Your Story Read online

  Imagine if you were told that by writing every day for a year, you would cure a life-threatening condition, ensure the safety of your child, or save the planet. You’d find the time.

  Look, I’m all for hobbies—we all need something to do with our spare time when we’re not working or engaged in the gazillion shoulds, musts, and have-tos of our lives. Scrapbooking, knitting, practicing the ukulele. I’m a great fan of puttering. I can while away entire days just dabbling in this and that.

  But if writing is just a hobby, chances are it will remain hobby-zoned.

  Writing was just a hobby for me for 10 years. I used to write at night after work—sometimes, when I felt like it or I felt motivated. And I’d attend a weekly writers’ group. When my kids were little, Zed would take them out on a Sunday morning and give me a few hours to “potter” on my writing. But 10 years later, when I was at a dead end in my professional life, Zed said to me, “You are a miserable wretch. Why don’t you finish that bloody book you’ve been writing for ten years?”

  “I won’t be able to earn any money for a while,” I sniffled.

  “We can survive,” he said. “Baked beans on toast for a few months doesn’t sound so bad.”

  Only when he gave me this permission did I knuckle down, and for six months I focused entirely on pulling my novel together.

  There are professors who work full-time who manage to write books. Waitresses who work double shifts. They wake in the dark to get two hours of writing done before their day begins. They write on weekends. They sacrifice. A book gathers momentum, the blade of its message becomes sharpened, its coherence sets when we dedicate ourselves to it. Even if we can only devote part-time hours to it, we can devote full-time attention to it.

  Without this kind of commitment, we’re just puttering.

  So, you want to write?

  Steal time.

  Make time.

  Sneak time.

  Take time.

  No one gives it to you.

  Or just don’t write.

  The only person you will make miserable is you.

  22

  I don’t really believe I can do this

  Some of us are born thinking we’re superstars (predominantly those of us with Jewish parents, like me).

  The rest of us earn our self-worth by testing our dreams against the world. If we’re robust, we return after failure and try again. And again, each time a little more robust and resilient. But I know few people (barring the megalomaniacs) who are spared the tilt around the anxiety of “Am I up to this?” or “Who am I to have these wild and wicked dreams?” Some of us manage the wobble better than others. Some of us are more practiced at finding the center. But trust me, we’re all tuned in to the silent whine in our inner ear of “Can I really pull this off?”

  If you give too much attention to resistance, it will block you from writing like a brutal bouncer at the door of a club you want entry to. So you have to be smart. Brave. Unflinching. Make creative choices.

  One of my favorite quotes by the poet Robert Frost hangs above my desk:

  You’re always believing ahead of your evidence.

  What was the evidence I could write a poem?

  I just believed it.

  The most creative thing in us is to believe in a thing.

  It’s the poetic equivalent of Nike’s Just Do It. Frost is saying that believing in yourself is a choice. It’s up to you. Self-belief is not a fact, it’s an attitude, and we measure it based not on who we are, but on what we do. Sitting around wishing we could write will not build our self-belief. But writing something—even if it needs a lot of work—will give us a sense of accomplishment. With feedback and work we can improve it, and then we will think, This isn’t so bad, and maybe even, Huh, I wrote that? It’s pretty good.

  And voilà, suddenly you believe.

  23

  I’m afraid of failure

  Funny that.

  Do you think there’s anybody who’s not? We all are, just as we all fear rejection and dying. No one gets a free pass on this one. So seriously, suck it up. If you weren’t afraid, you’d be insufferable. Writers are always doing the dance between “just believe” and “fear failure.” That’s what makes our efforts worth it—that we have battled with ourselves and spilled blood on the page and we have words to show for it. Get used to having that fear hanging around in the same way you have to learn to live with migraines or a neighbor with a yappy dog. If we can’t eliminate them, we learn how to manage them. We work around them.

  But if fear stops us from writing, we’ve given it far too much power. It’s become the boss of us. We have to wrestle it into submission—or lock it in the basement for a few hours—so we can write.

  I know you want a guarantee. You want someone to underwrite your investment of time, energy, money, and love and make promises that if you do everything right, you’ll finish your book, it will be brilliant, you’ll have publishers fighting over you, and you’ll go on to become J. K. Rowling, rich and famous.

  But I can’t give you that, because:

  I’m not God;

  there are no guarantees in life, ever; and

  the truth is, it’s unlikely to happen.

  Failure is part of what makes life interesting. So go ahead, and if you fail, remember—you’re just “doing research for a book.”

  Besides, a completed manuscript—even one that is unpublished and has been rejected by publishers a million times—is only a failure if that’s the title you’ve chosen for it. I prefer “bloody well finished.”

  24

  I have no talent

  Who gets to legislate who has talent and who has none? Your primary school teacher who screeched and carved red lines through your work?

