July 2023: Revision Reflections

On revising the worst writing advice ever given

Hello, friends!

I’m so glad you’ve joined us here. I’d like to introduce myself by sharing the worst writing advice I've ever been given. “Jo!” you might yell. “What?” I know. It’s going to take some trust. Let me start with a little backstory, and then we’ll get to this awful advice…

When I was in college I took a nonfiction writing course which turned out not to be a course in writing informative articles about current events, which I'd assumed, but writing personal essays. In case some of you don't remember, when you're a sophomore in college, a personal essay can get super personal.

This happened to be one of the most difficult years of my life, and so it seemed fitting that I should unload all the stuff happening to me on my poor writing instructor. In response to my excruciatingly honest submissions, he would write pages-long letters back, pushing me not to share more, but to craft my confessions into something meaningful and, bless him, more literary.

I would revise, crafting my essays into not a comment about me, but a comment about my world. I had to learn how to stop writing confessions and write commentary. I had to look deeper into why sharing this story mattered to me in the first place, and why I wanted—needed—to share it.

My professor urged me to add details I didn't want to see at first. Didn't want to acknowledge. If you really want your reader to feel something, you have to take them through a real room, not some beautified version of it. Show us the dust, the beer bottle rings left on the coffee table, the cigarette burns on the sofa—and worse.

I had to learn the difference between writing a diary entry and writing an essay. Rather than think, Dear Diary I had to think, Dear Audience. Dear strangers. Not surprisingly, there's a big difference. And it has a lot to do with using excruciating honesty to discover the truth, which I'll come back to in a minute.

With the encouragement of my instructor, I submitted one of these essays to the college's literary journal, Sidelines. It was called “Living Room Music” and it was about an evening when I'd returned home from a party to discover my parents dancing in the dark in our living room. Our house was about to be foreclosed on and my parents were facing bankruptcy. I'd grown up witnessing my parents following their dreams, taking huge risks, and perhaps not making the wisest of financial choices. There, as I stood in the dark looking into the living room at their shadowy silhouettes, I was witnessing what was left of all those risks. The irony of Elvis singing "Wise men say only fools rush in" and how "some things are meant to be" wasn't lost on me. It was March, and it was freezing indoors because the wood furnace in the basement could never send enough heat upstairs before it escaped through the thin walls of our ancient farmhouse.

I wrote about what it felt like to stand there, alone in the dark, witnessing what was left of all those risks and wonderful and awful memories in a house that was literally falling apart, in a family that was at risk of doing the same. What was left, was nothing.

Only, my instructor helped me realize that wasn't true. He helped me learn, by looking deeper through the ruin and my own anger and frustration, that what I was seeing in that darkened living room wasn't utter loss. Through all the destruction, there were my parents, holding each other up, dancing. If I'd stepped into the room and let my presence be known, they'd have opened their arms and made me dance with them. I was the one on the outside, I had been all along. All I needed to do was step into the dark and realize it wasn't empty.

That was the truth I discovered in writing the essay. All that moping and feeling sorry for myself was perfectly understandable, but what I'd been unable to see was the hope I discovered in all the ugliness surrounding it: My family may have been losing "everything" but if we still had each other, how important was all the rest?

When this essay was accepted to the magazine, I learned I would have to read it at a reception for all the winners. Those of you who know me know I'm not a huge fan of public speaking or reading, or pretty much anything that involves me standing alone in front of an audience. But I managed. And when I finished, I looked up to see several people in tears.

Now, one of the most frequently asked questions you'll get as an author is, "When did you know you wanted to be a writer." For me, it was at that moment. I was the shyest of the shy kids. I never spoke unless called on. No one ever asked my opinion, even though I for sure had one. I wanted to be heard, but didn't have the guts to speak up. Finally, I had discovered a way. Through writing. It wasn't so much that I wanted to make people cry, though through my career I've been accused of that plenty of times (one of my books was even marketed with a packet of tissues!). What I loved was the connection. The connection not to my imaginary Dear Diary, but to real people. We shared something, those criers and me, and it made me feel like I wasn't alone anymore.

I'm pretty sure all of you subscribed to this newsletter for a similar reason. You want to write. You want to write because you have something to say. You want to be heard. So now let me step into my mentor shoes and give you this terrible advice that has served me both well and horribly, and which, most likely you've already heard numerous times by well-meaning cheerleaders:

“Write what you know.”

I have cursed whoever first gave this advice many times in my teaching career, and as a participant in many a critique group. How many times have you given a writer feedback and been told, "But that's how it really happened!"? I think writers often fall into the trap of feeling like writing what they know means writing exactly how it happened, and I would argue that even in nonfiction, that's often the kiss of death, depending on how you fail to spin it. And the reason is, that to successfully convey what "really happened" you need to explore why it happened. And that's almost always a much more frightening proposition.

As writers, you are trying to create not just a physical telling, but a deeply emotional one.

Laying out the facts about losing my home isn't what made the audience cry. What made them cry is what I'd learned by revising to learn what I DIDN'T know. By examining why these things had happened I discovered that what I was really writing about was two people who followed their hearts on a long and crazy journey together, who took chances because they knew that no matter what happened, there was one thing they wouldn't lose: Love. Watching them dance that night, it wasn't clear to me which one was holding the other up. In the process of writing about it, I learned it didn’t matter.

So here's how I'd modify that classic advice you are sure to hear many times on your writerly journey: Write what you know, then revise it to discover what you don't.

It's not easy. The most beautiful, the most powerful writing starts with admitting that ugly things exist. I think in the thousands of words I've read, the most memorable are the most raw and bare and exposed. It's the ugly details that make your story feel honest and real. I trust the writer more who dares to describe the world as it really is, and not what we pretend it to be. It's scary. Of course it is. But it is necessary.

We connect through shared truths, and those are rarely perfect. But those are what make your audience cry with recognition. Those are what will connect you with your reader, and make you feel less alone.

Often, it's by walking through the hardest path, exposing the harshest truths, facing the cruelest demons, that leads to true discovery and hope. That's where the real beauty hides. You just have to walk through the cold, dark living room to get there.

I challenge you to write the kind of story that requires a little of your blood. A little of your soul. Don't be afraid to put yourself or your characters in dark places. By doing so, you shine light on them. Write raw. Write honest. To do this, you need to write what you know, yes. But more than that, it requires you to be brave enough to discover what you don't.

In community,

Jo

This essay was adapted from a commencement speech delivered at Mountainview MFA, June 2017

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