On Writing - Michelle Richmond

Creative Fidgeting

An article by Roland Rotz, Ph.D., in ADDitude Magazine this month claims you shouldn’t fight the fidget, especially when it comes to children with ADHD:

Doing two things at once, it turns out, can actually help focus the ADHD brain on a primary task.
Experts believe that engaging in an activity that uses a sense other than what’s required for your primary task — listening to music while reading a social studies textbook, for example — can enhance focus and improve performance in children with attention deficit disorder. These secondary tasks are called fidgets — mindless activities you can do while working on a primary task.

Rotz recommends walking, moving around, doodling, using multicolored pens and pencils, keeping your hands busy, listening to music, and chewing gum.

I think anyone–with or without ADHD–can benefit from a bit of creative fidgeting. When I’m stuck in a novel I’m writing, it always helps to get up and move around. When we lived in the Outer Richmond in San Francisco, I used to take long walks on Ocean Beach (well, yes, that does sound like a personal ad, but I did!), and I never came home from one of those walks without a few paragraphs in my head. Something about the zen aspect of moving with no invited noise–I never wear headphones when I walk, so the noise was that of the waves and water, and the hum of traffic on the Great Highway–intensified my focus, such that I would write in my mind as I walked, repeating the sentences in order to memorize them.

I say “invited noise” because, while noise is inescapable, we don’t have to invite it in. Turning off the headphones when you’re running or walking, or turning off the TV when you’re on the treadmill, or turning off the radio in the car, is a way of keeping the endless, not-so-ambiant noise at bay. Of course, one of the fidgeting activities recommended in the ATTitude article is listening to music–so it really depends on the person. My husband always listens to music when he’s writing or reading, and it works for him, but anything with words completely stumps me, because the words crowd out the ones I’m trying to write down. That’s why I can’t write in cafes, which is a method some of my writer friends swear by.

Think about your own creative process. Are there any kinds of fidgeting you do that bring you focus?

The Art of Rejection: Kathryn Stockett’s tale of never giving up

More Magazine features an essay by Kathryn Stockett, author of the wildly successful novel The Help, now a wildly successful film. It’s an old story, but worth repeating: novelist gets a zillion rejections, or 60, to be more precise, before finally landing an agent, a publisher, and a long-running spot at the top of just about every bestseller list you can imagine.

Stockett’s advice for writers and anyone else who keeps hitting a brick wall? “Give in to your obsession.”

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In the end, I received 60 rejections for The Help. But letter number 61 was the one that accepted me. After my five years of writing and three and a half years of rejection, an agent named Susan Ramer took pity on me. What if I had given up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60? Three weeks later, Susan sold The Help to Amy Einhorn Books.

For Stockett, 61 was the magic number. With The Year of Fog, my magic number wasn’t far behind. I like to believe that every good book has a magic number, that books will find their way into the hands of a receptive agent and editor given enough time and persistence. For me, the agent was Valerie Borchardt, and the editor was Caitlin Alexander, and I consider my book very fortunate to have fallen into their hands.

So if you have a book that keeps coming back with a form letter that says, “Unfortunately, this book is not quite right for us,” don’t give up. Envision in your mind a magic number. You don’t know it yet. No one does. It could be twenty rejections from now, or forty. Or it could be just one.

Related: What if the only thing standing between you and publication is a great revision? Visit the Book Doctor now.

What writers can learn from late, great music man John Carter

In July’s obit section, WORD magazine remembers John Carter, songwriter, producer, and A&R man extraordinaire, who “was instrumental in the careers of and a passionate supporter of Bob Seger, The Motels, Sammy Hagar, Melissa Etheridge, Tori Amos, David and David, and … Tina Turner.”

WORD quotes an interview for industry website Taxi, in which Carter said that “the one thing he had learned was that over 70 percent of hit records have titles containing nouns.”

All kinds of songs become successful, and therefore can be held up as examples to encourage someone that what they’re doing is right, but I think, in general, it’s an English lesson. Lyrics are important It’s about a story. It’s about a great title. The title should have a big noun in it. Some of the best songs are even proper nouns. Nouns, baby, nouns!”

If you think about it, the same principle applies to good writing of any kind. One, “it’s about a story.” And two, it’s specific: proper nouns are nothing if not specific. It’s the very old, very true creative writing 101 lesson: you get to the universal by way of the personal. You reach many by focusing on the struggle of one. It’s easy to find great books with a proper noun in the title:

Ulysses
Lolita
Portnoy’s Complaint
The Great Gatsby
Jane Eyre
Madame Bovary

Okay, you get the picture. Of course, this is not to say it has to be a proper noun. I can think of equally exciting books that have only improper nouns (I don’t think that’s a thing, really, but I like the sound of it) in the title.

To Kill a Mockingbird
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Bluest Eye
Things Fall Apart (what can be less specific than things?)
Brave New World

You’ll note, however, that all of the books in the latter category get very specific very quickly, with characters whose personal and unique struggles have a universal quality. Scout moves us not because she’s archetypal, but because she is a very specific child at a very specific time and place, engaged in a universal struggle played out in the tragedy of one man and one town.

and all the ships at sea

I wanted to share an interesting email I received last week from a reader:

I’m a Marine stationed over at Camp Pendleton in California. While I was on deployment, I found The Year Of Fog in the small ship library…I was a part of an expeditionary unit sitting off the coast of Burma last year after their country was ravaged by a natural disaster. I mean this in the greatest sincerity when I say that reading and finishing your story was truly all I looked forward to the 2 months I spent sitting on a ship, counting the days until I could come home. I’m not sure what it was, but I found myself very sympathetic and attached to the main character. I almost wish the story hadn’t ended. Or at least had ended the way I was expecting. Again, thank you for your story.

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