Some Notes on Writing

Or, in fact: A Brief Diversion as I Write Something More Difficult Than This

The cover of Louise Fitzhugh’s 1964 novel, Harriet the Spy.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about writing—what it is, how it works, why humans do it and why they read it, why I do it and why I read, form and genre, the process and mechanics of it (the question of longhand (notebook and pen) or typing on a computer. The craft. Everything.

One reason I’ve been thinking about it is because, having finally landed on a subject that lights my fire (art and culture) I want to ensure that I do it well, that I am always making a conscious effort to improve my work. For too long, I didn’t do that.

But the bigger reason: I’m struggling right now with a long piece—one that I will publish here soon, assuming I summon the nerve to hit the “publish” button—and it has me thinking about the craft in its entirety.

Basically: What the hell I’m I trying to do here? How can I do it better? Does this make sense? Will I lose readers here? Will they think I’ve lost my mind? Is this relevant? Is this possibly an actual book? Is this accurate? How can I say that better? How does this sound? How does it look?

So I’m taking a break from the writing of that and writing this, just free associating, really, possibly rambling. Best to lower your expectations.

Here’s the thing: I don’t really know how I learned to write in the first place, any more than I can tell you how I learned to read. I learned it by doing it. Writing was a natural activity for one who loved reading. In hindsight, it was pure instinct, little intellect. In the last couple years, I’ve been trying to do more of the latter. Actively thinking about the work, from sentence to sentence. Stepping back, trying to see my own work with an editor’s eye.

That’s one downside of Substack, I’ve found: No editor, no second set of eyes. I have a great one over at Oregon ArtsWatch. Here, I’m flying blind.

I am sure that I learned stuff from teachers along the way. To be sure, it’s been really helpful seeing how my editor can make a good piece better, although the lessons tend to be ephemeral. But I really don’t feel like I was “taught” to write. I learned by watching—which is to say, by reading.

Given that, along with the fact that writing is so intensely personal, so completely bound with interiority, the activity of mind and conceptions of “self,” I’ve always had a baked-in suspicion about and even hostility toward those who offer their services as a writing instructor or mentor. I’m like, Who the hell do you think you are?

To be clear: I understand that there are people who can teach writing and do it well, just as I know that there are writers who benefit from personal instruction, advice and mentorship. But ultimately, it probably has more to do with the relationship and even a kind of intimacy than pedagogical skills.

I think of the late Tom Spanbauer, the celebrated literary lion of Portland whose Dangerous Writing workshops are legendary. I never met him, but I remember reading about him in the 1990s and being struck by the awe he seemed to elicit in the lucky few who workshopped their stuff with him—Chuck Palahniuk among them.

My hypothesis is that pairings of teacher and student where lightning strikes and magic happens are rare and cannot be formulaically contrived. So my eyes glaze over when I flip through Poets & Writers and see those lush advertisements for workshops, retreats and conferences in New England, when the colors are full—pornography for writers, basically.

For me, the spark that lit the fire was not a teacher, class or workshop, but a book, encountered probably around the sixth or seventh grade. Louise Fitzhugh’s 1964 young adult novel Harriet the Spy was a well from which I could not drink enough.

Here was an impressively independent, hyper-intelligent 11-year-old living in Manhattan who wrote everything down in her notebooks. I remember buying a notebook once and, sitting in my grandparents’ tiny living room, writing “PRIVATE” on the cover, just like Harriet.

More so than Harriet herself, it was that notebook, particularly, the idea of having a notebook, a receptacle for thought and imagination, that I found absolutely thrilling. It seemed like an almost enchanted artifact, potentially a source of great power.

At one point (spoiler), Harriet’s friends find and read one of her notebooks and are rightfully hurt and horrified to see what she’s written about them. The drawing of her classmates sitting there on a bench, staring at her, is forever burned into my brain.

That’s how all this started: a book I found at the library. Harriet the Spy. Later, I saw All the President’s Men, and it was game over. So now you know.

That’s what art can do—it can light fires and change lives.

Seems like a good final sentence … okay. Back to the other one.