"If you want to write well, make sure that you have lots of strong feelings." That may seem to be my message here, but it is not. I have purposely used the word "experience" for what the writer needs-no doubt till you are very tired of it -- and avoided as much as possible the word "feelings" or "emotions."
"If you want to write well, make sure that you have lots of strong feelings." That may seem to be my message here, but it is not. I have purposely used the word "experience" for what the writer needs-no doubt till you are very tired of it -- and avoided as much as possible the word "feelings" or "emotions." But our language is fuzzy in distinguishing the different things people have inside: feelings, experiences, conceptions, ideas. When I say that the writer "should experience" what she is writing about, I mean something much closer to "should see and hear" than "should feel strongly." Feelings get confused with experiences because, when we experience something fully, feelings occur, too: real experiences hit us hard. But strong feelings, in themselves, don't help you breathe experience into words. In fact, some of the worst writing fails precisely because it comes too much out of feelings rather than out of the event or scene itself -- out of the bamboo. Consider, for example, what happens if you decide to write about that car accidept you were in. You will find that there is a huge difference between the words that grow out of your experience of the accident and those that grow out of your feelings about it. To experience it, you have to go back and be there -- see, smell, and hear everything. But the feelings you end up with -- "It was so awful" or whatever -- may well impede you from re-experiencing the accident. (And happy feelings can also block full experience of an event. "It was so wonderful, so glorious, I felt like I'd never felt before" is sometimes all the inexperienced writer can say when she gives in to her feelings about an event she wants to write about.) Of course, it wasn't just sights and sounds you were experiencing during the car accident, you were probably experiencing feelings, too. So, when you let words grow out of the experience itself -- when you manage to go back and connect with or relive the accident -- you will have words that issue not only from sensory experiences, but also from feelings, too. As well you should. But it's not that these are feelings that makes them the right source for your words, it's that they are part of the experience of the accident. What causes so much bad writing is the flood of later feelings that tend to follow, if only by an instant or two, any strong experience. These later feelings tend to dominate our memory and, as we write, rush in to monopolize our attention. The reason they do so, I think, is that they are a kind of short cut that saves us from actually re-experiencing the event itself. In either case feelings, as feelings, are of no value for writing. They are of value only insofar as they are part of the original experience itself that you are trying to render in words. Therefore, you should probably lean a bit away from them since they have such a tendency to numb or mush or blot out the rest of your experiencing. Thus teachers are sometimes led to make an extreme though perhaps useful blanket rule: no feelings! Stick to sense data. Notice how few feelings there are in the Silverman piece about the drunk (though it creates feelings in the reader). The weakest sentence results from a slide into telling feelings about how pathetic this man is. Silverman's strength was his ability to zero in on the object and not his feelings about it. The Magson war story is weakest at the three emotional moments and strongest in the smoke machine which is rendered without feelings. In short, having feelings about the bamboo is not the same as going to the bamboo.You can, of course, write powerfully not about the car accident, but about the feelings you have as a result of it -- the funk, the jitters, or whatever. Fine. In that case you should try to let your words grow out of those feelings, or if you are writing much later, you should try to get back and re-experience them. But don't pretend you are writing about a car accident. You are writing about the emotional aftermath of a car accident. Advice The goal is to get power into words. If I am right, that means getting your reader to breathe experience into what you write: get her to pedal while you steer, get her to let you play with her mind, get her to hear music and not just read notes. To make this happen, you must breathe experience into your words. You must go to the bamboo. But what does this mean in practice? | • | Direct all your efforts into experiencing -- or re-experiencing-what you are writing about. Put all your energy into connecting with the object. Be there. See it. Participate in whatever you are writing about and then just let the words come of their own accord. | | • | You can fix the words later when you revise. That's when you can be savage: cut, correct, clarify, rearrange entirely. That's when you can and should think carefully about your audience and what style is appropriate; about your topic and what approach will work best. It's easy as you revise to make enormous changes in style, tone, approach, and structure and still keep life in your words. | | • | In your raw writing, don't let your words grow out of a conception or idea. It's possible to start with a conception -- "Let's see. What about a story of someone who marries his mother by mistake" -- as long as you are then willing to move past your clever idea into actually experiencing the events that are entailed by it. | | | But that is a dangerous route unless you are a very skilled writer. When you start out from