Lessons from writing that apply to life

A few writing quotes I think about even when I’m not writing...

Not long ago, I was invited to a swanky event for journalists here in Los Angeles—the kind I immediately chalked up as pretentious. Naturally, I went.

When I got there, I looked for evidence to validate my cynicism. The designer outfits. The impeccable haircuts. The bite-sized hoagies that everyone called crudités. “This is so L.A.,” I thought. 

Then I remembered something George Saunders calls “first draft mind.” 

When you’re writing, there’s a perspective that shows up in the first draft. During the revision process, that perspective changes. It gets deeper and more thoughtful. As George Saunders explained in an interview with Ezra Klein, “first draft mind” is your knee-jerk reaction to a given situation. Like being cynical at a party because, as you realize in "second or third draft mind, you’re actually just insecure. And maybe in fourth draft mind, you even realize it’s okay to be in a room full of people who intimidate you. That maybe you can learn a lot from the people in that room. And even if you don’t, hey, free food.

Saunders put it this way:

“By the end, there’s a different person represented. And it’s a person that I like better. So in other words, the mind that appeared in the first draft was just some mind. It doesn’t have to be identified with me. The process of working through it, suddenly you see, oh, there’s a lot of minds along the way. And that to me is a really beautiful and kind of addicting experience. I don’t ever want to be the person who speaks or thinks in first-draft mind.”

So much good writing advice is also solid life advice. 

I think about “first draft mind” a lot, usually when I’m reacting to something defensively or impulsively. Is this how I really feel, I’ll ask myself, or is this my first draft mind?

A few years ago, I started making a list of quotes or pieces of writing advice that I think about even when I’m not writing. This week, I thought I’d share a few.

Enjoy,

Kristin

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On self-criticism:

“If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.” –Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

On letting go:

“There’s a line between revision and fretting, just working it to death. It is important to know when you are fretting it; when you are fretting it because it is not working, it needs to be scrapped.” –Toni Morrison, from a 1993 interview in The Paris Review

On finding your voice:

“ But in just about every case I can think of, one is already in possession of the voice, one is just not in the habit of listening to that voice, or for it, much less letting it speak.”   –Alexander Chee, How to Write Faster and Find Your Voice

On authenticity: 

“We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can. When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for The Simpsons who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.” –Zadie Smith in the Guardian

On doing the damn thing:

“Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.” –William Faulkner

On the value of practice:

“You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.” –Octavia Butler

On meaning-making:

“'What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.” -Vivian Gornik, the Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative

On starting messy:

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.” –Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

On the value of uncertainty:

“Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.”

― David Bayles, Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

Untranslatable words you might enjoy

• The Duende (Spanish): A heightened state of creative expression.

• Tsundoku: (Japanese): Books that pile up before you have a chance to read them.

From the archives

How to Finally Write Your Nonfiction Book (the New York Times)

Shareworthy

• I helped write this Hidden Brain episode about cynicism versus hope. "Cynicism is far from a radical worldview. It’s a tool of the status quo."

• Thank you to Jon for recommending Gretchen Rubin’s The Opposite of Meditation Is…Recess & I Need More Recess. “I didn’t want to empty or quiet my mind; I wanted to flood my mind with sensations.”

• I enjoyed this story about the history of Erewhon, an expensive grocery store chain in Los Angeles. “It exists within, and has always occupied, a space between commerce and cult.”

This week’s soundtrack