TRUE TO LIFE: Chapter 15

Last year I learned a simple way to express the vital truth written below: every good piece of writing is about the thing, and then it's about the other thing. There's the story on the surface, and the deeper, more universal story below. My students have heard it a million times: What is this story REALLY ABOUT?

15

Make it matter

_ 

One of the most common sentiments of beginning memoir writers is, “Who’ll be interested in MY story? I’m not famous or interesting.” That was the attitude of Grace in Step 1, presenting what she thought was a boring, mundane saga of adoption, which I heard years ago and have never forgotten. Think of high school teacher Frank McCourt, who decided to write a memoir of his Irish childhood. He didn’t know if his story would interest anyone, but he had a moving tale and told it well, with detail, dialogue, humour, and skill—and also, considering what a painful story it was, with great compassion for his hapless parents. Angela’s Ashes became a huge bestseller (suggestion—read it).

The beautiful irony of our work is that the more honest, direct, and passionate we are in telling our own stories, the more our readers will connect to us. This is hard to believe, but it’s true, no matter how specific your story is to you, how quirky and unusual. My parents were not alcoholic or Irish, but because McCourt wrote with truth, wit, and daring, I connected on a deep level with the rich humanity in his tale. I don’t have a sister, but because Grace told her story with such genuine emotion, I understood something new about the power of the loyalty and concern we feel for our own flesh and blood.

This kind of writing means telling the small story so well, with such focus and heart and skill, that the big story inside it will shine through, though sometimes we don’t even know what the big story is. If what you choose to write doesn’t matter to you, the writer, it won’t matter to your readers. Trust your important stories and trust your voice to tell them.

To become better writers, we must work on two fronts. On the one front, we need to summon the courage, depth, and honesty to dig up and recount our most important stories. On the other, we must develop the patience, humility, and dedication to learn the craft and technique of good writing, so that we tell those vital stories well. Craft and courage—that’s all you need. If you have lots of courage but no craft, people will be eager to read your honest tales but won’t be able to penetrate your prose. If you have lots of craft but no courage, your stories will flow beautifully with rich vocabulary and good structure but may not find readers, because nothing is at risk.

Risk is key. Something must be at stake. Otherwise, why should we care? (Risk is an important topic; see Step 37 and on.)

                                            

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.

robert frost

The literary non-fiction writer recreates the narrative so that it becomes resonant. She uses her imagination, but the story is based in fact and emotional truth. She tells her own truth so fully that she enables her readers to remember theirs. An honest story opens others to the possibility of their own humanity. It opens us up, teaches the heart how to manoeuvre and think. We touch a human, visible part of each other when the story rings true.

from wayson choy’s notebook

joyful noise: Once Were Brothers and banging pots

I may be one of the only people who has actually lost weight during the pandemic. Four or five pounds shed, so far. But I'm happy to tell you that the major stress is over, and so the appetite will return. My son came over yesterday; as a bartender, he has dealt with all kinds of difficult situations and is the most street-smart, savvy person I know. He gave me the best advice, and I felt instantly calmer.

So then we ordered steak/frites from our favourite local resto the House on Parliament - they're doing take-out - and had a feast with a glass of red wine. A true celebration. And then Anna texted that she's coming over tmw. It's not over, but it's ending, and by next week all will be calm. I think. But even if it's not, my team is on the case, and a finer team you could not ask for.

So this little sailboat is on smoother waters. Bring out the cheese and chocolate.

There are lessons here. I overreact, I act impulsively without enough thought, I want to fix things that I cannot fix, and I also accept blame where there is none. You'd think, by age 69, I'd be smarter. But I guess we go on learning about our flaws until the day we die. Hooray!

Tuesday - Once Were Brothers, a doc about The Band. The name says it all. Canadian Robbie Robertson, half-Indigenous and all talent, found out as a teenager that his birth father was a Jewish gangster who'd been murdered on a Toronto street but whose family encouraged his musical ambitions. It's a moving story of the flowering of an extraordinary group of men, what happened in that pink house in Woodstock, and how it all eventually turned sour, as these things so often do. But their unique music lives forever. Up on Cripple Creek ... Time to get out the record and put it on the player.

