Hi Writers!
I’m holding a one-day class, “How to Begin,” at the end of March for anyone interested in getting help getting started on their next great masterpiece. I’ll share examples of great beginnings, give you the lowdown on how the writer pulled it off and share a writing prompt sure to bust through your writing block. Please share with all your writing pals, and I’ll see y’all next month!
The Week in Writing
After reading this Melissa Febos interview in Rough Cut Press, I immediately texted the link to my writing group. Melissa drops so many gems in this piece. There’s a lot in this interview worth commenting on, but I’m going to restrain myself and only write about one part.
I’ve been through the very long trajectory of typing something and being like: “Oh, this makes me sound so smart. I feel great about this.” And then someone will read it and be like: “I don’t really know about this part,” and I’ll be like, “They don’t get me.” And then years later an editor will read it and say: “This is bullshit.” And I’ll be like: “Is it?” And maybe I’ll even put it in the final book and read it and ultimately be like: “Oh, fuck. That was just me trying to show off.” This is just an example of one of the tics that I have; we all have to figure out what our tics are. I’ve been through that process so many times, and I’ve interrupted it at earlier and earlier stages. I’ve done it enough to know how it feels to write something that I am going to eventually cut. There’s a difference between writing something good and feeling great about it and writing something performative and feeling safe about it. Those are different feelings, but they can be indistinguishable for a long time.
I’ve made a study of how it feels to read work that feels disingenuous or like the writer is hiding. All the published texts I have found most instructive are usually books where I admire a lot of what the writer did. I want to understand how they did it, so I can steal it. But then I always ask myself: “What don’t I want to learn from this? Where is this writer, for me, hiding, eliding something vulnerable, not following a thought or movement to its completion in the work? Where is a thought or movement interrupted for the comfort of the writer rather than the integrity of the work?”
I love how closely Melissa studies the craft of her own writing and how perceptive she is about writing overall. This thing she points out is a thing I hate when I encounter it as a reader. I can’t stand feeling like a writer put some ish in just to feel smart. I feel like good writing makes the reader feel like the smartypants. I also as have had to develop the ability to catch myself when I’m doing it and delete-delete-delete that shit.
For example, the opening essay to my next book, takes place in Florida. I decided I needed to cram something in I learned in grad school when I took a 1 credit hour entomology class (being a writer in an entomology class means people correcting you constantly, “You mean etymology.” What? No, bugs not words!) about the death of the Florida citrus industry dying off due to a disease called greening. And I mean it kind of worked in my essay, but not really. Like when you assemble your own furniture and the cabinet doors aren’t quite lined up but you just stop noticing it after a while because mentally you’ve decided it’s good enough.
Well, as a writer, you have to figure out a way to cut off the “It’s good enough” impulse before you just stop noticing how a section really doesn’t quite lineup with the rest of the essay. In the most recent draft I sent to my agent, that section? CUT. (But it was satisfying to get include an abbreviated version of it here.)
Shifting gears: I’m teaching a sex writing class right now and a student emailed me about the ethics and legalities of writing about other people. I’ve been in a lot of rooms where this question has been asked and given a lot of thought to it myself. I won’t get into the legal side of things here (because I’m no lawyer!) but ethically one of the best things I heard a writer say on the topic — and I can’t remember who the writer was, but maybe it was actually Melissa Febos…? — was that it depends on how much you value the relationship with someone and how vulnerable the relationship is.
There are people who’ve written difficult things about their upbringing and have had their parents give them full support in telling their story. There are people in happy marriages with spouses who 100% absolutely do not want one single word published about them, and whether this is a reasonable stance to have our not, their writer-lover respects it because, to them, it’s not worth risking the relationship.
I like this advice because this just isn’t the kind of question that has a single blanket answer. It’s all so dependent on you, the story you’re telling and the people who populate it. Brevity Blog ran a piece last week by a writer and her experiences with contacting people about having written about them. She found that as nervous as she was, that the people took the notice well, were appreciative for the heads up, and she felt better for having done it. Note: She gave notice, but did not make the offer to edit the piece based on anyone’s feelings about it.
On a related note, I came across this piece on Threads about a documentary film crew that basically took all the appropriate consent measures, but their subjects still ended up publicly disavowing the documentary once it started to garner international acclaim. And the writer is parsing out whether or not it’s ever possible to get true consent in this kind of situation because you can never really know how far your message will spread, how it will put others in jeopardy and how someone feels about a hypothetical can be entirely different than they feel about the reality of a thing.
Although this about documentary, I think it can still be applicable to nonfiction.
As a global industry, we are finally speaking—haltingly, urgently—about participant care. A conversation long overdue, a reckoning with the extractive nature of documentary filmmaking, the ways in which filmmakers have, for decades, turned people into narratives, flattened complexities into consumable arcs, and walked away with accolades while those whose lives formed the raw material of these stories were left to contend with the aftermath. Accountability must be asked of us. But any reckoning that ignores the instability of the world we document is, at best, incomplete. People change. Institutions shift. Perceptions distort. Politics reshape lives. Reality resists coherence, and to ignore this is to miss the point entirely.
Current Fixation
For years, I’ve been advocating for an end to mint toothpaste supremacy. The mint is too aggressive. And before bed, I want my mouth to feel fresh but the mint-of-it-all can be overwhelming and make my brain think, “It’s morning! Wake up!”
Several years ago, I feel for a limited edition flavor of Marvis toothpaste. That was the gateway for me to try their Sweet and Sour Rhubarb toothpaste, which I’ve been purchasing off and on for a few years now, despite the increasing hardship (and rising prices) of finding it.
I have no concept of rhubarb as a stand alone flavor. I just know it goes in strawberry pie. And “Sweet and sour” conjures up images of mall food court “sweet and sour chicken.” And who wants sour toothpaste??? So there were a lot of mental roadblocks I had to overcome to give this toothpaste a try.
Here’s the thing. It’s not children’s candy sour. It’s a subtle sour that’s perfectly balanced by the subtle sweet and topped off with a subtle mint. It’s just a well-balanced flavor profile. This toothpaste makes brushing my teeth a true joy.
— Minda
Fake News
“How to Begin” A 2.5-hour Writing For Fakers class on getting started. $55. March 31st.
“Write Your Heroes” I’m teaching a 6-week writing workshop for Bluestoop on writing about your life alongside the life of your literary hero, like that blog that became a movie “Julie & Julia.” Begins March 18th.
“How to Write a Heartbreak” Bringing back my class on heartbreak writing! Begins May 13th.
Mail Club Last chance to get in on the February mail club. Love notes going into the mail next week! Upgrade here.
