You have probably always wanted to write a book. You have probably tried to start writing it several times and gave up. Or maybe you did write it, but it didn’t quite turn out the way you wanted it to. You have most likely been scared and frustrated by the writing process, as well as exhilarated and thrilled. And you probably wondered how you could tell exactly what you wanted to tell, and tell it well.
I’m not going to give you an answer to your burning questions. I’m still searching for it myself. But I will maybe alleviate your pain in sharing with you my own search on the way to telling my stories in the best way I can. After four years of writing full-time, I have turned a corner and am no longer scared. No, this is a lie. I am scared, but being scared no longer stops me. And the answer is simple: study the craft of writing. How? By doing it and by learning how others did it before you.
When I started out, I charged ahead like mad, high on the possibility of writing my very first book and actually doing it. I disregarded rules and channeled my inner self on the page, believing it was true art (not that I understood what that meant). I was fine for a while. But on my fourth book I got lost and quickly finished it because I didn’t know how to make it better. And on my fifth book I got stuck and had to scrap everything and reengineer my entire writing process. Why? Because I ignored the rules. I thought writing was an expression of something intangible and divine that couldn’t be touched lest it be wrecked by such rudimentary and boring things as plotting, theme development, grammar, character arcs, etc. And I was wrong, and maybe because you read these lines you will trust that what I’m sharing with you is true and will spare yourself the pain I went through (or maybe you won’t, but you will remember these lines when you hit rock bottom).
Know what they expect 😉
Writing isn’t some nebulous ethereal substance to be caught from the air and randomly spun into a story. Writing is both an art and a craft, and the two can’t be separated from each other. If you’re a painter, you must know the types of paints and brushes you use. What would happen if you didn’t? Same with writing. The boring grammar is not boring at all. It’s a wonderful tool to help you say exactly what you want to say the best way you can. It’s a tool that you have to learn and allow yourself to be awkward with, at first, and keep practicing until you master it, and it becomes a skill that you don’t have to think about.
Jemaine Clement as frustrated author Dr. Ronald Chevalier in Gentleman Broncos.
That frustration we talked about, remember? It comes from the feeling that something isn’t right, but you can’t pinpoint what exactly. Studying the craft of writing will show you what’s wrong and how to fix it. Without it you’ll be lost and tempted to give up.
But there are so many ways to write! You might be thinking. There are writers who plot, and writers who don’t! You’re right, of course. But here is what I’ve learned. Until you study the rules of your craft, you won’t know how to break them. And by not studying the rules at all you’re robbing yourself of a chance to learn how to tell your tale and tell it well. You might get lucky and stumble on it. You might not. Are you willing to spend days, months, years groping around in the dark? That’s what I did, and it’s not an easy road. I nearly quit writing altogether several times, that’s how bad it got.
So where do you start? You start by doing and learning. What do I mean by that? Simple. Start writing your tale. Just start. When you get blocked and don’t know how to proceed, look at what’s stopped you and study it. Read about it. Is it grammar? Revisit your grammar. Is it sentence structure or style? Read about style. Is it your character who gives you trouble? Study how to write characters. Plot problems? Learn about plotting. And so on. You will find that every time you get stuck you will get unstuck, and with new knowledge keep charging forward. You will see that learning how to write well takes time, and you will allow your tale to be bad and awkward and messy, because you will know that it’s normal, and this is what will keep you from quitting. That’s huge. I wish someone told me this when I started.
I had to find out for myself. I hope my telling you this now will keep you from quitting. We need your tale. We want to read it. So tell it. And while doing so, learn how to tell it well. It may be that it’ll take you ten bad tales to arrive at one good one. Or maybe twenty. Or thirty. But never give up. Do and learn, do and learn, and you will get there. And now I’m done telling you my tale about how I learned that to tell my tale well I needed to study how to do it. Your turn.
Many have been humbled simply standing in a darkened field and looking to the stars. Indeed the great thinkers of the many generations that have come and gone are regarded as giants when in fact they were merely humans dropped to their knees by the wonder that is the universe all around us. There is as much wonder in a blade of grass as there is in a cosmic nebula, as much mystery in a drop of water as in the dark matter we yet fail to comprehend.