Last night, with Sam, Spy in the Wild: they put cameras into clever replicas of animals and birds, even fish - a baby bear that actually turns its head and grunts, a fake stork, a fake hummingbird, a fake beaver - so the camera can get close to the action. And what incredible footage we get. Sam was hilarious - George, have you noticed there's something strange about your friend? - as we watch a weird bird with glassy eyes that doesn't move its wings. But there we are, in the middle of the flock.

Tonight, after aperitif at 5, the next treat is at 7.30 - Monique and I go out into the street with our neighbours and bang pots - I the boys' tambourine - to give thanks to the frontline workers. There's not much else we can do to show our appreciation, and I doubt any frontline workers are walking by at 7.30, but we are together making joyful noise, and it feels good.

CN Rail just cancelled the exciting, much anticipated trip Anna and the boys were to take on the overnight train from Montreal to Moncton in July, in preparation for my 70th birthday gathering there. Some rethinking of the summer is in order. Careful, calm thinking. My new modus vivendi. Stay tuned.

in the storm

I thought my difficult issue was being resolved but in fact, I feel like I'm in a sailboat in a hurricane. However. It's a sturdy boat, and I have faith we'll get through. At some point. I do have friends who are aware of the situation and are giving support and counsel. Thank the very good lord for wise, solid, caring friends.

Otherwise - it's spring, the world is stunningly beautiful, I don't think it has ever been lovelier because we need it so much - flowers, green, buds, birds. Birds. Green. Magnolia trees. I walk the same route in the 'hood every day, just looking and breathing.

Monday night, two superb programs - one on CRISPR which I began, barely, to understand - the genetic sequence they've discovered will repair itself when damaged, and so they're hoping they can use CRISPR to repair genetic flaws like sickle cell anemia and Huntington's. Again, I wish my dad were here to watch these incredible genetic innovations. And also to debate the scary, risky side of all this - the selection of characteristics for babies, the end of Down's Syndrome, where is it all headed?

And then the finale of My Brilliant Friend, ending with Lila - spoiler alert! - in a version of hell, a salami factory with dead pigs and a river of blood on the floor. A shock for Lenu and for us all. But also a loving friendship with a kind man, a healthy happy son, a bright tidy apartment - she has created her own life. Such superb drama. Can't wait for Season Three, though - can they top this, or even keep up?

So, another day. A Zoom stretching class at 1, a talk at 3 with my tech guy about an important issue, aperitif at 5, and my son coming for supper. In between, what? No idea. My little boat and I sail on.

TRUE TO LIFE: Chapter 14

14

Complete your baggy

first draft

_ 

You sit staring at the page or the screen and, finally, an idea comes. You begin to write tentatively, then with more confidence. The words start to flow, and the pages take shape. Then you stop and read what you’ve written, and you want to throw up.

Congratulations! You’ve done exactly what you’re supposed to do. You have written a big fat baggy first draft.

Inexperienced writers think that writing is like laying an egg. You begin by gathering your thoughts, fashioning a nice warm nest. You sit in it, gestate, strain—and voilà, you produce a perfect, shining, egg-shaped piece of writing, a gift to the world all set to go.

But that is the furthest thing from what writing really is: a process, a journey, endless stumbling along a confusing trail. Beginning somewhere, figuring out where you want to go, trying to get there, trying again this way, trying again that way, finishing somewhere and then starting again. This messy, frustrating process is what writing really looks like.

A first draft can and indeed should be awful. In her diary, Virginia Woolf spoke of her first draft as a chaotic handbag into which she threw everything. Try not to edit or stop as your first draft emerges. Let the ideas, thoughts, and scenes pour out until that bag is bulging. You are writing a big fat baggy first draft, wearing your writer’s hat (throw all the ideas in) not your editor’s hat (weed many ideas out). You can’t work with a few tentative lines; you need pages filled with words. When you stop and read your draft, it’ll be too terse and constrained or, more likely, way too rambling and long. It’ll be full of bad grammar, digressions, and clichés. “All over the place!” you’ll say. “So dull. Abysmal.”

Forgive yourself. Because now the next part of the work begins: editing, shaping, and improving the baggy first draft.

