Greetings, writers—
“Tell a dream, lose a reader,” goes the old Henry James saw. Oh well.
Last night—before I got up at 3 a.m. and made coffee (will the jet lag never end?)—I was certain that I’d conceived of a groundbreaking prestige TV series in my sleep. It’s ridiculous now, but when I was half-awake at 11 and midnight and 1, the interconnected dreams I was having about an 18-year-old with no friends or family but a lot of money living a strange, lonely, and intermittently debauched life at a Ritz Carlton somewhere seemed like exactly what HBO and indeed the world needed.
Yes, I saw one of the White Lotuses, but I think the dreams were actually inspired by the second half of Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies, which I tore through on the trans-Atlantic flight that’s still wreaking havoc on my Circadian rhythm.
Waking up and realizing your brilliant idea is actually a dumb non-idea is akin to (but not nearly as bad as) the sadly common authorial experience of thinking that you’ve written something really good on Monday, but then, during Tuesday’s read-through, you suddenly understand the truth, which is that your words are a crime against the paper they’re written on.
Of course they are not. But they probably could be better. And your job, my job, our job, is to not let our disappointment in what we see as our meager Tuesday talents make us too profoundly discouraged.
I’ve quoted George Saunders before, but he’s wise about this sort of thing:
So many times, in writing, we beat ourselves up, by acting as if the problems we encounter are proof of our inadequacy. But what if (in order to be more powerful artists) we could train ourselves to respond to a problem in our text by instead saying something like: “Well, working with this sort of problem IS writing. That’s all writing ever is.”
That is: having vexing problems and then trying to fix them = process.
I feel like some variation of WRITING IS JUST DEALING WITH PROBLEMS should be pasted above all of our desks.
Also, maybe, BE NICE TO YOURSELF.
And here’s Dawn Powell, another writer I’ve quoted before (with good reason), speaking to this matter:
You must remember that you don’t know what people find in your work so there’s no sense in trying to repeat it. You can only do, in the way that seems best to you. Like not knowing really why people like or dislike you—do they like your brains? No, it is your cooking and perhaps your apartment. Is it your conversation? No, it is the fact that occasionally you let others talk. So—for reassurance in finding some of your work so bad—remember, you don’t know.
So maybe I’d add DON’T JUDGE; JUST WORK to the wall, too.
Your prompt for today:
Write down some encouraging words to yourself, and keep them where you can look at them whenever necessary.
Shameless self-promotion:
May I suggest, if you have children in your life for whom you need to purchase holiday presents, that you consider getting them a book or two from the Klawde: Evil Alien Warlord Cat series? I wrote them with one of my best friends and we cracked each other up the entire time. Writing the third book in the series—in which a good dog tries to apprehend the titular evil cat—was the most delightful writing experience of my life.
A few literary links:
—I think ChatGPT is dark and scary. Debbi Urbanksi, who wrote a novel in which an artificial intelligence narrates the end of humanity, thinks we should be a lot more optimistic about a creative collaboration with AI.
—“It’s always about tone. If the tone is not there, there is no writing.” I took a class with Jonathan Franzen during my sophomore year of college, and he was a wonderful, generous teacher. Here he talks for four minutes about his writing process.
—“When Ruthless Cultural Elitism is Exactly the Job.” The headline says it all, really, but here’s a fun interview with legendary literary agent Andrew “the Jackal” Wylie. In a different interview (paywalled, or I’d link) he calls the bestseller list “a dungheap of illiteracy.” (!)
—Are you going to make a resolution to write a novel in the new year? Here are 12 ways to outline one.
Happy writing!
Emily
Brilliant and helpful, thank you again! Happy Holidays!