I'd Rather Be Writing » creative nonfiction

The Paris Review – Gay Talese: The Art of Nonfiction No. 2

Tom Johnson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:27:56 +0000

The Paris Review – Gay Talese: The Art of Nonfiction No. 2. This interview with Gay Talese in The Paris Review is fascinating. What appeals to me is how Talese gathers information for his prose. He goes out and talks to people; he interacts and observes and takes notes. Critics identify him with the New Journalism movement, a group of writers who blend traditional news reporting with literary devices from the fiction world. Talese is looking for story, often from minor or unknown characters. This interview inspires me to take the same approach in my writing: to go out and interact, interview, observe, study, and then write about it in a narrative way.

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If You’re a Writer, Write

Tom Johnson — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:03:34 +0000

Many of you—at least a third, I’m guessing—are writers by nature. You majored in English, dabbled in creative writing, probably immerse yourself in literary novels at lunch. You love the written word. You revel in your expertise in grammar, your fine tastes in sentence structure and semantics. You proudly display your Chicago Manual of Style on your bookshelf. Maybe you even secretly want to be a novelist. Perhaps you have an unfinished manuscript tucked away in your desk drawer that you think about finishing. Writing—the more creative, literary kind—is in your blood.

Fortunately, now is one of the best times for writers to be alive, because you can write and publish without hassle. According to Phillup Greenspun, the web provides a flexible format that removes traditional restrictions of length. You’re no limited to magazine length (5 pages) or book length (200 pages) of content. You can publish 20 pages essays, or 2 paragraph thoughts. You can write fiction or nonfiction, on any topic you want. You could publish your novel serially, or write your book chapter by chapter in a wiki-like way, or do any creative thing you want.

So why is it that, given the opportunity and tools to write, so few embrace it? I have several thoughts as to why.

1. You enjoy the idea more than the work

Most people enjoy the idea of being a writer more than the act of writing. The same could be said of a lot of activities. I once fantasized about doing triathlons, but it was really the idea of being a triathlete that appealed to me more than running, biking, and swimming. I also once fantasized about medicine, but it was the idea of “being a doctor” that appealed to me more than putting my hands inside bloody skin and tissue to fix people.

The truth about writing—the reason why people may daydream about “being a writer” but never seem to find the time to write—is that it’s a lot of work. Coming up with original ideas, organizing and structuring those ideas, editing and polishing your sentences, refining your thoughts, and finding time to do it all rather than sit back and watch TV or work in the yard—is something akin to completing that triathlon. It’s a lot of running/thinking, swimming/writing, and biking/editing. And it’s taxing. Winston Churchill compared writing to fighting a monster:

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.

Instead of slaying the monster, it’s easier to sit back and think about “being a writer.”

2. Your elevated awareness sets higher standards

Another reason you may not find time to write is that your literary awareness is on a higher level, which makes writing more challenging. You’re aware of what good prose looks like, and so the standards you set for yourself are more rigorous. You’ve got William Faulkner and Jane Austen or some other famous writer on your mind, and you know that to write something worth reading, it will take a lot of time, more time than you’re willing to commit. For the limited time you do have, all you can produce is mediocrity, which you won’t sink to.

This high-brow position isn’t very excusable, because knowledge of higher standards often gives you more talent and capability. And if you have limited time, you can just stretch your efforts out over a period of time. Still, being able to recognize that your first drafts are junk can be a motivational deterrent.

3. You’ve fallen out of the habit

Although the previous two reasons are possible, most likely you stopped writing because you’ve fallen out of the habit. Desiderius Eramus, a fifteenth-century Dutch humanist, said, “The desire to write grows with writing.” The reverse is also true. The desire to write shrinks the less you write.

Habits aren’t particularly tricky to establish. It’s mostly a matter of doing it. Once you start doing something, it becomes easier to do it. When asked for advice from a young would-be writer, E.B. White, author of dozens of essays, said:

You asked me about writing—how I did it. There is no trick to it. If you like to write and want to write, you write, no matter where you are or what else you are doing or whether anyone pays any heed. I must have written half a million words (mostly in my journal) before I had anything published, save for a couple of short items in St. Nicholas. If you want to write about feelings, about the end of summer, about growing, write about it. A great deal of writing is not “plotted”—most of my essays have no plot structure, they are a ramble in the woods, or a ramble in the basement of my mind. You ask, “Who cares?” Everybody cares. You say, “It’s been written before.” Everything has been written before.

In other words, if you want to write, just open up a blank Word document and start typing. It’s that simple. The rest—the form, the purpose, the ideas, the publications—will follow. The more you write, the more desire you’ll have to write. And the easier writing will become.

Final Thoughts

I decided to write this post because I’m frequently asked—by fellow writers—why I blog [write] so much. For me, I consider myself foremost a writer. I majored in English, studied creative nonfiction writing, and find value in the act of writing, especially when I have nothing particular on my mind. I enjoy creating something from nothing.

