For me, everything is about that first line and where it takes you.
Some writers are driven by plot, the delicate arrangement of chess pieces, while others are drawn in by a character and the ability to go on a meandering journey where there are no guides or roadmaps, just the will and wants of the person you created.
And some writers live for the music words make — they hold the beauty of the line above all else. There are hundreds of books and essays that purport to teach you the mechanics of writing. Between the books, manuals, writing workshops, and MFA programs, everyone seems to have a magic formula, but few cut through the noise and show you how to find your own way. Few tell you the way can be messy, filled with false starts and experiments gone wrong, manuscripts buried in drawers, and the stories that make you shudder whenever you re-read them. (Shuddering is good as it’s a sign of progress!)
I’ve been at this for decades and I can say that the mess is the journey. The mess and mishaps ultimately form a clearing that reveals your distinct voice and style.
For most of my twenties, I wrote stories that required a weedwacker to wade your way through. They were dense, flowery, filled with extraneous exposition. The kind of stories where you found yourself banging your head against the wall, screaming, WILL SHE GET TO THE FUCKING POINT ALREADY? Then, I do the thing most writers do when trying to find their voice and style—they vivisect the work of other writers and perform mimicry. Most of the stories I kept to myself because they were cringe-worthy, but the practice is important because much like how you may copy your friends in high school and college to then determine who you are as an individual, study and mimicry (not plagiarism) are crucial to your development as a writer.
I wrote fiction modeled off the likes of Lydia Davis, Ben Marcus, Amy Hempel, and Gary Lutz because they were word fakirs and I loved the rhythm they created on a line level. They demolished all rules of grammar and syntax—forging new worlds and sentence structures that reminded me of a maze you wanted to get lost in. They awed me with their language acrobatics; they would take a meaning of a word or an image and upend it, and you would find yourself looking at the world a little differently — it’s sort of like being in the Upside Down, only your experience is on paper.
However, their style went too far on the obtuse. And the predictable, linear plot-driven novels didn’t work for me either. I hadn’t found my place. I found myself in my thirties unsure of what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it because I was still in the process of mimicry and experimentation. My first book was a testing ground for some of that experimentation balanced with the traditional prose writing engineered by my editor. Years later, I re-read Sky and realized while the book was about me it didn’t sound like me. It sounded like a woman fumbling through the dark.
Some writers know their voice and style at the get-go. It took me 20 years of writing to master mine, and I still consider myself a student. And how did I find it? I kept writing. There is no secret formula, no fast-tracking, no hacks or listicle tips. I read, I studied, I wrote, I experimented, I balled up wads of paper and one evening in 2013 I found myself writing in a style unfamiliar to me but it felt right. It was the beginning of my second novel, driven by character, marveled by language. It occurred to me that I am the sort of writer motivated by the people I create and the places they wish to go while also desperate to hear the music in the background.
My words have to make music. Often, I read sentences aloud and I’m now able to know when something doesn’t sound right. I’m able to see when I need to vary long operatic sentences with an abrupt staccato line. I know when words are “bumping” me and the magic that occurs when the story glides. It didn’t happen by accident—it was through years of work and practice. Whittling down to a place that felt right.
Writing will forever be difficult and daunting, but the joy is in the work and the possibility of what it can breed. Writers live for this, the magic of seeing the world they’ve architected to its completion. I’m not famous. My books don’t sell a hundred thousand copies. The “cool kids” don’t follow me on social media. But this isn’t about the business of books, rather, this is about the love of what you commit to the page. I’ve devoted my life to the practice of reading and writing and it’s yielded results of which I’m proud (two beautiful books, lots of stories published, and a few awards).
But the work is where the joy resides. I love writing, live for it, regardless of the outcome.
In 1962, Peter Orr asked Sylvia Plath what sort of things she wrote about as a young poet. She said,
“Nature, I think: birds, bees, spring, fall, all those subjects which are absolute gifts to the person who doesn’t have any interior experience to write about. I think the coming of spring, the stars overhead, the first snowfall and so on are gifts for a child, a young poet.”
Compare Plath’s The Colossus to her final, devastating Ariel. The poems in Ariel are violent, intensely personal and the writing is chiseled—sort of like she took an icepick to them. You could see the trajectory of style between the two books where the voice is similar but now refined, taut. That occurs when a writer finds their stride and sometimes their subject. For Plath, it was about turning the lens inward. But she had to write about flora and fauna to get to the place she felt confident in her command of language. And I feel the same.
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