Some first steps to finding your path as a writer

I try to keep my focus on this Web site on the craft of writing—mostly because practical questions about how to get jobs, book contracts, agents, and big bucks tend to bore me. But I am asked all the time for help from writers ready to take the leap, so I thought I’d organize my thoughts. Consider this my first salvo, and please feel free to add suggestions in the comments.

When someone asks me how to launch a career as a writer, I always feel flummoxed. I think of what Mark Twain said about his training (“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education”) and about what Picasso said about understanding art (“Why not try to understand the songs of a bird?”). And I think of a stone found many years ago on a beach in Tuscany, when I was walking with the Italian painter who acted as my mentor, imploring him to tell me how to “make it” as an artist. Myriad tiny blue lines scored its cool, jade surface. Any one of those lines, he hinted, might work.

Now, 25 years later, is there any advice I can offer besides a couple of quotes and a metaphor?

I think so, although every writer must find his or her right path. For starters, though, read a few good books. Go to your nearest public library or independent bookstore and peruse the selection in Writing Reference. How to Get Happily Published is a classic, though last revised in 1998. More recently, Arielle Eckstut and David Sterry have written The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published: How to Write It, Sell It, and Market It . . . Successfully and Putting Your Passion Into Print. Writers Digest publishes books providing nuts and bolts information. These won’t give you a prescription for professional success, but they will acquaint you with the world you long to enter.

Then there are memoirs by writers (Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home by Lynn Freed or Remembering Mr. Shawn’s New Yorker, by Ved Mehta) and editors (The Forest for the Trees, by Betsy Lerner). They, too, trace very individual roads taken by their authors, but they will give you a real sense of the writer’s life. A conversation on Salon between veteran critic Laura Miller and veteran editor Bob Gottlieb blends the insightful and the inspirational.

Join one of the organizations that exist to help writers find each other and share suggestions. I belong to the American Society of Journalists and Authors. It’s national, and it has chapters in some metropolitan areas, but its online forums are helpful no matter where you live. Many smaller groups target specific niches, too. In my neighborhood alone (using the term loosely), Left Coast Writers, Bay Area Travel Writers, and The Writing Mamas all have strong track records.

Go to writing conferences. If you want practical sessions on how to succeed as a freelance nonfiction writer, go to ASJA’s big conference each spring. If you want soup-to-nuts on all genres, check out the San Francisco Writers Conference. If it’s the craft of nonfiction storytelling you hunger for, try the annual narrative conferences at Boston University and the Mayborn School of Journalism in Texas. At Book Passage in Corte Madera, California, you’ll find conferences for travel photographers, mystery writers, children’s book writers, and food writers. Caveat emptor: These conferences are serious, but some are just a way for the organizers to make money. But conferences can be inspirational and a lot of fun.

Find a writing community. This could be an intimate critique group that meets in your living room, or it could be a preexisting group that meets online (see SheWrites and Red Room). It might be an ad-hoc school where you meet people through classes and lectures, like Grub Street in Boston or The Writers Workshop in Seattle. I belong to the San Francisco Writers Grotto, a large group of professional journalists, poets, novelists, filmmakers, and other “narrative artists” who share a warren of offices and talk at lunch about whether to Tweet, how to find the story in the mess of research notes, and what we’re reading. (You can become part of the community by subscribing to our monthly Notes.)

Say it’s something more personal you want, focused on you. Maybe a friendly voice on the phone, a bit of help in identifying the right agent, or advice on where to start publishing. I founded The Prose Doctors with a small group of my favorite editors; we all do one-on-one coaching for a fee. A writing teacher might agree to play this role for you. Paying someone to be your guide and to hold you accountable can be more efficient than crying to your spouse—or to your therapist.

Some Web sites and blogs offer sound advice and a broad range of opinions. The best ones aren’t just journals of lonely scribes or rants by writers rejected by one too many editors. Some provide solid information and tips. You’ve already found this Web site; others I find credible are Meghan Ward’s Writerland and the blog by former agent Nathan Bransford.

