Wobbly Writing

I skipped the fireworks this weekend, which is to say that I chose to not walk out of my house to stare up at the sky exploding, but instead listened to the roar and rumble of various amateur and professional pyrotechnic enthusiasts while reading and critiquing student work. Like many people, I wasn’t feeling the holiday this year. I did think about my favorite firework memory which was New Year’s Eve when Atlas was about four and we raced to Hartford to watch the sky, then couldn’t find a parking space, so we just pulled over on the side of the road near a fire hydrant and stared through the windshield. Which was quieter with the windows rolled up and warmer with the heat on. There is not much that tops watching a four-year-old watching the spectacle that is a full fireworks display.

And while I stayed in all weekend missing the festivities, I started to plan my next round of classes coming up and thought about the privilege of working with so many writers with such interesting stories. I thought about how the best writers always seem to be a little unsure of themselves. They bravely present their work and stay open to the feedback because they truly aren’t sure if it’s working or not. I had one lovely class of all women recently and I had to make a rule when we did prompts in class- they weren’t allowed to badmouth their work before they read it out loud. Because there was a lot of apologizing happening from people who then read work that wowed the whole room.

It’s not that I think people shouldn’t know their worth or should be so hard on themselves. I regularly set the intention to build a student up, especially when I’ve seen tremendous growth and I’m not sure they understand how good their work is getting. But I can’t help but notice this trait in really talented writers and it makes me think there is something there that serves the particular job of writing. It’s a kind of work that takes a long time, that must go through many many drafts, that has to age and sit and be returned to again and again. You can’t write a piece and just think it’s good enough. You can’t settle. It isn’t the kind of thing that you can just talk up, sell, and bam, you have a book deal. It’s a long slow process and you have to love the tediousness of going back again and again. The saying that writing is rewriting is absolutely true.

A good book is not a pitch. It’s a kind of magic that can’t even really be described.

A couple of days ago, I read a brief review of Lauren Hough’s new book, Monster of a Land, a very positive opinion from a writer I admire, and I finally started the book today, read the first essay, and was blown away. I liked Lauren’s first book so I was expecting to like this one but that first essay was magic. It’s everything the opening of a book should be. It moved me, it made me laugh out loud, and it made me hear a very specific, likable narrator speaking in my ear. From reading her twitter account years ago and more recently her substack, I know this book was full of ups and downs and came together through hard work and draft after draft and four years of just going back to it again and again. And it shows. I can’t wait to read the rest of it.

There’s no shortcut. It’s not a product to be sold, something whose worth you can talk people into. A good book speaks for itself and the author doesn’t have to say a thing. Write the best work you can possibly make and be okay with discomfort when it’s still in those early stages, when it feels wobbly and you don’t know if it’s working yet. I’m standing on a wobbly novel right now, today. Yes, it’s uncomfortable. It’s also fine.

Thank you for reading.

Note: I still have a couple of spots open in two of my classes starting soon. Feel free to send a note if you’re interested.