on building the body of your craft

Sometimes, when the writing feels far away but I am not yet ready to return to it, I gorge myself on discussions of craft: books, podcasts, videos. For a long time I tried to integrate everything I read or heard into a Grand Unified Understanding of Craft — but, as I slogged through drafts that deflated and refused to be resuscitated, I found that there is no Grand Unified Understanding of Craft, only a particular, specific body of craft which belongs only to me. You have your own body of craft — and though our bodies of craft may share pieces, they belong wholly to each writer.

And understanding this — I have my own body of craft, I am responsible for it, it is composed of all I try to shove into it — clarified for me that some advice, some theory, some “rules,” simply do not belong in my body of craft. Just this week, a craft book’s advice raised my hackles, and a video offered what I knew would be devastating advice for me. Those writers aren’t wrong — but their craft is not my craft.

I think it can be too easy to assume that, because someone speaks with authority, what they say is “correct” in a universal way. But there isn’t a universal correctness when it comes to writing. There is only the body of craft that we construct for ourselves.

So here are a few of the things I have chosen to add to my body of craft, with hope that they might inspire you to consciously build your body of craft in a shape that best serves you and your writing.

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I consistently find Shaelin Bishop’s videos insightful — they offer thoughtful advice on how stories work, from the plot/character level to the line level. In particular, I hold close this video on “writing for yourself,” in which they talk about feedback and audience. This is a loose paraphrase, but the point they are getting across is that feedback/audience reaction is not about “Do they like this story?” Feedback is useful in figuring out “Am I communicating the story effectively?”. The goal is not to write a story that is liked, but to write/edit a story that effectively communicates what we set out to communicate. Did we create the experience of the story we hoped to? If so, that is success — not if people “liked” it.

Other recommended videos from Shaelin: Pacing, “Things I Got Wrong About Craft”, Structure without an outline, Planes of story

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I’ve mentioned this book many times before, but it’s worth mentioning again: Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode. I find this book particularly inspiring because it offers questions and possibilities, rather than rules. It expanded my understanding of how narrative works (through plot, character, voice, momentum, etc), and what shapes it can take.

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Melissa Febos recently gave an incredible interview in Teachers & Writers Magazine. A few delicious quotes:

I will say that one of the things I find disheartening is something I’ve seen increasingly in students, where they are bringing the imagined criticisms of a bad faith reader to the desk with them when they’re doing the first draft. Basically, they’re already thinking, “What is that person on Twitter going to say about this when I publish it?” It is a preoccupation with others’ perceptions. I try to encourage them as much as possible: be conscientious in your work. Be conscientious of your reader, of your potential readers, of all of your past selves, but do not write for the bad faith reader. You have to write for the reader of best faith, the reader who most needs your work, and you need to do your absolute best work for that reader. Exile the thoughts of the person who is looking to invalidate the art that you’re making; you can’t make art that way. Or it will be a brittle, sad version of what you would’ve done if you had imagined the loving reader who is grateful and interested in what it is that you actually are trying to communicate.

I have to say—and this is pretty mundane because it’s a thing that all my teachers said to me because it’s true—that the writing is the best part. It absolutely is. Almost all of my writing dreams in terms of achievement have come true, and I promise you writing is the best part…And I will say as an addendum to that: take your time. Don’t be in a hurry, and capitalism does that to us, but I have never been sorry that I took my time, and I have often wished that I had given myself the time that I really needed for something. It always feels like you’re behind, but you’re not. There’s no hurry. You’re right on time.

I get a little teary when I read those last sentences: “There’s no hurry. You’re right on time.”

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There is a sense I get, sometimes, where I can tell that a writer loves people. Believes in people. I don’t have a better way of saying that, but it’s a good feeling. It’s a feeling you can rest against for a moment. Matt Bell’s book Refuse to be Done felt warm, encouraging, specific, and inviting — like he believes in you, dear writer, and offers up what wisdom he can, in the hope that it will be helpful. It’s a book that is useful in piecemeal, in the sense that what you need now might only be a handful of pages — but in a month or six month, you might need a different chapter.

Matt Bell did an interview with Kirstin Chen and Jac Jemc, which contained many gems of encouragement.

In particular, Kirstin Chen shared:

I trust in my diligence…I reach a point in every book where I think, ‘There’s no way I’m going to be smart enough to solve this problem,’ but that’s how I know I’m on the right track…The story is smarter than you are and I hit that point because…I made a good problem for myself. You have to stretch to really finish the book…and that’s how you know this is the right book to be working on.

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And last but not least, two poems that help me to orient myself when things are hard:

During grad school, my fellow poet Jenny Boychuk brought Jack Gilbert’s poem “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart” to class. “He wrote this about love,” Jenny explained, “how love is impossible to capture in words. But I think it could also be read about poetry —if you replace ‘love’ with ‘writing’.”

I’ve thought about this often, in the years since — this sense of reaching, longing, a persistent effort to touch something that is, at its core, untouchable. The soul of the work. The deep question that propels the writer forward. The idea that words will never fully bridge the gap, but they are also all we have.

And here is Langston Hughes, with “Tired”, articulating that persistent, deep-rooted thing animating my heart when I feel the need to tell stories:

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What makes up the body of your craft? What will you set aside because it does not serve you, and what will you seek out?