I have thankfully never suffered from writer's block, but if you do, perhaps you could try this innovative means of writing in hopes of curing it:
Write naked.
I can't say that his work was especially impressive that day, but he was putting words to the page, which apparently is a big deal to anyone suffering from writer's block.
On Wednesday of this week, I received an email from someone who I don’t know. This is the entirety of his message, minus his name and the Word document that was attached.
___________________________
I play poker in las vegas, and not a week goes by that someone doesn’t say your the politest poker player.
Poker is a nasty brutal game but it doesn’t mean I have to be like all the others.
most people mistake politeness for weakness.
I am not a writer and doing this hard for me
I have attached my personal project on winning, poker, aggression, OODA LOOPS, women, the marines, alcohol, loneliness, insanity, hell and my 2 cents on all of the above
enjoy the quotes
back to my cave of darkness
___________________________
Two days later, the same person sent me this email:
___________________________
I know how extremely busy you are - so to take time and reply with such an awesome and considerate e mail is something I will always remember
OH I FORGET- YOU COULDN`T EVEN BE BOTHEREDT TO HIT REPLY AND SAY THANKS FOR YOUR INTEREST OR DROP DEAD--
I know it would have taken maybe 2 seconds
Oh well just another dick
will ignore you in the future
___________________________
I’d like to say I was surprised, but I really wasn’t. I receive messages from people like this from time to time. Sadly, I’ve become fairly accustomed to this level of surprising vitriol when I fail to respond to someone in what they perceive to be a timely manner.
A couple years ago, I was in the process of reading the first 30 pages of an unsolicited manuscript that I actually liked a lot when the writer emailed me and told me to delete her manuscript from my computer immediately. I had taken too long to reply to her unsolicited request, so she called me a bunch of terrible names and demanded that I never read her story.
I can’t imagine what these people are thinking when they do this kind of thing. Is burning a bridge really going to help?
Nevertheless, I replied to my most recent attacker, hoping that perhaps he would reconsider such actions in the future.
___________________________
Seriously? You sent me something on Wednesday, and two days later, you send me this?
Listen, man. I'm an elementary school teacher. An author on deadline. The founder and producer of a storytelling show that has three shows in the next two months. I was teaching a storytelling workshop on Wednesday night. I’m have six pages of a comic book due on Monday and an entire musical that should’ve been finished a month ago. I had parent-teacher conferences this week. I spent the week reviewing report cards. I'm the father of two kids ages six and two. Both of them are sick. Oh, and I’m a husband, too.
Yeah, it's true. Your email was sitting in my inbox, waiting to be opened. 48 hours later and I hadn't had a chance to reply or even read it yet. You weren't exactly my priority.
Are you kidding me?
Your email was insanely rude. I can't believe how rude it was. I hope, with all sincerity, that you learn from this mistake going forward. There’s no need for this level of rudeness. It gets you nowhere.
___________________________
Less than 24 hours later, he replied.
___________________________
I DID NOT READ YOUR RESPONSE-
I can only hope that is how your are treated
___________________________
I replied instantly.
___________________________
I don't believe you.
___________________________
No response from him yet.
If you haven’t seen Taylor Swift’s Christmas video, you should.
It’s a lovely thing, but it’s also an exceptionally valuable lesson for anyone who creates content. Actors. Writers. Artists. Musicians. Designers. Anyone.
Treat the people who make your work possible very, very well.
My agent, Taryn, once told me that although she thinks I’m a talented writer and a great storyteller, one of my greatest attributes is that I treat people with kindness and respect.
Basically, I’m not a jackass.
This may come as a surprise some of my friends, but it’s true.
I’m polite and respectful to my editors and the professionals at my publishing house. I respond to every email and tweet from my readers. I bend over backwards for bookstores and libraries. I’m accommodating to the organizers of literary festivals and speaking tours.
Taryn said that it’s much easier to sell my books when the people who buy them know that I’m not a jerk. That I am a decent person to work with.
I think this was probably Taryn’s way of warning me not to become a jerk, which can apparently happen after someone sells their first book.
I didn’t understand her concern at the time, but since publishing my first novel in 2009, I’ve had the honor of meeting many, many authors. Most of them are kind, humble, generous souls. The salt of the Earth. The best of the best. Truly some of the finest people who I have ever known.
But there is a very specific segment of authors and unpublished writers who are not nice. They are entitled, arrogant, rude, angry, demanding jerk faces.
They are also almost all men. This may simply be a reflection of my personal experience, but probably not.
I suspect that the same is probably true for musicians and celebrities like Taylor Swift. Most are kind, generous, and polite. Some are probably not.
I was not a Taylor Swift fan prior to watching her Christmas video. Her music was fine, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I would occasionally play her songs her songs at weddings, but I didn’t have any Taylor Swift songs in my musical rotation. Other than a handful of her hits, I didn’t know any of her work.
After seeing this video, I’m an enormous Taylor Swift fan. I’m not sure if I like her music any more than before, but I like Taylor Swift as a person a whole lot. I’m much more likely to give her music a chance now. More inclined to watch a video on YouTube.
This was a very smart thing for Taylor Swift to do, but most important, it strikes me as exceptionally genuine. I felt like I was watching a real person doing real things for real fans. I felt like I was seeing the real Taylor Swift.
