ira explains it all
just because ira glass was once named to a list of 10 chicagoans we love to hate, that doesn’t mean we have to, well, hate him. because the thing is, he’s really good at what he does. and what’s more, he might also have some solid advice for people in any creative field that also want to get good at what they do.
with this video series, ira’s addressing people who want to produce stories for broadcasting, but i think this interview—particularly part 2 (above) and part 3—are equally applicable to writers not interested in the radio & tv fields. and it’s also a nice follow-up that excellent post about interesting failures.
ira’s suggestion that not enough is said about the importance of abandoning crap can be a tough one to swallow. there’s some famous line, attributed to who knows how many people, about how writers never finish anything—they just abandon it. as if there were nobility in never letting go. which maybe does have an ounce of truth to it. but i’m kinda inclined to side with ira—that the moment you put something down, it’s trying to be crap. another wise man once said that the most potential a story will ever have is when it’s still a blank page. and every word you put on it after that limits that story’s potential.
yet ira assures us that everyone who has ever been good at creative work goes through a period (years, even) where their ambition fails miserably to live up to their own high standard. a place i’m all too familiar with. i’ve told several people that the more i learn about writing fiction, the more i realize that i’m doing it horribly, horribly wrong. the trick, supposedly, is to get through this phase. stick with it through the suck until you come out on the other side, presumably as a moderately successful writer who probably still needs a “real” job to pay the rent.
but if you’ve got suggestions for how to get through that phase, i’m all ears. ira stresses the importance of just doing a lot of work (as have all my writing instructors). true enough—but still kinda vague, right? anne lamott wrote a fantastically funny essay related to this topic called “shitty first drafts.” anne recommends reminding yourself that it’s okay to write lousy stuff that no one will ever see. she also suggests an entertaining, if not morbid, exercise about imagining voices critical of your work as mice, which you pick up by the tail and seal in a glass jar. when the harshest voice of criticism is your own, however, i’m not sure what kind of jungian mess you’d be getting yourself into there.
so i’d love to hear how you fought through the shit to become a brilliant writer. or not. at this point, i think instructive examples and schadenfreude are probably equally helpful.
Tags: anne lamott, ira glass
Sam’s remark about potential in story is interesting. It kind of echoes an idea I’ve been tossing around for a few years now, about these things/concepts that actually increase as they are seen to decrease (e.g. faith: the more one doubts a belief, yet still believes, the more faith that person must have. likewise with hope–one has no more hope than the person who seems hopeless, but is still breathing/trying).
Anyway, it made me think of that, but also of a sort of fallacy of the statement, that potential isn’t necessarily a good thing, right? I mean, it is, but what is potential except for an untapped kinetic something?
I’m rambling. I was up too late last night. I like this post. This place has tall buildings. I like food. Bye.
i’m intrigued by this increasing/decreasing idea – sounds like something very much worth being explored through writing. which, of course, necessitates being moved beyond the “potential” phase. potential’s a great starting point. but, yeah – at some point you kinda have to move further along the scale of thought development. otherwise, one just becomes the weird dude that never leaves his apartment, rocking back&forth listening to journey albums on repeat. forever.
Yeah, I’ve been mulling the concept over for a few years. Stabbed at it a few times with some words and forms, but haven’t quite gotten it right yet. Onward. Don’t stop believin’.
The thing about potential though is that it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. A thing with limitless potential isn’t on its way to becoming something. An uncarved block of wood has unlimited potential regarding the object its going to be carved into, but it’s still just a block of wood. Maybe each cut’s going to limit the potential as you carve it. But if you don’t make any cuts, you can keep the potential and the block, never moving toward anything.
I think all work is failure. At least all of mine is. That’s why I find that Beckett quote Dan referred to yesterday so encouraging. The quote is: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” I love that idea of just sort of enduring, trying again, failing again, getting just a little better, maybe.
So, even knowing something’s going to fail, I still think you try to move the work toward perfection or completion. And it’s that effort, seeing the failure, and trying over and over to overcome it, that might make the work stronger or better or closer to done. Ultimately, you’re still going to have to abandon it at some point. The question is, when?
Blake posted a radio interaction between Barry Hannah and Larry Brown a couple months ago over at HTMLGIANT, in which Hannah said something about the best work coming fast and not being sort of worked to death. He said it as a kind of general statement about all work, not just his own, a sort of theory. Is this true? I don’t know. Can you overwork lines or stories or poems or essays? I think so. So when do you know when to quit? I don’t know.
