A reader writes: Dear David,
I woke up this sunny morning with the clear idea in my head that I should just start working as soon as I prepare myself a cup of coffee. But there were some dishes I had to do first, and the dog to walk, and some phonecalls to do... You can imagine how it goes... And when I did all that, my will froze a little, so when I finally hit the laptop, I'm not so into writing anymore. So, I open mailbox and I see this newsletter. --- And I fall into a fit of enthusiasm: I always read signs around me - and this I read as a clear sign that I REALLY SHOULD STOP POSTPONING MY WRITING. I am so happy as I write this to you, and I just want to thank you, these words of yours are so inspiring, and the idea of split personality is great, I think it could work for me. So thank you, thank you, thank you. - no, thank you, it's so good to start my week with something like this.
Newsletter 10: March 10, 2008
Approx 780 words - a little long today, so feel free to read quickly.
I'm going to send this to you a few hours early, if all goes well. I'll be dedicating Sunday night to a very special family occasion if the gods allow. British readers won't notice the difference, it'll arrive overnight. Americans will get it a day early. Antipodeans always get it yesterday.
And so here we are already at Newsletter Ten! That's a milestone for me, although of course the letters are still young in the world. When I started, I was too cautious to even say I hoped I might make it a weekly event. Now we all know it just is.
I have a private medium-term destination, far along the road and out of sight. Let's pretend it is one hundred letters. Whether it is or not doesn't matter. One hundred of these would be around the size of a small but real book. If that was my goal, then, after having worked for this very short time, today I could say to myself, "Already I've done 10% of it! The worst is over! I only have to do that again a few times before it's complete!" Which would be very encouraging.
It's good to measure achievement in fractions. To get from 1/10 of a hundred to 1/9 of a hundred will take me only a couple of weeks. To get to 1/8 of a hundred takes only another couple. There's always a new reachable milestone.
I've found writing these letters to be surprisingly easy. All I need is the triggering idea, and then the letter happens. I've been wondering why it does. Here's what I've decided.
I grew up in the United Kingdom: I was taught diffidence. When we say a thing is not bad, we mean it's awesome. When we do something awesome we brag quietly, not wanting to be what the Australians call a tall poppy (they attract attention and get their heads knocked off). Every assertion has to be superstitiously qualified with "if nothing goes wrong" or "God willing."
Writing research papers at a UK university for the first of my psychology degrees, I learned that one should never (that can never be right: maybe I mean "rarely"?) make an absolute statement. I've been following that advice successfully for ten years.
But the other day an American reader of these letters, who also knows my heavier work, commented on how much more direct I am here than in some other places. And that's right; and a big part of the reason is that this is my place and I am using my own voice.
There are other parts to it. I like not having to be right - I'm hitting you with as many ideas as I can in the hope that one of them clicks with each reader, and I don't care if s/he thinks the rest is amusing nonsense. It turns me on to be finally sharing hard-earned knowledge with a small interested group. And I notice I'm helped by the weekly deadline, far more than I'm ever motivated to make occasional postings in my writer's block blog.
But I think speaking in one's own voice is the key to fluency.
How does this help with creative writing? I don't mean dialogue, of course. But the way you narrate a novel or a short story, the way you structure a play, the way you cut from scene to scene in a screenplay, is personal. So my suggestion is to welcome that and celebrate it.
The current fashion is to enter a movie scene late and leave it early; but there's an audience for thoroughness too, and you can still sell a 400-page airport novel. So do it your way.
Even in business and government, no matter how regular the structure of your reports, there is a place for vivid language which tells the Board that the project is worth caring about (or that it's a stupid project someone dumped on you and it needs to be killed, if that's what you want them to know).
See you next week, if we're spared.
Something you can try today: work within the rules, as we always must - even if we're James Joyce - but so far as possible write as yourself. How to do this? Only you know. For me it's varied sentence lengths and relaxed grammar. For you, it's you.
Did this help? Let me know.
David
David Jung McGarva
+1 (818) 707 1871
Write me: david at todayiwrite dot com
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