1. It’s not about you.

This is one of life’s most difficult lessons for writers and non-writers alike. Before you send your apology, look it over. Which pronoun appears more frequently: “I” or “you”? If the “I”s outnumber the “you”s, consider revising.

Example: Recently my aunt asked me to babysit her daughter “from 9 to 12 on Sunday,” so she could attend a memorial. I agreed and cleared my Sunday evening. Imagine my horror, then, when I was awakened by the ringing of my phone at 9:15 in the morning on Sunday. Whoops — she’d meant 9 AM to noon! An honest mistake, but even after my abject self-flagellation over the phone, a subsequent written apology was definitely in order. Here was how it originally began:

I feel like such a moron…

But this, I realized, was a bad opener. After all, why should my aunt care how I felt, when she was the victim here? By immediately calling attention to your suffering, you implicitly force your victim to apologize to you, and this is sure to create further resentment on her part.

You can avoid this common pitfall by remembering rule #2:

2. God is in the details.

You may be embarrassed and reluctant to refer to the particulars of your mistake, but in an apology — as in all writing — specificity is infinitely preferable to vagueness. “I’m sorry about last night” will never have the same effect as “I’m sorry I vomited all over your heirloom Persian carpet. I know that it was priceless to you, and I could tell that you were devastated.”

And so I edited my apology to my aunt:

I must have inconvenienced you terribly on what was probably already a sad day, and I feel just awful about it. I hope it didn’t ruin your day (or [daughter’s name]’s day) too much.

Note that “I feel like such a moron” has been changed to “I feel just awful about it.” By calling yourself names, you’re practically begging your victim to reassure you: “You’re not a moron!” It’s an understandable impulse, but try not to give in. That’s not what this email is for.

3. Avoid the passive voice.

This is an important writing rule in general, but the temptation to use passive language is particularly overwhelming when you’re apologizing, and even the most seasoned politicians can succumb (cf. President Nixon’s famous words on Vietnam: “Mistakes were made”).

Example: Last year I was involved with a guy, and things ended quite badly between us. After a prolonged silence, he sent me an email that began like this:

frankie,

lately, i’ve been really just sad and upset about how things came to be. i am a little confused about it all, but mostly want you to know how sorry i am if my actions were hurtful to you.

Though his heart is undoubtedly in the right place, his apology already violates Rules 1 through 3. He opens with his feelings (“I’ve been really just sad and upset”); he uses only vague and euphemistic terms (“how things came to be,” “it all,” “my actions”); and he distances himself from his wrongdoing with an elaborate syntactical contortion (“if my actions were hurtful to you”).

Perhaps you’re not a grammarian and you’re unsure if you’re guilty of this in your own apology. Here’s a nifty way to tell: imagine translating your apology into Latin. Or Spanish, or French, or whatever language you studied in school. How difficult would this be? (I don’t know how I would even begin to translate “if my actions were hurtful to you,” with its conditional tense and indirect object.) Your apology should lend itself to a simple, direct translation.

And while we’re looking at this guy’s apology, let’s remember Rule #4:

4. Spelling counts.

As does punctuation. And capitalization. It’s never a bad idea to proofread.

5. Don’t blame the victim.

Unless you committed an actual crime (in which case your writing style should be the least of your worries), you probably aren’t fully responsible for whatever happened, and your victim isn’t entirely blameless. But your apology email is not the place to point this out.

Example: Once my mom lent me her housekeys and invited me to spend the night with her at her apartment after I returned from a late-night trip. I arrived at her building at 3:30 AM, only to find that the keys wouldn’t open her door. I knocked, I called her cell phone, I called her landline, I buzzed her buzzer, I went downstairs and rang her intercom — all to no avail. I had to find another place to crash that night.

The following morning, I woke up to this email from her:

Subject: OH NOOOOOOOOO

OMG I’M SO SORREEEEE!!!!!!

