially actors, have been wounded by unkind, unhelpful remarks that say more about the limitations of the reviewer than the work under consideration.

The obvious conclusion: do not be put off by an initial response that is likely to be hasty, unthinking, and simply stupid. Get a second and third opinion. Ask good readers for positive criticism. Seek praise, too: What did you like about my story? This is an essential question in any writing workshop. And: How can it be improved?

When you are asked to wear the critic's hat, remember to be fair, to think of the author and the work, not yourself. It took years for me to learn this since, like many students, I was sometimes the recipient of harsh judgments, and as a young teacher, given to handing them out.

I like to think that with age comes wisdom.