The fact is that it’s lonely to write. Like Norman Mailer says, you don’t have a life style, you just sit in a little room and write. The rest of the world is out there acting like adults, wearing real clothes, making real money, hanging out with co-workers. Writing is about hanging around the house in your sweats, eating odd little snacks heated up in the microwave, talking to your cats/dog/the walls and checking your e-mail every other minute to feel connected to the real world even if it’s just electronically.
This week I’m teaching a personal essay workshop at the UCLA Extension Writers Studio. This isn’t a plug (the ten courses in screenwriting and creative writing are already filled), but a look at why people make this kind of commitment, why they drop out of their own lives for four days to sit in a classroom eight hours a day. There are warm bodies in the room! People to have lunch with! People all in the same boat as you! It’s like camp but nobody puts frogs in your bed or bullies you. There’s a lot of energy in the air. And all you have to do is write. Something really magical happens when you have a group of people (in this case, twenty in a class) who tell their stories, true stories, stories from their heart. At the same time, you are learning a lot of craft – memoir, screenwriting, fiction, personal essays – from writers who are out there doing what they preach.
My students all have a story. Maybe they didn’t realize it when they came into the class but they realize it now. I’ve told them, and the other students have told them. Hey, this is interesting stuff. Most of the time we don’t realize this about our own lives, all we know is that we have a yearning to write, to put something down on paper. Sometimes it takes a class to let us know how important our own stories are.
My two favorite bloggers, Billy Mernit and Tod Goldberg, are also teaching at the Writers Studio this week as well as Samantha Dunn whose latest memoir is on our list of Recommended Reading. Go to Tod’s blog and read “This Is What We Talk About When We Talk About Writer’s Conferences”. It’s hilarious. Please engrave in your heads Tod’s rule #10:
"Don’t argue when I say that you don’t need any other dialogue tag other than "said" and that adverbs are the root cause of terrorism in the world today and that if you support adverbs and "retorted" and "cautioned" and "explained" and "fumed" and "declaimed" then you’re no better than those liberal Commie hippie bastards…or, you know, whatever the bad people are now. You’re one of those."
To Do: Join a writing workshop or find a writing buddy
If you decide to take a workshop, the one thing to remember is this: you’re there to be inspired and guided by nurturing and honest feedback. The minute you feel put down, embarrassed in any way shape or form – leave. Walk out. You can’t take risks with your writing and grow if you’re afraid somebody will get sarcastic. (And if you’re paying money to listen to a writer tell you how to write, make sure to read something that writer has published.)
The best place to find a writing buddy is in a good workshop. You get to hear what kind of feedback they give and what kind of writer they are. Whether or not you find your writing buddy at a workshop, or in Barnes & Noble, your writing buddy should be as serious about writing as you are. Meet your buddy at Starbucks or via e-mail regularly. The important thing you’ll get out of having a writing buddy is feedback on your work from somebody who’s in the same precarious boat as you are and a way to set writing deadlines.
Good luck! Please post a comment or e-mail us and let us know your experiences with this To Do.