Did you wind up going to Bkln at 3 in the morning??

I’m just horrified at what happened. Every now and then it happens that I lock the wrong lock. But of all the times for it to happen…!

But why didn’t you ring the intercom bell, or buzz one of the door buzzers, or even knock on the door? I mean, that constituted an emergency. Right?

Up until the final paragraph, this is the perfect apology, a model of the form. So outwardly focused! So specific! Not a single passive construction in sight! However, the final paragraph squanders all this goodwill and will likely inspire your victim to call you up screaming “I DID DO ALL THOSE THINGS! I DID THEM LIKE A BAZILLION TIMES! WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF IDIOT DO YOU THINK I AM?” which is not the desired outcome. Stick to what you did wrong; you can discuss the rest later.

(Also, seriously, Mom, did you really think it hadn’t occurred to me to knock?)

6. Look to the future.

No apology is complete without a forward-looking conclusion, a promise that you will make up for what you did. And so I concluded my email to my aunt:

I definitely owe you a favor, which you should feel free to call in anytime.

<3, F.

I believe this is what is known in the corporate world as being “proactive.”

Now you try!

Example: When I was sixteen years old, I had a blog on which I frequently complained about my high school enemies, by name, in unladylike language. The blog still exists, and not too long ago, one of my high school enemies came across it. As I gathered from the unladylike language she herself used in her Facebook message, she was not pleased.

Below is the apology I wrote to her in response. If I do say so myself, it’s a good one — but upon revisiting it, I can see that I broke at least one of my rules. Can you spot my mistakes?

Dear [name of high school enemy],

I’m so sorry I hurt your feelings. Thank you for bringing this to my attention; I have no memory of writing any it. Clearly I was an asshole at the age of sixteen.

Please accept my deepest apologies, and rest assured I will take that entry right down.

I hope you’re well otherwise! I think you’re terrific, despite what I apparently wrote on the Internet seven years ago. It’s a pleasure to hear from you again, even if it had to be this way.

<3, F.

Addendum: If you find that you’re having an inordinate amount of trouble following these rules, consider the radical possibility that you are actually not sorry and don’t wish to apologize. If this is the case, then don’t bother! Once you break the habit of apologizing when you don’t mean it, it feels even better to apologize for real.

______________________________________________________________________________

Need writing advice? Send your questions to frankiethomas@thefastertimes.com

I thought I’d involve you in my quarter-life crisis. I recently went on two dates with a giant tit of a man who told me that, despite all assertions to the contrary, you “are” what you do 40 hours per week. So, by his reasoning, I’m not a writer; I am really only a secretary at a corrupt and largely incompetent nonprofit. It bothered me when the tit said it then and it bothers me now. What if he’s right?

I continue working on my novel on days that I’m not too depressed to do anything but eat scones and watch Maury Povich, but is there some other outlet you’d recommend in the meantime? Should I start writing for a blog? Should I start sending out short stories to incestuous literary journals? Should I quit my day job and do nothing but write, write, write? Should I just accept that, at 26, I’m probably too old or too young for this writing thing anyway? Oy vey! What are your ideas?

—Just a Secretary

Dear Secretary,

Well, first of all, I’d advise against making major life decisions based on the philosophical principles of a giant tit of a man. I’ve been down that road, pal, and take it from me: you don’t want to go there. Whatever you decide to do, don’t do it for a giant tit of a man, or even for a small tit of a man. Do it for you.

How easy it would be to wave away your concerns with hollow reassurance! “Oh, honey,” I could say, “anyone can be a writer! Did you know that some famous writers had jobs?! Herman Melville was a customs inspector. Franz Kafka was an insurance officer. Ayn Rand was a phone sex operator. Therefore, you’re a writer. Problem solved! Go forth and write!”

