{"id":2189,"date":"2014-07-20T06:33:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-20T10:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2189"},"modified":"2014-07-20T19:30:25","modified_gmt":"2014-07-20T23:30:25","slug":"put-the-cat-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=2189","title":{"rendered":"Put the Cat Out"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Siamese<\/a>

Shut out again. (photo: author)<\/p><\/div>\n

Steven King\u2019s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft<\/a><\/em> focuses on how he became a writer and the process of becoming and many of his observations about being a writer ring true to me. Like most people who dispense advice to the novice, he emphasizes the virtue of \u201cass-in-the-chair\u201d\u2014writing every day, which is a groove serious writers finally work their way into, despite the distractions of kids, jobs, and grocery-shopping. Right now, for example, my lawn is shaggy as a pony\u2019s winter coat.<\/p>\n

He says if he doesn\u2019t write daily, \u201cthe characters begin to stale off in my mind\u2014they begin to seem<\/em> like characters instead of real people . . . the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade.\u201d Like many other writers, I hit the keyboard early in the morning, and the excitement King talks about is what gets me out of bed at five to grab a cup of coffee and dive into the work.<\/p>\n

He also insists that you shut the office door, \u201cyour way of telling the world and yourself that you mean business.\u201d Certainly, I shut mine, mostly to keep out Grant, a Siamese cat who thinks sitting in my lap and watching the cursor move across the screen has limited entertainment value and is something to complain about. (I created a monster when I played YouTube cat videos for him.) Eliminate distractions\u2014phones, beeping email alerts, insistent cats\u2014anything that takes you away from the page.<\/p>\n

King tries to write 10 pages a day\u2014about 2000 words. That\u2019s his goal, and he thinks every writer should have one, every day. I\u2019m a fan of getting a draft on paper, powering through and getting the story down and fixing all the inevitable issues and lapses and problems in rewrite. After that, I revise, a chapter a day.<\/p>\n

Room, door (and the determination to shut it), goal. Adhering to these basics, he believes, makes writing easier over time. The more you do it, the easier it gets. \u201cDon\u2019t wait for the muse to come,\u201d he says, and it\u2019s astonishing how many would-be writers talk to me about their lack of or need for \u201cinspiration,\u201d as if it sprinkles down from the clouds rather than up from the mind\u2019s carefully plowed field. King says, \u201cYour job is make sure the muse knows where you\u2019re going to be every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone who aspires to write has likely read a lot, too. We\u2019ve listened to lots of TV and movie scripts. Lots of other people\u2019s words, many not very good, have passed into our brains, and our subconscious is filled with the stuff. It\u2019s in there. It wants out. When a phrase or scene comes too easily, almost unconsciously, I\u2019ve learned there\u2019s a problem. It\u2019s canned, it\u2019s derivative, it\u2019s not a genuine product.<\/p>\n

So now King gets to the hard part. You have to tell the truth<\/em>. Your story\u2019s truth. The writer cannot just be a pass-through for others\u2019 words, ideas, conversations. \u201cThe job of fiction,\u201d he says, \u201cis to find the truth inside the story\u2019s web of lies.\u201d Even when we love the characters in a book and we really, really don\u2019t want it to end, if the book has told the truth, we can feel satisfied when we turn that last page. If not, a squeaky voice starts up somewhere in our brain, Madeline\u2019s Miss Clavel saying, \u201cSomething is not right.\u201d As stunning as most of Gone Girl<\/em> was\u2014a web of lies if ever there was one\u2014I thought the ending fell unexpectedly flat, and King has put his finger on the reason. In working out her denouement, author Gillian Flynn somehow strayed from the truth of her characters.<\/p>\n

By contrast, truth-telling pervades the Pinckney Benedict<\/a> stories I reviewed this week (on the home page for now; eventually the review will end up in \u201cReading . . .\u201d). One of the best quotes describing the struggle to find the truth nugget is a favorite of my writing coach, Lauren Davis<\/a>, and it\u2019s from sports columnist Red Smith, who once said, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.\u201d<\/p>\n

While that\u2019s true, King also says that even the worst three hours he ever spent writing \u201cwere still pretty damned good.\u201d<\/p>\n

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