Finally, ask a writer to lunch. Here’s a tip: Don’t just email the friend of a friend asking for general advice. Most writers worth talking to are busy writing. Most are also struggling financially. So take them to lunch—a nice lunch, a lunch they’d never treat themselves to. And before you even order an ice tea or San Pellegrino, make sure you’ve prepared yourself for a useful conversation by doing everything I’ve outlined above.

Wait! There is one more thing, the most important thing: Start writing and don’t stop. Try different genres, experiment with styles. Don’t ever wait for an editor to say Yes to a great idea—write what you know you must. Blog. Send essays to lowly newspapers. Write opinion pieces. Take classes. Seize every opportunity that comes your way. Just do it.

Then comes the part I really can’t help you with: be persistent, develop a thick skin, and find a way to stay sensitive.

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I was recently contacted by Anna Tims, a reporter with The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. She was writing about improving written communications and had come across a Yahoo blog post by Marci Alboher that offered tricks to business writers eager to craft wicked good memos.

The list of tricks varied slightly in Marci’s post and Anna’s article, and I’d be curious to hear which you find most useful. In the meantime, though, I wanted to share Anna’s questions, which probed whether email and texting are degrading the art of letters, and my answers, which have been slightly expanded from the original email exchange.

Anna Tims: Are writing skills getting generally poorer today, and does text short-hand/email informality partly account for any diminishing standards?

Connie Hale: It’s so hard to generalize! There are those who just text to their heart’s delight, not caring about quality, there are those who write for work who care but are untutored, and there are those who have spent years reading, studying, and working at writing. Then there are those who just have awesome talent. (I hate those genetic oddities.)

Some new studies show that many kids adept at texting are also “communicatively adept.” My fast-fingered nieces certainly get the difference between the vernacular of MySpace and more eloquent English. Aren’t we all capable of literary bilingualism? Think of how we adults express ourselves in jargon and out of jargon.

What has surely happened, though, with mass literacy and easier access to computers and cell phones, is that more and more people are writing and publishing on their own. So the mediocre middle has expanded exponentially, giving us a lot of ho-hum prose. At the same time, technology has placed a premium on the brief and the informal, which is a good thing. People who learned in school to write stiff, academic stuff are finding that email allows them to write more authentically, with natural verve and voice. I would bet that if you looked at really fine writing a century ago and fine writing today, you’d find that the amount and degree hasn’t changed that much. It’s hard to say writing skills are on the wane when we can find fiction by Cormac McCarthy and Lorrie Moore, pulp nonfiction by David Grann, TV shows by David Milch and David Simon, or Tweets by Susan Orlean.

AT: What are the most common errors in people’s writing today—bad spelling? limited vocabulary? inappropriate tone?

CH: The biggest failure of much business writing is a lack of imagination (all those clichés!). But you may be asking about more basic errors. Most people would benefit from simplifying sentences into a subject, a verb, and an object. Short, clear sentences trump overloaded ones jammed with information. I’m not sure if the mechanical mistakes are the same in the U.S. and the U.K., but the most common thing I see is the inability to distinguish between *it’s* and *its* and the use of *they* or *their* when a singular pronoun is required.

AT: Is fine writing, even in the form of a memo, appreciated in the world of work or are we all so slipshod that few of us notice? Why, in other words, is it worth learning good writing skills?

CH: In a story in The New York Times, page A-1, Adam Liptak writes about how the current U.S. Supreme Court is defining itself by long and flabby and opaque opinions. Lower-court judges are struggling to interpret these opinions. So, are writing skills noticed? I would say so.

Most people don’t write well—it’s hard work!—and when someone has the knack it is usually recognized. I have an aunt who writes outrageously funny Christmas letters, and friends and family all comment on them. On several occasions, and from different quarters, Facebook friends have told me they welcome posts that are well crafted and maybe even meaningful. People in all walks of life appreciate recognize writing that has depth and style.

