September 10, 2018 • 37 mins
New writers often overestimate their skills, avoid feedback, and get stuck between rigid rules and total creative freedom. Many write in isolation, struggling to spot their own weaknesses. This episode explores these challenges and how to overcome them with self-awareness, critique, and a balanced writing process.
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(00:00):
Welcome to the inside creative writing podcast.
The weekly discussion of craft and technique for
writers of fiction and creative nonfiction.
And now here's your host,
writer and educator,
Brad Reid. Episode Episode 33.
Today, we've got our first guest hosted episode
with writer, Jesse Holly. Get ready for some
(00:21):
great insights into the challenges faced by aspiring
writers and some practical and effective tools to
overcome them.
Welcome back to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast.
My name is Brad Reed and I am
thrilled that you're spending some time with me
today on the Inside Creative Writing Podcast.
A few weeks ago, I announced a new
(00:42):
feature on the show,
occasional guest hosts.
Now these are a little different than the
interviews that I usually do in that,
rather than me asking questions that I think
our writing community
would like to hear,
a guest host instead puts together an entire
segment of the show
about a writing topic that they are especially
(01:04):
passionate about.
Now, I couldn't be more pleased that our
first guest host is writer Jesse Holly.
He's a long time supporter of the show.
He's a member of the Patreon team and
he has a lot of great,
unique insights
into what it means to be a writer.
Now, Jesse says he's been writing for about
two years and
(01:25):
for a segment, he's looking back on the
lesson that he's learned over those two years
and the discoveries that he's made
as a new writer. Now, I'm actually going
to take exception
to Jesse's claim that he's only been writing
for two years but you'll have to wait
until the wise words segment after we hear
from Jesse for my reasoning behind that claim.
(01:45):
So without further ado, I'd like to introduce
guest host
Jesse Holly
and his great unique insights
that are going to benefit writers of any
experience level. I know they were beneficial
and useful to me and I'm sure that
they will be for you too.
(02:11):
Thanks Brad and thank you listeners for taking
the chance to listen to my writing experience
and perhaps hopefully a little bit of writing
insights.
Before we get onto the show and what
I'll be talking about, I thought I'd give
you an introduction of who I am. Am.
My name is Jesse Hawley, I live in
Sydney Australia. It's a rainy day today outside
you might hear the cars whipping past.
(02:32):
My background is in science, actually I'd researched
for a little bit with
flies and spiders on how their diet affects
their lifespan, their longevity.
I've got a whole bunch of interests,
but I found creative writing was the only
true way to express myself wholly and the
most effective way for transmitting feelings is through
prose.
(02:52):
As you well know studying the craft of
creative writing is pretty overwhelming.
It is a
very complicated world, there's no rules which means
you can get lost pretty easily but at
the same time if you look around there
is only rules which you can get paralyzed
by.
Of course there are plenty of writing gurus
(03:12):
and writing idols to look up to but
at the same time conversely there are also
charlatans and emperor's new clothes, people espousing sort
of pieces of suggestion or great pieces of
writing with,
once they're looked at properly, perhaps aren't as
deep as, you know, they're claiming to be.
Which, if you think about it, learning the
craft of creative writing sounds about as messy,
(03:34):
complicated, and confusing as the real world does
or at least it does to me anyway.
So on that note, that's exactly what I'll
be talking about this episode.
I'll be talking about how growing the craft
of writing, becoming a better writer is actually
like maturing almost as a person, developing your
personality to be,
a strong writer. I would like to tell
you about my most memorable mistakes, the ones
(03:56):
that hurt the most and were thus most
memorable
so you can be aware of them yourself.
And finally, I'll be talking about what I
think is the most important part of growth
which is, seeking out and addressing your weaknesses
and your blind spots, how to identify them,
and then how to address them.
And of course if I get the time
I'll chuck in a couple of bonus lessons
(04:16):
that I've picked up recently that might be
helpful for you. Well here we go.
So I think as a young writer I've
been writing for two years I should say.
My biggest mistake by far
which is, one that perhaps will be familiar
with you it'll be interesting it'll be interesting
to know that actually is, not admitting my
arrogance.
(04:38):
If writing is maturing, well then this is
sort of a hallmark of adolescence,
you know, thinking that you understand and you're
equipped enough to just go out there and,
make a big splash. Anyone who attempts to
say otherwise is
trite and naive to what you can bring
to the world. It's classic teenager thinking and
it's sort of the thinking that plagued my
(04:58):
own writing and my own stunted
writing growth in the first six months. So,
this is the Inside Creative Writing podcast. So
I thought I'd pass on a quick story,
in that vein. You've probably heard it. It's
getting to be a bit of a platitude,
but I'll say it anyway. So the story
goes that,
there was a professor
traveling around Japan,
(05:20):
looking to learn the art of Zen.
And
he, he's been to everyone but didn't really
find anything that interesting. And and he was
finally pointed towards this great Zen master. And
he sat down, the the Zen master sat
him down, and the professor instantly launched into
telling him all of all of his preconceptions
and ideas about how Zen works and what
he knows about it and his travels already
(05:41):
and his disappointments.
As he was talking, he saw the Zen
master had finished pouring his cup of tea
and yet was still pouring. The tea was
brimming over the cup and then began to
cascade down the side and puddle up on
the table. And the professor was like, woah,
woah, woah, woah. I really don't need that
much tea. It's sort of like dripping on
me at the moment. And the Zen master
said, yes. Well, this cup is your your
mind and the the tea is your preconceptions
(06:03):
and your ideas of zen. How do you
expect me to teach you anything and fill
you up if it's already full? Before I
can teach you anything, you have to empty
your cup. So the first six months of
my writing, I sort of forgot that I
didn't know anything and I wrote prolifically.
I was looking outwards at the distance, the
idea of finishing a novel, but I certainly
wasn't looking at others and I doubly certainly
(06:25):
wasn't looking inward at myself and my own
weak points. I wrote a lot. I wrote
fifty, sixty thousand words,
that amounts to I suppose sort of teen
poetry and the process of maturation
caught on paper.
And I'm reluctant to go and read it
now for obvious reasons just like we wouldn't
want to see our
teen diaries. Yes. Well, that's the first lesson
I learned, having to admit my own arrogance
(06:47):
before I can proceed and grow honestly. Continuing
with the aging analogy,
whoever feels like an a complete adult. I
know I certainly do not. And, we're all
sort of perpetual teenagers in a way. What
needed to happen next was to identify
those shortcomings and those weak spots
that most needed addressing most seriously
(07:07):
in creative writing.
So there's a quote by a playwright Eugene
O'Neill that says, life is for each man
a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
But if that were the case, that would
be sort of easy because you could see
what's going on in the reflection and you
could address it. You got
egg on your face or messy hair or
whatever.
But, no, it's not that easy. Reflecting on
(07:29):
our writing is difficult.
We're obscured our view or perhaps we're standing
too close and can't actually get the perspective
to know that you need help, let alone
where that help is. So if that is
the case, how do you go about addressing
your blind spots?
Well, I found one easy way is to
seek help from others. What better way of
seeing, your shortcomings than through the eyes of
(07:49):
somebody else and through earnest advice.
A good way I've found of finding out
your ignorance is to turn it inside out
to avert
yourself,
and throw yourself
into the domain of judgment and advice.
It's very difficult to get advice or answers
(08:10):
when your questions are contained only
in the vacuum of your mind with no
access to outside
help. So academically,
I'm pretty average. Smack bang, actually.
But I've grown a lot and managed to
succeed at university
through
bearing my ignorance
time and time again
publicly
(08:31):
for better or for worse I you know
not happily but I'll put my hand up
to let people know what I don't know
and thus will be steered on the right
path
red faced
you know hard thumping
but I'll I'll have put myself out there
to be corrected.