But I suspect that your actual question is not “Am I as legit a writer as Ayn Rand?” but “How can I achieve Ayn Rand-level success in my writing career?” Forgive my presumption if you are not, in fact, interested in fame and fortune — but if that’s the case, then you are much more enlightened than I. I think there’s an entire lobe of my brain devoted to giving imaginary interviews to The Paris Review, fantasy-casting the Hollywood adaptations of my novels (or my memoirs — get me Ellen Page!), and planning the outfit I’ll wear in my author photo (jeggings, with a pinstriped vest worn as a shirt over my favorite black Chantelle bra that makes my cleavage look really intelligent). If it spurs me to keep writing, is that so wrong?

Luckily for you, it just so happens I have the secret to success. Just kidding! But I am measurably more successful now than I was when I was working a crappy job and struggling to write a novel. And I can tell you what worked for me.

I plugged away at that damn novel. It took me three years and over 400 pages, but in December 2009, I actually finished it. Hooray for me! All the hard work was over! I sent it to a bunch of agents, washed my jeggings in anticipation of my author photo shoot, and waited.

Pro tip: agents generally take a really long time to get back to you. After a while I got bored of waiting, and I decided to write a personal essay. Why not? I’d written a 400-page novel; surely I could write a little essay. And I did, and then I wrote another essay, and another — and the next thing I knew, I had a whole book’s worth of essays! Sure, by then every single agent had rejected my novel, but I barely cared, because my essays were actually even better than my novel. I began to send the essays to agents instead.

As I waited to hear back about the essays, I found myself seized with the urge to write a short story. Why not? I’d written a novel and a book’s worth of essays; surely I could write a short story. I wrote one, and then another, and the rejections for my essay collection began to trickle in — but that was okay, because my short stories were even better than my essays. And one day, as I was in the middle of working on a short story, my phone rang. It was an agent. He was calling about the essays. He was not calling to reject me.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Writing begets writing, and while I don’t have the secret to a big break, I do know one thing for sure: your big break won’t come unless you write. Which is why I am on Team Finish Your Damn Novel, Above All Else. Save the blogging and the incestuous literary journals for later; I think you already know in your heart that right now they’d just be a form of procrastination, every bit as much as the scones and Maury Povich. Finish your damn novel. Even if it comes out Randian in quality, at least you’ll know that you have it in you to write a whole novel. The rest, I promise, will follow.

Well, what do you know? I guess that advice does boil down to “You’re a writer. Problem solved! Go forth and write!”

___________________________________________________

Need writing advice? Send your questions to frankiethomas@thefastertimes.com

This is another kind of outline.

Dear Nancy,

Should I outline?

H.M., Brooklyn.

Dear H.M.,

In a word, yes.

I don’t know anything about you or your writing but in general, I’m pro-outlining, with some caveats.

I know I’m going against the whole “intuitionist” school of writing by saying this – you know, the one that says you should “discover” the plot and characters as you go along. I use those scare quotes with love, though, as I’m not against intuition. Far from it. I think it’s essential. Without some writerly instincts to guide you, your writing might well turn into leaden prose.

But the thing about intuition is that it’s not always reliable. It doesn’t always show up when you need it, and it doesn’t always guide you in the right direction. A scene that might have seemed brilliant when you were drafting it turns out to break the flow of your story – the pacing is off, or the character comes out of nowhere, or the scene is lacking context. Of course, these are all things you can go back and fix on revision, but wouldn’t it just be simpler if you have at least a hint of where you were going before you sat down to compose?

The intuitionists sometimes get outraged at this idea. They flat out refuse to outline. They talk about their creativity being stifled. They say they “can’t” outline. They don’t know how. It’s adorable.

Truth is, there are many different kinds of outlines – this is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Some writers I work with have very complete and comprehensive outlines that track every single plot point in their novel. Some have sketchy ones that at least cover the main narrative points. Sometimes I force my clients and students to come up with outlines that pick out the archetypal moments in their stories. Some of them fight like hell against doing this, but I think it’s always useful to know the protagonist’s desire, the conflict to that desire, the point of crisis, and the resolution. And if their work doesn’t have those elements, we can talk about why not, or if they might be in there but hiding in subtle ways, or if they are even necessary anyway. It’s always a useful discussion, no matter the outcome.