an idea or scheme or gimmick, it is usually harder to have the experiences. | | | Use memories. It is usually easier to experience things that actually happened to you than to experience made-up events or scenes. | | | Write about what is important to you. If it is important, you will probably find the psychic energy you need to really connect with it or open yourself to it. But don't rely on intensity to arouse yourself or your reader. Intensity is often a prophylactic against experience. And peak experiences that never happened to you are especially 'hard to relive. But I mustn't be dogmatic about these subsidiary rules. Sometimes you can connect better with a big event, sometimes a little one. And some people actually connect better with fantasy events than with remembered ones. It's the main rule that is important: wherever the experience is, go there. | | | I suggested earlier that if you want the reader to trust you or give consent to having an experience at your hands, you must trust yourself and not think too calculatingly about what you want to do to her. This may sound like impossible advice ("Don't think about sex" or "Don't put beans up your nose"). But if you follow the main advice in this chapter, you can achieve the purity of heart you need. If you just put all your energy into actually seeing what you are talking about, you won't have any attention left over for creating that distracting fog of self-doubt or manipulativeness. | | | Don't ask for too big an experience from your reader too soon. | | | Learn to coach yourself, to give yourself pep talks as you write -- especially if you sense yourself losing contact with what you are trying to write about: Be there! See it! Hallucinate! Hear it! Feel it! Be that person! Close your eyes and don't let yourself write down any words until you can actually see and hear and touch what you are writing about. To hell with words, see something! | | | Read out loud as much as you can: your own writing and that of others. It develops the crucial muscle you need for learning to focus your attention wholeheartedly upon the meaning of words as you emit them. Listeners can actually hear it when you let even a tiny bit of your attention leak away, and this will help you gradu ally to gain control over this slippery inner putting-experienceinto-words muscle. |
| Whenever you get feedback, always ask readers to point out the bits that actually made them see something or hear something or experience something. Insist on the real thing: not just what feels to them like impressive or earnest writing, but passages that actually caused movies in their heads. It is rare. Much of your writing will cause no movies at all. That's par. But when feedback shows you even a few short passages that actually do it, you will be able to think yourself back into what it felt like as you wrote them. This will give you a seat-of-the-pants feeling for what you must do to get power into your words-what muscle you have to scrunch or let go of to breathe life into your writing. | | Play the image game -- with one other person or with a small group. Take turns giving each other images. If the listener doesn't actually see the image, then you must stop, stop trying to say words, and go back inside to work harder at actually seeing the image. Others must wait patiently for you to get there. They must allow you the time and silence and concentration you need to tune out your present surroundings and focus all your attention on the image you are trying to experience. This game helps you most effectively if you start small. Focus only on a couple of objects. Instead of trying to describe that whole scene on the terrace, focus down on the small table next to the canvas chair: the number 2 pencil with a broken point touching a moist ring left by a cold drink on a plastic table. * And don't use narrative. Restrict yourself to what can be captured by a still photograph. Narrative is a way to get your reader's attention, but it is a rudimentary kind of attention, mere curiosity about what happens next. It doesn't make her actually build an experience in her head. Narrative is powerful but you need to have it in addition to experience in your words, not as a crutch or substitute for experience. | | These are good rules of thumb: start small, focus your attention on only a few details, let them be the spark for the listener's more elaborate creation. But the process isn't the same for everyone. The main thing is for the listeners to stop you if they don't get movies in their heads from your words; and your response should not be to search for better words, but to increase your efforts actually to see what you are describing. | | Don't let this chapter trick you back into your worst habits: "No, I'm not ready to write yet. I don't see it clearly enough in my head. I'm not having a real experience. I'd better go and look through some old photos I have. I will experience things better if I do some research or take a long walk or lie down on the sofa and close my eyes." Sometimes the best way to get to the experience of what you are writing about is through nonstop writing, even if at first the words seem dead, mechanical, and unfelt. It's all right to close your eyes and stop putting out words when you are playing the image game, with a live audience right there listening to you. The presence of others will ensure that you will come up with words before long. And if you happen to be someone who writes easily and is already turning out pages and pages and pages of writing that somehow lack power, perhaps it will help you to sit longer in silence before actually putting words to paper. But for most people, the important thing is to keep writing. |
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