You've got to you've got to be naked
before you can be corrected I think. And
(08:52):
when it comes to
the craft of creative writing I don't think
it's any different. So the standard advice is
don't show your first draft to anybody and
that is good advice. It's strong advice. People
aren't used to seeing first drafts and it,
you know, it's probably
a piece of shit.
(09:13):
It probably
is. And in some ways, it's difficult to
fault that advice, but I have faulted it
time and time again in the last two
years. And the lessons that have come from
that have been the most memorable.
So I've given excerpts of my first draft
to friends which is okay and I've heard
good advice.
I've given it to co workers
(09:34):
and my boss and embarrassingly,
listeners,
I've given my first draft to total strangers.
Two of them. They're not strangers now, of
course. They're, Sally and Catherine.
And, I was in a cafe and I
saw Sally at least reading outside a book
and I don't know what I was thinking.
I was working on my story on my
laptop,
(09:54):
and I took a deep breath and I
took my laptop outside. I was like, hey.
How's it going? And I described
I've been writing for a year or so.
And I described my my plight, my writer's
plight, and I gave her the first draft.
And it was a difficult
it was a painful wait. But ten minutes
later, I went and saved her, scooped her
up from the quagmire that was that first
draft. And it was a shameful piece of
(10:16):
writing.
And,
the advice that she gave and that was
given by my honest boss and by the
other stranger that I imposed myself on
was earnest and incisive
and it wounded my ego sort of laid
me down from writing for days.
But each of those pieces of advice are
now turning points in my writing growth such
(10:39):
that I can
identify
exactly what everybody said as landmarks
and they're meaningful ones because
they were the most beneficial in helping me
grow. So if you're interested the advice was
too heavy handed, too too many illusions and
parallels instead of just being honest with yourself.
The other one was,
you're fitting too much,
(11:00):
sort of
meaning and verbosity into each sentence making it
difficult to wade through you've got to ease
back and and pare back your communication
and it was also you know this is
too close to home it sounds like you're
just sort of diarizing and it it might
be therapeutic but
yes perhaps you should just tell a story.
So all those three pieces of advice are
(11:21):
fantastic
and had I not shared my first draft
they wouldn't have cut so deep and allowed
me to heal and move on, as I
have and I'm very grateful.
So you identify your weak spots by,
seeking help from others, but, of course, you
can find it in yourself and reflect. So
a good way to do that well,
the main way, what you should be filling
(11:43):
most of your non writing time with, I
suggest,
is, reading. Immerse yourself in great literature. Cast
yourself before the minds of of the greats.
And
that's just such an organic way to grow
every aspect of yourself as an artist.
It'll give you techniques, feelings, emotions, thoughts, maturity.
(12:03):
Reading is just sort of like a wormhole
jumping through personal growth and development living others
lives and being in other's shoes.
And, for your writing, it's just,
inimitable inimitable.
It's difficult to find those lessons elsewhere outside
of literature. On the other end, seek out
poor literature. So I recommended this on a
(12:24):
recent episode of Inside Creative Writing, but not
just to get inspiration
by reading sort of shallow pieces of literature
but upon reading it you might see,
reflections of yourself and something that you are
doing and something that you have not that
much respect for and what greater,
kick in the butt
to move on and develop your craft than
(12:45):
seeing yourself
in a piece of art that you don't
really respect. That's a, that's a great way
to self diagnose that is outside of literature.
One of the great ways that I've found
to develop my writing skills has been through
how to write books. So as an example,
my biggest weakness in writing,
in the first year or so was not
(13:05):
using narrative summary. I wasn't summarizing a thing.
I was literally taking readers through each moment
moment by moment, scene by scene in a
grueling, I don't know, first person perspective style
like the Blair Witch Project or something, though
even that's got cuts. And I wasn't even
aware
that narrative summary or to summarize something
had a name,
and I wasn't aware that I wasn't using
(13:27):
it. So by reading how to writing books
and books on craft, I was actually able
to slap a label onto the symptom of
my own
sick
writing.
If you're interested,
my three favorite books on the craft of
writing,
Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain.
(13:48):
That's great for all the fundamentals and that
really got me going in the right direction,
I think.
Secondly, I'm a sucker for beautifully constructed sentences.
So my other favorite is Building Great Sentences
by Brooks Landon.
And thirdly,
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose.
This is a wonderful book in many regards,
not least for the appendix, which has actually
(14:11):
got a list of great literature that you
ought to catch up on if you're interested
in, having a whiz bang journey through the
history of great books. I really recommend that
too. And if you're keen on getting that,
list of recommended reading, you can just go
to the Wikipedia page of the book Reading
Like a Writer and it's got its own
little subheading. I'd recommend that. On that note,
(14:31):
on advice and seeking advice from things like
how to write books, another big mistake that
I made was taking advice too literally. So
imagine
if you if there were a book, How
to be a perfect human being.
It's pretty clear that there is no such
thing as a perfect human being in any
regard.
(14:52):
I regularly flout social etiquette and taboos and
I certainly wouldn't change that which is probably
what would be recommended. And I know those
who know me, wouldn't want my personality to
be corrected, inverted commas, by a book of
rules either. So these things should certainly not
apply to you and your personality as a
writer.
That previous book that I recommended,
(15:12):
Reading Like a Writer, the thesis of the
whole thing is great works can come from
flouting all of the rules, none of the
rules. Genuine, honest expression and writing is where
the beauty and grandeur comes. It's not by
following rules or breaking rules, it's the honesty
that transcends
all of them. When I finally admitted my
(15:33):
ignorance that I didn't know what was going
on as a writer, the pendulum swung too
far the other way, and it fell into
that saying, don't have your mind so open
that your brains fall out. Because that's exactly
what happened. I took on the world of
rules and recommendations and suggestions,
these,
cliches and structures and formulae
and they were so overwhelming they just sort
(15:54):
of collapsed on top of me and my
writing became a victim of everyone's words at
the same time which is just such a
bad idea.
So my recommendation here to avoid making the
same mistake is
read widely instructional books, listen widely, but keep
the voice of yourself
stronger than the voice of others throughout
and incorporate and evolve, but don't concede and
(16:15):
conform.
Before we leave the topic of improving your
writing through self awareness and, identifying your weak
spots and growth there, I thought I'd talk
about something that might be a little bit,
idiosyncratic
or personal, but I think it's really important
to know yourself, know what makes you special,
know what makes you challenging, your strengths and
your weaknesses
(16:35):
quite intimately and how to work around those
and incorporate them into your writing style. So
as a bit of an example of what
I'm talking about because it might sound a
little bit strange, I'll tell you about myself,
some of the the things about me that
make me challenging. I get caught up on
details very easily, the minutiae of tasks and
I lose track of the forest for the
trees. I'm very sentimental.
(16:56):
I I dwell on feelings and the emotion
in events.
I'm self involved a little bit. I can
often overvalue my own opinions and insights at
the cost of others and I love fun
a little bit too much. I drink quite
a bit, stay out late, and,
that's that's challenging. So I know that that
affects my craft because my obsession for details
(17:16):
and my dwelling on feelings,
stunts the momentum of my novel writing and
it has a tendency to make it melodramatic
as opposed to having a movement and I
I pretty easily forget storytelling
at the cost of things that seem special
to me. And, of course, this incorporates me
overvaluing
my feelings and insights.
Me loving fun too much a little bit
(17:38):
is obviously depriving actually writing time. So now
that I'm aware of these four shortcomings or
facets of my personality, I know how to
work around them and incorporate them into writing.