One kind of outline that I often assign – useful for fiction writer and nonfiction writers alike – is the three sentence summary. It goes like this: For each chapter, write 1-3 sentences about the content, the “what happens.” Then write 1-3 sentences about what that content means, why it’s important. The benefit of this kind of outline is that it forces you to be concise, but it also forces you to think. Does the plot flow? Do all the events link up? And, equally important, is the progression in emotion and meaning clear and linear? Is it intrinsically tied to the plot points on the “content” side of the outline?

This might all sound dreadfully formulaic, but an outline isn’t supposed to be a straight jacket. You can change it. In fact, producing an outline is one way to figure out if the plot does need to change in some way. I advocate that you create your outline using post-it notes and/or index cards for this reason – they enable you to keep things flexible. If a chapter needs to change, just throw away that index card and pull out a fresh one. Suddenly, a plot that was rigid can gain a wonderful manipulability.

So yes, H.M., I say outline, write, change your outline, write some more, and repeat, ad infinitum.

Here’s bestselling nonfiction Mary Roach, saying pretty much the same thing. This was taken from an interview on Media Bistro:

I write outlines, and I abandon them. I write another outline, and I abandon it. And I keep thinking along the way, “Now I’ve got it.” But I get more information, and I’m like, “No, I don’t have it.” It’s getting there. I’m much closer than I was before, but it’s really agony. The end result, though, if you beat yourself long enough and stick with it, is that it will work, and it will be good. And people think, “Hey, this reads like you just sat down, and it all came out.”

And isn’t that the aim, H.M? To wow the reader with the effortlessness of your work? It’s just a shame that getting to the appearance of effortlessness requires so much effort, and perhaps, an outline.

I hope this helps.

Nancy.

Instead of answering a reader question, I’m going to do something a little different this month.

The Guardian newspaper in London recently asked a whole bunch of writers for their ten rules of writing. They got 29 responses, with well-known and respected writers like Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith and Joyce Carole Oates amongst them. The compendium of all this information is a real treasure trove of useful writerly advice – I suggest you read the whole two-part article, here and here, as soon as you can. But for those of you who are a little pushed for time, I have pulled my favorite – and to my mind the most essential – of all the advice into the list below (English spelling left intact).

It was hard to cull these nuggets from so much wisdom, and my choices certainly reflect my proclivities as a reader – I couldn’t help but draw more heavily, perhaps, from those writers that I admire most. But this list also addresses the concerns that I see arising most in the writing students and coaching clients that I work with day after day. It’s amazing how many of the writers questioned by the Guardian had some version of “be persistent” on their lists, or how many of them suggested that you need to be careful about what criticism you listen to.

So, for better or worse, read on. Personally, I’m printing this list and sticking it up by my desk – and taking down that picture of Virginia Woolf while I’m at it.

1. The first 12 years are the worst. (Anne Enright)

2. Don’t give up. (Ian Rankin)

3. Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom. (Jeanette Winterson)

4. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet. (Zadie Smith)

5. Do not place a photograph of your ­favourite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide. (Roddy Doyle)

6. Read aloud to yourself because that’s the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out – they can be got right only by ear). (Diana Athill)

7. Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph. (Roddy Doyle)

8. Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones. I was working on a novel about a band called the Partitions. Then I decided to call them the Commitments. (Roddy Doyle)

9. Never worry about the commercial possibilities of a project. That stuff is for agents and editors to fret over – or not. Conversation with my American publisher. Me: “I’m writing a book so boring, of such limited commercial appeal, that if you publish it, it will probably cost you your job.” Publisher: “That’s exactly what makes me want to stay in my job.” (Geoff Dyer)

10. Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it’s a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It’s only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I ­always have to feel that I’m bunking off from something. (Geoff Dyer)

11. Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand. (Anne Enright)

12. Read. As much as you can. As deeply and widely and nourishingly and ­irritatingly as you can. And the good things will make you remember them, so you won’t need to take notes. (A. L. Kennedy)

13. Learn what criticism to accept. (Ian Rankin)

14. Know the market. (Ian Rankin)

15. Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever. (Will Self)

16. Don’t romanticise your “vocation”. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle”. All that matters is what you leave on the page. (Zadie Smith)

Dear Nancy,

I find it really hard to get going with my writing in the mornings. I get up early in order to have a couple of hours to write before I have to leave for work, but then I usually waste at least an hour checking the news online, reading email, going through bills, and other things that can wait. Absolutely anything can distract me, and I don’t get up at 5 a.m. to go through my bills. I want to write! Any tips for making my mornings more productive?

Procrastinating in Pennsylvania

Dear Procrastinating,

You need a start-up list. This is a simple tool that gets you into your writing through a series of steps. My start-up list is typed and saved on my computer. I print out twenty or more copies at a time. When I sit down to write, I take out my list and go through the items one by one. It takes about ten minutes, tops. As I “accomplish” each task, I cross it off the list, which is satisfying. When I’m done, I have cleared away all my distractions and I’m “in” to my writing. Sounds too simple to be true? It is, in a way. It’s just a list. But it works.

Everyone’s start-up list will be slightly different, but they are likely to have the same basic features. Your list might also change over time, depending on how the work is going and your circumstances. I have a start-up list for when I’m at a writing residency that is different from my “at home” list. You’ll have to make your own, based on your own preferences and work habits, but I’ll share mine, so you can see what I am talking about.

The first thing on my list is: Make a cup of tea.

No, it’s not writing per se, but I know that if I sit down to write and I don’t have my cup of tea, the first thing I’ll think is, mmmmm, I could do with a cup of tea right about now, and I’ll jump up again to make it. Which is distracting. So let’s just get that one out of the way first, shall we?

Next is: Clear desk. I can’t focus if my desk is littered with paper. I don’t organize my desk – filing is whole separate task. But I do clear it, stack up all the paper, shelve the books, and keep out only what I need for that day. My start-up list is at the top, of course.

Next is: Check email.

Yes, I know – it’s a distraction. But if I don’t do it, it’s more of a distraction, and I do need to stay connected to my clients and students. So I check, see if there are any fires that need to be put out – usually there aren’t – and I’m done. Then this step is swiftly followed by:

Turn on Internet blocking software.

This, for me, is crucial. I use Freedom, which is for Macs, and I wouldn’t get much writing done without it (if you are a PC user, there are various software programs that can block your access for set periods of time – NetNanny is one of them.)

Once my Internet access is blocked I can’t fritter away hours on the New York Times website or play online scrabble, or compulsively check my email twenty more times. I’m blocked, and I know it’s time to get serious and plug into my work instead. I usually block myself for two hours, but the time scale is variable, of course, depending on your schedule and needs.

Next thing on my list: Decide what I want to accomplish in my writing and write it down.

Often, this necessitates another list – my writing “to do” list for the day. It might seem strange to have a list that leads to another list but if you haven’t realized it by now, I’m a firm believer in the focusing power of lists. For me, the very act of writing something down makes it clearer. Therefore, it’s more likely that I’ll do it.

It’s important that you don’t give yourself gargantuan, unachievable tasks at this stage, though. Make the list of what you want to do small and manageable. You can always add to it if you whip through everything in record time.

Next thing on my list: Open the last writing document that I was working on.

Followed by: Reread that document.

Followed by: Start work.

