Selling your work is selling your work, whether you get one hundred dollars or one hundred million dollars. Maybe it goes down a little better for a hundred million dollars. I don’t know. The play went on. People came. And as I stood in the lobby, people who had come to see my other shows came up to me. I could tell they weren’t quite sure what to say. Finally, “It just didn’t sound like you,” they’d say. Or, “It wasn’t quite what I was expecting.” Yeah. I knew it as it was happening. The play was no longer mine, and I didn’t fight for it because I had my hundred dollars in hand. The work was no longer mine. I was new to this game. I was trying to be professional. I also, back to the ruthless honesty part of this deal, wanted to avoid confrontation more than I wanted to defend my writing. This was the betrayal. Not the selling of it, but the lack of defending it. This was where I turned my back on my work, and this is when the rift between us began.
Sold work gets reworked all the time. Novels are adapted to films, and the novelist hangs her head. She can’t recognize her story, but she sold her book. It’s what we do. If you want to retain all your rights to your work, don’t publish it in any traditional way. But if you do sell your work, then other people will be involved. That’s the way it goes. It’ll be a director or an editor. It’ll be an actor or a producer. It’ll be someone, and they have a right to get involved because you agreed to the process. So you have to learn what battles to fight and what battles to let go. You have to learn when it’s an ego response (sounds like: No! All my words are perfect and brilliant and untouchable. You, mere mortal, can never expect to understand what I was trying to do. Perhaps you should go back to being a dishwasher in lower Manhattan. Out of my sight!). And you have to learn when the response comes from resistance and laziness (sounds like: Oh wow. Yeah. I knew that part wasn’t really working. But do you know how much work it’s going to take to fix it? That’s going to require rewriting the entire first act and, honestly, I don’t care so much anymore.). And you have to learn when the response is working in service to the greater good of the work. This happens when the ego steps out of the way. It happens when you are able to get out of your own way and recognize that the input of others can make your work better than it could be on its own. It happens when you can hear what’s being said, can recognize what’s of value in what’s being said, and are prepared to take the necessary action to integrate the suggestions.
This doesn’t mean you’re a doormat, taking every single piece of feedback and slapping it all together in a smorgasbord of ideas and directions. It’s your work, no matter what you were paid for it. But there are compromises every writer must make, and those compromises are generally for the greater good of the work. I field a lot of questions from students about editors. They tend to think one of two things: the editor will completely rewrite the work and fix everything the writer was too lazy to fix (grammar and spelling!), or the editor is some kind of power freak who wants to take the writer’s talent and spin it in some horrific way. Neither of these fall anywhere close to my experience.
Students often don’t want to submit their work for publication because they’re afraid they will lose their voice if someone else gets hold of it. A good editor helps you make your own voice better. The editor doesn’t take away your voice and turn it into someone else’s or her own. For this relationship to work, however, you have to be open to hearing someone make comments about your work. You have to be open to changing the way you initially approached something. (Sometimes their ideas are better, sometimes not, but the way you choose to respond to these suggestions will speak volumes about you as a writer.) Respond with courtesy. Digest the comments. Ask yourself: Will this make my work better? Is this something I never considered? Why is this comment coming up now? What did I forget to say? Where was I unclear? Editors want to help you and help your work. Let them.
Accepting feedback is not a betrayal of your work. Sometimes, though, your work does become discombobulated and you find you no longer recognize it. There may be nothing you can do about it, depending on the kind of contract you’ve entered into. You may have to follow this to the end, watching your vision crumble. But you may have options, such as paying back your advance and pulling the work (this may have longer term consequences for your career than you realize at this point, so think long and hard first). You may be able to renegotiate the deadlines so that you can rewrite with a different focus. Every choice you make will have consequences; sometimes it’s right to walk away and cut your losses, and sometimes it’s right to stay and fight. Practice self-observation without judgment. Be ruthlessly honest with yourself. There are no absolute answers here.
In my situation with the play, I could have fought more for my work. I could have argued with the director. I never presented my concerns to him. I was too wrapped up in who this director was (I thought he was untouchable in the local community). I was afraid that if I challenged him he would never produce my work again. I was also afraid that maybe he was right and I had made some serious miscalculations about what the work was supposed to be. I was too inexperienced to know the difference between my intuition and my ego response. It takes time to learn the difference, and I’ll bet there will always be a bit of confusion. Ego tends to be louder than intuition. Ego tends to respond with contraction and reaction. Intuition feels softer, more spacious. Wait; wait. That’s not quite right. That’s a different response from: He’s destroying my genius! As you get more practice watching your behavior in situations, you’ll become more skilled at determining who inside of you is speaking.
I didn’t stand up for my work. I could have and I should have. It wasn’t like I’d sold a screenplay and Johnny Depp had signed. This was a low stakes theatre. A low stakes production. But I remained silent. That was the betrayal. The betrayal wasn’t whether or not I stood up for it or didn’t. The betrayal wasn’t in the outcome. The betrayal was that I knew what the right thing to do was, yet did nothing.
