What kind of (writing) advice do we need right now? Gentle encouragement or tough love?
A week of polarised reading
I’m always reading books on writing. Craft books. Memoir-type writing books. Essays on creativity and the writing life. I’m perpetually hungering for another insight into this strange and beautiful life I’ve signed up for. A life spent in my imagination. A life spent putting marks on a page and convincing myself it’s as essential to human survival as any of those more obviously utilitarian professions. A life where the thing that makes you come most alive also sometimes feels like it’s burying you. I need guidance and comfort and encouragement and notes from those who’ve been here before me and survived - and sometimes even flourished.
For the past week I’ve been reading two books simultaneously. One recently published, one published in 1980. Both take a radically different approach to encouraging the writer to keep going. Which is, in the end, all we writers need: a nudge (or depending on the book, a stern talking to) that persuades us not to give up.
I have shelves full of writing books, partly justified from my years of teaching creative writing. I’ve read most of them, dipped into a few others and, occasionally I find one that I bought on a writing-book-buying-spree and forgot about. Dorothea Brande’s Wake Up and Live! is one of those books. This book, published in 1980, the year I was born, is written in a voice and style very much of its time. Quite formal in tone. A bit stern. And full of tough love, much of it based on the premise that though, as humans we have a drive towards life, there’s a darker drive to our psyches which pulls us towards failure, despair, even death. It’s hard to read at times: it exposes our human weaknesses, our failure to get things done, our propensity for distraction, for making excuses for ourselves - and the danger we face of frittering away our lives. Brande doesn’t mince her words. At times I felt like I was being told off. But then, I think there are times when that kind of tough love helps. When we need to be told to stop naval gazing and to pull up our socks and get on with the job at hand.
“One motive is at work…the intention, often unconscious, to fill life so full of secondary activities or substitute activities that there will be no time in which to perform the best work, of which one is capable. The intention, in short, is to fail.”
Wake Up and Live, Dorothea Brande
Ouf, that stings, doesn't it? Facing up to the stark reality that we put so much energy into things that makes us fail - or prevents us from doing the real work. Of course, there’s a positive message, a message of great hope, to all Brande’s reprimands. She makes us aware, if we are able to shift our perspective, our habits, our purpose and drive, that we are capable of far, far more than we realise.
“We live so far below the possible level for our lives that when we are set free from the things which hamper us so that we merely approach the potentialities in ourselves, we seem to have been entirely transfigured…”
Although Brande exposes us for the procrastinating weaklings bent on failure that we can be, at times, she also believes in the success of which we are capable, that we do not even let ourselves dream of, for fear of how wonderful it might be to truly pursue (and realise) our dreams. She also doesn’t leave us stranded with these polarised ways of living but gives us some concrete ways in which to redirect our attention from ‘the will to failure’ to the ‘will to succeed.’ Most of all, she urges us to start living as though success were inevitable. How different, would our days and our choices be, if were sure that we could succeed?
Chuck Wendig takes a different approach in his new book, Gentle Writing Advice: How to be a Writer without Destroying Yourself. In the opening chapter, he reflects on how, when he started out as a writer, the advice was very much about keeping your backside on that seat and churning out the words. He also admits to, in the past, having been one of those telly, get your head in the game, type of writing teachers and even titled his first writing book: The Kick-Ass Writer. However, in a moving and insightful way, he reflects on the fact that we live in different times now. He reflects on how the world is fragile and breaking and heartbreaking and unbearable and how we’re all undone by it, how we are all caught up in some crisis or other, either personal or national or global. How we are already being given tough love, already being shouted out, already having so much asked of us, every moment of every day, that perhaps, when it comes to our writing lives, we need to tread a little more gently.
“These are tough times, and creatively, it can become especially difficult to find your way through that tangle of chaos and fear to make art and to write stories. I’ve found that the last four/five/six-ish years in general have been pretty corrosive to creativity. Certainly for me. Maybe for you.”
Gentle Writing Advice, Chuck Wendig
Chunk Wendig is a horror writer and to describe him as prolific would be an understatement. He knows how to put in the work. Which is why we trust him when he suggests that there might be a wiser way to approach our work than berating ourselves or pushing ourselves into burnout.
He also acknowledges that there’s a middle way. That we can marry accountability with gentleness.
“There can be gentleness in unison with urgency. There can be a way to hold yourself accountable without giving in to shame. It isn’t one thing or the other. The difficulty of the thing is finding the balance between the sharp rock in your back urging you to move, and the pillow under your head urging you to rest.”
