Another good Medium article with good re-read value has many important remarks on writing:
I’m using the word story here to stand for a complete essay with a beginning, middle, and end, where the writer overcomes some obstacle, a truth is learned, or some other sort of meaningful shit occurs. An anecdote is just something that happened — an incident. You go to the dentist and someone says something funny. It might be an amusing bit for the dinner table, but it’s not a story because you haven’t made it one yet.
This is the difference between retelling something that happened to you and what a writer does. If something crazy happens to a normal person, they have been gifted a story. A writer creates stories out of the flotsam and jetsam of life. We take the mundane and bring it to life. We make it a story. You can’t wait for life to drop gold in your lap, you have to be an active participant in seeking it out.
A professional photographer makes a photo, they don’t capture one. Anyone can take a good picture in perfect circumstances. The difference between a pro and an amateur is that a pro can do it on demand, and do it every time no matter what the conditions. The amateur needs all the planets to be aligned.
Every time I see one of those “nofilter” hashtags, I think, “What a schmuck.” Pros use filters to trick the camera into revealing what our eyes see.
That tells the truth on the trade!: use your talent to turn something mundane into interesting. For those of us who lack literary talent, there's always the plot twists & conflict we've mentioned before.
Speaking of drama:
In my experience, the travel story where everything is lovely and nothing bad happens is a complete waste of everyone’s time. It’s like showing us your Instagram feed from Jamaica. Why do we give a damn about the vacation you took? You gave us nothing. We learned nothing. You just made us watch your shitty home movies. Writing flaccid travel stories where nothing happens is the modern equivalent.
Ha! Well put. Inside we all are a little mean & envious—“Not a very masculine trait, envy” used to say a former friend—and we couldn't care less for those perfect portrayals on social media. "So you're so affluent and you were having fun? Well, F U!" But we're drawn to drama & conflict—negativity bias, I suppose—and guess what? There's always drama & conflict underneath those picture-perfect portrayals on social media!
Source: LittleAnimatedMeComics on Instagram
He goes on: «When I do sit down to write, I never start at the beginning. We left for the airport at 6 am. I begin by writing a scene in the middle that struck my fancy. I need that first sentence to tell me what it’s about, or at least where I want it to go. The story doesn’t always cooperate.» Hear, hear! That’s a good tip, to just “throw” the reader into the middle of a scene, and build from there.
More often than not, I start with the title and the subtitle. They provide a pretty good roadmap for where I think I’m going. While they are quite likely to change before I’m finished, this helps to guide me. What do I think I’m trying to say? It can change, but you have to start somewhere.
It doesn’t really matter what the story is, it has to connect to some part of my life so that I’m interested and engaged. Something learned or remembered, a piece of literature or a movie scene, a bit of information that connects the dots for me to a larger truth about myself and the world in which I live. The event — the anecdote — is merely the catalyst for bringing that idea forward. What did this experience teach me about myself and the sweaty mass of humanity swirling around me?
That sounds like a good tool to break away from writer’s block: begin in the middle of an anecdote, with a title and subtitle as guides, and weave the story from there.
I’m always looking for an emotional connection with the reader. It might be anger, disgust, romance, love, hate, fear, or hope. It’s all grist for the mill. I don’t intentionally set out to make the reader feel a particular way.
I’ve always considered writers who are able to make you feel things, the best; the ones who can plant you in a roller-coaster of emotions whether you like it or not, the ones who use their talent to do as they please with the reader. But those are the masters. Us humble hacks have to make do with our limited talents:
I might be asking them to join me on a little journey and experience the emotional roller coaster we’re on. Other times, it’s clear that I’m out of my gourd and I’m simply spinning out for their amusement. Sometimes, I’m just revealing how cracked and broken I am because that’s how I feel that day and I know that many others feel the same and will relate.
I realize that sounds like a lot of emotional woo-woo. What I’m trying to pull out of you is this: What does that boat ride you took have to do with me? It doesn’t have anything to do with you, you say, it’s my story. Ah, so you want me to be engaged with something I have no interest or involvement in?
