Note: At first, I thought this would be a two-parter… but I now realize this is going to be a many-parter. I’ll see how it goes.
Recently, I was talking with a writing friend about how each of us learned about publishing, the writing biz, and all that. Even though there seems to be countless articles on the interwebs, some of the information was hard to come by. In this series, I thought I’d tell a bit of my story, and what I’ve learned along the way. But before talking about publishing, a bit about my writing journey. For starters, who hates the word journey, raise your hand? Right. Me too.
Craft books, courses, and just plain reading. Those are the three categories that pop into my head. (I created a poll on the twitterbox, and someone suggested that writing groups and workshops should be added… perhaps.) Starting with the latter, I know there’s a number of writers that profess all you need to do is read a lot of great books, and that will teach you how to write. Go back a hundred years, or even fifty, and you don’t see the proliferation of writing courses, MFA programs, and entire sections of stores devoted to “How to Write Gud” books. (Okay, maybe not entire sections, but it seems that way. BTW, I think my mail delivery person has a new book coming out on writing. And my cat.) Anyway, back in the day, writers just read stuff. Then they wrote stuff. This is part of my journey (ugh) as well. As a kid, then a teen, my sisters forever saw me with a book in my hand. The library was my favourite place to hang out, spending afternoons in a chair in the corner, pouring over sci-fi, western, adventure novels, as well as books about film… a budding film geek if there ever was one.
So yes, reading was my first teacher.
But during that time, I don’t think any significant lightbulbs went on that showed me the inner workings of how things get written… or more importantly, how I could write something. I did some assigned short stories in school, which were admirably bad, but I was fumbling in the dark. In first year college, I was assigned the book, Slaughterhouse Five. Now, Vonnegut didn’t just turn on a lightbulb, he lit up my whole freakin’ head. For one thing, and I recall saying this out loud while reading, “You can write like this?” So it goes.
There were others who began to show me the things that I never understood as an early, though voracious, reader. Reading Catcher in the Rye in my early twenties was another, “You can write like this?” moment. Maybe that’s what began to happen. In my teen years, certain books and writers made things seem unattainable. I recall reading a Steinbeck story in high school and wondering what the hell was going on… and how was that a story anyway? Later, Steinbeck became one of those writers on my list of obsessions, but as a sixteen-year-old I just couldn’t figure it.
So many of the stories they assigned in English class made no sense. What was I missing?
Seeing reading as a teacher started to take hold in college, when I started to take a few contemporary literature classes. There was one class in particular where I was introduced to John Gardner (Freddy’s Book), Günter Grass (The Tin Drum), Heinrich Böll (The Clown) Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook), and the aforementioned Vonnegut. It’s notable to me that I can remember the complete list of readings for this class. My education as a writer started here.
I compare this type of learning to what happened when I learned to play guitar. Before, I kind of liked the Beatles, but when I learned how to play their songs on the guitar, and I recognized their craft, then I began to love the Beatles.
I’m not a fan of the “literary”moniker, but it was books like the ones above that opened up the craft to me. I loved the way Vonnegut moved around in time, and Gardner and Grass (with the professor’s help) showed me the depth of literary symbol and allusion. Like many writers, I went through a Hemingway phase followed by a Faulkner one. Here, I want to mention I didn’t think about gender when choosing authors—around this time I was also discovering Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, and Ursula Le Guin. Later in my career, Jennifer Egan’s work became very important to my development as a writer. (See: Gasp, the writer said.)
I’m attempting to not just track my reading, but to try to see where, and what, these books were teaching me. I realize that a lot of it was giving me permission. For example, it was okay to use easy to follow language like Vonnegut, as well as injecting humour into the writing. I note that one of my favourite writers of the last decade, George Saunders, also discovered this permission.
The last brick in my writer-head-wall (and before I really started to write) came with the discovery of South American and Central American writers and magical realism. The two main ones being Gabriel Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude) and Laura Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate.) Around this time, I started reading Don DeLillo, but that obsession is for another post. Once again, reading that it could rain yellow flowers for three days after a death, or a recipe could be made to make everyone fall in love… and the strangeness of these events was treated as commonplace… finally, I went, “Holy Crap, you can do that?!!!”
A lot of writers begin writing short fiction before tackling a longer narrative like a novel. I’d written some short fiction. It was not good. So, I decided to take all these books and writers that had been burbling in my head and start finally writing my own.
Later, I discovered that I should have spent some time on the short fiction form… but more on that in another post.
I’ll end it there for now—just to add, if you read my crime fiction novels, you might wonder where all those writers were. Well, with one notable exception (Donald Westlake), I never read any.
Next time in the series, I’m going to talk about courses and workshops, and what they taught me.
I’m curious how you were taught by the books you read—and which ones taught you the most. Post a comment, over reply over on twitter. Love to hear from you.
As always - thanks for reading! Please subscribe, tell your friends, be nice to your cat.
Interesting that you don't mention classical crime writers. I grew up reading Georges Simenon. His books were all over the house. He was one of my dad's all-time favorites. I never thought of "lessons in writing" when I read him. Now, thinking back, what I recall (and must have been an unconscious influence) are the simplicity of the language (French writers can be ornate, lol) and the atmosphere suggested with an economy of words, a short description, an attitude. I read an English translation of one of his books recently and it felt stilted - something definitely went "missing in translation".