Did I already say that the list is supposed to be elementary? So simple that any fool could do it? That’s what makes it powerful. So yes, I do give myself the instruction to open the last document I was working on, because guess what? If I didn’t, I might go rooting around on my hard drive and decide to reread that college essay I wrote nine years ago, just…because. Because it’s not my work, and I’ll do anything to avoid the work. But click on the last writing document? I can do that. That’s achievable.

Ditto for re-reading. I need to ease myself in and remind myself of what my own writing sounds like. Inevitably, I’ll read a sentence that I immediately want to change. That’s OK. That’s good – see how I am tricking myself into the work?

By the time I have gotten to my final list item – start work – I’m primed and ready. I’ve got my tea, the desk is clear, I’m sitting in front of my computer, free from the Internet, already engaged in the writing, and I have a new set of tasks for the day. I’m set.

So, Procrastinating, this is the power of the start-up list. Make your own, or borrow or adapt mine (reproduced in its entirety below). Good luck.

The start-up list for procrastinating writers

1. Make cup of tea/coffee

2. Clear desk

3. Check email

4. Block internet for ___ hours/minutes

5. Decide what you want to accomplish in your writing that day and write it down

6. Open the last writing document you were working on

7. Reread that document

8. Start work

Dear Nancy,

I’m half way through the manuscript of my first book, and I’ve just finished a workshop in which I got some substantial feedback on my existing chapters. Now I don’t know what to do – should I go back and revise, or push forward with new pages?

Befuddled in Brooklyn.

Dear Befuddled,

I’m afraid there is no clear answer to this one. The best I can do is…it depends on the kind of revision that you are talking about. If the workshop has helped you to re-imagine your project, or given you some new, overarching structural ideas, and you want to bring that fresh vision to the page, by all means, dive in and revise. In this case, though, it isn’t so much revising as rethinking. Implementing that kind of change can reinvigorate your work and your energy for it. It can make space for new ideas, new possibilities.

If, on the other hand, you are talking about polishing sentences, adding in context, or taking care of any other more small-scale issues, revising might be a way of spinning your wheels and avoiding the more difficult production of new words.

Feedback can be very useful, but I tend to think that it’s a mistake to try and deal with every issues that gets flagged by your workshop readers. Better, often, to let the feedback sit a while and go back to it in a few weeks (or even months). Then the really important things will jump out at you and the minor, nit-picky stuff from that pedantic reader (every workshop has one) will fade into the background, where it belongs.

Getting caught up in minutia won’t help you when you are trying to birth a whole book. I’m a firm believer in the importance of beautiful sentences, don’t get me wrong. But when writing a book, you have to balance that consideration against big picture stuff – story arc and conflict, tension and pacing. And plot, of course. Once you get that big stuff down, polish away. Before that, you might be applying your mental energy to pages that are going to get radically altered anyway, down the line, once you have worked out the kinks in your story.

Good luck,

Nancy.

Dear Nancy,

I have a friend who often tells me how much he has written. He’s all like – “yeah, today I finished that story I was working on and started a new one, got ten pages down.” When the writing is not going well for me, which is most of the time, I’d like to whack him in the face with his own well-thumbed copy of Infinite Jest. So can you tell me – how much should a self-respecting writer actually produce on any given day? Like, how many pages?

Unprolific in Utah

Dear Unprolific,

This is a very timely question because in a couple of days, writers around the world will be launching into the tenth annual NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, the aim of which is to complete a 50,000 word manuscript over the month of November – a daily average of 1667 words, or about six pages. There are many good reasons to take part in NaNoWriMo. It provides a jolt of energy, community, and a big challenge, all of which help some people to up their game and realign their priorities. And I’m sure it can be fun.

But Unprolific, do you need me to tell you that the real writing life is about quality, not quantity? Anyone can rattle off 1667 words a day – making those words good enough to publish is a whole different story. Writers are not cows. There’s no minimum yield. And there are innumerable stories about extremely talented writers who work very, very slowly. Recently:

Junot Diaz spent ten years working on The Brief Wondrous World of Oscar Wao, which, at 352 pages, comes out to a production rate of just over 32 pages a year.

