Greetings, writers—
I subbed for the kindergarten class again this week, from which I bring you the following news: the chicks are bigger and smellier, a fledging crow came to join the party, and, as Career Day dress-up demonstrated, six-year-olds want to be scientists, rock climbers, princesses, ninjas, a “superhero-witch-butterfly,” and a cat.
Today it’s more “keep on truckin’” encouragement, first from a piece on Nick Cave’s blog, The Red Hand Files, which a handful of you have seen before.
When a fan named Marko asked Cave what he did “when the lyrics just aren’t coming,” Cave wrote this:
In my experience, lyrics are almost always seemingly just not coming. This is the tearful ground zero of song writing—at least for some of us. This lack of motion, this sense of suspended powerlessness, can feel extraordinarily desperate for a songwriter. But the thing you must hold on to through these difficult periods, as hard as it may be, is this—when something’s not coming, it’s coming. It took me many years to learn this, and to this day I have trouble remembering it.
The idea of lyrics ‘not coming’ is basically a category error. What we are talking about is not a period of ‘not coming’ but a period of ‘not arriving’. The lyrics are always coming. They are always pending. They are always on their way toward us. But often they must journey a great distance and over vast stretches of time to get there. They advance through the rugged terrains of lived experience, battling to arrive at the end of our pen…
Marko, our task is both simple and extremely difficult. Our task is to remain patient and vigilant and to not lose heart—for we are the destination. We are the portals from which the idea explodes, forced forth by its yearning to arrive. We are the revelators, the living instruments through which the idea announces itself—the flourishing and the blooming—but we are also the waiting and the wondering and the worrying. We are all of these things—we are the songwriters.
“We are the destination.” Take that and shove it, self-doubt!
But really, I do think patience is just about the hardest thing. Maybe it’s why I like writing these newsletters: from my first idea to your inbox is only a matter of hours. Novels, stories, poems—they take a lot longer.
(You know what else doesn’t take a ton of time? Flash fiction and micro-memoir! So sign up for the class on July 22! Details at the end of this missive.)
While I’ve never read a novel by Nancy Peacock, I like her take on producing them:
You see a lot of books that promise to show you how to write a novel in a weekend, or a week, or a month. You can try it if you want to, but I don't advise it. Instead, I suggest you relax, recognize that writing a novel is slow food and takes time. I wrote LIFE WITHOUT WATER, my first novel over a period of two years - first draft in a year, and second and third in another year. I recognized the reality of my life and created a schedule around it. I knew if I did not get any writing done before going to work, I wasn't going to get any done at all. I was simply too tired after a day of house cleaning (my day job at the time) to write coherently. So I scheduled myself to write for one hour every morning before going to work. Just one hour. I also decided - quite randomly - that my novel was going to be 12 chapters long, and that I would complete one chapter a month. For a whole month I could futz with a chapter, edit, revise, and so on - but at the end of the month I had to move on, even if I didn't feel 100% about it. I gave myself weekends off and five "sick days" a year, meaning if I really was sick, or hungover, or just didn't feel like it, I could skip it - but only five days in a year. I kept track of it. And it worked out. I still work this way. For me it's important to do a little editing as I go along, rather than forbid myself to change anything before the end of the first draft. But it's also important to keep it moving, and not mire down in the swamp of perfection. Above all, be real about your schedule and your time. You will only be disappointed in yourself if you set unrealistic goals. You might think you're not a writer because you can't write a novel in a weekend, or a week, or a month. But maybe you just need to get real about it all. It takes time, and there is nothing wrong with doing something that takes time. Go easy on yourself. Be gentle but steady. The rewards of this life are more abundant than you know.
If you, like Peacock, recognize the reality of your life, what sort of writing schedule would you keep?
Write it down. Try to stick to it!
And finally, here’s another thing you can write. It’s today’s official prompt, which was inspired by a line in We Begin in Gladness: How Poets Progress, by my excellent former Publishers Weekly coworker, the poet Craig Morgan Teicher.
“A poem is some thing that can’t otherwise be said addressed to someone who can’t otherwise hear it.”
Write something—a poem, a scene, a song, a stream-of-consciousness gush—in which X tries to say something virtually unsayable to Y, who may or may not be able to open their ears to listen.
Happy writing—
Emily
*******CLASS INFO*******
Can you tell a story in a single page? In a single paragraph? In this three-hour, in-person workshop dedicated to the short-short story, we’ll read examples of microfiction and discuss how the authors create entire worlds in tightly compressed spaces. We’ll consider structure, voice, characterization, plot, and more, and use what we’ve learned to generate our own pieces of extremely short fiction (or memoir). Since constraints so often spark creativity, we’ll be working with prompts and other encouragements, and you’ll walk away from the class with at least one short-short-short story in your pocket. (Literally: If you bring your computer, we’ll print your piece out.)
When: July 22, 10 am-1 pm
Where: The Writers’ Block in downtown Portland
How much: $100
Have any questions? Want to sign up? Hit reply to this newsletter, or send an email to writingisagoodidea@substack.com.