Ask any writer to define literary style, and you’ll find that the answer is as distinct as, well, that writer’s style. I noodled around on the Net and found that Gore Vidal defined style as “knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”

Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, on the other hand, called it “craftsmanship”: “What’s really important for a creator isn’t what we vaguely define as inspiration or even what it is we want to say, recall, regret, or rebel against. No, what’s important is the way we say it. Art is all about craftsmanship. Others can interpret craftsmanship as style if they wish. Style is what unites memory or recollection, ideology, sentiment, nostalgia, presentiment, to the way we express all that. It’s not what we say but how we say it that matters.”

Poet Robert Frost remarked that “style is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward.”

Are you dizzy yet?

I took a crack myself at defining style in an essay in the Sin and Syntax Salon: I suggest that literary stylists use wonderful words, smart syntax, literary devices, and maybe even structure to echo or underscore the idea of their story.

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But, mucking  around a bit more, I asked some of my favorite writers—including Po Bronson and Susan Orlean—how they define style, and whether they have favorite “stylists.” Here’s what they said:

Po Bronson:

I don’t have singular favorite stylists, I just keep a mental catalog of style tricks I’ve seen over the years, which are available to draw upon (if, theoretically, I could remember them at the right moment). But I do think about it. On my website I have this page where I have an example of a variety of fiction and nonfiction, implementing stronger styles of various sorts. One’s a story through FAQ style narrative. One’s nonfiction meant to read with the immersion of fiction. One’s about split alternative narrative futures. One’s an early short story in maximalist voice, my reaction to the popularity of minimalism in the early 90s.

Susan Orlean:

Style is so hard to describe… I guess I’d say it’s as ineffable and indescribable as someone’s personality, and in fact, I think a writer’s style is linked exactly to personality. It’s the voice of the storyteller, the distinct tone and tenor of how a writer “talks.” I think of it as a genuine and organic expression of the writer’s way of looking at the world.  My favorite stylist? Hmm. Non-fiction? Or fiction?

Tommy Tomlinson:

I usually think of style as something that strikes me AFTER I’ve read the story—if the story is really good, I’m a lot more concerned about what happens next than how the author is presenting it. When the style outshines the substance, I usually just put the book down. It’s a delicate trick, I think, to write in a style that sounds like a narrator (or a character) speaking, and not like the author speaking. I love a narrative voice that sounds more like somebody telling me a story than an author writing down words. When the style is right it’s intellectually absorbing AND emotionally rewarding.

Gary Smith of Sports Illustrated has a distinctive style—he talks directly to readers, guiding them through the story, peppering them with questions. Every time I read a new Gary piece, it’s a jolt to read that style, and I’m always thinking this is the time it won’t work. Then 100 words later I’ve forgotten all about it and I’m neck-deep in the story. This is one of my favorites. And here’s a story I did a few years ago as a Gary Smith homage.

Katy Butler:

The “literary style” I worship is compelling and transparent. If style is the window through which I see the story, I don’t want the window drawing attention to itself, covered with filigree or etching. I want to see the characters in the scene, and be absorbed in the writer’s thoughts. So I don’t like unnecessarily fancy words or over-clever thoughts. On the other hand, I work for hours on the opening of a piece to get it right. I don’t want any dirt or lumps on that window. I scan the sentences, as if they were poetry, because what trips the tongue will trip the eye, and beautiful rhythm will please and reassure the reader without her knowing it. You want the reader to know she’s in good hands. I omit unnecessary words and details. I trust my irrational mind or heart when it insists on including a detail whose significance I don’t understand.

In the opening of “My Father’s Broken Heart” [written for the New York Times Magazine], I HAD to include the mention of two cardinals in my mother’s birdbath, her Japanese iron teapot, the weak October sunlight in which we discuss turning off my aged father’s pacemaker.  I don’t want the reader to linger over those details, but I want them to subtly suggest the fidelity of a long marriage, my immigrant mother’s foreignness and interest in Zen, the weakening of the end of life.

So I like style that is pared-down, and yet beautiful. Metaphors and similes exist, but are sparely used. More is implied than stated. There’s rhythm, alliteration, choice of “kitchen table” Anglo-Saxon words rather than multisyllabic Latinate language.

On the other hand, I love Virginia Woolf, and her language is often complex.. But the language never overwhelms the images. I am carried on a stream.

Primo Levi’s “Survival in Auschwitz” is another example of the style I like.

