Reading & Eavesdropping
It’s a two-fer! How are two of your fave pastimes making you a better writer, without your having to conjure a single word?
In this continuing series in which I reply to my decade-ago writing self in my writing memoir, This Is Not A Writing Manual….
Chapter 2, “Writing Without Writing”
Synchronicities. Those little gifts from the universe in the form of the name of an agent from a friend when you’re ready to shop your novel, or a free easel on the side of the road the day after you decided to start painting again. Julia Cameron tells us to look out for them when we begin The Artist’s Way.
Recently, synchronicity came in the form of an invitation for me to explore one of the ideas I put forth in TINAWM, Chapter 2, “Writing Without Writing.” In that chapter, I equated reading with writing: “Virtually all reading, even reading for pure pleasure, can count as writing … As long as you ask yourself” the “craft-related questions the book poses for you.” And also “it’s been while reading that I’ve had some accidental but major breakthroughs in my own writing.”*
I can still get behind all that.
And.
Reading can also be a barrier to writing, as I discovered in technicolor when I did Week 4 of The Artist’s Way, which is known as Reading Deprivation Week. Cameron entreats us not to read anything for one week, essentially so that our muse has a chance to get bored and do some play, make some mess.
Boy howdy, did I do some stuff when I turned off the social media and vowed not to read anything at all (or watch TV). I got out my watercolor pens and made two pretty pictures, I cleaned my grill then made a delicious steak on it, and I also ripped up the staircase runner I’ve hated for 5 years to reveal lovely hardwood stairs…then I treated myself a little shopping and redecorating at Home Goods.
It was all SO REWARDING, and left me with a house and notebook full of beautiful things.
Did I do any creative writing? No. But TAW is teaching me is that my muse wants to do more than write. It wants to paint and cook and move furniture and rugs. As a result of those 7 days of play, I felt strong and rejuvenated. I also discovered many more hours in my week, which I will not cede again to the likes of social media.
But what about reading? I think one of the things I discovered during RD week is that I don’t tend to use reading as an anesthetic—at least not reading novels. Reading novels is relaxing and inspiring. But other kinds of reading, particularly social media, is damaging to my muse. Not only is it a huge time suck, it also encourages the kind of comparison which, to borrow Teddy Roosevelt’s phrase about the green-eyed monster, “is the thief of joy.”
At the same time, I do absolutely need time off from novels and research, if only to make me miss it. Reading Deprivation made me EXCITED to go back to reading, and it’s made me more discerning about what to read next.
Chapter 3, “Eavesdropping”
There’s a lot of really solid information in this chapter about how eavesdropping on the conversations of others helps a writer develop a sense of “the vast moral grayness of human experience,” at the same time that is “teach[es] you how people talk,” but I think what really stood out to me on rereading the chapter was the way I wrote about the unpredictable and cyclical nature of the craft of writing.
On the one hand, yes—eavesdropping can improve your writing.
On the other hand, for me, this improvement took a while. Initially, eavesdropping “made me a worse writer” because listening to all those juicy conversations about other people inspired me “to write about things that had never happened to me.” And when I was 22, writing about a mother who’d abandoned her daughter…well, let’s just say I was in over my head.
This isn’t a plea to “write what you know.” In our post-#ownvoices world, that advice has a Pandora’s box ring to it that I’m not going to entertain right now. Allow me to sidestep “write what you know” to say “respect where you’re at” in your writing journey.
Respecting where you’re at in your writing journey could look like saying any of the following to yourself:
Poetry scares me but I want to try, so I’m going to put my fears aside and be willing to write some bad poetry on my way to decent poetry.
I’m young and nothing very interesting has happened to me yet, but I’m going to write about the world as I see it, and respect that maybe my most interesting material will emerge in a few years. All writing is good practice.
I want to write a fantasy novel but so far I’ve only written historical fiction—I have a lot of learning to do, and this will require a lot of drafts, but I’m up for the challenge.
I feel burned out. I’ve written 3 novels in 5 years that have gone nowhere, and I need a break—so I’m going to take off 6 months, then sit back at my desk for NANOWRIMO.
Had I been able to respect where I was at earlier in my writing journey, I would have saved myself much of the angst that comes from “why hasn’t this happened for me yet????” The truth was that for me, I needed to do some growing up before I could write a novel that would resonate with a wide readership. I needed to genre-hop, and have a kid, and start a literary journal, and teach writing. All of that improved my dialogue (and character development, and plotting, etc) at least as much as eavesdropping.
At several points in TINAWM, I refer to the “long road of the writing life”—and for good reason. Writing is pretty much the only career people never retire from, and usually start as a child. The road is LONG, with many twists and turns and ups and downs. I’d call it a rollercoaster, but those are much too fast. Think of ourselves as more like snails on a path with no end.
And every day I come to my writing, I try to respect where I am on that path. If it’s a sunny, breezy day, great. I enjoy it. If it’s raining and I’m soaked and my tears are only adding to my wetness, that’s okay too. It’s where I am.
ALL OF IT—I promise—ALL OF IT is getting us further down the path, even if we look up day after day (month after month) and it seems like we’re seeing the same damn trees above us. We are making progress.
Where are you on your path? In what ways can you respect where you’re at, and show yourself some kindness? Let’s connect in the comments!
*This feels like a good time for a footnote to just say that the chapters from TINAWM have much more information in them than the bits I single out in these responses. These little Substack essays are only meant to be replies to the parts of my earlier book that stand out to me now, and to add to the thoughts about writing I had ten years ago.
Awesome reminders. Thanks Kerri. Thrilled to hear The Artist Way has opened another dimension in your life. Happy Artistry!