It's really important to identify these things about
ourselves,
I think, before we can actually start addressing
them and,
making them work with our creative writing life
if that's what we've decided to do.
(17:59):
Okay. So before we move on, I thought
we'd regroup. So far, we've spoken about the
importance of admitting our ignorance and using others,
both friends and family, and also,
writers, of course, and wonderful resources and people
like Brad Reid,
to identify our weak points and how they're
important
in growing.
(18:20):
But before I finish up and pass on
some of the latest lessons I've learned, I
thought I'd provide a little bit of writing
self help. Here's a quote from Thomas Mann.
A writer is somebody for whom writing is
more difficult than it is for other people.
As you well know, again, writing is difficult
not just in the ocean of techniques and
(18:41):
experience
and work and time that it demands,
but psychologically
writing is really easily defeating.
It's confronting. It's challenging.
It's engulfing for your life
waking
and the dream world or at least it
is for me.
And, yeah, writing is difficult. So I think
the more we can be reminded of how
(19:01):
difficult it is and that there are kindred
spirits that are going through similar struggles, the
easier the whole journey is to bear. So
on that note,
sorry to bring the show back to myself
again. Case in point.
I've been living the craft of being a
human for twenty seven years now, twenty seven
years old. I've been studying and introspecting and
and thinking and developing
(19:22):
myself that whole time, I'd say. And I'm
I'm pretty competent in wielding my persona. I
know what actions do what consequences,
which social mood calls for which conduct,
etcetera.
But,
like a human being, I vary on a
day by day basis,
hourly basis
based on biochemistry,
mood, things that happen in my life. And
(19:44):
I'm a fluctuating being. I know that, you
know, a flat mood means I'll have lackluster
ideas. If I make a mistake or embarrass
myself, I'll know that I look around and
challenge everything in my life and everything that
I've ever created and I'll reevaluate it
colored by that past embarrassing experience.
And, you know, it's very easy to look
at what you've done and,
be embarrassed by it. But I've been doing
(20:06):
this for long enough now, and by doing
this, I mean living, that I know that
this is exactly
the human condition.
We vary. We're not constant. We're not robots.
We're we're quite sensitive beings. And I know
that these moods are transient
and they come and they go like anything
else.
They don't affect me and make me think
that I'm a poor craftsman at being a
(20:28):
human being. I know that I'm a successful
mature person
and I don't let those varying moods, which
are inevitable
and uncontrollable,
I don't let them affect my broader understanding
of myself.
And this is this totally applies to your
craft as a writer I'd say or it
certainly does with me. Some days I'll I'll
(20:48):
wake up and I'll be in a dreamy
reverie and ideas will be pouring in and
through my fingertips and I'll be writing and
typing prose and movement and something that I
know will be gold and I'll be proud
of for a long while and there'll be
other days 95%
of the time in which I'm flat my
ideas are generic and cliche and they'll be
written out and adapted and they won't be
(21:09):
sufficient for what I want.
I've had to grapple with and come to
terms with how writing
and our craft varies just like a mood
and just like our sense of self, but
don't let those
shitty days of flat writing influence your view.
You've got to rise above that moment and
see yourself in the grander scheme of things
(21:29):
as a writer. That's your identity, and that's
going to vary. Before I go, I thought
I'd pass on the, most recent techniques and
insights that I've stumbled on on my own
creative writing, and hopefully they'll be as useful
for you as they certainly have been for
me to keep in
mind. So the first one is about, a
bit of like a pyramid of hierarchy of
why we read and why we engage with
art. So I was listening to a podcast
(21:50):
recently with,
Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens and he's
saying that, you know, the human spirit
is
generated from the brain which is in this
sort of vacuum cabin of the skull such
that it never actually lives with anything. It
just sort of experiences
feeling and emotion after one another. And that
the external world might shift. We might eat
(22:11):
something delicious, we might get a raise, or
we might get struck by lightning but the
only thing that's actually changing is
chemistry in our brain and these emotions. So
that's what people are ultimately doing when they
engage with our writing.
They want
their brain inside their skull wants to
live vicarious
emotions. They wanna be lifted up, you know,
(22:32):
in surprise and tension and conflict and love
and they wanna be taken down just so
they can feel the the ascent before going
up again. So our job ultimately at the
most fundamental level is to take the reader's
emotions and heart through these different states.
So we do that by giving them characters
that they care about and plots.
(22:53):
And all these different things
are just tools and techniques to actually draw
out and exacerbate
the emotion.
And at a more shallow level still,
our sentence and word choice and all of
these other sort of
superficial, in some way, techniques
sit on top of conflict and character and
(23:13):
plot. So I sort of imagine
what we're doing ultimately at the deepest level
is manipulating
emotions of the reader,
doing that by using conflict and plot and
characters
to
maximize the effect and using our words, our
our sentence order, structure,
synonyms, etcetera to maximize all those effects. So
(23:34):
I think it's really important to keep in
mind
what emotions are you eliciting in your reader
when you're writing and how could you most
effectively construct plot to maximize
that emotional
liberation and,
roller coaster ride. So I think it's really
important to think of writing in that pyramid
style structure.
(23:55):
And finally,
what I've learned most recently,
this is a difficult one to explain because
there's, it seems to be split camp, honestly,
which is,
you often hear the advice
writing is a job, you know, you write
write write and that's the right way to
go. You sit down even if you don't
(24:15):
feel like writing the act of writing will
make you feel like writing etcetera.
There are also these other other ideas associated
with it, you know, writer's block. It's got
a whole culture of productivity.
The question is,
do you sit and wait until inspiration slaps
you in the face and jump up to
write
or do you just write like a drone
(24:36):
or an office worker nine to five
like a mad person and then look at
look back at what you've done and,
and just hope, you know, that you can
draft it and redraft enough times before you
whip it into something that you can be
proud of and it will be valuable. So
that seems to be the two opposite ends
of the spectrum.
Sit and wait for inspiration
(24:57):
or pursue
it unerringly
at a typewriter.
Of course, I've been running for just two
years. I'm a child in the scheme of
things and will always be. But,
my latest thinking on this is, of course,
with most things, some sort of in between
lukewarm
Goldilocks porridge situation.
I've I've done that,
(25:17):
spartan sit down write a thousand words every
day regardless of your internal and external circumstance,
and I've done it and I'm not proud
of it. And
the amount of editing that I'd have to
do to put that onto a course where
pride might arise from, that you may as
well start again from
and I have.
(25:39):
And I've also done the other route of
sitting and waiting for inspiration to strike me,
and obviously that doesn't work either. So let
me talk about the world that I'm existing
in the moment that's, between those two extremes.
So there's a, Simon and Garfunkel song called
Cecilia
and she is the muse or the patron
saint of music and inspiration
(25:59):
and she's depicted as this whimsical
nymph like character that sort of frolics with
the singer
and produces
these, orgies of great songs and great music
and everyone's very pleased and then he turns
around to go get, you know, glass of
orange juice or something and comes back to
bed and Cecilia has escaped and she's jumped
into bed with some other writer and is
(26:19):
is creating some hit over there. So the
idea is that, creative expression is almost an
expression of passion
and with these sorts of drives be it
carnal or or hunger or thirst you'd be
familiar that if you're full and not hungry,
food doesn't taste so good. And yet if
you deprive yourself of food for some time,
(26:41):
your nose
will pick up the scents of foods from
so far off like a bear or something.
And by the time you actually eat, it's
a sensational experience.
Of course, that type of heightened sensory experience
and sensitivity
happens with a lot of pleasures.
And I'm finding creative writing, creative expression to
follow a similar route.
