Marilyn McEntyre, author of Start With a Word: On the Craft and Adventure of Writing, with five invaluable suggestions for writers.
I said a lot about writing in my new book, Start With a Word: On the Craft and Adventure of Writing. These are a few of the many things I didn’t say—at least not in so many words. Afterthoughts, if you like, or just thoughts that return to me courtesy of my own inner writing critic—a wise, wry old woman who likes me well enough to remind me when I’m losing my way that there is a way, that I’m in it, and that it’s up to me not always to stay on the path, but sometimes to stop and get my bearings and get on with it.
1. Your relationship with your reader is a social contract.
You owe them; they owe you. You set the terms; they decide whether to accept those terms. (They don’t have to. They can close the book or turn the page at any time.) Once you’ve set those terms, you need to deliver. If you’re James Joyce, the terms are demanding: If you want to make the journey through these pages, you’ll have to let go of your notion of what stories do and allow for a lot of word play. You’ll have to be willing to digress and get lost for a while and puzzle out what won’t be explained.
If you’re Wendell Berry, the terms of the contract are demanding in another way: If you want the pleasure this book or poem offers, you’ll have to enter into the intimate spaces of conscience and memory. You’ll have to be willing to mourn our collective losses, linger over local language and slow down enough to discover that “what we need is here.”
If you’re Billy Collins, the terms are something like this: You’re permitted to laugh. You’re invited to notice. Give generous time and attention to what is fanciful. Assume that time and attention will be well spent.
If you’re Mary Karr the contract may entail some permission giving: I’ll give you luminous moments, but you’ll have to walk through some squalor with your eyes open. You’ll have to indulge me. I’ll reward you with surprises along the way.
You might try writing out the terms of your own contract just to see more clearly what you’re offering, what hope you’re holding out to your reader, how you, and your readers, may need to be brave or bold or willing to embark together.
2. Writing: you never do this alone.
The writers in the tradition you inhabit are your ancestors. Certain words and phrases and whole sentences ring with their voices: “I will arise and go now . . .”; “April is the cruellest month . . .”; “I’ll tell you how the sun rose–– / A ribbon at a time . . .”, “Consider the lilies . . . .”
Writers from other traditions are also your teachers; they offer you rhythms, sounds, and forms that stretch you into new emotional and syntactical spaces. They give you access to words for which there is no equivalent in English. If you read them, in the original or in translation, with humility and gratitude, they will teach you. They will teach you. What they inherit is not yours to appropriate, but it may teach you to delight in the “biodiversities” of language and form.
The conversational environments you move through in the course of a week are deep wellsprings of colloquialisms that help foster the “dream of a common language.” Those conversations range from the ones you have with other writers who read and respond and help you revise to the folks behind you in the grocery line, to kids working out their differences in the park, to the remarks a friend drops that remind you of your mother or mirror you suddenly to yourself, and let you hear your own voice in a different key.
When you sit down to write, this “cloud of witnesses” comes with you. Mostly they stay at a respectful distance, available when you summon them, often silent. But you have access to them—more of them than you can account for. Enjoy their company. Thank them now and then.
3. You’re always translating.
Some of us actually work in the borderlands between two languages and know our readers will need a translator, or will have to look things up now and then. Some of us work in the borderlands between two disciplines—humanists speaking for and about scientists; chefs speaking for and about chemists; caregivers speaking for and about people with disabilities. Our translation work may be to offer access, or to reframe differences, or to enable our readers to imagine more generously what has seemed alien or inconsequential.
One way or another, even writing in our own language for readers in our own social territory, we’re always answering the question, “What do you mean?” Between one mind and another lies a riparian zone where new life forms can grow and flourish. Those zones need to be protected. We need to recognize when we’re crossing borders or boundaries and invite our readers along with proper reminders to tread carefully and respectfully and be open to surprise.
4. All beginnings are middles.
Aristotle said that—I didn’t make it up. Unless you’re writing the book of Genesis, you’re not starting at the beginning. That should come as a relief: anywhere can be a beginning. The tiniest prompt can offer a point of departure: start a sentence with “Because . . .” or “Behind . . .” or “No one knew . . . “, and already you’re somewhere. A path opens up from there. You’re in the middle of a dark wood or an ancient argument or a great transition. But because you’re there, what has already been happening takes a new turn: the river changes its course, if only a little. What you’ve done will come as a surprise to people who think there is nothing new under the sun. Every time the kaleidoscope turns something new happens. You get to turn it.
5. There are things you don’t need to know.
The principles of thermodynamics, for instance, though if you bothered to take that physics course you have access to a rich trove of metaphor. You also don’t need to know who’s going to read what you write. You know your friends will, and maybe your spouse or mother though don’t take umbrage if they don’t. You really don’t need to know how many people “liked” you on Instagram.
You don’t need to know who quoted you and for what purposes. You don’t need to know who has found you to be the teacher they needed, or the role model. You do need a few good readers with a critical eye. You need companions on your journey. But beyond the circle of trust and love that protects your writing space, your work will go on its own journey. It will float out into the world like a little coricle, going where the wind takes it. Bless it on its journey and let it go.
(c) Marilyn McEntyre
https://www.marilynmcentyre.com
About Start With a Word: On the Craft and Adventure of Writing
A creative masterclass for aspiring and established writers alike.
After decades of writing award-winning books on subjects ranging from poetry to art to liturgical seasons, celebrated author Marilyn McEntyre turns her attention to the vocation that has shaped her life. Start with a Word: On the Craft and Adventure of Writing is a literary masterclass that eschews drills and formulas in favor of close readings and refreshingly playful advice.
A veteran teacher, Marilyn understands that the best writing instruction doesn’t come from rigid rules or rote approaches to filling the blank page. Instead, she demonstrates how the writers whose works we have enjoyed can become our tutors. She calls us to move beyond asking “What does this text say?” to a more revealing question: “How does this text work?” This shift in perspective—from passive consumption to active apprenticeship—transforms how we encounter literature and how we create it.
More than a how-to manual, Start with a Word is an invitation into a way of being that honors both the precision and the mystery of words. It offers short lessons on essential elements of literary craft, close readings of passages from a range of works, writing prompts, and, above all, encouragement for authors to find their unique path into work only they can create.
“Reading and writing keep alive in us the desire to be precise, lively, surprising, generous, inviting, challenging, wise. They make us want to be good, if only in the sense that choosing exact and appropriate words is a matter of choosing the good. . . . I don’t think you can be an excellent writer without developing some virtues, if only fidelity to a practice that honors the gift of language.”
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