  I had one of those. Her name was Ms. Richards, and I was 11. She detested me for no reason I could ever work out. She had her favorites and I was not one of them. But I figured out early on that I didn’t want her as a passenger on my tour bus. I left her in my fourth-grade classroom. She was a sad and bitter human being, and what she thought of my talent was never going to determine my future behavior and success.

  On the other hand, my tenth-grade teacher, Mrs. Orkin, loved my writing. I carry her in my heart with every book I write. Find people who love what you do and want to hear your story. Then write about your own Ms. Richards—these folks make great characters in our books.

  And we get to exact long-overdue revenge.

  25

  An aside on talent for the tragically untalented

  Here’s what I think about “talent.”

  Talent isn’t enough: Some of us, it’s true, have an innate flair for writing. So we imagine, I’ve got this. We act like we’ve got a business-class ticket. But we don’t. Talent is not even our boarding pass. It may get a writer to the terminal, but it does not guarantee takeoff, a smooth journey, or arrival at any given destination. Getting to where we want to go is, perhaps counterintuitively, unconnected with talent. (It has far more to do with stamina.) Talent is who you are. Stamina is what you do. Blissfully untalented writers can have Fifty Shades of commercial success because they have muscle in places “talented” writers neglect.

  Talent often tags along with debilitating neurosis: Gifted writers can be serious nutcases. (I say this with great affection—any one of us might be a slight nutcase.) They are blessed with a form of self-consciousness that, although it is a writing strength (it makes their writing glimmer with depth and takes a reader into some of the most hard-to-reach internal spaces), when turned on itself, can be paralyzing. They overanalyze and overthink what others will say. They become hunchbacked with self-doubt and shattering vulnerability. They often self-sabotage. They don’t write. They struggle to finish.

  Talent gives people a false sense of entitlement: Just because someone has talent, it doesn’t make them special (remember, we’re all special). I know, I’m sorry, this must come as terrible news to the talented. We all nurture the romantic fantasy of being
discovered, based on one or two fairy-tale success stories of famous writers who became multimillionaires overnight. If this is your Plan A, my quiet suggestion is to put a Plan B in place (one that does not rely on the same elements that produce a lottery win). No matter how gifted a writer you might be, we are all subject to the same rules of the game: hard work, perseverance, and the willingness to refine our craft. Talent is not a shortcut, although it might give you a head start in the confidence department. Tortoises can beat hares.

  If you were born with writing talent, you’re one of the lucky ones. If you believe you have none, please don’t stop reading this book. If you have something to say, I will teach you how to harness the qualities you already possess to start, write, and finish what is burning inside you.

  26

  I just don’t think I have what it takes to be a writer

  What does it take? Is there like a checklist?

  When we start anything new, we’re going to come up against stuff we can’t do yet. Because we’re beginners. When we start writing, we’re often:

  turning out writing that’s clichéd, sentimental, and unoriginal;

  uncertain about our own abilities;

  short on experience as writers (we haven’t spent enough time on the craft);

  far from our authentic writing voice and scared to take risks;

  not really in tune with why we’re writing or who it’s for; or

  impatient and give up too easily.

  But all of these can be overcome. We simply need to develop certain qualities to help us work through these challenges. To overcome lack of originality, we need to cultivate curiosity; to forge through self-doubt, we need to foster conviction; if we’re inexperienced and haven’t done our homework, we need to buckle down conscientiously and do the work; to get to our writing voice, we will need to take risks, and that will take fastidious courage. In writing to reach an audience, we need to be connected to our story and to the bigger story we are sharing with our readers. And if we are going to finish what we started, we need commitment.

  What you’ll notice is that these states of being have less to do with writing and more to do with the writer. If we don’t possess these qualities innately, we can learn them. They begin with our thinking. If we can change our thoughts, we can develop any number of new qualities.

  Writing, we are taught, is character driven.

  Not only those in our stories. I’m talking about you, the writer.

  Yep, you’re driving.

  27

  I need to read this book first

  The question you should be asking yourself right now is whether reading this book is your own personal form of procrastination or resistance. You could read endlessly about how to write without ever actually writing. If you really want to write, shouldn’t you toss this book aside and get some words down?

  When we start writing, we imagine that there’s a secret, maybe even The Secret, that we have been too thick to unearth unassisted and that, once learned, will ignite the fires of our own creativity. Like addicts, we tell ourselves, Just one more book. One more writing exercise that begins, “I remember . . .” One more instructive “Show, don’t tell.” Sometimes, we’re readily distracted by promises of iridescent “it’s-out-there-somewheres.”

  Reading is no substitute for doing. Self-help feeds on self-doubt.

  So you can read this book. But after you’ve read it, you have to promise yourself that you’re going to write your own.

  28

  Yes, you should, and here’s why

  Let’s forget about “them” for a while.

  They can get in the way. The publishers, the readers, the reviewers—all those who are not sitting at your desk trying to get words onto the page. “They” who may never materialize, but who haunt you nonetheless.

  Start by writing for the most important person, the only one who counts. Write for you.

  Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief, said in an interview, “I set out to write a book that meant something to me, but I ended up writing a book that means everything to me. That’s probably the first reason it has had any success at all, let alone international success. . . . As a reader there is something about encountering a book when you have a sense that it means a great deal to the author.”

  So write what you care deeply about. Get clear on why you are writing. Don’t do it from your ego—think bigger: what does my story offer to someone else? Don’t be pretentious or grandiose. Readers see through posturing. And we will eventually get tired of our own posturing too.

  Think of writing about your life as a pilgrimage, a search for personal and emotional truth. Guided by the lantern of language, you will learn to see, know, and understand yourself better. The poet Mary Oliver writes in “Sometimes” from her collection of poetry Red Bird that to live a life we must be able to do three things: bring our full attention, allow ourselves to be astonished, and then relay what we’ve witnessed.

  When we give our own lives attention, they become illuminated. As we write our journey, we mark our heart’s trail, and map our internal territory: I was innocent . . . I was loved . . . I was lost . . . I was broken . . . I found joy. . . . We name the nameless. We come softly upon insights. And because we now know the truth, we can choose our self-disclosure. The only person you owe anything to is yourself.

  I hope by now some of the reasons you can’t write have loosened their hold on you. In the chapters that follow I am going to introduce you to every good reason why you should give everything you have to your writing.

  29

  Write to meet yourself

  Oscar Wilde famously said, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” In lives bombarded by media and op-ed and news we have no part in creating, we flail about in roles, social constructs, ideologies, privileges, and philosophies that are so invisible and infectious, we’re completely unaware of whether we actually believe them or want them as part of our story.

  I woke up to this in my early 20s when I realized that although I was expected to love live concerts and clubs, I detested them. For a long time I pretended to enjoy them, because I wanted to fit in. I dragged myself to smoky, noisy, disco-ball, epilepsy-inducing, light-flickering, eardrum-damaging clubs, drank alcohol I didn’t want, and tried to be sexy. I invariably came home with terrible stomach cramps. When I owned the fact that I actually detest crowds, noise, and disco balls, I felt my spirit chiropractically align. I became myself.

  Sometimes we fall in with the pack because we don’t want to seem difficult. We want people to like us. And we don’t want to miss out on “the fun” that everyone is having. But what’s fun for some is not fun for everyone, and I have come to the place in my life where I want to choose what’s fun for me, even if it involves five days of silent meditation (which to my husband sounds like hell). Likewise, flying to New York to run a marathon would be a form of torture for me, but it gives him joy and meaning.

  Each time we claim a piece of ourselves through our preferences and our non-negotiables, we fortify our spirit. We lay a cable through the architecture of our beings. We wake up from the dream walk of following the crowd, walking someone else’s path, living out someone else’s expectations for our lives.

  When we write our story, we confirm I prefer this to that. I belong to my history, to my family, to my past, to my memories. For those of us who feel lost, writing our story grounds us in a firm sense of conscious selfhood.

  30

  Write to break the silence

  Words came easily to me.

  Apparently I started speaking when I was nine months old. My older sister, Carolyn, was born deaf and couldn’t speak. She and I had a special bond that required no language. I was the only one who could understand her. So at nine months, by all accounts, I became her interpreter.

  As a child, when our family crowded around the TV to watch Bonanza or Little House on the Prairie, I�
��d watch, then turn to Carolyn and silently mouth the key plot points. I learned to summarize and to pick out what was important.

  I watched my sister go through 12 grueling years of speech and hearing therapy to learn to pronounce her s’s and th’s so she could make herself understood in the world.

  When something comes easily, like language did for me, it’s natural to take it for granted. When we have never had to struggle or reach for something, we imagine it is our birthright. We don’t see it for what it is. Health works that way. Food on the table. The right to vote. Freedom from violence. Instead, I have always felt how precious words are. How some have to struggle for them. How painstaking it can be for some to find their voice. And I have always felt, as one who has a voice, an overwhelming responsibility to use my words well and wisely and to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves.

  Many of us can speak. But we have no voice. We don’t speak what is true—perhaps we don’t even know what is true for ourselves. When we undertake to write our journey, we are committing to breaking a silence within us, to discovering who we really are. Words become bridges. Without words and language, we have no voice. We are cut off. Alone. Writing connects us inward and to each other, so that we can belong to our own true selves and to this world.

  When we can put something into language, when we can give shape to our shames and shadows, they transmute, they get sucked like a dark genie back into the magic lamp of language, where we can contain them.

  31

  Write to take back your power

  To tell a story, we must believe that we have a right to tell it. For those of us who feel powerless, writing our stories helps us reclaim our power. We get to remember events in the way that we experienced them—not factually, but emotionally. We get to call “the incident” “rape,” or “incest.” We choose what we call ourselves: a “survivor,” rather than a “victim”; a “woman who loved her children and stayed,” rather than a “battered woman.”