(27:01):
So what I've been doing is
writing
only
when my ideas have had a chance to
mature
and I've actually grown lost for wanting to
write. I'm not forcing writing when I've got
nothing to say. In fact, when I've got
writing
time, what I'll do is go for a
walk, live my life,
(27:22):
and let the ideas
either actively I'll be thinking about plot. I'll
be thinking about my story and letting ideas
cling together and cycle around and reiterate and
grow. Or at a subconscious level, this tends
to happen anyway. So I'll just continue with
my life. I'll think about the book and
let ideas mature and get myself sort of
riled up in a type of, I guess,
(27:43):
creative foreplay,
tinkering with ideas and, of course, reading,
and let ideas really mature away from the
keyboard.
In fact,
everything that I'm proud of that I've ever
created in creative writing,
be it themes, motifs, characters,
a plot twist, a plot point,
None of that has happened at the keys
of a keyboard.
It's all happened
(28:04):
living my life and thinking about writing without
that light. The light of the computer, the
light of the phone, whatever it is. It's
almost like a a light that,
a moth is budding itself, showering scales everywhere.
It it compels you to write. It compels
you to make progress. But the ideas that
you're putting on paper,
(28:24):
how how deep are they, you know? I
think it's a really good idea to spend
non writing time developing and maturing ideas such
that by the chance you actually get back
to your keyboard,
they've matured and you're brimming and,
got yourself into a bit of a lather.
The ideas that will come out will have
no choice but to be from a deep,
rich, and creative point because because you can't
(28:46):
hold them in any longer. You need to
express. You need to create. And I think
that's where beautiful writing comes from. So my
recommendation is use your non writing time creatively,
constructively,
such that when you finally get a chance
to write, it'll be some powerful stuff that
you'll be proud of from the get go
instead of relying on your future redrafting self
to,
polish a turd, I suppose.
(29:07):
And perhaps it goes without saying that it's
definitely worth giving a thought for the types
of influences that might stop you from using
your spare time, your daydreaming time from thinking
and letting your ideas distill. For a lot
of people, I suppose it'll be social media
and and their smartphones.
So it's just, definitely something to keep in
mind. How much of your time, how much
(29:28):
of your psychological
spirit and spotlight,
deserves to be spent on those platforms.
Well, listeners, that's it for, this guest episode.
I hope it was constructive. I know it
was a bit of a, a smattering, a
mishmash,
a lucky dip of content. I hope it
was, bound together in a sort of package
that made sense for you and was helpful.
(29:49):
Thank you so much, Brad, for giving me
the opportunity to come on the show. I'm
so thankful for both you, your guidance, and
of course the inside creative writing. Wonderful show.
I'm very thankful that it's been an influence
in my writing life for these years. And,
thanks very much for giving me your attention
again, listeners. I'm very thankful.
If you'd like to
(30:10):
get in touch, you can find me on
Twitter at pensapiens
and ask me any questions or just chat
about writing and reach out because
it's a, it's a tough it's a tough
life we've all decided on. Very tough. So,
yeah, give me a message. Anyway, thanks again
everybody, and, have a great rest of the
day. Bye.
(30:36):
Alright. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to
Jesse Holly for doing such a great job
as our first guest host here on the
Inside Creative Writing podcast.
You know, I was especially taken with his
metaphor,
when talking about building up the desire to
sit down and write. I've never really approached
my writing time like that, but I think
(30:58):
there's real value and real wisdom in that.
And I actually look forward to experiencing
with it a little bit in my own
writing life to see if it works for
me as well. So,
it actually also reminds me of something one
of my early writing teachers
used to say, and I'm going to use
that as our wise word for today.
So Alan Heathcock, who's been a guest on
(31:19):
our show before, was one of my early
writing professors when I was at Boise State
University.
Now, one of the things that he says
that sticks with me still to this day
is, you're never not a writer.
So writers,
in a way, are always
writing.
We tend to see the world differently
(31:40):
than non writers do. We notice the details
of life. We
recognize the unusual
turn of phrase that a friend might use
and we see story possibilities in the world
all around us. In other words, we're watchers
of the world
and we're constantly
mining that world
for elements of story that we can use
(32:03):
in our writing.
Now this is why I said at the
beginning of the show that I think Jesse
is selling himself a little bit short by
saying he's only been writing for two
years. Now, he may have only been,
intentional about getting stories put down on the
page
for two years,
but I can tell he's been
interacting with and exploring the world as a
(32:24):
writer does for a lot longer than that.
Now another thing I like about this concept
that we are never not writers
is that it helps us remember how much
more there is to writing
than just putting words down on paper.
When we're staring
blankly off into space, kind of letting our
(32:45):
stories play in our minds as if on
a movie screen, we are in a very
real sense
writing.
When we're exploring the world and we're meeting
new people and having new experiences,
we are in a very real sense writing.
When we're in the shower and that bolt
of inspiration comes
that unlocks that difficult scene problem that we've
(33:08):
been plotting,
we are in a very real sense
writing. Now there's something
beautiful
about that concept, I think. But there's also
something a little bit dangerous because it can
result in a sort of,
pernicious
procrastination
too.
Ultimately, it does take sitting down at a
(33:29):
keyboard
and putting one word after another on the
page, but don't discount the ways
in which you are a writer in all
the other aspects of your life as well.
Okay. So this week's, weekly challenge is to
do something you've never done before or
(33:51):
go somewhere you've never been before.
So, this week is all about getting out
of your comfort zone and
kind of waking yourself up to an aspect
of the world that you've never experienced before.
This, I think, is part of what it
means to be a writer.
And, I don't necessarily mean finally doing something
(34:11):
you've always wanted to do or finally going
somewhere you've always wanted to go. I actually
want you to scare yourself a little bit
this week. I want you to do something
that you never thought you'd do
or that may be entirely out of character
fee for you. So when I give this
challenge to writers,
often what they think I mean is something
kind of seedy or dangerous like, you know,
(34:34):
maybe, I don't know, going to a strip
club if you've never been to one or
jumping out of an airplane and, parachuting. Right?
And and it could be that type of
thing. But it could also be
something a lot more tame than that.
It could be sitting in on a court
case, right, at your, local
city or county court. Or it could be
(34:56):
volunteering at a school. Or it could be
going to something like a rotary meeting in
your community. Right? Something that you've never done
before that feels like you're the odd man
or the odd woman out in that situation.
It could be having lunch at that place
in town where it seems only a certain
ethnic
ethnic group eats,
or maybe helping out at a food kitchen
(35:17):
for the homeless, or, going to an unfamiliar
church service. So, we we tend to live
in these tiny little bubbles
of familiarity
which can actually be a real problem when
we're trying to write
outside of that bubble. When we're trying to
write about people and places
and cultures that don't exist within our little
(35:38):
bubble. So this week
is all about doing something that wakes you
up
to the way other people live and the
experiences that they have. So even if nothing
that you discover
during this process ends up in a story
that you write, the experience
will help you see the peculiarities
of your own world in a new light
(36:00):
and make you a better writer of those
things in your own world. So that's going
to wrap it up for us this week.
If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love it
if you'd tweet about it or mention it
to some of your writer friends and maybe
even leave us a review over on iTunes
or whatever app you use to listen to
podcasts.
Also, please consider joining the Patreon team.
(36:21):
If you're interested in submitting a guest segment
to the show like Jesse did, just head
over to bradreedrights.com
and you'll find everything you need to know
about how to do that over there. So
I'd love to get your voice on the
air and share your insights and discoveries
with our writing community like Jesse got to
do today. So until next week, remember the
(36:41):
best way to improve your craft
is by writing.
That's what I'm off to go do, and
I hope you're off to do the same.
Let's get some words on paper this week,
and we'll meet up again next week for
another episode of the Inside Creative Writing podcast.
Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing
podcast with your host, writer, and educator,
(37:02):
Brad Reed. We'll be back next week.
Welcome to the inside creative writing podcast.
The weekly discussion of craft and technique for
writers of fiction and creative nonfiction.
And now here's your host,
writer and educator,
Brad Reid. Episode Episode 33.
Today, we've got our first guest hosted episode
with writer, Jesse Holly. Get ready for some
(00:21):
great insights into the challenges faced by aspiring
writers and some practical and effective tools to
overcome them.
Welcome back to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast.
My name is Brad Reed and I am
thrilled that you're spending some time with me
today on the Inside Creative Writing Podcast.
A few weeks ago, I announced a new
(00:42):
feature on the show,
occasional guest hosts.
Now these are a little different than the
interviews that I usually do in that,
rather than me asking questions that I think
our writing community
would like to hear,
a guest host instead puts together an entire
segment of the show
about a writing topic that they are especially
(01:04):
passionate about.
Now, I couldn't be more pleased that our
first guest host is writer Jesse Holly.
He's a long time supporter of the show.
He's a member of the Patreon team and
he has a lot of great,
unique insights
into what it means to be a writer.
Now, Jesse says he's been writing for about
two years and
(01:25):
for a segment, he's looking back on the
lesson that he's learned over those two years
and the discoveries that he's made
as a new writer. Now, I'm actually going
to take exception
to Jesse's claim that he's only been writing
for two years but you'll have to wait
until the wise words segment after we hear
from Jesse for my reasoning behind that claim.
(01:45):
So without further ado, I'd like to introduce
guest host
Jesse Holly
and his great unique insights
that are going to benefit writers of any
experience level. I know they were beneficial
and useful to me and I'm sure that
they will be for you too.
(02:11):
Thanks Brad and thank you listeners for taking
the chance to listen to my writing experience
and perhaps hopefully a little bit of writing
insights.
Before we get onto the show and what
I'll be talking about, I thought I'd give
you an introduction of who I am. Am.
My name is Jesse Hawley, I live in
Sydney Australia. It's a rainy day today outside
you might hear the cars whipping past.
(02:32):
My background is in science, actually I'd researched
for a little bit with
flies and spiders on how their diet affects
their lifespan, their longevity.
I've got a whole bunch of interests,
but I found creative writing was the only
true way to express myself wholly and the
most effective way for transmitting feelings is through
prose.
(02:52):
As you well know studying the craft of
creative writing is pretty overwhelming.
It is a
very complicated world, there's no rules which means
you can get lost pretty easily but at
the same time if you look around there
is only rules which you can get paralyzed
by.
Of course there are plenty of writing gurus
(03:12):
and writing idols to look up to but
at the same time conversely there are also
charlatans and emperor's new clothes, people espousing sort
of pieces of suggestion or great pieces of
writing with,
once they're looked at properly, perhaps aren't as
deep as, you know, they're claiming to be.
Which, if you think about it, learning the
craft of creative writing sounds about as messy,
(03:34):
complicated, and confusing as the real world does
or at least it does to me anyway.
So on that note, that's exactly what I'll
be talking about this episode.
I'll be talking about how growing the craft
of writing, becoming a better writer is actually
like maturing almost as a person, developing your
personality to be,
a strong writer. I would like to tell
you about my most memorable mistakes, the ones
(03:56):
that hurt the most and were thus most
memorable
so you can be aware of them yourself.
And finally, I'll be talking about what I
think is the most important part of growth
which is, seeking out and addressing your weaknesses
and your blind spots, how to identify them,
and then how to address them.
And of course if I get the time
I'll chuck in a couple of bonus lessons
(04:16):
that I've picked up recently that might be
helpful for you. Well here we go.
So I think as a young writer I've
been writing for two years I should say.
My biggest mistake by far
which is, one that perhaps will be familiar
with you it'll be interesting it'll be interesting
to know that actually is, not admitting my
arrogance.
(04:38):
If writing is maturing, well then this is
sort of a hallmark of adolescence,
you know, thinking that you understand and you're
equipped enough to just go out there and,
make a big splash. Anyone who attempts to
say otherwise is
trite and naive to what you can bring
to the world. It's classic teenager thinking and
it's sort of the thinking that plagued my
(04:58):
own writing and my own stunted
writing growth in the first six months. So,
this is the Inside Creative Writing podcast. So
I thought I'd pass on a quick story,
in that vein. You've probably heard it. It's
getting to be a bit of a platitude,
but I'll say it anyway. So the story
goes that,
there was a professor
traveling around Japan,
(05:20):
looking to learn the art of Zen.
And
he, he's been to everyone but didn't really
find anything that interesting. And and he was
finally pointed towards this great Zen master. And
he sat down, the the Zen master sat
him down, and the professor instantly launched into
telling him all of all of his preconceptions
and ideas about how Zen works and what
he knows about it and his travels already
(05:41):
and his disappointments.
As he was talking, he saw the Zen
master had finished pouring his cup of tea
and yet was still pouring. The tea was
brimming over the cup and then began to
cascade down the side and puddle up on
the table. And the professor was like, woah,
woah, woah, woah. I really don't need that
much tea. It's sort of like dripping on
me at the moment. And the Zen master
said, yes. Well, this cup is your your
mind and the the tea is your preconceptions
(06:03):
and your ideas of zen. How do you
expect me to teach you anything and fill
you up if it's already full? Before I
can teach you anything, you have to empty
your cup. So the first six months of
my writing, I sort of forgot that I
didn't know anything and I wrote prolifically.
I was looking outwards at the distance, the
idea of finishing a novel, but I certainly
wasn't looking at others and I doubly certainly
(06:25):
wasn't looking inward at myself and my own
weak points. I wrote a lot. I wrote
fifty, sixty thousand words,
that amounts to I suppose sort of teen
poetry and the process of maturation
caught on paper.
And I'm reluctant to go and read it
now for obvious reasons just like we wouldn't
want to see our
teen diaries. Yes. Well, that's the first lesson
I learned, having to admit my own arrogance
(06:47):
before I can proceed and grow honestly. Continuing
with the aging analogy,
whoever feels like an a complete adult. I
know I certainly do not. And, we're all
sort of perpetual teenagers in a way. What
needed to happen next was to identify
those shortcomings and those weak spots
that most needed addressing most seriously
(07:07):
in creative writing.
So there's a quote by a playwright Eugene
O'Neill that says, life is for each man
a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
But if that were the case, that would
be sort of easy because you could see
what's going on in the reflection and you
could address it. You got
egg on your face or messy hair or
whatever.
But, no, it's not that easy. Reflecting on
(07:29):
our writing is difficult.
We're obscured our view or perhaps we're standing
too close and can't actually get the perspective
to know that you need help, let alone
where that help is. So if that is
the case, how do you go about addressing
your blind spots?
Well, I found one easy way is to
seek help from others. What better way of
seeing, your shortcomings than through the eyes of
(07:49):
somebody else and through earnest advice.
A good way I've found of finding out
your ignorance is to turn it inside out
to avert
yourself,
and throw yourself
into the domain of judgment and advice.
It's very difficult to get advice or answers
(08:10):
when your questions are contained only
in the vacuum of your mind with no
access to outside
help. So academically,
I'm pretty average. Smack bang, actually.
But I've grown a lot and managed to
succeed at university
through
bearing my ignorance
time and time again
publicly
(08:31):
for better or for worse I you know
not happily but I'll put my hand up
to let people know what I don't know
and thus will be steered on the right
path
red faced
you know hard thumping
but I'll I'll have put myself out there
to be corrected.
