Writers on writing - Jones, Montgomery, Lake, Tullis, Lamott & Gilbert

I frequently post about writers on writing and there's been a few recent compelling pieces about writing from three different sources to note here.

The first was "Getting the Story: A roundtable discussion", an e-mail discussion from the magazine Creative Nonfiction moderated by Matt Tullis with writers Ben Montgomery, Thomas Lake & Chris Jones. Topics covered all dealt with nonfiction writing and while the entire piece had some great content to it, below are some of the notions that stood out the most to me:

From Tullis on whether creative nonfiction and journalism operate on different ends of the nonfiction writing spectrum...

"Some of the best creative nonfiction I've read over the last five years was actually journalism, and by that, I mean stories written about the lives of other people, reported by people who know how to report and synthesize what they have reported, then craft a story that captures a place, a time, a person—sometimes all three—to give readers an experience they won’t soon forget, one that reaches truths which fiction and memoir strive for but often fail to reach."

From Montgomery on the question of whether the right term for this type of writing is "creative nonfiction" or something like "narrative journalism"...

"I’m not really concerned with how we categorize it or what we call it. Seems like there’s a new name for it every year. In the end, it’s a stack of facts and reported detail and dialogue ordered to give life to a story. It’s journalism. Narrative journalism seems redundant."

From Jones on the import & process of reporting...

"True nonfiction, the sort of nonfiction that might last and has a chance to matter, is built on a foundation of reporting. And not just a little reporting. Whenever anyone asks me what I do, or whenever I have to fill out a form that asks for my profession, I usually answer “reporter.” A writer can be any number of things. A reporter can be only one thing: a finder of facts. That’s what I love most about my job, that’s what I think I’m best at, and that’s what I most want to be. I want people to read my stuff and think, That guy’s a reporter."

"Reporting really is a two-step process: find your sources, and then mine your sources for material. I usually try to make a list of the people I want to talk to. That list will change because it’s useful to ask the people you talk to who they might talk to if they were writing the story, and they will give you names that you've never heard before. And then I talk to people, a lot."

From Lake on when to stop reporting...

"When you see the story in your mind, from beginning to middle to end, and you can write down that structure on a blank white sheet of paper and there are no gaping holes. I should clarify: This does not actually mean you stop reporting. What it means is you can start writing. But you keep reporting as you write because the act of writing reveals these little pinholes in the reporting, these places where you don’t know quite as much as you should. So you keep making phone calls right up to the end. You solidify, you deepen, you seal all the leaks. You may never actually be done until the thing shows up in print."

From Jones on writing a story...

"I usually have a rolling Word document filled with contacts and ideas and sentences that have popped into my head. I don’t outline, but like Ben, I write from memory first. I don’t go back to all that stuff until after I have a first draft. Then, I go back and correct my mistakes and find plaster for the holes. Otherwise, I get too bound up, reading back over everything. I want my story to feel natural, not constructed, if that makes sense."

Excellent content from this piece for Creative Nonfiction Magazine and another interesting piece on the subject of writing was from Gretchen Rubin who wrote the self-help bestseller The Happiness Project. On her Happiness Project blog Rubin posted "14 Writing Tips from Anne Lamott" with wisdom from Lamott's book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. The tips from Lamott that Rubin passes along are very solid and reminded me of reading and reviewing Bird by Bird last year.

Final piece on writing to note here was from Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, with her essay for the website Bookish. Gilbert offers a response to novelist Philip Roth who spoke of how writing an "awfulish field" to work in. Roth is a renowned author of many books, including The Plot Against America that I enjoyed quite a bit, and it's certainly his prerogative to be down on the field of writing, but was also interesting to read Gilbert's thoughts in support of writing as a profession. The part that struck me the most was the following...

"Writing is a voluntary act. Becoming a novelist, then, is not some sort of dreadful Mayan curse, or dark martyrdom that only a chosen few can withstand for the betterment of humanity. Writing is just a thing. It is a lovely thing, mind you, and it personally means the entire world to me, but I still recognize that it is just a thing. It is a thing that you can choose to pursue with your life because it excites you, or because you have a flair for it, or because it seems more rewarding than toiling away in an office. Sometimes it even works. Not always, but sometimes. If you're lucky, you might be able to make a small living out of this thing. If you're exceedingly lucky, other people might come to appreciate your gifts. If you are phenomenally lucky, you might become lionized in your own lifetime, like the great Philip Roth himself."

Some really great material on writing and the producing of it from these three sources.

Two great pieces on light and dark side of football - by Wright Thompson & Patrick Hruby

There's two pieces of writing I've seen lately that take completely different approaches to looking at football and which seem equally well done and true.

