Category Archives: writing

On Writing

For day two of Reverb 10, we writers are prompted with the following from Leo Baubuta:

December 2 Writing.
What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?
(Author: Leo Babauta)

I thought about this for a short bit but my mind was quickly drawn to this recent letter from writer Charles Bukowski to William Packard:

“When everything works best it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.”

– Charles Bukowski

The fact is, there is nothing in my day that does not contribute to my writing. Every moment. Every experience. Every sense. Even the times I appear to be goofing off or doing nothing. Yep, all of it contributes to my writing. Why would I – how could I – eliminate a single bit?

Here’s a little exercise. Let’s replace the word writing in the prompt with one that has equal value to me:

What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your breathing — and can you eliminate it?

See what I mean?

Writing is the way I translate the world. It’s the only satisfactory tool I have. It’s pleasure. It’s pain. It’s a drug. It’s sex. It’s life the only way I can feel it.

Say It Simply

“Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.”

Some in my audience may be old enough to remember the above. It is the “slogan” for McDonald’s Big Mac hamburger. Perhaps one of the most successful marketing campaigns in history. If you ask almost anyone who was of learning age or older in the mid-1970’s, they can likely rattle off this list of ingredients today without pause and on command. I have not had a Big Mac in over 20 years but I will be able to remember exactly what one is, the very components it is built with, for the rest of my life. Textbook advertising. Yet, it is just a list of ingredients. Nothing more.

I love words. One of the main reasons I write is because of my affection for words and the ability to play with their framework and structure. I find it not only fun, but self-challenging. Nothing thrills me more than clever prose. Seeing something written with such deft skill and imagery that it causes one to gasp in the seeming death defying awe of it all. Yet, while other writers may look at such a thing and half-grin with knowing approval, what the reader often remembers, and what often has the most lasting impact, are the things that are said simply.

Writing Advice (To My Younger Self)

I recently had the extreme pleasure of being interviewed by Ian Hines for is wonderful new project, Intrvws. Ian is an extremely skilled interviewer especially via email. He takes his time developing smart questions and is very comfortable letting people take a while to think about and compose an answer. As evidence, our interview was conducted via email between August 1 and October 4, 2010 (Two months!). I’m incredibly proud of having been a part of it.

I really urge you to read the whole thing, but I wanted to post a particular section here. It is the writing advice I wish I had given my younger self. I encounter young and just starting writers all the time and have given them all manner of hodgepodge advice.Henceforth, I will point them to this:

Ian:

I wonder, if you had the opportunity to send some advice to your younger self to read as you were first beginning to write on the web, what would it be?

Patrick:

Focus on writing well. Read as many posts and books on writing as you need to learn the craft without letting it distract you from, well, writing. Because, after a certain point, no book or post or advice will ever help you as much as putting those words down.

Also learn how to edit your writing to turn it into something other than a collection of words ordered according to some universally agreed to rules. Because some of those rules should be broken. In fact, many should have never been agreed to in the first place. Because those rules can stifle you from finding your own voice if followed too rigidly. More often than not, what you will be editing out of your writing is the rules.

Spend at least twice as much time editing as you do writing. Slave over every detail, sweat every word and punctuation mark. Read what you write over and over again. In fact, never stop yourself from revisiting something you wrote and improving or expanding on it if you feel it would make it better. Even something as simple as adding a comma where there should have been one can change the feel of an entire essay.

Be curious about everything but find one or two things that your are insatiably curious about and interested in. A subject or two that you can never know too much, or think too deeply, about. Write about these things.

Also, ignore the numbers. Ignore the audience. Ignore the fact that, for a very long time, no one may be reading. Just make sure that you are. Be your own biggest fan (when warranted) and harshest critic (when warranted).

Finally, do what I say, not what I do.