That was the last play I produced at that theatre. Not because I had burned bridges, but because I couldn’t write. I couldn’t find a way back to plays, a way back to drama and the stage. I had betrayed my writing, and my muse turned her back on me. I didn’t know that was what was happening. I didn’t understand the sacred relationship between a writer and the writing. I was still exclusively an ego-based writer. I still thought I was in charge of the whole thing. I thought I could turn it on and off like a light switch. I thought I dictated the terms and conditions of its arrival.
In negotiations with your work, fight the fights that matter. Maintain a consistent relationship with your writing so it doesn’t think you’ve turned away. Remember that you are in a partnership, not in a mistress/servant relationship. What would you do in the same situation if your writing were a person? Or if your writing was yourself, because ultimately, of course, what you do or do not do to and for your writing, you do to and for yourself.
How do you want to be treated? How do you want to be remembered? How do you want to love?
CHAPTER 47
Natural Talent
Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
—Henry van Dyke
It happens every semester. The student creeps up to you in the very last breath of your office hour. Or she waits until the rest of the class has gathered up their backpacks and water bottles. Sometimes he’s shy. Sometimes she’s bold. Sometimes he poses it as a challenge. Sometimes more of a prayer.
“Do I have any talent?”
For a writing teacher, this question is the equivalent of being asked to reveal state secrets to the Taliban. And, fortunately, I’ve honed my Special Forces resistance skills over the years to where I can keep a poker face and provide the only answer that is ethical: “I can’t answer that.”
The reason the poker face is needed is because I’m still a human being. The students I work with present a wide range of abilities. I have personal tastes that I try to keep out of the classroom, but the
y are still part of how I see literature.
I’m convinced that people ask the question because they want to be validated. My job is not to validate. My job is to help my students grow as writers. Think about it. The last time you asked someone if your butt looked fat in those jeans, did you really want them to say, “Actually, yes it does”? Likely not.
I am not the Talent Police, nor am I the Talent Judge. But talent isn’t all that matters. Perseverance, a commitment to learning the craft, writing writing writing writing writing, studying grammar, reading reading reading reading reading—these things can make a writer successful. I can’t even tell you with certainty whether or not a piece can be published. So much of publishing is changing and out of our control that we can’t possibly say with definitive authority, No, it’ll never make it, or, Yes! It’s a best seller. No one knows these things. Please don’t ask us. Ask questions such as, “Who can I read more of to learn more about plot?” or “What are some of the different ways I could have approached that character conflict?” or “Where do you think the work fell into cliché?” Ask concrete developmental questions about your work. We can answer those. The work will improve. And the rest will go where it will go.
I think of talent as a magic bean. All of us received a handful of magic beans, but none of us got the same assortment of magic beans. All of these magic beans were not programmed to sprout at the same time. Sometimes they lie dormant until the circumstances arise for them to bloom. Sometimes they are nurtured from early childhood. Some people publish a book in their early twenties. Others not until their eighties. Everyone didn’t get the same set of circumstances, so talent cannot be measured in an Excel spreadsheet. Talent can’t be ranked, quantified, or implanted.
I also know that since all people are not given equal gifts, all people cannot accomplish the exact same things. No matter how much I want to be a blues singer, it just ain’t happening in this life. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy music and singing, but it means the open mic or karaoke night is as far as I’m going to get with my musical ability.
If you’re in my class, I’ll never tell you whether I think you’re talented enough because I can’t know. I will tell you if individual sentences, or stories, or poems sing. I will tell you how to make a piece stronger.
Do your own writing. Study. Read. Read. Read. Write. Read. Push yourself. Don’t get complacent (oh, I already know how to write dialogue). I’ll bet there’s something new you could learn. Be a constant student whether you’re in class or not. Be in service to your art. Listen to it. Walk with it. That’s the relationship that will get you wherever you and your writing are supposed to end up in this crazy world.
But talent? Don’t worry about it. Your job is to use the magic beans you’ve been given to the best of your ability. Don’t waste them comparing your beans to everyone else’s beans. Your commitment is to your growth with your art. Nothing more and nothing less is required of you.
You may never be able to string together clauses like Faulkner, but that’s OK. We’ve had one Faulkner. What is it that you can do?
CHAPTER 48
Spiral Dance
And those who were seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
Novelist Ursula K. Le Guin decries the linear perspective that dominates modern storytelling. She says it’s “like an arrow, starting here and going straight there and THOK! hitting its mark.” Furthermore, she complains, modern plots are usually advanced through conflict, as if interesting action can’t possibly arise from any other catalyst.
This week, in an introductory creative writing class, we began in-class writing at last, and I started the inevitable and constant work of helping students look inward with ruthless scrutiny and ruthless compassion. Much of what I teach is not about writing in a linear way. Most of what I do is guide students into their lifetime journey of self-exploration. Until they look inside themselves and find themselves shocked and awed, in despair and in love with what they see, they will not be able to create believable worlds on the page.
