Last Year, Last January
Last year, last January — I wrote a column called “How Does a Writer Practice?” in which I tossed and turned over not knowing how to objectively improve at writing. My anxiety stemmed, I guess, from the fact that, as a storyteller, you never outgrow not knowing what the hell you’re doing. “It frightens me to practice a craft in which the skills I regularly rely on, I can’t call upon, at will” (the writer I am today would have cut that last comma. I could write an entire essay on the gross use of italics in the here-in mentioned previous one). I guess I was talking about hitting some loosely-defined aesthetic bullseye, and not the foundational elements of sentence-making. Because the latter, I can call upon at will. And there’s a lot of work I could be doing to further my intimacy with the English language. I can’t tell you a thing about noun phrases, prepositions, sentence structures, or present perfect — I can only use them. And I could probably use them better if I knew when I was using them. I’ve never been one to say as a musician “music theory takes all of the soul out of it, man” so I’m not gonna be that way as a writer when it comes to grammar. I think the way I would answer the question “How does a Writer Practice?” now is with the maybe obvious answer: “Refine (so that you can re-define) the basics.”
I made some decent points in last year’s column (though reading it today, I can’t help but feel the essay argues quite vehemently against a point no one was making. It’s always better to respond to a contradicting argument rather than conjure one from thin air, like here for instance, I’m responding to myself). I agree with younger me that the ‘suffer for your art’ approach is dumb. “Don’t suffer expecting some worldly acknowledgment of quality,” that’s fair enough, younger me. Last semester, I probably got up to eight hours of writing per day working on the last story I submitted for workshop. It isn’t better than the story I wrote in two hours earlier that year, well, what can I say? shit happens. I put in those eight-hour days because I was having fun working on the story, not because I felt like I needed to be able to tell people “I worked for eight hours a day on this story.” I used to get all tied up in a knot over Stephen King saying writers need to write two million and eighty-six thousand six hundred and forty-six words per day, or however many, but I don’t know why I did, I don’t want to write like Stephen King. Not usually. Sometimes, I read Stephen King and don’t really see the work ethic reflected in the quality (a word to the wise: don’t follow craft advice you don’t like from writers you don’t like). But I imagine he writes that much because he finds it fun and fulfilling. So I don’t think he should write fewer words in a day, or anything. And plus, who cares what I think, he’s Stephen King.
One of my goals this semester is to study grammar. I’d like to be able to talk about sentences more precisely, like Garth Greenwell can. I remember when I started to get into sound engineering as a musician, it felt like I was hearing music I’d listened to for years for the first time. It brought some dead songs back to life in my listening life: I had a new way of hearing, and so the familiar gained depth. I would love to have that as a reader. I want to read The Bluest Eye knowing why those sentences move me. I want to reread The Lord of the Rings and figure out the same. I don’t feel like this grammar improvement thing is something I, or anyone else, has to do to be a good writer, or a successful writer, but it’s something I want to do. And I think that was the point I made last year, however clumsily: do what you want in your practice, but follow your pleasure and curiosity. Everything I’ve written and ended up liking, I had fun writing. “No fun for the writer, no fun for the reader,” Donna Tartt said that. I fully agree.