Lorrie Moore had a fourteen year gap between her last novel and her new one, A Gate at The Stairs, which averages out to 22-and-a-bit pages a year.

Ian Frazier’s new nonfiction book about Siberia has been approximately sixteen years in the making so far, and he’s not done with it yet.

These writers have been working on other things alongside their books, of course, and I’m sure no one actually thinks that they have split their production time equally over each year as my amortized page counts suggest. But I, for one, find their examples more inspiring and encouraging than a whole independent bookstore full of NaNoWriMo-ers.

I think that a regular – if not daily – engagement with your work is crucial. Without that engagement, the writing can wither and die, like a plant that hasn’t been tended. Writing is a living thing, after all, isn’t it? Daily engagement doesn’t always result in the production of pages, though. It can lead, instead, to a realization, an idea, a new way of structuring the work, some character development, some revision.

You might write and write and write one day and feel really good about what you have produced, come back the next day and delete every sentence but one, start over, and then do it all again the day after that. You might struggle for several hours just to force out one paragraph, which you hate. You might write an excellent scene that has no place in your manuscript. These are all good writing days in my book.

A quick, informal poll of my writing friends revealed that almost no one measures their production in term of pages or word count. It’s almost always about time spent at the coal face of the work, and even that can vary enormously from one writer to the next, according to life circumstances and each writer’s personal definition of what feels like enough.

Guilt over supposed “underproduction” is just one of the ways we beat ourselves up, as writers. And what good does beating ourselves up do, ultimately? Most of the time, I think it just gets in the way, consuming mental energy that could be channeled into something more useful. This self-flagellation comes from a desire to produce, to push ourselves, perhaps – which is a useful drive to have. But if you engage regularly, tend your writerly garden, that urge should be met. Engage, and the production will take care of itself, in its own sweet time.

And so, yeah, your prolific writing friend sounds like he’s either Dave Eggers*, a NaNoWriMo-er, or a literary size-queen: trying to make up in volume what he lacks in technique. Real writers do it slowly. Make that your new mental bumper sticker.

Best,

Nancy.

*Don’t think about Joyce Carrol Oates or Dave Eggers. Their rates of production are so far outside of the norm that contemplating them can bring on nausea. You can’t compare yourself to the freakishly prolific – no good will come of it.

Dear Nancy:

Sometimes I sit down to write and the words come without too much difficulty. Other times it’s incredibly hard going and painful. How can I make sure I have more good days than sucky ones or, even better, how do I avoid the sucky ones altogether?

Sucking in South Dakota

Dear Sucking,

I feel your pain, I really do. I think anyone who has ever tried to write has experienced those days when it feels like the part of the brain responsible for sentence construction has been surgically removed. I know I have. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that sucky writing days are part of the writer’s life, one of the hazards of the job. So the problem isn’t so much that you have them – it’s how frequently you have them, and how you deal with them.

Even one or two sucky days a week, while not ideal, might be OK if you have a few good days too, to balance them out. Writing can often be like that – progress followed by remission. As long as you have the feeling of solid, genuine progress on a semi-regular basis, you’re doing OK.

It’s when the feeling of progress starts to get drowned out by the sucky days that you have to reassess what you are doing. And by reassess, I don’t mean you should go to bed at two in the afternoon while mentally taking a big whip, lashing yourself with it, and wailing “I suck, I suck, I suck! I’m never going to be a writer, I should just have gone to laaaawwwww schooolllll!” That’s not reassessing. That’s giving into the suck.

Instead, try asking what the sucky days are trying to teach you.

