Developing Parameters

that will be invisible eventually

Cosmo says happy solstice, have some watermelon

The April 21 issue of the New Yorker had a profile of Phish, by Amanda Petrusich. I’m not a huge Phish fan (despite the fact that I saw them in concert when they played at my high school during my senior year, which I did just have to google to confirm, because it seems impossible? But yes, they did) but this article is a fascinating peek into their creative process.

Most interesting to me was the description of how they approach a jam, which is a long, improvised performance during live shows. “A Phish jam is usually preceded by an enormous amount of preparation. The Mondegreen¹ jam was divided into seven parts, and each was assigned a key, an image (‘Organic Architecture,’ ‘Shape Shifting Trees’), and an energy level (a number between one and ten). Despite the planning—there are PDFs—it still required what Anastasio called ‘a willingness to fail right in front of people.’² He finds parameters generative.”

Parameters are generative, and there are PDFs. This is delightful. If I see musicians improvising for fifty minutes, I would not immediately jump to “I bet there are PDFs.”

As writers, we work alone, at least when we’re making the stories. We plan for eventual collaboration with an illustrator, an editor, and an art director, but as it’s not the simultaneous improv experience of an on-stage jam, it requires even more structure and discipline on our part. We’re alone at our desks. We’re not leaving a drummer alone onstage, waiting for us to start playing guitar. If we don’t write the book, the illustrator will find someone else’s book to draw.

If you’re writing picture books, there are elements in place: a low word count, leaving room for the illustrator, using page turns to enhance your story (to name three). If you’re writing a novel, you might pick a genre, a feeling, and a theme. Maybe you want to divide your story into sections and write in terza rima. Maybe you choose an emoji for each section, so your book is 🙃, then🚨, and finally🔥.

Later in the New Yorker article, Petrusich says, “Musically, Phish braids three major elements: formal composition, improvisation, and—despite what you may have heard—pop hooks.” So that’s another type of structure, how you are as an artist. On a broader level, you might decide that you want all of your books to showcase exquisite writing, layers of story, and delight.

This morning I went for a walk and the drawbridge was open. Imagine the parameters in your writing are like being stuck on an open drawbridge. Your car has stopped, yes, but you, in the car, are still free to think and dream.

Ok, so you set up some structure for your creative work. NOW WHAT. Now you need structure for your work day. Especially now, when there are so many things flying at you, wanting your attention. You owe it to your story to dedicate some actual time to writing it.

For example, I know that I work best in the morning, so I write³ for at least an hour when I first get up, and don’t check my phone until that’s done. I have a list for each day, and I tackle it more or less in order, prioritizing the hard yet satisfying writing tasks. I have been using Cal Newport’s Action Bucket/Holding Tank system (from Slow Productivity) for over a year, and that works for me too. I generally work for 30 minutes at a time, and then take a break.

But some days/weeks, that structure grates against me, and I have to toss all of that order out the window and just sit surrounded by books and notebooks, and see where I end up. I’d contend those organically-occurring free-form weeks are like the on-stage improvisation that follows the structured practice and planning. The improv creativity sessions can’t be the whole of my writing process, because they are too unstructured to sustain the fragile bubble of inspiration all the time, but they are freeing and generative after weeks of structured work.

My friend Bob Shea has developed a system called “Time Blobbing,” born out of his need to actually get work done after years of unstructured winging it. Bob and I have been talking for a long time about how to get work done. When Cal Newport started enthusiastically recommending Time Blocking, we were excited about it, and then, after trying it, we both got mad at it. The fact is, I don’t think Time Blocking really works for a freelance creative person. It’s just not how our day is set up. Time BLOBBING though, totally works. It’s about three things: how much you have to do, how much time you have to do it in, and how long the tasks on your list really take to do. You can get a full tutorial (It’s a PDF! Like we’re in a band!) on Time Blobbing by subscribing to Bob’s new newsletter, I’ll Do It Later.

