Thoughts on: Writing

From Maggie Smith to Alexander Chee, here are incredibly wise nuggets on the art and craft of writing

Welcome to Thoughts On, a series of bite-sized, soul-nourishing insights from our time’s greatest heart-centered minds. Culled from my interview series, these are the can’t-miss excerpts on the deeply personal craft of writing.

1. See where the writing takes you

“I never know where a piece of writing is going. And that's not a bug. That's a feature. If I sat down and thought I knew where a piece of writing was going, where it would end, what it was going to be “about,” what the form might be, how long it might be, where the turn might happen, what imagery might be useful; if I knew any of those things at the outset, I don't even know what the point would be. The writing for me is the process of discovery. That's the whole point. So I enter my writing with questions and just see where they go.”

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Maggie Smith

[read Maggie’s full interview]

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2. Use your senses to plug into astonishment

“I’m a pretty big fan of Mary Oliver—and this idea of being able to be present and pay attention. Marie Howe talks about it, too. I have an exercise based on this that I do on retreat. Set a timer for five minutes and then be fully present in whatever your surroundings are for that time through the physical senses of sight and hearing and touch and smell and taste. Observe objectively in an attentive but not narrative way, just what is. Record these observations in fragments, not full sentences, just recording things as they are.

Doing that is transformative; it's so much more than being a better writer, it's being in the world in a different way. Mary Oliver says, “our job is to pay attention, be astonished and tell about it.” It really does boil down to that, but the pay attention part can get short shrift.”

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Jeannine Ouellette

[read Jeannine’s full interview]

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3. Convince the reader to stay

“Part of what I've been doing over the last couple of books is asking the question of how do we also attend to what we love in the midst of what we do not love? The way that I modulate how much I'm putting the delight versus the pain might have something to do with trying to convince a reader to stay with me so that we can actually get into this deeper.”

— Ross Gay [read Ross’s full interview]

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4. If you’re white, don’t avoid writing about whiteness

“White people cannot wash our hands of writing about race. We cannot say, “Well, I'm white so writing about race is not for me.” It’s incredibly important that we are thinking about race, writing about race, including writing about whiteness and what that means: what it protects, what it excludes, what it implies.”

—

Rebecca Makkai

[read Rebecca’s full interview]

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5. Overcome resistance with rhythm

“The perfect rhythm for me is to write my way into a scene or a moment or description in the morning, and then in the late afternoon or the early evening, reread them and mark them up. Then the next morning, begin with those marked up pages. This helps me to overcome my resistance to the work when I have marked up pages and I'm inserting changes. Before I know it, I'm inside of it. And then I continue.”

— Dani Shapiro [read Dani’s full interview]

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6. Tell the whole truth

“When I was writing the first draft of Wild and I wrote that I swallowed a handful of my mom's ashes, I remember getting up from my computer because it was as if I had been electrocuted. My first thought was, I'm going to have to take that line out. It's too much. It revealed too primal a self. It seemed taboo. Whenever I feel that way about a sentence, soon thereafter, I’ll think no, that's exactly the sentence I was writing toward. I have to leave that in. So many people around the world have spoken to me about that sentence because they related to it. It was such a teacher for me: all those things that we think are too much are the things that art and literature are about. Our mission here is to tell not the truth, but to tell the whole truth. Not to write about who are we, but who are we really. It's in lines like that, that we are revealed.”

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Cheryl Strayed

[read Cheryl’s full interview]

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7. Write wherever

“I still just write wherever. But it's now part of the pattern of where I do my writing. I write on my phone a lot now. What I've realized is that part of the way that I write best is if it doesn't really feel like writing. If it doesn't feel like I'm sitting down to write something “Very Important.” If I'm writing something where I'm just messing around, I can just go.”

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Alexander Chee

[read Alexander’s full interview]

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8. Keep digging into areas that are underwritten

“With my first couple of drafts, there will be little things that I'm like, oh, that line is really good. Or that idea is really good. But as with most people, unless you're like Faulkner or something, it takes work and going over the thing over and over. I do my best with every draft, and then go back and try to fix things and keep the things that are good.

I feel like a lot of writers, if not most writers, overwrite and then cut. I am a historical underwriter. In graduate school, I always was turning in these incredibly short stories. It wasn't because they were so brief and wonderful like Lydia Davis; it was because they were horribly underwritten.

A lot of what I do when I'm revising, is trying to dig into the parts that I've underwritten.”

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Esmé Weijun Wang

[read Esmé’s full interview]