Maybe you keep going if the work has some juice for you. But what about the days it doesn’t, the days when none of it seems any good? I don’t know. How do you know when to walk away? Whitman never did.
And I don’t think it’s vague to say just do a lot of work, write a lot, read a lot. That’s the only thing we can do. Some writers or teachers say just plow through a draft. Don’t worry about the lines. Get to a finished shape, then work the lines in the rewrite. Other writers say they can’t move forward until the lines are exactly right. Most people probably do a little of both.
Also, knowing that you suck is much better than not knowing that you suck. Knowing that you suck makes you work harder and harder in your failures. It gives you the humility you need regarding this idiotic thing we’re engaged in, this business of trying to create meaning or arrest time or lull people into dreams that seem more real or true than other forms of consciousness. We have high standards because we read a lot and write a lot and know how good work can be. But the fact that we can never reach perfection means that we can never exhaust this thing either. The hard part is knowing where you stand regarding your work, day to day — because on one day, you think a piece is really good, really strong, finished. And the next day, it sucks. And it seems like you just keep going back and forth between those positions (or less extreme versions of those positions) until you finally just quit the piece. Maybe when it’s published. Maybe not. But hopefully something else grabs your attention. Hopefully, you start to make something else. Did you quit the other piece too soon? Did you just give up? Aren’t there times when you should just give up? Yes. When? Which times? I don’t know. Maybe when the piece feels dead to you. But if it doesn’t feel dead, if you keep working it and working it and it still sucks, are you just deluding yourself? I don’t know. Sometimes, probably yes. Other times, probably no. I have plenty of stories that took me 5 years to write, 10 years. I couldn’t quite see the shape of the story. I walked away and came back. Something was still there and I reworked it. Walked away again. Came back. Or, in other cases, didn’t come back. It was dead. There was nothing there anymore.
In the end, I’m just looking for a spark, looking for a line, a sound, that leads me to the next line/sound, that leads to another that hopefully starts to reveal some shape that ultimately feels whole and complete and finished and satisfying. Some failures are bigger than others. The moments of satisfaction seem to come during the work, when I’m lost in it. I think you get better at learning when to walk away from a piece that isn’t working. But that, of course, might be my delusion.
Good words, Sam. I live and write by that Beckett quote. When you cited that in this response, the concept as a whole kind of clicked.
I think it touched on me a bit because living in Indianapolis, I’ve grown quite accustomed to potential. This entire city is a hotbed of it, and I’ve spent the last couple years of my life trying to see it and give it a push.
This interplay between potential and kinetic has been another something I’ve been chewing on in my brain gears the past few years, so this entire post/thread is awesome.
you’re right – “just do the work” isn’t vague. it’s just difficult. i’m still looking for that magic trick that lets you turn off what anne lamott calls KFKD, the imaginary radio station for writers.
it’s encouraging to hear you say it takes 5 or 10 years sometimes to write a story. but it’s also easy to forget that when you’re staring at the screen, and rewriting the same d*mn first line 20 times because you can’t jump from the potential, or idea in your head, to actual language. i haven’t figured out yet how to just “plough through a draft” yet. i might as well try to do advanced calculus right now. i’m kinda hoping that this is something i can learn. after, maybe, like another 87 failures. but hopefully interesting ones.
“Can you overwork lines or stories or poems or essays? I think so. So when do you know when to quit? I don’t know.”
I totally think you can, but also don’t have any idea of how to know when to quit.
Natalie (Kusz) often talks about the current draft not necessarily being the one which logically progresses to the next one. Sometimes we are blinded by viewing the drafting process as a linear progression; draft number three being closer to the finished product than two and so on. Instead, Natalie’s advice is to sometimes go back to older drafts and look for golden nuggets. Maybe your story or essay took a turn from draft 4 to 5 and now that stuff you cut out in draft 2 belongs in the piece again.
Sam, this is just what I needed to read just now. I like what you say about letting a spark guide you. As long as there is something bright in a heap of words that you want to undig, let loose, sculpt, oxygenate, or even snuff out, then there is some work to do on a story. When you don’t care anymore, even after walking away and back, then you get to keep walking. Yes.
And I love the idea of going forward even if you know you are going to fail. That is the best thing I can keep in mind right now (and probably always).
Favorite quote on potential:
“Potential is just a French word that means you haven’t done shit for me yet.” -Mike Ditka
Oh, clever you to bring it back to Chicago again. :-)