I walk around the classroom and listen to their disclaimers of their work. Before they’ll share what they wrote, they tear it down. New work is as fragile as an antique teacup. New work must be allowed to breathe and speak before the craftsperson shapes it. One student mentioned that she wanted to develop a more sacred relationship with her writing. I rarely hear that during the first few weeks, but by the end of a semester with me, few people believe writing is anything but a sacred relationship.
Le Guin’s statement hits at the heart of my philosophy on writing. Yes, plot is a causal relationship, but the structure of a story or a book can be anything but linear and expected. This event may follow that event in your “real life,” but in narrative you have the luxury of manipulating time and space. Pearl S. Buck says, “One faces the future with one’s past.” We look ahead to what we can be and do based on where we have been and what we have done. So even “real life” is not as directly causal as it appears on the surface. This follows that because of that and that and that, or because that and that and that did not occur, this did. It’s not a line. Remove a section within a line and you’ve still got a line. Remove a piece of a spiral and the whole pattern changes.
Whether my students publish or not, writing a novel or a story and following it through revisions, critique sessions, self-doubts, false praise, and finally that cutting, compassionate eye from within will change them forever. The world is a better place with each story written. Every time you take a risk with your work, you give yourself the ability to take more risks in your “regular” life. The way you approach your writing is the way you will approach your life. Discipline and compassion cannot be turned on and off.
When I look back on my life, I do not see it as a journey from point A to point B. I see it in defining moments. I see it in overlapping memories and overlapping relationships. I see it in a merging between what happened and what I wanted to have happened and what I have subsequently told myself happened. And I hope, when I am reflecting on my life for the final time, I will see the pattern I have written.
My pattern will not be a line that stretches from birth to death. My pattern will be a series of spirals, of turning in and back and around and forward. My pattern will dance, even as I spin away.
This is my sincerest wish for my students and for you. When you look back on your lives, may your patterns spin and twist and meander. May the ending be the only possible conclusion to the work you’ve done. May you close your eyes and whisper, “It is perfect,” and spin away.
THE WRITING WARRIOR PRACTICE
An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.
—Mahatma Gandhi
Part 5, Deepening Your Writer’s Roots, gave you some insights into the mysterious side of the writing process. This mystery is awe-inspiring and often frustrating. The more you understand the ways writing can manifest in your life, the less likely you’ll be to throw up your hands and walk away. Every writer walks his or her own path. Understanding some of the common pitfalls along the path will help you avoid succumbing to them.
Writing goes through phases. Sometimes we’re intimate with it. Sometimes we’re detached from it. Sometimes we can’t figure it out at all. Remember the concept of impermanence. The next time you sit down to write will be different from this time. Trust that nothing will be the same from day to day. Rather than be unsettled by that, let it be grounding. You’ll be lonely sometimes. You’ll doubt yourself and your work. You’ll wonder if you have enough talent or discipline or passion. Keep showing up. Each word follows the word before it, just like each breath follows the previous one. You don’t have to know where you’re going to end up somewhere wonderful.
When the mystery becomes uncomfortable or unfamiliar, return to the familiarity and stability of the Writing Warrior practice. Anchor yourself with your breath and your pen. Move through your discomfort with shaking. Tomorr
ow will be different from today. Approach each writing session with emptiness and acceptance for what arises. Your relationship with writing is not static; it is constantly evolving with each stroke of your pen. Let it grow as you do, ever more free, light, and awake.
INTERNAL CONVERSATIONS
You can use these internal conversation exercises for personal work. The deeper your relationship with yourself, the deeper your writing becomes. Feel free to use poetry or prose to respond.
Create a chronology of your relationship with writing. Do you remember when you first met? How would you describe that relationship over time?
What/who has haunted you? What are your obsessions? How have they manifested in your writing?
Examine your writing process. What gifts has writing given you? When/how have you been surprised by what writing has to offer? When/how have you been frightened by it? Enthralled with it?
When/how have you experienced “limbo” in your writing? What does that in-between place feel like? Be specific. Find an image to represent limbo for you.
What projects have you started and been unable to finish? Are any of them worth revisiting with fresh eyes?
What ghosts or representations of yourself could you pick up alongside the road? What might they whisper to you if they could?
How does the Texas phase manifest for you? Can you come up with another metaphor that’s more accurate for your experience? How many times have you turned back from or stopped writing a project? Observe without judgment. Do any of those projects still have energy for you?
What have you learned about yourself from each of your projects or characters? Take time for gratitude.
Have you ever betrayed your writing? Take time now to acknowledge and write about that experience. What did you lose? What did you gain? What did you learn?
How would you describe your relationship to solitude? You might like to think of solitude as a companion rather than an adversary. What can it teach you? What can it show you about yourself? What do you fear or avoid about it? What do you welcome about it?
The Writing Warrior Page 20