Good prose writers are secret poets. We use all of the craft skills of poetry: telling detail, synecdoche, repeating elements at the opening and the end, rhythm, scansion, etc. But we pretend we aren’t doing it.

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My colleague Audrey Dolar Tejada, a journalist and poet who experiments with nonlinear storytelling at www.strangetango.com, added these thoughts:

Literary style is ultimate self-expression and exploration. In an era in which books are largely marketed to leverage on multiple platforms, in digital forms, as movies and screenplays, and as brands, I eschew the temporal for the eternal. Stylists like Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges wrote novellas—a literary form now rarely published in which concept and form, not necessarily plot, are part of the intellectual and sensory enjoyment of literary works. Judged against today’s best sellers, Borges’ “The Library” and Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” are unmatched in their innovation, spare beauty, and ambition.

How do you define style? ? Add your comments, below. And if you’d like to play around a bit with style, there are some suggestions in Week Twelve section of Online Writing Classes.

My third year of teaching at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism wound up last night, in a place called The Monday Club Bar in Harvard Square. Over tart lemonades, chic pizzas (flatbread with Meyer lemon and arugula) and “hot dates” (almond-stuff dates wrapped in bacon, broiled, and drizzled with balsamic vinegar), we reflected on a year of working together. Several fellows handed me rewrites of their final assignments, which ranged from reflections on 10 years of covering Cuba, to a war photographer’s account of watching the U.S. Marines take a bridge in Iraq, to an article about moms and boys, to a memoir about a swashbuckling dad who was a bush pilot in Lesotho.

We spent the last few weeks looking at the way different writers make their prose musical through the use of rhythm, and playing with the rhythm in our own paragraphs. I lectured these Nieman and Loeb fellows on parataxis and hypotaxis, even writing an essay on the search for rhythm to try to make some sense out of these somewhat obscure terms of lit crit.

I’ve streamlined a semester’s worth of lessons and put them into an online writing course. Try some of the exercises out! And if you’re a teacher, let me know you’re interested, and I’ll add you to a mailing list of like-minded souls trying to encourage good writing in their students.

I’ll end with a riddle: is this passage by Raymond Chandler, in Farewell, My Lovely, an example of parataxis or hypotaxis?

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.”

Some chewy bits and pieces to offer you this week. First, kudos to David Finkel, whose book The Good Soldiers was just named the recipient of the Anthony Lukas prize. I’ve long been an admirer of Finkel’s narrative journalism, which came to my attention when I edited the Nieman Foundation’s Narrative Digest. The Good Soldiers offers an interesting counterpoint to The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins.

Both books are examples of masterful war reporting, but they also make a study in contrasts about the role of the narrator in nonfiction storytelling. Finkel choses the third person, zooming on his soldier protagonists. (See this Washington Post excerpt.) Filkins, on the other hand, uses his book to write in a way that is impossible in his New York Times stories, as he explains in “Up Close and Personal in Iraq,” an article by Ankush Khardori in The American Prospect. Just read the first few pages of each, and you’ll notice the difference in point of view.

How will books like these fare in the future, as traditional publishing adapts to new technology? You may have seen the host of recent news articles about e-books, and you may even be considering buying a brand-new iPad. In the Sin and Syntax Salon, Sarah Baker gives you the lowdown on what she calls the “chaotic bazaar” of book publishing.

Motoko Rich also had an interesting (if oddly written—did anyone else think it went in circles?) article about how e-readers kill the fun of looking at what others are reading. Is the Kindle a conversation killer? I once sat next to a handsome guy on a plane who was reading The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. My asking how he liked the book kicked off a conversation that took us to Frankfurt. And it gave me a cool connection in Washington, D.C. (He was a staffer for Congressman John Conyers.)

OK, now back to our conversation about writing. I wanted to share some suggestions from my California colleague Nora Isaacs, who is a terrific journalist as well as a freelance editor.

Nora is good on tips. I appreciated the ones in her book Women in Overdrive. And taking some of those tips to heart, I will stop writing and start assembling some literal bits and pieces for a dinner party tonight.