Petrusich writes about how “There’s a particular moment that Phish fans wait for. It doesn't happen at every show, and it’s difficult to describe without sounding as though you’ve been a whiff too cavalier with your dosing, but here goes: there is sometimes a brief yet transcendent stretch, occurring maybe ten or twelve or even twenty minutes into a jam, in which the band achieves a kind of otherworldly synchronicity, both internally and with its audience.”

I write for these moments, when the fix for a story problem comes to me, and I suddenly feel like I am bridging a line between some cosmic force and future readers. Sitting in a deserted corner of the Y while Ramona took ballet, when I realized how to end a book,⁴ and I gasped out loud and wrote as fast as I could. Walking in the cemetery, suddenly seeing the journey Rick the Rock could take, and why he had to take it. I’ve had book ideas and characters handed to me through what Petrusich calls the portal, like I reached up and caught hold of a sliver of magic. Remembering these moments, I can feel the same buzzy glee I felt then.

These moments used to happen more. My phone and the internet have massively upended any of the structure that used to come more naturally. I have been clawing my way back to it. I miss those bolts of inspiration. They’re good for me, and for my writing. The only reliable way to get them is to build in the structure of my day and my writing—to build the structure my creative work lives in, so the inspiration has a door to knock on.

The magic of well-done art (art that moves people) is that it looks effortless.

I am sure that most of you reading this are already well aware that effortless art takes effort. You’ve had the experience of revising something until it finally reaches that point of seeming effortless to someone who doesn’t know how much work went into it.

It’s a canny trick, making something look effortless, and it takes years of practice. If you do it right, all of the structural elements you built will be invisible in the final book. But you still need them during the construction phase, to prevent the final product from having the general shape of chocolate pudding.

Just like you need to be intentional about staying off the internet, you need to be intentional about adding structure to your work. Give your writing project parameters, give your day parameters. This is a real “a seed blooms in a garden” situation. Or maybe it’s a “nurture your spark” situation. You need the right environment, the right food, to make your seed grow and to turn your spark into a fire.

It can be incredibly hard, but it can also be exhilarating and fun, and can make you feel like you’re bubbling over with potential and genius. And when you feel that way, you don’t mind so much when you’re putting yourself in a position to fail right in front of people. It’s worth it.

Thoughts and Links

• The next round of Fail Better Club will be the week of July 21. Fail Better Club is your chance to send me your messy problem-child manuscripts and I’ll tell you what I’m seeing (i.e., how to fix it). Requirements: you have to be a paying subscriber to Do the Work (this newsletter), you can only send one manuscript (but it can be one you’ve sent before, if you want), and you must be willing to use Voxer so I can send you voice notes. I hope you’ll join Fail Better Club! It’s super fun. (Ask me if you have any questions.)

• Mason Currey says we should write a letter to our projects.

• This old Will Ferrell “dad sneeze” SNL bit came into my YouTube feed, and I absolutely sent it to everyone in my house. (We have a rule that Dave has to clap before he sneezes if he’s driving, because of the number of times I have been dreamily staring out the window and then full on startle-screamed due to the ferocity of his sneezing.)

• I have been working with money coach Laura Gates-Lupton for two years now, and she has absolutely transformed my approach to making money and thinking about money. If your response to this is “I don’t know what a money coach is but I’m pretty sure I need one” check out her newsletter and her podcast.

Books I read recently and loved

Disclosure: book links in this newsletter are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site which supports independent bookshops.

• E. B. Goodale recommended Trailblazing Women Printmakers to me, about Virginia Lee Burton and her printmaking collective. It’s incredibly fascinating and makes me feel like a slacker for not writing and illustrating books AND printmaking AND designing fabric AND teaching. (I loved the Looking at Picture Books post about The Little House. There’s a photo in Trailblazing Women Printmakers of Virginia Lee Burton wearing a skirt with a Little House border print, which is so cool.)

• I just finished the audiobook of Tyson Yunkaporta’s Right Story, Wrong Story: How to Have Fearless Conversations in Hell, and I’m going to be thinking about this book for a long, long time (forever, probably). I recommend it highly, especially the audio version.

1. a specific concert last August in Dover, Delaware

2. I love this. What is putting art into the world if it’s not willingness to fail in front of people?

3. in some form—journal, notes, actual writing

4. this one