Writing the Book Only You Can Write
Thank you to E.B. Goodale for recommending A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders (it was beyond a recommendation, really, since she said it was a book emergency when she found out I hadn't read it yet). Have you read it? It's a book-formatted version of a class Saunders teaches at Syracuse on Russian short stories. I will admit I hesitated for a while. Somehow the marketing around this book did not make it sound fun. There was a general vibe of "We all know Russian short story writers from over 100 years ago are a downer, and you'll find this book is a lot of work!" I was under the impression it was the book equivalent of fiber-fortified bran cereal.
It is not. It is, in fact, a lot of fun, and, I will even say, essential for picture book authors (and super duper essential for George Saunders fans). There's a part in particular where he talks about how he revises a short story that is extremely helpful and applicable to picture book revision.
It is also making me nostalgic for college literature classes.
Here is the part that really grabbed me by the lapels and shook me around a bit (kindly): Saunders is talking about his own writing process, since not much is known about the process of the Russian writers in the book. He spent a while trying to be Hemingway, and then, mostly through happenstance, tried writing something that was much more him, his voice. He says this: "When I finished the story, I could see that it was the best thing I'd ever written. There was some essential 'me-ness' in it -- for better or worse, no one else could have written it." He also realizes that all of the things that he had been thinking about a lot in his real life showed up in the story. They were things that mattered to him. He admits that it was "slightly embarrassing" because the story shone a light on who he was.
But of course he couldn't be Hemingway, because Hemingway was Hemingway. He could only be himself.
I was listening to an old episode of Cal Newport's podcast a few months ago, and an academic person asked how to know they were making progress, and Newport said that you had to judge your progress against known quantifiable markers of success. For an academic, it's how many citations your papers get, and the increasing quality of where you're publishing. I had a bit of a panic, because what are the quantifiable markers of success in publishing? How many books we sell? Because if that's the marker, we only find out that number twice a year. (Literary agent Carly Watters had a great Twitter thread this week about how ridiculous it is that authors rarely learn the numbers of how they're doing, but that's really an issue for another time.)
I did what I always do when I have this type of question, and asked my friend Bob Shea, who always has good advice (that's why you should subscribe to his newsletter). (Let me also jump in and say that I have reserved Bob for my own advice guru, and you should absolutely not send your writing advice questions to him. He is undoubtedly exhausted from answering all of mine. Plus I pay him in ice cream cones when he comes to visit.) Bob said, "Okay. Quantifiable markers in his world are very tangible, ours are more abstract. More precisely, I think they are more personal. You know when you are making progress and producing work that is improving." He brought up a topic we had just been talking about (and which is the heart of my point here) -- that we're trying to write books that only we can write. Those books that have, as Saunders says, "essential 'me-ness.'"
Bob said, "Are you doing that? then that is success. I’m not trying to be all touchy-feely about it, it’s honestly all we can control. If you sit down and do deep work, but you are not pushing yourself creatively, what’s the point? If you write a saccharine book, “Puppy train to sleepy town” and it’s a huge hit, but your book, “Julie Falatko: The book only I could write” tanks, how do you measure success? Long answer short: As long as you stay honest with yourself, you know when you are doing it."
So I'd like you to think about: what are the elements of essential you-ness? If you're someone who loves a worksheet, go ahead and write them down. Otherwise, think about them, or talk to your dog about them on the morning walk (like I do). For me they might be: figuring out my place in the world, thinking about delicious things to eat, reveling in weird things that are very funny when put next to each other, the pressure to produce work I'm proud of, breaking up with people pleasing, birds, smoothies, coffee, dogs, all animals really, shoes I admire but cannot wear, gnome hats, trees that look like they're waving hello. Et cetera.
Thoughts and Links
My writer pal/critique group bestie Carter Higgins's next book, Circle Under Berry, is making the reviewer rounds, and I can't wait for it to come out so you all can read it. When she sent me the first draft of it years ago, I was blown away by its brilliance, and knew it was going to be incredible. It's making me so, so happy to see people like Mr. Schu getting their copies and loving it, AND it just got a starred review from Kirkus (!), who says it's "positively begging to be read aloud."
The newest coffee shop in my neighborhood (which also sells e-bikes, so cool) uses coffee ice cubes in the iced coffee, which is an idea so simple and so genius that I keep telling everyone about it.
