My Writers’ Round Table
This extremely coincidental story started like most other normal day that I work, I wake up and hang out around my house until about 4. Soon after I get ready for work and drive there expecting a decently busy shift being that it was a Friday. About an hour or so passes by and this familiar looking gentleman walks in the door and sits down under the television and says he wants to wait till his friends to arrive before he orders. Not too long after two other familiar women walk in and sit next to the guy they order their food and I can’t help but notice the one woman say “He stands in a pair of his oversized loafers on the worn skin of a lesser kudu-the typewriter and the reading board chest-high opposing him”[1] talking about a famous writer whose name I heard from somewhere, I just couldn't remember where. She then brought up Maya Angelou and said she had an interview with her and had said “I write in the morning and then go home about midday”[2] indicating that she would go somewhere to write her amazing and influential masterpieces. It then made me wonder why would someone like her would feel the need to go to a place to write when she could probably make up the best story I’ve ever heard just by looking around the room? But not long after my question had been answered “Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it. Nor do they go about their business feeling dewy and thrilled… We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose upon being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do no come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time.”[3] After about another twenty minutes of hearing them go back and forth about how to teach writing, I decide it's time to go over and ask a few of my own questions to help me with my english project. My first question is how do i prevent writer’s block? The first one to answer was the gentleman and he said “Don’t look back. Yes, the draft needs fixing. But first it needs writing.”[4] then he continued on with “The writing process itself can be divided into three stages: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. The amount of time a writer spends in each stage depends on his personality, his work habits, his maturity as a craftsman, and the challenge of what he is trying to say. It is not a rigid lock-step process, but most writers most of the time pass through these three stages.”[5] Then in an almost angry way the one lady said “I don’t think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you wont be good enough at it.”[6] Which had kind of insulted me at the time but i had just brushed it off because hey, at least i’m not majoring in anything english related so who cares. Then the other lady starts bragging more about another famous writer she interviewed saying “I write in spirts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence… and I can write it down.”[7] My next question for them was have you ever worried that the book has a problem that you didn’t notice? The first one to answer was the mean lady and she said “You really must get your piece or book just right, as right as you can. Sometimes it is just a matter of fine-tuning, or maybe one whole character needs to be rethought. Sometimes the friend will love the feel of the writing, the raw material, and yet feel that it is a million miles from being done. This can be deeply disappointing, but again, better than your spouse or friend tell you this than an agent or an editor.”[8] Which i couldn’t help but agree with because no one wants to receive an F because they didn’t have someone to proofread their work before submitting it. My second to last question was if they had any secrets to becoming a better writer? The gentleman was the first one to answer this question “By the time this is published I will, I hope have moved on… No matter I have no choice. The pieces of writing I have not yet thought of writing will become the different from what I expect them to be when I propose them to myself. My constant is change.”[9] They were all finishing up their food that I had made them and were getting ready to leave but before they could i had one last question i had to ask them and it was their names and one by one they told me their names first starting with the gentleman his name was Don Murray, the mean woman’s name had been Anne Lamott, and finally the other lady’s name had been said Maria Popova. All three of them were the same people that we had been talking about in my English class and I couldn’t have been more shocked because the very people i had to write about were the ones right in front of me answering my questions and getting to know me as a writer. This had been by far the most coincidental day that I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. [1] Ernest Hemingway’s prefered position taken from The Daily Routines of Great Writers [2] Quote by Maya Angelou taken from The Daily Routines of Great Writers [3] Bird by Bird: Some Instruction on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott [4] The Essential by Don Murray [5] The Essential by Don Murray [6] Bird by Bird: Some Instruction on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott [7] Quote by Susan Sontag taken from The Daily Routines of Great Writers [8] Bird by Bird: Some Instruction on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott [9] The Essential by Don Murray
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