I prefer personal essays and nonfiction over fiction, so the blog is a natural form for me. But whatever preferences for form you have, don’t give up on your more creative or literary writing. You don’t have to submit your writing to journals and magazines for publication. A blog can be a worthy publishing format. I get more reward from the comments, trackbacks, emails, and other feedback on my blog than from any other writing endeavor. Whatever style and format you choose, if you’re a writer, write. The opportunity is there.

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What I See — James Hall’s Essays and Florida

Tom Johnson — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 07:05:49 +0000

James Hall's book of essays, "Hot Damn"

On my father’s recent visit from Florida, he brought me a stack of books, one of them James Hall’s collection of essays, Hot Damn!

James Hall is a poet and crime novelist, but he once wrote essays for a newspaper for several years. This book is a collection of those essays.

The topics of Hall’s essays range widely — from adventures in Florida to experiences as a boy in a library, to buying a house, to eating Cheetos while watching sports. But one theme is consistent throughout: the celebration of life. Falling in love with something. Getting excited about an adventure or place that others might simply regard as ordinary.

I believe this attitude is something I’ve largely forgotten. Let me excerpt a few paragraphs that demonstrate his love for life, especially Florida.

In “Home at Last,” Hall explains that he turned down the Air Force Academy to attend Florida Presbyterian College — not for religious reasons, but to escape in to Florida:

I did four glorious years of college in the charming and soporific Satin Petersburg of the sixties. On holidays I explored the west coast, the Keys, camping at starkly primitive Bahia Honda, building bonfires on midnight beaches, discovering out-of-the-way taverns that served cheap pitchers of beer and spectacular cheeseburgers, bays where fish jumped happily into frying pans, the unair-conditioned piano bars in Key West where writers huddled in the corners and talked the secret talk. I had never felt so at home.

In “Florida Trifecta,” spending time near ancient ceremonial grounds, Hall writes,

As my psychic tuning fork hummed, we drank a beer together on a peak overlooking one of the assembly plazas and were quieter than we would have been almost anywhere else on earth. I no longer cared if we went over to Cabbage Key. This was fine. We could stay there all afternoon, standing shoulder to shoulder with the ghosts of our noble forebears who knew and loved this land when its waters were crystalline and dense with fish, its breezes uncontaminated and dense with fish, its breezes uncontaminated by the noise or particulates.

In “The Names of Things,” Hall describes a walk on the seashell-full beaches of Sanibel island:

Lace murex, wentletrap, lightening whelk, junonia. The names are as exotic and various as their shapes. Cones and tulips and angel wings, baby’s ears and worms. Their bright colors litter the beach before me and crunch underfoot. With every step down the sugary sand I cringe with guilt at the possibility that I am destroying hundreds of rare specimens.

In “Winning Me Over,” Hall drives through the Everglades:

It was nearly a quarter of a century ago that I first journeyed west out Tamiami Trail and fell instantly in love with that broad and water expanse of sawgrass and anhingas and alligators. What struck me on that first trip was the way the vast and mesmerizing distances seemed to open up immediately after passing beyond the city limits of Miami. At that time I did not yet know the name of a single bird or bush or tree, and my eyes were not yet attuned to the nuances of that profoundly understated landscape, yet I sense the aching silence, a mysterious, almost sacred hush that seemed to resonate from the immense spread of sky and land.

In almost every essay, Hall’s love of life comes through:

In “Nude Woman in the Grass,” he describes the experience of being gripped by a book for the first time.
In “Dream House,” he narrates a house he fell in love with, purchased, and lived in for eight years.
In “Touchy Feely,” he celebrates the sense of touch in vivid, prolonged ways.
In “Hemingway,” he sees past the flaws that critics point out in Hemingway and values him for his character.

Hall also has a good dose of wit and sarcasm, and the essays are far from any kind of inspirational writing. But in almost every essay, there’s an aesthetic component that uplifts me. The way he sees an experience, or describes a place or person, has an element of rapture with life.

I think remarkable literary writers have this same celebration of life inside them. Think of Walt Whitman, who, in Song of Myself, wrote passages like,

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what
is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

Finding this attitude isn’t about looking on the positive side, or avoiding negative gossip or criticism. It’s about looking in to the ordinary and seeing something moving and alive. It’s about learning to marvel at what others regard as plain.

Perhaps Hall’s essays resonated so strongly with me because of my time in Florida. Hall moved from Kentucky to Florida, and then spent the next thirty years of his life there. I must admit that I never viewed Florida as a literary paradise. It’s hot, muggy, and subject to urban sprawl like any other place. But that’s not what Hall sees. Whether he’s picking up sun-bleached shells on a beach, or staring out into the ocean for several days straight, or going into an old diner where they plaster the walls with dollar bills, he’s jazzed about the experience. He celebrates the life that happens all around him.

As I think back on my four years in Florida, it was a literary goldmine. All too frequently I dismissed my surroundings as mundane, as unworthwhile. And yet, it seems no matter where I live, the landscape is just as ordinary as it always is. Hall taught me to stop looking other places and instead look right where I am. To look into the ordinary and see something more. And with that something more, embrace it.