With the view of football as a fan experience is "Pulled Pork & Pigskin: a Love Letter to Southern Football" by Wright Thompson for ESPN. The piece is from 2007 and covers all that's great about college football, particularly in the states that care about it the most. The pageantry, the fan devotion, the gameday traditions... all chronicled by Thompson in a way that reminds me of Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird (which I reviewed the other day) urging a writing approach of reverence to the subject.

Not necessarily exactly on the flip side, but with an approach looking at the player rather than fan experience was a recent Patrick Hruby feature for The Washingtonian. "Did Football Kill Austin Trenum?" is on the impact of concussions in the sport and tells the at times gut-wrenching piece of a Virginia high school player. Hruby often writes of the darker side of sports (with the most recent piece I've linked to being on the business of sports) and it's solid writing he provides on Trenum, the dangers of concussions and things any parent of a concussed young athlete should be aware of.

Again, both very different pieces, but both excellent in their own right.

"Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott

In the oldie but goodie category is Anne Lamott's 1995 Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life about... both of those things.



I head about the book from author Chris Guillebeau who recommended Bird by Bird for anyone wanting to write better and found myself drawn to not only Lamott's views on writing but also her take on the world. I like interesting contradictions in people and Lamott comes across as religious (with her citing C.S. Lewis and his Surprised by Joy as an influence), profane, funny and with good insight. One thing that particularly stuck with me was how she seems to see the world with reverence and have that come across in her writing. At the same time that she write with wonder, though, she very much writes her world, with all it's warts.

In terms of the more nuts and bolts advice she gives around writing, the biggest notion that stands out is a writer writes. It's appointment work that requires putting in the time and good writing something that often can come when you just keep writing and then gleam the good out of the bad. The eloquent (and memorable) phrase used by Lamott is "shitty first drafts." Not to cause injury patting myself on the back, but this idea very much reminds me of the process of writing college English papers way back when... actually, just prior to the original publican of Bird by Bird.

Lamott also notes that if stuck on what to write about, someone should narrow down as much as possible (with the idea of "writing through a one inch frame") and just start describing. She recommends giving yourself short assignments about things as random as school lunches from childhood and people interacted with. The point is to just get started... with the Bird by Bird title coming from Lamott's father telling her brother how to get a report on birds done.

Just a very cool book that strikes me as a kind of (extremely honest, warts and all) love letter about writing by someone who has also taught classes on the subject. She also references the writer as a chronicler of events who stands apart and takes notes as things occur (or just occur to them) and the benefit of writing groups for people who take on this at times solitary pursuit.

Whether someone writes for a living, hopes to, or just loves to write, Lamott notes the reward for a writer in daily work done with devotion and commitment. It's not so important what's written and especially not important what the work starts out being (again, "shitty first drafts"), just to sit down, write... and then repeat the process.

"The Art of Non-Conformity" by Chris Guillebeau

After learning about it from The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss (which I enjoyed quite a bit), recently finished reading The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau.



Really solid book by Guillebeau that has some excellent stuff around living and working and some of the things that stood out to me (which I may be restating for my own use) are the following:

The often harmful idea of working to live

Concept from Guillebeau is that too many people view work as a have-to-endure slog to achieve some distant future goal of then enjoying life. The opposing view he trumpets is that life short and someone should think of how they want to live and start doing that.

The often excellent idea of taking a different tack

Direction given in the book prologue is to "think for yourself instead of following the crowd" and follow on idea that it ok to dream of unrealistic things... even if they don't come to pass (and they could), usually no harm done. To this point, Guillebeau writes about the concept of worst case scenario planning and whether said worst case really enough to not do something considered (with this same idea in the Ferriss book).

Approaches to a work

Guillebeau notes that regardless of whether someone works for a boss or is self-employed, their best job security is own competence. As someone who has done well with self-employment, he describes it as self-reliance and notes that many businesses can be started very cheaply (and may not make someone rich, but perhaps enough to make a living)... an idea which almost certainly led to Guillebeau's recently released The $100 Startup book. In relation to working for others, he writes about someone hiring a boss rather than being hired by a company. Even if not taken as far as in the book example, there's still something of heft there around someone targeting the type of work desired to do.

Recommendations of additional resources to check out

People, books and websites noted by Guillebeau include the Anne Lamott book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, the Seth Godin blog (or his website), the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, Zen Habits by Leo Babauta, and Guillebeau's own Art of Non-Conformity website (which includes his "A Brief Guide to World Domination" document that led to the book).

Really a solid book overall from Guillebeau and an interesting life he's created for himself with his writing, speaking and teaching... all stemming from an unconventional approach towards his work and time. A final thing I found of interest was an anecdote told in the book Postscript about someone unsubscribing from Guillebeau's blog and leaving a "thanks for everything, but I need to go it alone now" note. Interesting story that to me hits on a point about how-to and self-help type books... just ruminating on them is good and well, but the import of action and forward movement (even if the destination not known) can't be overstated.