You've got to you've got to be naked
before you can be corrected I think. And
(08:52):
when it comes to
the craft of creative writing I don't think
it's any different. So the standard advice is
don't show your first draft to anybody and
that is good advice. It's strong advice. People
aren't used to seeing first drafts and it,
you know, it's probably
a piece of shit.
(09:13):
It probably
is. And in some ways, it's difficult to
fault that advice, but I have faulted it
time and time again in the last two
years. And the lessons that have come from
that have been the most memorable.
So I've given excerpts of my first draft
to friends which is okay and I've heard
good advice.
I've given it to co workers
(09:34):
and my boss and embarrassingly,
listeners,
I've given my first draft to total strangers.
Two of them. They're not strangers now, of
course. They're, Sally and Catherine.
And, I was in a cafe and I
saw Sally at least reading outside a book
and I don't know what I was thinking.
I was working on my story on my
laptop,
(09:54):
and I took a deep breath and I
took my laptop outside. I was like, hey.
How's it going? And I described
I've been writing for a year or so.
And I described my my plight, my writer's
plight, and I gave her the first draft.
And it was a difficult
it was a painful wait. But ten minutes
later, I went and saved her, scooped her
up from the quagmire that was that first
draft. And it was a shameful piece of
(10:16):
writing.
And,
the advice that she gave and that was
given by my honest boss and by the
other stranger that I imposed myself on
was earnest and incisive
and it wounded my ego sort of laid
me down from writing for days.
But each of those pieces of advice are
now turning points in my writing growth such
(10:39):
that I can
identify
exactly what everybody said as landmarks
and they're meaningful ones because
they were the most beneficial in helping me
grow. So if you're interested the advice was
too heavy handed, too too many illusions and
parallels instead of just being honest with yourself.
The other one was,
you're fitting too much,
(11:00):
sort of
meaning and verbosity into each sentence making it
difficult to wade through you've got to ease
back and and pare back your communication
and it was also you know this is
too close to home it sounds like you're
just sort of diarizing and it it might
be therapeutic but
yes perhaps you should just tell a story.
So all those three pieces of advice are
(11:21):
fantastic
and had I not shared my first draft
they wouldn't have cut so deep and allowed
me to heal and move on, as I
have and I'm very grateful.
So you identify your weak spots by,
seeking help from others, but, of course, you
can find it in yourself and reflect. So
a good way to do that well,
the main way, what you should be filling
(11:43):
most of your non writing time with, I
suggest,
is, reading. Immerse yourself in great literature. Cast
yourself before the minds of of the greats.
And
that's just such an organic way to grow
every aspect of yourself as an artist.
It'll give you techniques, feelings, emotions, thoughts, maturity.
(12:03):
Reading is just sort of like a wormhole
jumping through personal growth and development living others
lives and being in other's shoes.
And, for your writing, it's just,
inimitable inimitable.
It's difficult to find those lessons elsewhere outside
of literature. On the other end, seek out
poor literature. So I recommended this on a
(12:24):
recent episode of Inside Creative Writing, but not
just to get inspiration
by reading sort of shallow pieces of literature
but upon reading it you might see,
reflections of yourself and something that you are
doing and something that you have not that
much respect for and what greater,
kick in the butt
to move on and develop your craft than
(12:45):
seeing yourself
in a piece of art that you don't
really respect. That's a, that's a great way
to self diagnose that is outside of literature.
One of the great ways that I've found
to develop my writing skills has been through
how to write books. So as an example,
my biggest weakness in writing,
in the first year or so was not
(13:05):
using narrative summary. I wasn't summarizing a thing.
I was literally taking readers through each moment
moment by moment, scene by scene in a
grueling, I don't know, first person perspective style
like the Blair Witch Project or something, though
even that's got cuts. And I wasn't even
aware
that narrative summary or to summarize something
had a name,
and I wasn't aware that I wasn't using
(13:27):
it. So by reading how to writing books
and books on craft, I was actually able
to slap a label onto the symptom of
my own
sick
writing.
If you're interested,
my three favorite books on the craft of
writing,
Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain.
(13:48):
That's great for all the fundamentals and that
really got me going in the right direction,
I think.
Secondly, I'm a sucker for beautifully constructed sentences.
So my other favorite is Building Great Sentences
by Brooks Landon.
And thirdly,
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose.
This is a wonderful book in many regards,
not least for the appendix, which has actually
(14:11):
got a list of great literature that you
ought to catch up on if you're interested
in, having a whiz bang journey through the
history of great books. I really recommend that
too. And if you're keen on getting that,
list of recommended reading, you can just go
to the Wikipedia page of the book Reading
Like a Writer and it's got its own
little subheading. I'd recommend that. On that note,
(14:31):
on advice and seeking advice from things like
how to write books, another big mistake that
I made was taking advice too literally. So
imagine
if you if there were a book, How
to be a perfect human being.
It's pretty clear that there is no such
thing as a perfect human being in any
regard.
(14:52):
I regularly flout social etiquette and taboos and
I certainly wouldn't change that which is probably
what would be recommended. And I know those
who know me, wouldn't want my personality to
be corrected, inverted commas, by a book of
rules either. So these things should certainly not
apply to you and your personality as a
writer.
That previous book that I recommended,
(15:12):
Reading Like a Writer, the thesis of the
whole thing is great works can come from
flouting all of the rules, none of the
rules. Genuine, honest expression and writing is where
the beauty and grandeur comes. It's not by
following rules or breaking rules, it's the honesty
that transcends
all of them. When I finally admitted my
(15:33):
ignorance that I didn't know what was going
on as a writer, the pendulum swung too
far the other way, and it fell into
that saying, don't have your mind so open
that your brains fall out. Because that's exactly
what happened. I took on the world of
rules and recommendations and suggestions,
these,
cliches and structures and formulae
and they were so overwhelming they just sort
(15:54):
of collapsed on top of me and my
writing became a victim of everyone's words at
the same time which is just such a
bad idea.
So my recommendation here to avoid making the
same mistake is
read widely instructional books, listen widely, but keep
the voice of yourself
stronger than the voice of others throughout
and incorporate and evolve, but don't concede and
(16:15):
conform.
Before we leave the topic of improving your
writing through self awareness and, identifying your weak
spots and growth there, I thought I'd talk
about something that might be a little bit,
idiosyncratic
or personal, but I think it's really important
to know yourself, know what makes you special,
know what makes you challenging, your strengths and
your weaknesses
(16:35):
quite intimately and how to work around those
and incorporate them into your writing style. So
as a bit of an example of what
I'm talking about because it might sound a
little bit strange, I'll tell you about myself,
some of the the things about me that
make me challenging. I get caught up on
details very easily, the minutiae of tasks and
I lose track of the forest for the
trees. I'm very sentimental.
(16:56):
I I dwell on feelings and the emotion
in events.
I'm self involved a little bit. I can
often overvalue my own opinions and insights at
the cost of others and I love fun
a little bit too much. I drink quite
a bit, stay out late, and,
that's that's challenging. So I know that that
affects my craft because my obsession for details
(17:16):
and my dwelling on feelings,
stunts the momentum of my novel writing and
it has a tendency to make it melodramatic
as opposed to having a movement and I
I pretty easily forget storytelling
at the cost of things that seem special
to me. And, of course, this incorporates me
overvaluing
my feelings and insights.
Me loving fun too much a little bit
(17:38):
is obviously depriving actually writing time. So now
that I'm aware of these four shortcomings or
facets of my personality, I know how to
work around them and incorporate them into writing.
It's really important to identify these things about
ourselves,
I think, before we can actually start addressing
them and,
making them work with our creative writing life
if that's what we've decided to do.