If we can’t relate to your story, we stop reading. But if you give me details that grab my attention, and reveal a certain amount of vulnerability, humanity, and personal connection, I can empathize and suddenly I’m not watching from the shore. I’m in the boat with you.
As I say, my writing goal is “words that are better than silence.” To entertain, to teach…, to make the reader’s time worthwhile.
When you take a small story and begin to relate it to your own life and experiences, suddenly you have all these possible paths to explore. Suddenly, it has the ability to become a much larger story. It gives you the space to have your own character arc, with a beginning, middle, and end. You are met with an obstacle, work to overcome it, possibly with the help of a guide, and are transformed somehow in the end. A classic story structure.
That’s the beauty of creativity, or “having ideas make love” as James Altucher used to say: you get new baby ideas.
I enjoy a darkly funny trip of misery into the mundane. When I’m in full writer mode, I’m game for anything, the worse the better. If you’re open to the story of your life, you’ll see things you never saw before, and notice things you never noticed. Look forward to that tedious chore or errand. There’s gold out there waiting to be mined.
When I’m open, I talk to people, random people, service people. They’ll tell you all manner of crazy shit if you just bother to be friendly and ask them questions about themselves. You won’t believe how quickly they’ll spill their guts. The trick is to remember to get into writer mode when you walk out the door. It makes the world such a more interesting place.
That’s another interesting concept: “writer mode”! That way we could hopefully get rid of crippling social anxiety and shyness, and encourage creativity in a newly-discovered, magic world full of wonders. In “writer mode,” not only the world will be a more interesting place, but the writer himself!
I’m fascinated by openings. Opening sentences and paragraphs. For me, it’s an amalgamation of ad copy, literature, poetry, and song lyrics, but with a purpose. It’s an exciting opportunity to really craft something special. A perfect combination of intrigue and wordplay that entices the reader to carry on. When I’m writing fiction, I begin each chapter as if it’s the beginning of the book. You can do the same thing in your essays.
Very important to remember in these times of short attention spans!
You’ve written your anecdote down to the best of your ability, and it’s good, but it’s not enough. What do you do now? Where do we go from here? I hit return and then type three asterisks in a row “***” and then I begin again. Forget what came before. Start fresh. What’s the next chapter of the story? Tell another story about a similar experience, or begin with some exposition about what the previous act meant to you. You don’t have to know where you’re going yet. Your mind will fill in the details.
What did the first part remind you of? What movie, song, poem, memory, or arcane piece of knowledge does it evoke for you? Start there and see where it takes you. As you write, things pop into your mind and you chase them for a while. You’ll reach dead ends and have to go back a paragraph or two and begin again. I’ve taken six to eight paragraphs out of this piece already, one at a time, because each one was getting off course. I don’t delete them. I cut and paste them into another document to be used later. I have two to three more essays already waiting for me. I waste nothing.
It surely seems he knows what he’s talking about!
In my experience, if you’re having trouble writing, you’re not reading enough. It’s good to read a wide range of things, but if you’re working on a personal essay, read personal essays. If you’re writing fiction, read fiction. My biggest problem with getting through books is that I’m constantly stopping to write something down. I’ll read six pages and a lightbulb will go off and I’m off and running, writing about something of my own.
I’m not sure I’ll follow this advice right now—there’s so much to read!—but it surely is a good suggestion to get rid of writer’s block: submerge your mind in content similar to what you're trying to create, and it’ll give you something similar.
Your job as a writer is to find connections in the world, between people and ideas, between you and the reader. I heard Judd Apatow say that he was fascinated by comedians as a kid because they appeared to have figured something out about the world and had come to some insight concerning our predicament. They had answers. That’s how I view the job of the writer. We’re thinkers and we have some of the answers. We have the gold. Everyone wants the gold.
Emphasis my own. We have the gold! We’re the (self appointed) thinkers of society!