Perhaps I’m naive. Maybe the video was a carefully orchestrated, cleverly choreographed production by a team of promoters and marketers, but I don’t think so.
I think that Taylor Swift is probably an exceptionally kind person. Someone who knows how to treat her fans. Someone who values them and understands what they have meant to her career.
Taylor Swift has a new fan today thanks to that video, and she’s reminded me about the importance of treating my substantially fewer fans well. To go above and beyond whenever possible. To thank them for making it possible to do what I do.
I might not be sending Christmas presents next December, but I’ll be watching for ways to let my readers know how much I appreciate them.
Slate’s Matthew J.X. Malady offers any number of reasonable answers to this question, but I think the answer is far simpler:
Writing instruction at the elementary, middle, and high school levels is taught primarily by teachers who are not writers and do not engage in writing on a regular basis.
Most teachers are readers. We read for pleasure. We read novels, nonfiction, magazines, and endless amounts of text on the Internet. We are forced to read the material that we assign to our students in order to evaluate comprehension, lead discussions, and answer questions.
Most teachers are also mathematicians. We add, subtract, multiply, and divide on a daily basis. We work with fractions in the kitchen. We measure at the workbench. We solve the same problems that we ask our students to solve in order to teach, model, and diagnose errors.
Few teachers are writers.
A third grade teacher requires her class to write a fictional narrative that includes a magic key and a hole in a tree.
When was the last time that teacher sat down and wrote a fictional fictional narrative using a pre-assigned plot point?
A middle school teacher assigns his students an argumentative essay on the death penalty. When was the last time that teacher wrote a five paragraph essay on a pre-assigned topic?
A high school teacher requires her students to write a 15 page paper on the differences between Julius Caesar and Macbeth in Shakespeare’s plays. When was the last time that teacher wrote a paper on a pre-assigned topic, using pre-assigned readings, with a strict page limit?
How often does any teacher write anything similar to what he or she assigns students? How often do teachers write for pleasure?
When I conduct workshops on the teaching of writing, the first thing I tell my workshop attendees is that listening to me talk about the teaching of writing is not the best way to become a better teacher of writing. I invite them to flee my workshop immediately. Run away! Find a writing class at a local college, a museum, or in their town’s adult education program. Enroll. Start writing. Start writing every day. Becoming a writer, and learning to become a better writer, is the best (and perhaps the only) way to become a better teacher of writing.
When I assign my students an essay, I also write the essay and share my work with them. When I assign my students a series of open-ended questions, I will always answer at least one of them. When I teach my students about poetry or playwriting or personal narrative, I write alongside them. I invite them to peek over my shoulder and watch what I am doing, like I do to them. I understand the struggles and frustrations of a writer. I understand what is important to a writer. I understand the challenges that an assignment presents. I quickly learn about where I need to focus and redirect my instruction.
The question I get most often from teachers in my workshops is about how to motivate the reluctant writer. It’s always been the most difficult question for me to answer, because I have no specific strategy to recommend. I have no intervention to deploy. No tricks of the trade.
My students are always motivated to write. I do not say this to boast, and I am not exaggerating. In my 16 years as a teacher, I can count the number of truly reluctant writers in my classroom on one hand.
My students want to write because they perceive me as a writer. They see me write every day. I share my work with them. I tell stories about my struggles and successes. Most importantly, I know what a writer needs to write. I know what a writer wants. I know what it takes to motivate yourself when all of the words on the page look like garbage and all you want to do is play a video game or eat a cookie or read something, anything, better than what you are writing.
Instead of writing every day, teachers purchase books filled with prefabricated writing lessons and activities that no actual writer would ever even consider doing. They hang posters about some nonexistent, linear writing process on the wall. They attend workshops and expect that six hours spent in front of a successful teacher of writing will somehow fundamentally change their practice and improve their instruction. When I tell teachers that just 15 minutes a day, every day, is more than enough time to become a writer and begin to understand what their students truly need, they tell me that they don’t have the time.
There are no easy answers. No simple solutions or quick fixes. Writing is complex and emotional. It’s a struggle and a joy. It’s hard. Incredibly hard. If you want to help your students become better writers, become a writer yourself. Not even a good writer. Just a writer.
That’s it. Just start writing.
I’m often asked where I get my ideas for books, which is an understandable but impossible question to answer.
There is no well of ideas. There is no secret formula. There is no one answer to that question, as much as fledgling writers seem to want there to be.
Simply put, I hear something. I read something. I see something. The flicker of an idea is born.
Something Missing was born from a conversation with a friend over dinner about a missing earring.
Unexpectedly, Milo began with a memory from my fourth grade classroom.
Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend was born from a conversation with a friend and colleague while monitoring students at recess.
My upcoming novel, The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs, originated with a story that my wife told me about her childhood just before falling asleep.
My unpublished novel, Chicken Shack, began with a dare.
All of these are simplifications of the actual origins of these novels. There are more complex stories behind the origin of each book. In all cases, additional ideas were grafted onto the original idea to create a more complex story.
But in terms of the initial spark, that was how each story began.
Which leads me to this poster, which is displayed in the Yawgoog Heritage Museum at Yawgoog Scout Reservation, the camp where I spent many of my boyhood summers.
I suspect that someday in the future, this poster will be added to the list of initial sparks for one of my novels.
A nun’s day at a Scout camp? How could this not be the basis for a novel?
