For the Love of Being a Student
My new obsession with craft + three gems of writing wisdom
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As a kid who lived and breathed ballet, there was something thrilling about being at the studio between classes, getting to peek in and watch the older girls through the blinds.
There was something almost voyeuristic about it, watching these industrious sylphs—half-technicians, half-artists—pour themselves into their craft, taking risks and pushing their technique, outside the pressure of an audience's gaze.
I'd watch them take corrections and turn them into fuel, pushing for the extra revolution in their pirouette or the extra lift at the top of their jeté. Brows brimming with sweat and focus. Even in simple uniforms of leotards and worn tights, no tulle or silk in sight, I felt a deep reverence for what I was witnessing.
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I've been thinking a lot lately about this duality of being an artist, and how they—we!—often occupy two realms.
There's the realm of performance, work that's visible out in the world: a painting that hangs on someone's wall, a performance onstage, a published piece of writing.
But then there's this whole underground world of skill-development and risk-taking, with much less veneer and more hits-and-misses. A world of notebooks brimming with half-baked sketches, skeletons of poems drafted in workshops, and center floor adagios the world will never see. Where knees get scraped and lightning strikes.
There's something about this underground world, where one shifts from being a performer to a student, that I find intoxicating. If I had to guess, it's because so much feral activity and growth happen here that so few are privy to, lending it the flavor of something sacred.
Offer me a front row seat, and I'll take it every time.
After a few years of dabbling in more ‘online business’ waters, returning home and seeing myself fully as a writer has felt like driving a stick after years in an automatic. Familiar and satisfying when you’re in the flow of it, though not without its jerks and stall-outs.
The ‘performance’ aspect of this writerly homecoming has largely happened here on Substack, where I've gently-but-firmly kept myself accountable to show up and share most weeks. But then, just out of public view, my underground writer life has been abuzz with activity.
Last fall on a whim, I joined a vibrant community of (intimidatingly talented) writers and started attending craft workshops and office hours with a lion's appetite. I’ve since gotten to know the architecture of a poem, learning about voltas and metaphor and line breaks. I’ve read creative nonfiction through the eyes of a student, learning how to write personal essays that pack punch and heat. I've forayed into new forms, filled notebooks with daily challenges, dabbled in quietly putting poems on the internet and sharing my work for community feedback for the first time.
Every bit of it left me thoroughly satiated, hungry for more.
I was swapping voice memos with a friend recently about this burgeoning obsession with learning and craft, telling her about all the writerly things I've been feasting on, but also that I can't imagine this is something people would want to hear about. She replied, "I mean, the people who read your stuff are probably just as nerdy as we are—and this stuff is all really interesting to me!"
She has a point. We can’t be the only two who savor the peeks behind the curtain, who are hungry for extra helpings of answers to our nosiest questions:
What are you learning about great writing that you wish you knew earlier?
What has it been like emotionally to be a student again, surrounded by people who are really really talented at the thing you want to grow in?
How are you learning to integrate what you're learning into what you're doing?
How can we as writers build community by pulling back the curtain and sharing what we know?
With the same enthusiasm I often use to crane my neck and catch glimpses of what other artists are willing to share about their craft, I suddenly feel called to join the realm of writers who do the pulling back of the curtain.
There are a few gems of writing wisdom I find myself returning to again and again lately.
They're all things I've gleaned in various workshops, but they didn't really crystalize for me until I started doing more writing and revision of my own—much like that one piece of wisdom a mother tries to impart a thousand times, that won't fully click until her kid is ready to hear it.
While I learned most of these in the context of writing poetry, I've found they can be applied broadly across a variety of forms and genres to make my writing more potent, generous, and (ideally) more resonant. And because poetry can't seem to help itself, many of these seem to double as suggestions for how we might approach connecting and communicating with each other.
🍐 Give the reader space to have their own experience.
I felt a seismic shift the day this really clicked, that this is what evocative writing is really about. Great poets and essayists—the ones whose work stays with me long after I've set it down—don't beat me over the head to make sure I understand their experience; they generously leave room on the page for me, the reader, to have my own.
It reminds me of something I heard over and over when I went through coach training—that as coaches, it's not about us. It’s not our job to tell a client about a time we were in there shoes, nor is it our business to convince anyone of anything. Their truth and their choices take center stage, while we help facilitate that experience with a blend of subtle skill and loving detachment.
How? Some nuts and bolts:
Show, don't tell. Let metaphor, image, and sensory details do the heavy lifting, avoiding abstractions where possible. When I'm tempted to explain how I felt, I ask: what single image could I employ here, that illustrates that emotional experience?
Practice restraint. Resist the urge to layer image on top of metaphor on top of description. Try giving the reader a singular, vivid image to rest on.
As the great Ellen Bass said in a workshop (and I'm paraphrasing here): trust that your reader is 110% smarter than you. In other words, you don't have to lay it on thick to make sure they get. Your people will get it.
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🍐 When you're tempted to go bigger, try going smaller.
I find this usually comes up when I'm trying to convey a really B-I-G emotional experience, wanting to make sure the reader feels the weight of it. I can often feel myself trying too hard as it’s happening.
Of course the cruel irony is, the more I layer on heavy brush strokes and grasp for ways to convey the magnitude of the thing, the more I tend to veer into cliches, abstractions, and convincing—all of which fall flat. Much like in heated conversations where I desperately want to be heard and understood, rambling and over-explaining rarely helps.
When this inevitably happens in my writing, one technique I've found really helpful is to go small. Tiny. Granular.
“The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don’t have to write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.” - Richard Price
How? Some nuts and bolts:
Instead of trying to describe a massive, shapeless feeling, try zeroing in on a specific moment, image, or detail.
Experiment with tighter sentences with fewer commas. (This one is HARD for me, but pushes me outside the limits of my typical writing style.)
Give the adjectives a break! Try reaching for nouns and verbs that sing.
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🍐 Treat writing as an adventure without a map
There is nothing more boring than sitting down to recount something and already knowing exactly what you’re going to say. I've believed this for years about journaling, but I've found it holds up in writing more literary forms, too.
To quote Joan Didion:
“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
In spite of the certainty I might crave at the outset, I'm learning to surrender to the thrill of sitting down to write about something and having absolutely no earthly idea where it's going to take me.
Realizing that I can start a poem or an essay without a map of the points it will hit or the shape it will take has been deliciously freeing. In fact, my new secret mission when I sit down to write is to land somewhere unexpected—to allow myself to be surprised on the page as the piece unfolds, knowing the same may very well happen for the reader.
How? Some nuts and bolts:
Start when you don’t feel ready to start. Sometimes I will literally say to myself, "Your task is not to write a final draft, your task is to go on an adventure and see where it leads." Practice listening for what wants to be written. You can always go back refine later—for now, focus on uncovering the bones of the piece. (Or as said recently, "follow the heat.")
Related: as Brendan Constantine taught me, sometimes you just have to get some words on the page—build a few rooms, if you will—and listen for the knock from your true subject.
Look for an opportunity to turn the piece in an unexpected direction. (Fun fact for fellow poetry newbies: this 'turn' or element of surprise in a poem is called the volta.)
Writerly friends! What's the best piece of writing wisdom or advice you've received? I'd love to hear in the comments.
Until next time,
Michelle
Writerly friends! I'd love to know: what's the best piece of writing wisdom or advice you've received?
All fabulous craft advice, Michelle, and things we forget too often, even when we know them.
The writing wisdom that's resonating most for me these days centers around giving myself credit for showing up to the page. And, when writing feels hard, asking myself, "What if it were easy?"