At a time when I feel less than fructified as a writer, that is I am not, as I so often am, teeming with ideas, a LinkedIn connection, whom I've never met outside of the auspices of artificial pixels, just sent me a note. Lest you think I am telling a tall-tale, I'm reprinting it here. Grad students would call that "verisimilitude."
While I am not qualified to answer Andy's question, lack of qualifications have never really stopped me from doing anything. When I was a kid I had my brother's draft card. That let me drink alcohol when I was just fifteen or sixteen. Today, I think, they call that "fake it till you make it." That's what I mean by not qualified.
I'm closing in on my 68th birthday and I realize I might never "make it." I'll never write the great amerikan novel, or even a decent short-story. And my days of being eligible for awards at Cannes are as past, as my days of actually caring about awards and recognition that seem more and more out-of-step with reality.
So, I'll fake it while I never make it.
Whenever I'm asked anything about writing, I think of a book I read probably half a century ago by writer and critic, Malcolm Cowley. It's the title that does it for me. In fact, given that I read it 50 years ago, the title is all I remember. But all, really, I need to remember. Because it includes the words "I worked." (BTW, you can buy the book here for just $6. And read the Times review here, if you subscribe to that paper.)
Mainly, Andy, the most common of characteristics is the one that's hardest to come by. That is, the willingness to work.
To work.
To work.
To work at your writing like you work at anything that's important. If you make your living writing, you cannot be a dilettante. You have to write and write some more and revise and think and always be thinking about your writing.
Writing isn't a talent. It's a craft. Crafts need practice.
I've never been a Hemingway type, where I say writing is akin to "opening up a vein and bleeding." But that's only because I've incorporated work into my being, so in a sense writing--at least the incidental writing I do, which is mainly to sell things for clients--has never seemed hard to me. But, that may be because my work ethic and my discipline are powerful enough to overwhelm the negative force of procrastination and avoidance.
In other words, I spend more time doing than avoiding. That's a big advantage if you work for a living.
The other bit, Andy, also doesn't draw a distinction between copywriting, fiction and non-fiction. Because, for me the similarities are more important than the differences.
Good writing--no matter what kind--includes two components.
1. Truth. I learned this most explicitly from two-time National Book Award-winner and two-time Pulitzer-winner, Robert Caro. (You should read his book called "Working," as soon as you can.) Caro says a writer's job is "to find out how things work and explain them to people."
I think that holds no matter what kind of writing you do. Even notes at the bottom of a greeting card.
In pursuit of that finding out, Caro urges writers to "turn every page." That is, dig. Dig deeper. Dig deeperer.
Because, as Caro says, "Time equals truth."
Truth requires digging. Digging requires sweat. Sweat requires soul. They all take time.
2. Love. I learned this most clearly from my favorite New Yorker writer, Joseph Mitchell. You can find a good amount of Mitchell online, if you haven't read him, especially if you subscribe to the New Yorker. You can also buy a softcover (used) of a collection of his writing, 750-pages worth, here, for less than the price of a cup of designer coffee.
Most of what Mitchell wrote was fictionalized non-fiction on society's forgotten people. These could easily have turned into caricatures or become mocking. But Mitchell shows love and empathy for his subjects. As odd as they may seem at first, Mitchell shows nothing but caring and respect for them.
Truth and Love is what all good writing has to convey. You can find it in spades in Homer's "Iliad." Why else would Achilles refuse to fight? Why did he drag Hector seven times around the walls of Troy? Why did Ahab hunt the whale? Or Hemingway's waiter want to leave his clean, well-lighted place?
Even an ad, even a tweet needs truth and love.
They're what it takes to write.
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