The best pandemic impulse purchase I made was an Olive & June manicure system. Maybe this is vain, but if I spend my days typing, my nails might as well look cute while I'm doing it. It's been over a year now, and I'm here to tell you that the nail polish lasts for days without chipping, and the cuticle serum has saved my ragged dry-from-overwashing cuticles. And the Poppy, the handle they make to put on the nail polish lids to give you more control (especially with your non-dominant hand) totally...works? Anyway, if you're a longtime home manicure person like I am, you might also like Olive & June. (You can use this link for 20% off the manicure system or the pedicure system -- I have both!)
I have really loved the first few episodes of this new podcast, Aack Cast, all about the cartoon Cathy, and how it's remembered as being about a pathetic single woman who was only about overeating and overshopping, but is, in fact, much more complicated than that (did you know, for instance, that Cathy gets sexually harassed by her boss Mr. Pinkley and punches him in the nose, and he is out cold for an entire night because of her punch?). You may have mixed feelings about Cathy, like I do, but this podcast is a lot of fun. And the theme song is wicked catchy.
I recently watched Kid 90, Soleil Moon Frye's documentary. It's a really interesting and ultimately extremely powerful look at being young, nostalgia, memory, friendship, and regret. It's thought-provoking for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the concept of what it was like to be videorecorded at a time where you weren't worried about the video ending up on the internet.
Sarah Campbell of Finish It Workshop kindly asked me to contribute some thoughts about finishing. It was fun to think about, especially because so much of writing is stories that get made over years and years, and some which never get finished at all. The tricky thing is, sometimes you do finish quickly, so then you know it's possible. You start something and think, "Will this be one of those quick ones?" For the most part the answer is: no. But still, every time, when I'm so full of the idea, I always think, "This one will be perfect when it pours out of me, and will be done almost immediately." That happens 0.5% of the time. It's fun to hope for, but mostly you have to be steady in the knowledge that the story you're excited about writing will be one of the other 99.5%, the kind that takes a lot of time.
I contributed my local knowledge to this new adorable picture book, Welcome to Maine. My family and I loved detailing the veracity of various items from the "Maine foods" page, most especially brown bread in a can. You can get it in the grocery store here, but we never had. Dave and I had both ate some decades ago. So, thanks to this book, we bought some, warmed it up, and had it with baked beans. Did my children love it? No. But now they can say they've had it. (Except for the can with raisins in it. That one is still on the pantry shelf. Apparently not even a global pandemic will make us crack open the brown bread with raisins.)
This essay by Nicole Brinkley, "Did Twitter break YA?" is fascinating. I'm not a YA author (which, after reading this article, felt like thank goodness) but I've seen the shift in Twitter over the past 8 years or so, from happy and collaborative communication device to a platform that rewards quick outrage. I still am on Twitter, but a tiny fraction of the time that I used to be. Most of it has been from a desire to be more intentional about my time, and it's so clear that social media is designed to make us unintentional about our time. It's designed to be this alluring brain hijacker that's hard to break away from in the moment or quit long term. Caitlin Flanagan also has a great essay in the Atlantic called "You Really Need to Quit Twitter," in which she says "Twitter is a parasite that burrows deep into your brain, training you to respond to the constant social feedback of likes and retweets." (I learned of this essay from Cal Newport -- of course -- you can read his synopsis here.) Flanagan quit Twitter for 28 days and immediately found she was better at reading and writing. Reading, in particular, struck a chord with me. She talks about how she would try to read and would become restless. "I had started to wonder if we were in a post-reading age, or if reading loses its pleasure as we age—but I knew that wasn’t really true." Once she quit Twitter, she was able to get lost in books again. If you're finding you no longer have the patience to read a book, maybe examine what the internet has done to your brain?
My second vaccine shot in May made me ethereally loopy, and somehow during that weird day I ordered three linen shirts from Lithuania. (Surely I'm not the only one who ordered Moderna-influenced Lithuanian fashions?) They arrived and I'm here to tell you that they're completely awesome. I am particularly in love with this one. The shirts are so great, in fact, that I wore two of them to a photo shoot I had with amazing brand coach and photographer Elle Darcy. I hadn't updated my author photos in seven years. It was time. I worried that if someone met me in person they wouldn't quite recognize me since my online photos were so old. ("Isn't that what you're supposed to do?" asked Dave. "Hasn't T.C. Boyle had the same author photos for decades?") You can see ten of them that I shared on Instagram here, or two below that feature the Lithuanian Moderna-purchased shirts.
I'm sorry, still laughing about "Puppy Train to Sleepy Town."