Hi Everyone,
from tomorrow we can sit outside in our gardens with up to six people! Though if today is anything to go by, we are likely to get soaking wet and freeze to death! No need for despair however, Tuesday’s forecast is for sun, so here’s hoping that we can once again begin the slow waking from our enforced hibernation.
If we were sitting down together next week in my garden over a coffee or even a glass of wine, I would undoubtedly be telling you how I’ve just read the best book ever on writing, in particular on writing short fiction: George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Saunders has been teaching creative writing at Syracuse in the US for twenty years. ‘A few years back, after the end of one class (chalk dust hovering in the autumnal air, old-fashioned radiator clanking in the corner, marching band processing somewhere in the distance, let’s say),’ he had the realisation that ‘some of the best moments of my life, the moments during which I’ve really felt myself offering something of value to the world, have been spent teaching that Russian class.’ In this moment he decides to put down what he knows, what he’s learned; to write the book and share with us his love and deep understanding of the stories and their craft.
When you find yourself underlining every other sentence or paragraph, sending What’s App messages to your writing Buddy at all hours of the night, you know you are in the presence of genius, albeit humble. Saunders is a cool and self-effacing kind of guy. These are just, he claims, ‘thoughts according to George.’
Saunders shows us by example what we might do as writers, guiding us through the relationship with our reader and with our own words, the choices we make, the trust we place in our story – the story has a will of its own that we must listen for. And how simple it can all be – ‘You don’t need an idea to start a short story you just need a sentence.’
For Saunders the focus in his own writing has always been ‘trying to learn to write emotionally moving stories that a reader feels compelled to finish.’ Stories must be honest, create energy, every element a little ‘poem freighted with subtle meaning.’ He de-mystifies plot into ‘meaningful action,’ rejects planning, ‘A plan is nice. With a plan, we get to stop thinking. We can just execute. But a conversation doesn’t work that way and neither does a work of art. Having an intention and then executing it does not make good art.’
Editing is key; obsessive, repetitive, the application of preference, over months even years…getting to know the voice inside you, what it likes, hearing it and acting on it in the thousands of microdecisions to be made. Saunders asks, ‘How long are you willing to work on something to ensure that every bit of it gets infused with some trace of your radical preference? The choosing, the choosing, that’s all we’ve got.’
I could go on and on, but suffice to say if you want to be a better, more aware writer, if you want to be the best writer you can be, you cannot afford not to jump into the pond with George.
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My copy is on route! I must be getting serious, its the first writing about writing I’ve bought. And I’m excited his study pieces are Russian greats I know. He’s a professor of scribbling fibs. I do wonder about the professionalisation of writing. Many speak of long years honing craft-fare enough. But did all of those writers I love just so happen to be geniuses when she or he cracked out a seminal read at 23 or 46? Or, is it the Phd which makes us better at fib scribbling? I notice, once, a ‘voice’ gave you a chance. Now, it seems a masters in creative writing and a self published novel offers a place in the traps at the starting line, the race still to come.