Leave it all on the page
Hi, friends!
Last August, I shared a bit about the notes James Salter left himself when writing a book. (You can find that newsletter here.)
One of those notes was:
DO NOT BE EAGER TO PLEASE.
Salter wrote lots of these things in lots of notebooks.
NO FINE WRITING.
and
No life is interesting that isn't serious.
and
Choose ruined heroes.
and
Select. Invent. Explain a bit.
Many of his notes were quotes borrowed from others.
Recently I've been stalled on my work. Not totally stopped, just lightly deterred from easily making progress. This year the bottom dropped out of a lot of things, and one of them was my writing. Abruptly writing felt like less of a safe place to spend time. I'm working hard to reclaim that right now.
Part of reclaiming it, I think, is to return to something tactile and analog. I've put aside the computer and begun writing longhand again. I chose a notebook whose paper I love running pencils across, and I decorated the cover like I'm a fourth grader.
I sat in a coffee shop—oh, how I've missed writing in coffee shops!—and I turned to the first page and thought, Wait a second.
I turned back to the inside cover and, like Salter, wrote notes to myself. Like Salter, I copied from others. Scrawled on that cover are notes like:
The telling is everything.
and
Put things you care about deeply into the characters you dislike.
and
Write for readers like yourself.
and
Open chapters beautifully.
and
Brief. Lucid. Mercilessly clear.
and
Don't write what they will recognize or accept. Write to astonish. To alter them.
And a few other things. And there's room still for more as I go along.
Something I remembered, too, as I began writing a prologue scene in the book: Pencil (or pen, or crayon, or whatever your preference) is immediate. It pulls your attention along the page. It's slower than typing. And that's maybe the most important distinction for me: Because I write longhand much more slowly than I type, I find myself taking more notice of the details. I find myself getting just a tiny bit more lost in the words, and in the images they produce.
Write as if this were your only book, your last book. Into it put everything you were saving—everything precious, every scrap of capital, every penny as it were. Don’t be afraid of being left with nothing.
That's me quoting Salter, who in turn was quoting André Gide.
I've missed writing. This year, I've resolved, won't take that away from me. I don't know if I'll succeed at writing this entire draft longhand, but I'm gonna give it a solid try. I'll give this draft everything I've got, and when it's done, I hope to see a bone-dry tank.
✏️Until next time,
Jg
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