(17:59):
Okay. So before we move on, I thought
we'd regroup. So far, we've spoken about the
importance of admitting our ignorance and using others,
both friends and family, and also,
writers, of course, and wonderful resources and people
like Brad Reid,
to identify our weak points and how they're
important
in growing.
(18:20):
But before I finish up and pass on
some of the latest lessons I've learned, I
thought I'd provide a little bit of writing
self help. Here's a quote from Thomas Mann.
A writer is somebody for whom writing is
more difficult than it is for other people.
As you well know, again, writing is difficult
not just in the ocean of techniques and
(18:41):
experience
and work and time that it demands,
but psychologically
writing is really easily defeating.
It's confronting. It's challenging.
It's engulfing for your life
waking
and the dream world or at least it
is for me.
And, yeah, writing is difficult. So I think
the more we can be reminded of how
(19:01):
difficult it is and that there are kindred
spirits that are going through similar struggles, the
easier the whole journey is to bear. So
on that note,
sorry to bring the show back to myself
again. Case in point.
I've been living the craft of being a
human for twenty seven years now, twenty seven
years old. I've been studying and introspecting and
and thinking and developing
(19:22):
myself that whole time, I'd say. And I'm
I'm pretty competent in wielding my persona. I
know what actions do what consequences,
which social mood calls for which conduct,
etcetera.
But,
like a human being, I vary on a
day by day basis,
hourly basis
based on biochemistry,
mood, things that happen in my life. And
(19:44):
I'm a fluctuating being. I know that, you
know, a flat mood means I'll have lackluster
ideas. If I make a mistake or embarrass
myself, I'll know that I look around and
challenge everything in my life and everything that
I've ever created and I'll reevaluate it
colored by that past embarrassing experience.
And, you know, it's very easy to look
at what you've done and,
be embarrassed by it. But I've been doing
(20:06):
this for long enough now, and by doing
this, I mean living, that I know that
this is exactly
the human condition.
We vary. We're not constant. We're not robots.
We're we're quite sensitive beings. And I know
that these moods are transient
and they come and they go like anything
else.
They don't affect me and make me think
that I'm a poor craftsman at being a
(20:28):
human being. I know that I'm a successful
mature person
and I don't let those varying moods, which
are inevitable
and uncontrollable,
I don't let them affect my broader understanding
of myself.
And this is this totally applies to your
craft as a writer I'd say or it
certainly does with me. Some days I'll I'll
(20:48):
wake up and I'll be in a dreamy
reverie and ideas will be pouring in and
through my fingertips and I'll be writing and
typing prose and movement and something that I
know will be gold and I'll be proud
of for a long while and there'll be
other days 95%
of the time in which I'm flat my
ideas are generic and cliche and they'll be
written out and adapted and they won't be
(21:09):
sufficient for what I want.
I've had to grapple with and come to
terms with how writing
and our craft varies just like a mood
and just like our sense of self, but
don't let those
shitty days of flat writing influence your view.
You've got to rise above that moment and
see yourself in the grander scheme of things
(21:29):
as a writer. That's your identity, and that's
going to vary. Before I go, I thought
I'd pass on the, most recent techniques and
insights that I've stumbled on on my own
creative writing, and hopefully they'll be as useful
for you as they certainly have been for
me to keep in
mind. So the first one is about, a
bit of like a pyramid of hierarchy of
why we read and why we engage with
art. So I was listening to a podcast
(21:50):
recently with,
Yuval Harari, the author of Sapiens and he's
saying that, you know, the human spirit
is
generated from the brain which is in this
sort of vacuum cabin of the skull such
that it never actually lives with anything. It
just sort of experiences
feeling and emotion after one another. And that
the external world might shift. We might eat
(22:11):
something delicious, we might get a raise, or
we might get struck by lightning but the
only thing that's actually changing is
chemistry in our brain and these emotions. So
that's what people are ultimately doing when they
engage with our writing.
They want
their brain inside their skull wants to
live vicarious
emotions. They wanna be lifted up, you know,
(22:32):
in surprise and tension and conflict and love
and they wanna be taken down just so
they can feel the the ascent before going
up again. So our job ultimately at the
most fundamental level is to take the reader's
emotions and heart through these different states.
So we do that by giving them characters
that they care about and plots.
(22:53):
And all these different things
are just tools and techniques to actually draw
out and exacerbate
the emotion.
And at a more shallow level still,
our sentence and word choice and all of
these other sort of
superficial, in some way, techniques
sit on top of conflict and character and
(23:13):
plot. So I sort of imagine
what we're doing ultimately at the deepest level
is manipulating
emotions of the reader,
doing that by using conflict and plot and
characters
to
maximize the effect and using our words, our
our sentence order, structure,
synonyms, etcetera to maximize all those effects. So
(23:34):
I think it's really important to keep in
mind
what emotions are you eliciting in your reader
when you're writing and how could you most
effectively construct plot to maximize
that emotional
liberation and,
roller coaster ride. So I think it's really
important to think of writing in that pyramid
style structure.
(23:55):
And finally,
what I've learned most recently,
this is a difficult one to explain because
there's, it seems to be split camp, honestly,
which is,
you often hear the advice
writing is a job, you know, you write
write write and that's the right way to
go. You sit down even if you don't
(24:15):
feel like writing the act of writing will
make you feel like writing etcetera.
There are also these other other ideas associated
with it, you know, writer's block. It's got
a whole culture of productivity.
The question is,
do you sit and wait until inspiration slaps
you in the face and jump up to
write
or do you just write like a drone
(24:36):
or an office worker nine to five
like a mad person and then look at
look back at what you've done and,
and just hope, you know, that you can
draft it and redraft enough times before you
whip it into something that you can be
proud of and it will be valuable. So
that seems to be the two opposite ends
of the spectrum.
Sit and wait for inspiration
(24:57):
or pursue
it unerringly
at a typewriter.
Of course, I've been running for just two
years. I'm a child in the scheme of
things and will always be. But,
my latest thinking on this is, of course,
with most things, some sort of in between
lukewarm
Goldilocks porridge situation.
I've I've done that,
(25:17):
spartan sit down write a thousand words every
day regardless of your internal and external circumstance,
and I've done it and I'm not proud
of it. And
the amount of editing that I'd have to
do to put that onto a course where
pride might arise from, that you may as
well start again from
and I have.
(25:39):
And I've also done the other route of
sitting and waiting for inspiration to strike me,
and obviously that doesn't work either. So let
me talk about the world that I'm existing
in the moment that's, between those two extremes.
So there's a, Simon and Garfunkel song called
Cecilia
and she is the muse or the patron
saint of music and inspiration
(25:59):
and she's depicted as this whimsical
nymph like character that sort of frolics with
the singer
and produces
these, orgies of great songs and great music
and everyone's very pleased and then he turns
around to go get, you know, glass of
orange juice or something and comes back to
bed and Cecilia has escaped and she's jumped
into bed with some other writer and is
(26:19):
is creating some hit over there. So the
idea is that, creative expression is almost an
expression of passion
and with these sorts of drives be it
carnal or or hunger or thirst you'd be
familiar that if you're full and not hungry,
food doesn't taste so good. And yet if
you deprive yourself of food for some time,
(26:41):
your nose
will pick up the scents of foods from
so far off like a bear or something.
And by the time you actually eat, it's
a sensational experience.
Of course, that type of heightened sensory experience
and sensitivity
happens with a lot of pleasures.
And I'm finding creative writing, creative expression to
follow a similar route.