James Hart Dyke is based in Brighton, England nestled between the water and the south downs. In his studio he works largely on commissions. Last November Hart Dyke traveled to Patagonia and is now painting mountain landscapes from this trip for an exhibition in London at the end of the year. Landscapes are his life’s work and his love for the art form has infused his life and career with adventure and physicality as he climbs and hikes the places he later paints. “Enduring the landscape in some way, I find that combination of painting and physicality very exciting…it’s what my painting is about, really,” he says. Hart Dyke has been embedded with British forces in war zones on commission from the UK military. In Baghdad he painted while two soldiers stood guard. This tradition of bringing artists along to paint is long standing and important to the regiments of the UK. The work created is kept in the collections of the individual regiments and displayed in the mess hall, documenting the history of each for the soldiers to witness. The tradition dates back before photography when artists were the only window to a visual representation of the action of the battlefield.
Artists’ representations of war convey more than just the actual imagery of what is going on before them. The emotions of the situation are infused into the work, as well. Hart Dyke has had an unusual career. His work has led him to a position as artist in residence for the British Secret Intelligence Service as well as to work for the Royal Family. For the British Secret Intelligence Service, Hart Dyke helped to commemorate the centenary by documenting things in paint. As an artist he was able to venture where photographers could not go due to the highly sensitive nature of the work done there. His paintings from this series are quite surreal, a nod to the rather unusual nature of the work the British Secret Intelligence Service does. Hart Dyke studied architecture which he is still passionate about despite eventually moving to painting. His entrance into the painting world began with commissioned paintings of buildings. In reality, Hart Dyke began painting at the age of eight and despite his foray into architecture he never truly gave it up. There was inevitability to his career as a painter. Because of the physical nature of his process, art has become in a very real sense James Hart Dyke’s sport. To hear more about this, James Hart Dyke’s unusual career, and about the tradition of artists on the battlefield, listen to the complete interview.
Kambui Olujimi recently exhibited work titled Red Shift. The title refers to celestial bodies in space that cannot be seen because of shifts in the spectrum of light. Through this lens, Olujimi contemplated the mythology of whiteness as an unseen force. Olujimi describes how the mythological space of whiteness plays out in the physical world through policy, allocation of resources, and myriad other ways. He references descriptions of mass shooters as “lone shooters” in a way that removes them from the space of violence pervasive in the US. Presidential assassins are another example. These two groups of predominantly white men are somehow isolated, removed from the larger conversation about violence in the US creating a Red Shift that in a sense conceals them from the rest of the data.
For the exhibition, Olujimi created collages from news imagery of the alt-right coupled with drawings. Olujimi’s current project centers on fragmentation of identity. His love of films informs this work. In particular he references the accidental announcement of La La Land for Best Picture in 2017 when in fact the film Moonlight claimed that title. His concept deconstructs and reassembles that moment, elongating it and examining the feeling of elation followed by crushing deflation. “A lot of my work is around these things that I call inevitabilities…I’m interested in bringing those inevitabilities out of the space of the implicit. Once you give them shape and weight and gravity and start to manifest them in some way, the incongruities and absurdities, the surreal aspects all become very evident and we are able to become more critical of them in that space.” It is these gaps, these “moments of silence” that inform Olujimi’s work. To hear more about this powerful art, listen to the complete interview.For the Silo, Brainard Carey.
Featured image- Mercy Doesn’t Grow On Trees, 2016 Wood, glass, hair, gold leaf, ratchet straps 150 x 48 x 30 inches
You have probably always wanted to write a book. You have probably tried to start writing it several times and gave up. Or maybe you did write it, but it didn’t quite turn out the way you wanted it to. You have most likely been scared and frustrated by the writing process, as well as exhilarated and thrilled. And you probably wondered how you could tell exactly what you wanted to tell, and tell it well.
you get stuck you will get unstuck, and with new knowledge keep charging forward. You will see that learning how to write well takes time, and you will allow your tale to be bad and awkward and messy, because you will know that it’s normal, and this is what will keep you from quitting. That’s huge. I wish someone told me this when I started.