My first drafts are turgid, unfocused, and lacklustre; they make me think I’m a lousy writer. But I am, I like to think, a good REwriter. Once the first draft is down, I work it over and over into something better—as I’m doing right now, over and over, in this book for you. Some believe getting the first draft out is the hardest part of writing; others love the initial burst of creation and hate the fiddly editing that comes next. Use different techniques to help launch yourself—perhaps drawing or creating mind maps, talking out loud, or making lists and pinning them on the wall.

Writing is more like working with clay than we realize at first; when you’ve got a lump of raw material, you have to figure out what to do with it, what its final shape should be, and how to get it there. But first, unlike potters or sculptors, you have to produce the raw material yourself, unearthing it onto the page from your own memory, heart, gut, mind, soul.

Delve into your topic, let yourself go, and write a clumsy, bulky, meandering, lousy first draft. Keep writing, keep your writer’s hat on, and keep putting in what comes to you until you have enough content to really rewrite. Only then should you put on your editor’s hat and begin to redraft, polish, and cut.

                                                  

When I used to write more at The New Yorker, there were two or three Polish cleaning women who came in late at night, and I was always afraid that they would find my early drafts and read them to each other, howling with laughter, slapping their brooms against the desks like hockey players do: Ha! He calls himself a writer!

calvin trillin

The first words down are like a block of marble for the sculptor: raw material. The content, or much of it, comes blurting out in the first draft. (Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that this appalling stuff sounds as if it were written by someone named Philboyd Studge.)

junot diaz

Let it pour out. Surrender to the story. Write too much so you have something to work with. Don’t worry about who will see it; write for yourself. Don’t hold back and be discreet. Don’t cut yourself off from the story.

wayson choy

Call the Midwife: sob! And Shelter.

It's possible the stressful tenant situation has begun to be resolved. My stomach was heaving again today, until about an hour ago. But I won't hold my breath until I'm sure.

Let it be so.

Last night, Call the Midwife - and as usual, I wept. I mean, they showed us a baby born with a terminal heart condition, not to mention the on-going plot points, the good-hearted handyman with his Down's Syndrome son who's one of the stars, the sweet nun midwives and the sweet not nun midwives, the final tableau of all the recently delivered babies arrayed on a blanket, and in the middle, placed carefully in a pot of flowers, a picture of the dead baby.

It's not maudlin, though it may sound so, just very real. But still, every week, Heidi Thomas the writer makes me - makes all of us, I'm sure - cry.

And then the second season of the terrific TVO show, First Contact, about a group of ordinary Canadians who have prejudices and preconceptions about Indigenous people being taken into First Nations homes and communities to meet individuals and hear their stories. It's superb.

It's destination television, at 9 on Sundays. My tech guru Brad wrote to say, why don't I show you how to access the shows you want to watch on HBO and Crave so you can watch them whenever you want? But I don't want to watch them whenever. With a few exceptions, like a few things on Netflix, if a show I want to see is on Sunday at 9, that's when I'll sit down and watch it. I won't sit down at 3 on Monday afternoon, it just doesn't occur to me, and so I just won't get to it. That's the kind of dinosaur I am.

I think things are different for couples; they need to find things they can do together, like watching shows whenever. But I am happier reading - these days, too much online rather than books or mags, but still, the solitary act of reading - than tuning in to something that aired 6 weeks ago.

Tonight, the finale of My Brilliant Friend, which has been renewed for another season. On Mondays at 10.

My friend Julia sent me this: Shelter. Beautiful. Dancers. She's a former student who just had a great piece in the Globe about the importance, especially now, of birds.
https://vimeo.com/413660247/2c1378a80c

Today, I finally started work. That is, not editing and teaching, not running this complicated house and garden, not keeping up with friends and family and the world, but writing work. IT'S ABOUT TIME, a mere 7 weeks into this thing. But everyone is saying, cut yourself some slack. It's stressful. Yes, it is, and I the lucky landlady had a little bit extra just to keep me on my toes.

But it's spring, and today another heavenly day. Here, from today's walk by the Necropolis, an amazing magnolia:

And here, Anna's 39th birthday party, the usual feast only with a small, select crowd, including Sam and friend Nicole. It's Eli's birthday in 3 weeks, and I want to be there. I need to hug those boys. Or at least sit 6 feet away and gaze. A destination birthday.