I've noticed a built-in problem with advice from successful people- it's never really clear if I'm getting helpful direction or an autobiography. When it comes to writing advice, always in the back of my mind is the same tiny objection: sure, it worked for you, because you are good- but what if I'm no good (1)?
In On Writing, Stephen King shares his formula for revision: second drafts = first draft minus ten percent. His formula is a perfect example of the idea to prune bullshit that I discussed last Friday (and I'm sure is itself an example of the idea). But it does not address an important fact- King is a great writer (2). When he prunes bullshit, he's left with a bestseller. When I prune bullshit, I'm left with a blank page.
Another piece of writing advice I really like comes from Cheryl Strayed. In addressing the difficulty of writing, Strayed comments:
"Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig."
Again, I think it's great advice. But coal miners usually know where to dig. In the context of writing, what is the equivalent of 'knowing where to dig'? The obvious answer is to learn 'where the coal is', an approach that strikes me as simplistic (or perhaps merely true, by definition). If I knew where to dig, I would be there, digging.
A lot of writers seem to think "just write, baby" or "keep panning until you find the gold" is sufficient writing advice. I don't think its ill-intended advice. I sometimes forget that life is dark before sunrise. Sometimes, a reminder helps get me to dawn.
Writing requires a solid dose of good old-fashioned grit and comparisons to digging or recommendations to write first and edit later are great analogies. No one describes a writer as 'gritty' because there is no such thing as a writer without grit.
But sometimes, advice reminds me of certain proverbs- 'he who hesitates is lost' or 'the early bird catches the worm'. The tricky bit with proverbs is that there is usually a counter-proverb- 'good things come to those who wait' or "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink".
Lately, I've noticed writing advice that is the equivalent of these counter-proverbs; the recommendations are the opposite of the 'pick up the pen and CHARGE' theme I've highlighted above. The best examples come from recent author events I've attended. Writers including Colson Whitehead, Min Jin Lee, and George Saunders all referenced 'incubation periods' of varying lengths for their recently published successes. All three of these writers hinted that writing at top speed as soon as they had their idea would have produced a lesser final work. These writers all looked- for a long time- before they leaped.
It seems like there is a case for slowing down, at least a bit, just to ensure that the writing is moving in the desired general direction. No one described the approach more directly than Dani Shapiro- regarding Hourglass, her recently released memoir, she remarked that she could not have written it 'a second sooner than I did'.
In tying all the advice together, what seems like the main goal is striking the right balance between caution and carelessness in the rough draft. A restrained approach might fail to unearth the entire message while a reckless first try might produce too much excess for the pruning exercise to function effectively.
One way I work on this balance is to examine my own bullshit. In the exercise I shared last Friday, I expanded on a simple phrase in a way that came naturally to me. The result was layer upon layer of nonsense. The bloated version introduced unneeded complexity to a simple message. In taking a simple idea- basically, don't sweat the little stuff- and expanding it into a rambling treatise, I highlighted my biggest problem of explaining too much (3).
I slowly became more aware of my bias to over-explain during the past year. I noticed that readers reacted well to posts featuring spare ideas. When I wrote posts over on The Business Bro at the end of last summer, I suspected the six hundred word limit produced sharper writing. Recent changes to the blog format reducing its complexity- limiting reading reviews to one book, writing deliberately shorter posts for Fridays, or grouping related ideas into recurring posts- left me with less to explain and thus less to potentially over-explain.
I recognizing over-explaining as a major problem when I started studying my revision process. I noticed that most of what I threw away explained the parts I kept. Tightening explanations, rearranging tangents into footnotes, or cutting away digressions constituted almost all of my revision time. Tailoring explanations took up so much time, in fact, that it was cutting into the time left for writing new posts. If I wanted to spend more time writing, I needed an approach that reduced the time I spent proofreading.
Over time, I responded by stopping myself whenever I was tempted to launch off into a first-draft explanation. In the same way that cars cut down side streets to avoid slow intersections ahead, I understood that my tendency to explain resulted in congested first drafts to sit through later.
I soon figured out that revision was the best time to add explanation. All I needed to do was read the first draft and assess the clarity. If I did not understand it, I added an explanation.
Most of the books I read tend to offer some kind of wisdom into how to improve at a given craft- how to write, how to manage, how to eat, how to run. These books generally take a forward-looking approach and direct the reader on what to immediately start doing for better results- what writing prompts to use next, for example, or what to prepare for tonight's meal.
But it is unusual to come across advice that urges me to look back and study my own process. In the case of writing, I've yet to read the suggestion that I keep copies of first and final drafts to study my own tendencies- what do I tend to get right the first time and what do I often mess up? Perhaps my background in sports lends itself to this thinking- most coaches study 'game film' to correct mistakes and identify an opponent's characteristics. Then, they adjust their coaching style for the next game. So, perhaps this kind of self-improvement comes more naturally to me than to non-athletes.
I acknowledge that such an approach might not make much sense for most writers. But I've yet to hear anyone suggest that increasing self-awareness is a bad thing. So until then, I'll continue to keep an eye on things regarding my process. And maybe one day, by ruling out all the ways I've failed to find the coal in the past, I'll know exactly how to look the next time.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Those who can do...
Readers who follows sports closely will recognize a similar idea- the best coaches were rarely the best players. Steve Kerr, one of the NBA's best coaches, was a half-decent NBA player- but his teammate was Michael Jordan, the best player ever yet not an NBA coach. Perhaps the most accurate statement regarding players becoming coaches is: playing ability has no relationship to coaching ability. It helps except when it doesn't.
It's a surprising result for some. Surely, those who performed well at the craft are most likely to coach well? The long list of former great players who failed to become even good coaches is proof otherwise.
It is possible one explanation for some of these failures is the playing experience itself. Rather than working with young players and identifying the appropriate technique for each player's development, the former player-turned-coach cannot help but simply apply his or her own history as the appropriate path forward for everybody. The issue with that coaching approach is the small sample size: one.
A coach who did not have a successful playing career has no choice but to study a wider variety of practice techniques. The result is a broader knowledge of the sport and an improved chance to find the right coaching technique for the players in his or her charge.
2. But was King always a great writer?
What I do not recall is whether King shared if this was his formula throughout his entire writing career or if this is a more recent development. My gut says that this was his process at the time he wrote his memoir, a conclusion that leaves the question open.
A more helpful bit of writing advice for someone at my beginner stage would be his revision formula during his first couple of years as a writer, whatever that might have been.
3. Armchair psychology 101...
Why do I have a problem of explaining too much? A non-exhaustive list of theories:
1) Fear of not being understood
2) Interest in complex ideas that require longer explanations
3) Perception that verbosity = intelligence
4) Not enough faith in my audience to understand my thinking
5) I like explaining things
It's not a bad problem to have. In fact, this blog probably never gets started were I disinterested in explaining things. But like all positive qualities, too much of it and the benefits are lost.
Interestingly, I first noticed this tendency in the same economics class I cited at the top of last week's post. I would be asked a question by the professor and launch into a detailed explanation of All Things Economics. As I understood my own tendency to over-explain, I tailored my approach to questions.
Instead of immediately answering a question, I started stopping briefly to think. When I finally did start speaking, I slowed down my delivery. What my responses lost in small details was made up for by a stronger reliance on the fundamental principles. And if I needed to add the details in to flesh out the initial response, I could always do so later- just like I do today with my first drafts.
