on writing

Some times we can't find ourselves in our words

I love to read writers when they write about writing; I usually feel like a peeping Tom, and sometimes they are willing abettors in the act, especially Eudora Welty, Pat Conroy, Stephen King, or Amy Tan (in Opposite of Fate, which I would recommend to anyone who wants to know what being a writer really means).  They often expose themselves, even  when they take the tack of writing a textbook, as do  Annie LaMott in Bird by Bird, or John Ciardi in How Does a Poem Mean--that I was introduced by my creative writing teacher Evans Harrington.

While I got a little bit of that sense of peeking through the blinds in reading Julie Smith’s  “how to” book on novel writing,  in Writing Your Way: The Great American Novel Track, the author manages to seem modestly wrapped in a bathrobe. Her choice of a second person voice in the title throughout most of the book was probably the key. She seemed as it were, to be looking back out of the slats at the reader.  That was part of her technique, to focus on the prospective writer.

One of the strengths of the book, was leaning on Samuel L. Clemens/Mark Twain’s exemplar Huckleberry Finn as a template of what makes a novel great. Clemens is undeniably among the greatest American writers.  Plus his critique of James Fennimore Cooper is perhaps one of the finest warnings to writers that the find authenticity in their fiction.  After reading Smith’s book one of the things I would dearly love to do is visit her in a literary salon setting where we could discuss the marvels of Mark Twain., and of course I would like to tell her why she, and Hemingway, are wrong about the close of Huckleberry Finn, that indeed it was some of Clemens bitterest writing, and he could be bitter as milk after eating grapefruit.

The strength of Smith’s book is that of a good teacher urging students to just do it. Her three rules of writings: “Start it. Put your heart in it. Part with it.”  are worth the whole book.  She says that many a writer finds themselves asking, “What would Shakespeare do?” That brought to my mind that speech by Hamlet to actors that could just as easily fit Smith’s instructions, “let your own discretions be your tutor: suit the action to the word and the word to the action.”  While Writing Your Way is very pedagogical, it is also intuitive and helpful. My main complain is that it is an e-book, which makes all those joys of making a paper book one’s own with marginalia and underlining are missing. The most valuable section is on marketing: or in other words, doing what all writers write for, finding a readership.