Notes on Daily Writing
When asked by my brother Jim how I got here, to writing, to posting short essays on Facebook and Medium, to feeling like maybe I could commit to writing longer form one day, I cite three things.
1. An article about a man who writes 500 words a day, has for the last fifty years, never intending to be published, has because writing makes him happy.
2. Five or six books on the craft. Books by writers, but not all.
3. Grub Street’s on-line writing workshops.
Since making the commitment, a commitment made after someone said: “You have to! Keep going. You don’t want to get down the road and regret that you didn’t try.” Words that echo, inspire, cajole. If what I write can move a few people like it did her, I will feel blessed.
Three Steps
1. First, I point to an article in the Wall Street Journal. About a man who writes for himself, because it grounds him, because it makes him happier, healthier. This piece appears right about the time I accept an Instagram challenge to draw a picture a day for thirty days. After the month, I think to myself, “that was fun, let’s trying thirty days of writing five hundred words a day and see where it takes me.” Those first thirty days now five years and running, and I can see how someone gets up to fifty.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-power-of-daily-writing-in-a-journal-1453837329
2. Next, everyone says that to be a writer, you have to read, read, read. “Read the greats,” my brother John suggests. “No better way.” Immediately realizing I neither have the time or the patience to plow through the hundred-years-worth of classics I failed to read in school, I decide instead to read books by writers talking about writing. I find that I gravitate to books that describe a writing life as much as they describe how to craft a sentence. These books are:
Bird by Bird: Anne Lamott
This book allows me to let go, to stop worrying about what’s going on the page or what other people think — put pen to paper and let the rest take care of itself. Anne says that my truth, told through the heart, is enough. She and others remind me that our first drafts will suck, that some days you will write pages and pages of drivel, that neither can be excuse for not sitting down in that chair.
The Writing Life: Annie Dillard
With both Dillard and Lamott, I get to imagine what it’s like to be a writer, to open-up to what’s happening around me, to put down on paper my experience — if for nothing else but to make sense of the world for myself. With Dillard, I come to understand that I don’t have to publish to be a writer. I simply have to write. Every day. This helps ward off the imposter syndrome I live with.
Elements of Style: E.B. White
I remember hating this book when it was first assigned to me back in ninth or tenth grade. Ugh! When to use a semi colon versus an em dash the last thing I wanted to learn then. This time though, I love it. The basics, made clear — the book interesting and fun to read. It’s central premise that less is more. No unnecessary words. And make them all tell.
On Writing Well: Zinsser
If you’re going to read just one book on writing, let it be this one — because it combines practical advice in readable fashion. He reminds me that editing and rewriting is hard, but makes us writers. There’s been something like a million of these instructional books sold since he first published it. CRAZY! And quite possibly the most popular book on the subject ever.
On Writing: Steven King
Who’d have thought that Steven King could write about writing in a way that’s helpful? At first, he didn’t. Refused for years. Yet now, he has. He reminds us that we’re writing to ourselves and for ourselves alone. That writing is as simple as sitting in the chair without as much as an outline and just letting it rip. That he never knows what’s coming next in his stories. That when you start to worry about publishing, you’re doomed.
Note: I read these first five books thinking, “OK, enough”. Until hearing Elizabeth Gilbert speak at a conference. Magical!
Big Magic: Elizabeth Gilbert
The ideas are all out there, she writes, floating around waiting for someone to express them. My discipline — of learning the craft, of sitting down and putting in the hours — allows me to channel ideas on to the page. “If not you, then someone else will,” she argues. She’s talking about both fiction and non-fiction. She’s encouraging us to face our fears head-on, to be curious, and ultimately choose creative lives. Scary!
These books my little cannon, enough to give me a sense of purpose and hope that I just might be able to do this without ever reading Faulkner and Hemmingway.* These six and our weekly New Yorker magazine subscription enough to set me on my way.
3. Lastly, after I publish a series of unadorned truths as short essays on Facebook, one writer friend generously suggests I take a course, which I do, at Grubb Street, one of the most well-regarded writing workshop organizations in the country. My friend didn’t tell me I had potential, or that I sucked. He simply offers the suggestion at a time when I feel ready to hear it, so I sign-up.
At first, I sign-up for an in-person course, but end-up taking a remote class when not enough people enroll for in-person. On day-one of the course, I feel a bit like the kid learning how to ride a bike — you’ve watched others for a while when one day your parents decide that it’s just time to shove off and start pedaling. The writing course format pretty simple: read, write, reflect, comment. Six weeks, Six Essays. Each a different kind, ranging from memoir, to critical to lyrical. I like the format so much, I take the course twice, with two different teachers, because the reading differs, as does the instructor’s approach.
Most recently, I spend six months writing one essay a week on Medium — to see where it leads, which is here, to writing my truth, about learning to write, about life, about doing the things that make me happy. I still don’t know where all of this will lead me, which isn’t the point. What I know is that writing clarifies my thinking and gives me confidence in who I’m becoming.
*I do have to admit to recently picking up Old Man and the Sea, because it’s Hemmingway, because he’s the master of the short sentence, and because it’s barely a hundred pages in length ; )