Let me share one of my own experiences here, so you can see what I mean. I’m working on a nonfiction book at the moment that is, in part, about what it means to engage in genealogical research. I get to a chapter where I need to address these issues head on, and I’m pulling my hair out trying to make it interesting. Everything I write seems dead and dry. It’s like I have writer’s stutter – I can’t get the words out and when I do, I hate them all and can’t stop myself from hitting the delete key. I spend days like this. I’m about ready to take to my bed and commence with the wailing and the whipping. And then I realize: I don’t have to make genealogy interesting. I can just acknowledge that sometimes, it’s really, really boring. I can start there, with that truth. And then everything started to flow again.

So what I’m saying here is: a succession of sucky writing days can be a signal that you are not acknowledging some truth about your work. If you stop banging your head against the keyboard for a minute and instead think about what that truth might be, you’ll probably be able to get yourself going again.

It’s my own, personal theory that so-called writers block is just an extended form of this: lots and lots of sucky writing days strung together, and a big truth that the writer refuses to acknowledge. Writer’s block is similar to depression that way, and there’s an excellent book about depression, Sunbathing in the Rain by Gwyneth Lewis, which makes just this point. Lewis says that depression is “…sickness of the imagination” and that “Depression happens to people who won’t listen to the messages which their subconscious is sending them.” You can’t will yourself out of it; instead you must submit, be receptive.

I also find validation for my theories in Rainer Maria Rilke, who knew a thing or two about writing advice. He wrote, in Letters to a Young Poet:

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.

So there you have it. If I might be so bold as to translate what Rilke is saying so elegantly here into the terms of this advice column, I believe it comes out to: Embrace the suck, go towards it, and you will free yourself of the alien ideas you are trying to force on your writing, and it will get better.

I’m working on a memoir, which involves revealing unpalatable truths about my family. My concern about their reactions when they finally read the book is inhibiting my writing. What should I do?

When I wrote my memoir SLOW MOTION, the only way I was able to do it was to tell myself that I could always change my mind — I could write the whole book and then scrap it. Never mind that my book contract was my sole source of income. Never mind that my deadline loomed. Wearing a very useful pair of blinders, I wrote the painful story of my religious childhood, my family dysfunction, the death of my father and near-loss of my mother in a car accident. I wrote about aunts and uncles and cousins. I wrote about my half-sister. I wrote about my married sociopathic ex-boyfriend. All the while, telling myself a helpful white lie: I can always change my mind. This lie served me well. It allowed me to write without wondering what people would think.

No family is ever happy to discover that a writer is in their midst. Even in the happiest families (which don’t tend to produce many memoirs) there still exists a feeling of being exposed. Of one person telling her own version of the story. In my case, I was most afraid of my mother’s response. I didn’t want to hurt her, but was aware that in order to tell my story, I had to tell a portion of hers as well. When I finished a draft, I gave the manuscript to a writer friend for a “mother read”. I wasn’t looking for literary criticism, or a line-edit. I gave it to this particular friend because she was a mother herself, and I thought she’d zero in on moments or descriptions that might sting. She found a few gratuitous zingers, and I cut them. Then I gave the galley to my mother. She wasn’t exactly pleased. I mean, what did I expect? In a way, I had stolen her story by telling my own.

It’s an instructive thing, I think, for writers to realize that the things they think will most offend family or friends usually slides by, unnoticed… while the smallest, most innocuous details end up causing distress. It’s impossible to know what will be insulting or overly-exposing and what won’t. Worrying about it — especially when writing a first draft — is counter-productive, and devastating to the creative process. I don’t say this in order to let memoirists off the hook. It’s just the way it is.

A writer worried about exposing unsavory aspects of her family might simply consider asking herself the following questions: Is it revenge I’m after? Am I trying to settle a score? Do I want to prove something? Is there someone in particular who I hope will read this and weep? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, it would be reasonable to question one’s own motives. But if the act of writing memoir is one of remembering, of telling a story, I think the best we can do is tell our stories as truthfully as we can. There’s a ruthlessness in the very act of writing. Within the context of that ruthlessness, it’s still possible to be discerning and careful.