(27:01):
So what I've been doing is
writing
only
when my ideas have had a chance to
mature
and I've actually grown lost for wanting to
write. I'm not forcing writing when I've got
nothing to say. In fact, when I've got
writing
time, what I'll do is go for a
walk, live my life,
(27:22):
and let the ideas
either actively I'll be thinking about plot. I'll
be thinking about my story and letting ideas
cling together and cycle around and reiterate and
grow. Or at a subconscious level, this tends
to happen anyway. So I'll just continue with
my life. I'll think about the book and
let ideas mature and get myself sort of
riled up in a type of, I guess,
(27:43):
creative foreplay,
tinkering with ideas and, of course, reading,
and let ideas really mature away from the
keyboard.
In fact,
everything that I'm proud of that I've ever
created in creative writing,
be it themes, motifs, characters,
a plot twist, a plot point,
None of that has happened at the keys
of a keyboard.
It's all happened
(28:04):
living my life and thinking about writing without
that light. The light of the computer, the
light of the phone, whatever it is. It's
almost like a a light that,
a moth is budding itself, showering scales everywhere.
It it compels you to write. It compels
you to make progress. But the ideas that
you're putting on paper,
(28:24):
how how deep are they, you know? I
think it's a really good idea to spend
non writing time developing and maturing ideas such
that by the chance you actually get back
to your keyboard,
they've matured and you're brimming and,
got yourself into a bit of a lather.
The ideas that will come out will have
no choice but to be from a deep,
rich, and creative point because because you can't
(28:46):
hold them in any longer. You need to
express. You need to create. And I think
that's where beautiful writing comes from. So my
recommendation is use your non writing time creatively,
constructively,
such that when you finally get a chance
to write, it'll be some powerful stuff that
you'll be proud of from the get go
instead of relying on your future redrafting self
to,
polish a turd, I suppose.
(29:07):
And perhaps it goes without saying that it's
definitely worth giving a thought for the types
of influences that might stop you from using
your spare time, your daydreaming time from thinking
and letting your ideas distill. For a lot
of people, I suppose it'll be social media
and and their smartphones.
So it's just, definitely something to keep in
mind. How much of your time, how much
(29:28):
of your psychological
spirit and spotlight,
deserves to be spent on those platforms.
Well, listeners, that's it for, this guest episode.
I hope it was constructive. I know it
was a bit of a, a smattering, a
mishmash,
a lucky dip of content. I hope it
was, bound together in a sort of package
that made sense for you and was helpful.
(29:49):
Thank you so much, Brad, for giving me
the opportunity to come on the show. I'm
so thankful for both you, your guidance, and
of course the inside creative writing. Wonderful show.
I'm very thankful that it's been an influence
in my writing life for these years. And,
thanks very much for giving me your attention
again, listeners. I'm very thankful.
If you'd like to
(30:10):
get in touch, you can find me on
Twitter at pensapiens
and ask me any questions or just chat
about writing and reach out because
it's a, it's a tough it's a tough
life we've all decided on. Very tough. So,
yeah, give me a message. Anyway, thanks again
everybody, and, have a great rest of the
day. Bye.
(30:36):
Alright. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to
Jesse Holly for doing such a great job
as our first guest host here on the
Inside Creative Writing podcast.
You know, I was especially taken with his
metaphor,
when talking about building up the desire to
sit down and write. I've never really approached
my writing time like that, but I think
(30:58):
there's real value and real wisdom in that.
And I actually look forward to experiencing
with it a little bit in my own
writing life to see if it works for
me as well. So,
it actually also reminds me of something one
of my early writing teachers
used to say, and I'm going to use
that as our wise word for today.
So Alan Heathcock, who's been a guest on
(31:19):
our show before, was one of my early
writing professors when I was at Boise State
University.
Now, one of the things that he says
that sticks with me still to this day
is, you're never not a writer.
So writers,
in a way, are always
writing.
We tend to see the world differently
(31:40):
than non writers do. We notice the details
of life. We
recognize the unusual
turn of phrase that a friend might use
and we see story possibilities in the world
all around us. In other words, we're watchers
of the world
and we're constantly
mining that world
for elements of story that we can use
(32:03):
in our writing.
Now this is why I said at the
beginning of the show that I think Jesse
is selling himself a little bit short by
saying he's only been writing for two
years. Now, he may have only been,
intentional about getting stories put down on the
page
for two years,
but I can tell he's been
interacting with and exploring the world as a
(32:24):
writer does for a lot longer than that.
Now another thing I like about this concept
that we are never not writers
is that it helps us remember how much
more there is to writing
than just putting words down on paper.
When we're staring
blankly off into space, kind of letting our
(32:45):
stories play in our minds as if on
a movie screen, we are in a very
real sense
writing.
When we're exploring the world and we're meeting
new people and having new experiences,
we are in a very real sense writing.
When we're in the shower and that bolt
of inspiration comes
that unlocks that difficult scene problem that we've
(33:08):
been plotting,
we are in a very real sense
writing. Now there's something
beautiful
about that concept, I think. But there's also
something a little bit dangerous because it can
result in a sort of,
pernicious
procrastination
too.
Ultimately, it does take sitting down at a
(33:29):
keyboard
and putting one word after another on the
page, but don't discount the ways
in which you are a writer in all
the other aspects of your life as well.
Okay. So this week's, weekly challenge is to
do something you've never done before or
(33:51):
go somewhere you've never been before.
So, this week is all about getting out
of your comfort zone and
kind of waking yourself up to an aspect
of the world that you've never experienced before.
This, I think, is part of what it
means to be a writer.
And, I don't necessarily mean finally doing something
(34:11):
you've always wanted to do or finally going
somewhere you've always wanted to go. I actually
want you to scare yourself a little bit
this week. I want you to do something
that you never thought you'd do
or that may be entirely out of character
fee for you. So when I give this
challenge to writers,
often what they think I mean is something
kind of seedy or dangerous like, you know,
(34:34):
maybe, I don't know, going to a strip
club if you've never been to one or
jumping out of an airplane and, parachuting. Right?
And and it could be that type of
thing. But it could also be
something a lot more tame than that.
It could be sitting in on a court
case, right, at your, local
city or county court. Or it could be
(34:56):
volunteering at a school. Or it could be
going to something like a rotary meeting in
your community. Right? Something that you've never done
before that feels like you're the odd man
or the odd woman out in that situation.
It could be having lunch at that place
in town where it seems only a certain
ethnic
ethnic group eats,
or maybe helping out at a food kitchen
(35:17):
for the homeless, or, going to an unfamiliar
church service. So, we we tend to live
in these tiny little bubbles
of familiarity
which can actually be a real problem when
we're trying to write
outside of that bubble. When we're trying to
write about people and places
and cultures that don't exist within our little
(35:38):
bubble. So this week
is all about doing something that wakes you
up
to the way other people live and the
experiences that they have. So even if nothing
that you discover
during this process ends up in a story
that you write, the experience
will help you see the peculiarities
of your own world in a new light
(36:00):
and make you a better writer of those
things in your own world. So that's going
to wrap it up for us this week.
If you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love it
if you'd tweet about it or mention it
to some of your writer friends and maybe
even leave us a review over on iTunes
or whatever app you use to listen to
podcasts.
Also, please consider joining the Patreon team.
(36:21):
If you're interested in submitting a guest segment
to the show like Jesse did, just head
over to bradreedrights.com
and you'll find everything you need to know
about how to do that over there. So
I'd love to get your voice on the
air and share your insights and discoveries
with our writing community like Jesse got to
do today. So until next week, remember the
(36:41):
best way to improve your craft
is by writing.
That's what I'm off to go do, and
I hope you're off to do the same.
Let's get some words on paper this week,
and we'll meet up again next week for
another episode of the Inside Creative Writing podcast.
Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing
podcast with your host, writer, and educator,
(37:02):
Brad Reed. We'll be back next week.
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