What only you can do
The miracle of revision, plus my weekly shareables: Chris and Martina, sex in cars, and a badass pageant queen
I think it’s going to turn out that the best writing guide ever compiled will be not a book but a newsletter: George Saunders’ Story Club. In between writing some of the greatest short stories of our time—his latest for the New Yorker, “Thursday,” knocked me sideways—he takes to the newsletter to show how he does what he does, and how other writers do what they do. It’s like school for magicians.
In a newsletter earlier this week he spent a good bit of time on one of his favorite subjects: revision. So many beginning writers I know hate rewriting. But that’s where the real magic happens. It’s not just about making a story better. It’s about seeing the work in a different way. The act is right there in the word: re-vision. And the big part of re-visioning a story is making it sound like your true voice.
He had one sentence so good that I pulled it from the newsletter and printed it out to put on my desk:
So often, in the early drafts of something, we sound like everybody else more than we sound like ourselves. I know my stuff tends to sound like John McPhee when I’m trying to be wise, or or Susan Orlean when I’m trying to be stylish, or Lee Child when I’m trying to get out of the way of the story. But my true voice is all those things, plus a thousand others, crammed into a blender. I don’t know how it works. I just know when it sounds like me. And the point of revising, for me, is to get to the place where the story sounds like me.
This requires some self-awareness, which I’ve learned over the years both the hard way and softer ways. It also requires enough ego to believe that people will want to hear your true voice. And then it requires the confidence to let it out.
I suppose you know by now that all this applies to many other things besides writing.
I can tell you this: One of the great joys of my job is taking a chunk of writing filled with static and turning it into something with a clear and strong signal—the one I intended all along. I don’t always get all the way there, and that’s fine. There’s always another deadline and another chance to try. But once you get hooked on revising, it’s all you want to do. You can’t wait to put some junk on the page so you can turn it into something beautiful. Something you, and only you, can do.
10 things I wanted to share this week:
This week’s SouthBound was a replay of my talk with S.A. Cosby, whose Southern gothic thrillers are just about the hottest thing going in the book biz. He’s got a new one out called ALL THE SINNERS BLEED.
Another New Yorker short story that left me in pieces was Claire Keegan’s “So Late in the Day.” She actually talks about it to (speak of the devil) George Saunders on the NYer’s fiction podcast … I have not listened to that yet, but I did enjoy this Q&A with her about the story.
The story all my writer friends were gushing about this week, and rightfully so: the brilliant Sally Jenkins on 50 years of Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, who have evolved from rivals to friends to fellow cancer survivors. (Washington Post)
I’m always drawn to the stories of people who get a small, brief glimpse of glory, so this story was in my wheelhouse: Brooke Pryor writes about seven players who made it into exactly one NFL game—including one who played just one play. I think that’s called the full Moonlight Graham. (ESPN)
DOG NEWS: While I work on my book DOGLAND, I’m devoting this slot to dog stories. This week: Can dogs smell time? (NPR)
Necessity, meet invention: Perfecting the art of sex in a car. (NYT)
The Basnight name is known in North Carolina for politics. Now, according to my brilliant food-writer friend Kathleen Purvis, a Basnight is making a name in seafood. (The Assembly)
The reigning Miss Texas is the coolest pageant queen I’ve ever heard of. (Washington Post)
This household is sitting on ready for the second season of THE LINCOLN LAWYER, which starts streaming today. Double bonus points for the cover of Joe Jackson’s “I’m the Man.”
The latest NPR Tiny Desk concert featured Juvenile, and while I should warn you that the content and language is definitely NOT FOR EVERYBODY, I will also say that the vibe is just delightful. Hip-hop with live instruments is one of my favorite types of music. And the crowd loved “Back That Azz Up” so much, they played it twice.
See y’all next week, everybody.
I read Don Quixote recently in the Grossman translation (I have many holes in my education) and when Quixote leaves the scene to relieve himself the wording is "He went to do what no man can do for him." I have used that phrasing myself and offer it here.Thanks to a 500 year old Spanish novel.
I loved the NPR backstory about how the Juvenile Tiny Desk Concert came to be and the joy on his face when he realized all the "young" staff knew all the words...and just the joy in the room that was shared with so many...