How I write
Some notes on my writing methodology
I have been asked a question many times. It consists of some modified version of these asks — how can you be so prolific? Why do you write so much? Or, most recently, the better question — how do you write?
That’s the only question I can answer. For me it’s simple. Like any writer I have a method. My method. I’m assuming other writers have their own.
My writing starts with reading. To get better at writing one needs to read more. When I moved to the U.S.A. I shipped most of my books in a captain’s chest, the one you see in the image above. Nowadays, in any given week, I meet the UPS driver at my front door one to three times. She brings me books. This week’s delivery contained Verve: The Sound of America, and two books by Karl Ove Knausgaard: Book Three of My Struggle (a six part series) and A Time For Everything. I am currently wading through The Best of McSweeney’s and I have almost finished Home: A Short History of An Idea by Witold Rybczynski.
That list then, is almost equal parts fiction and non-fiction. That’s about right for me.
The next book on my reading list is The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde; I’ve read it once but want to soak it up again in light of my role as an advocate at Beats Music. The 2007 edition of The Gift has a short explanation of Hyde’s hypothesis on the cover: The Gift is a brilliant defense of the value of creativity and its importance in a culture increasingly governed by money and overrun with commodities.
The Gift is a roadmap to solutions in my work; I want to solve real, not imagined, problems for musicians in a new era. To me, advocacy is a form of diplomacy and requires a calm temperament and an understanding of the concerns of others. To escape into a book is to calm the temperament.
Turning Up:
Some writers suffer from the ‘block,’ writer’s block. I notice the phrase ‘just turn up’ popping up frequently as a “solution” for writer’s block. Turning up to write is, of course, a start, yet it’s not really a solution. Staring at the blank slate/page/screen may make you die a little inside if you have nothing to say, but…it’s ok. You set the bar. Tomorrow you can decide if you want to turn up or not. Or maybe turn up when you have something to write about. Do some yard work otherwise.
My rules:
- Start early in the day.
- Finish late at night.
- Expect nothing.
- Write like a musician.
- Erase like a musician.
My method:
I keep blank white cards beside my bed and on every desk in my house. There’s one in the picture along with some notes scratched on a hotel memo pad. The cards are plain index cards. They come shrink-wrapped by the 100's. I buy them from Office Depot and they sprout like two-dimensional, flattened parsnips from many books in my house. I write notes on them as I read. I may write entire paragraphs from books on these cards; I index them with the page numbers of the book I’m reading. I also tear pages out of the New York Times and underline sentences or corral large areas of the page with a pen. I save URL’s on my iPhone for reference. I then study the rhizome that ties together the internodes of my own ideas, insights and critiques; and then I write. And I keep writing.
I write in two mental states: sober and tipsy. First thing in the morning is the time for sober writing after reading whatever I’d scribbled on those cards the night before. Later in the evening, after a couple of glasses of wine, I shake the foundation. As I write non-fiction I ask of myself — have I been unfairly critical of someone else’s writing? I may have written an original blog post that needs tightening up. Was I angry? Whatever I’ve written that day goes through an analytical process tempered by that looseness that a couple of glasses of wine can bring. First I ensure there are no ad hominem attacks, then I read whatever is on the ‘page’ again with an audience in mind, an audience that I consider myself part of. Then I consider context. Where will the article appear? On the Beats blog? On my personal website? Facebook? On Medium? And finally, I ask myself why would anyone read it?
I ask that last question because of skimming. I wrote about skimming the other day. On Medium. Here. Basically, I was contemplating how no one reads anything of substance these days. They just skim and then send out their own opinions on to the almighty social media platforms, and bingo! “I’m an intellectual.” It’s what Karl Taro Greenfeld calls Faking Cultural Literacy.
Let me be clear — I consider tl;dr an affront to a democratic society. No, really. How about ntl;pr - not that long;please read.