What I love most about his approach, is his sense of humour which, a bit like Brande (who doesn’t have much of a sense of humour) gets to the truth of things. For example, his questioning of whether writing advice is worth its salt to begin with (which is funny considering he’s written a book called ‘Writing Advice’):
“Writing advice is bullshit, but bullshit fertilizes.”
He makes fun of himself and reveals the strange quirkiness - and also the vulnerability of us as writers (“Writers are not a protected species.”).
I think what made me warm to Wendig most was how he shifted the lens and reminded us that the thing we writers are finding so hard right now - the writing - is, in fact, the thing that might save us. That the process of creating, of putting stories out in the world, is an opportunity to find joy and comfort and hope and purpose. That if we let go, for a second, of our sense of comparison, of the ever tightening noose of social media, of the mess that the publishing world is in, of how world weary we are right now, and all the million and one reasons that are keeping us from writing and return to what it is that first made us want to write, that writing, as act, might be the most radical form of self-care - a beautiful way to be gentle with ourselves, both our human selves and our writing selves, which, of course, are inextricable.
“Maybe you can write today. Maybe you can’t. Maybe you can manage to write a lot, maybe just a little. But the writing is an opportunity, whenever you can seize it. Writing can be a chance to escape. It can be a way to funnel your rage. It can be a place to wrestle with your fears, to contextualise your anxiety, or to do literally none of that and instead enjoy a buffet of vicarious fictional thrills. Writing can help you understand the world outside your door, or it can help you avoid it entirely.”
I guess that both writers helped, in their way, and made me realise that each approach is important: that depending on the season, the week, the time of day, even, I sometimes need a stern talking to, whilst at others I need some support, understanding and empathy. Life is hard. It’s okay to find it hard. But life is also short and is asking something important of us. Luckily, there are enough writing books out there to pull us up and keep us going, whatever model of coaching we need.
Writing Prompt:
As February draws to a close, we get to have a bonus day, the 29th. That only happens every four years, when there’s a leap year. The next one will be in 2028.
The dimension of time is such a great resource for a writer. Time slips. Shifts in time. Time distortion. Time as linear and time as something much more slippery and unpredictable and subjective.
For this week’s prompt, use the phrase: ‘On this day, four years from now…’ as a starting point and keep writing. It might be a journal entry, a kind of forward looking memoir, a poem, the beginning of a short story or a novel, a chapter, some stream of consciousness writing. Just see where it goes.
If the future doesn’t speak to you, consider: ‘On this day, four years ago…’ and do a bit of a retrospective.
Set a timer for 10 minutes, write without looking back, be open to what comes up.
Adapt Your Writing Prompt:
Imagine your character’s life four years from the point you’re writing from. What does it look like? Spend some time making note of details. Where are they living? Have their relationships changed? In what ways does their life look different and why? You could also flash back four years.
It doesn’t matter whether you story or novel ends up using that time frame but it’s interesting to imagine the longer arc of our character’s lives as a way of getting to know them better and understanding where they’ve come from and where they’re going. You never know, considering different points in your character’s life might trigger a great plot idea too.
Recommendation:
Writing books:
Obviously, both Dorothea Brande’s Wake Up & Live and Chuck Wendig’s, Gentle Writing Advice, are worth the read and worth having to hand whether you need tough love or some gentle encouragement.
A Novel:
I’m loving The Last Beekeeper by Julie Carrick-Dalton, a local New Hampshire author. It’s the most gorgeous speculative novel about what the world would look like if the bees died out. The novel is told through the eyes of Sasha, both as a child and as an adult: she is the daughter of the Last Beekeeper and her life, her past and her present, her relationship to her father and the secrets she holds about the future all drive the narrative. Mystery and beautiful nature writing come together in this gorgeous novel, which also sounds a warning bell about our precarious future on this planet.
A Quotation to Chew Over
“Some days, you rescue the writing. Other days, the writing rescues you.”
Gentle Writing Advice, Chuck Wendig
Thank you for reading. Do share any writing books you love - I’m always looking for an excuse to add to my collection. And also what you think about the tough love versus gentle and encouraging approach when it comes to writing advice.
With love, and keep writing,
Virginia🤍
Virginia Macgregor is the author of five novels for adults and two for young adults. She has an MFA in Creative Writing with a specialisation in the teaching of writing. She lives with her husband, her three children, her four cats and a home full of books and coffee mugs, in New Hampshire.
There's definitely a time and place for the tough-love and for the gentle approach. Thanks for the thought-provoking post!
Love the comparison! Team gentle over here. 😊