Your best book club "books" might be the ones you write for each other. Authors Lauren Mouat (left) and Amanda Skenandore (right) tell you how.
To clarify the headline: this article does not seriously expect you to write a whole novel. But it does want you to try creative writing.
The Back Story
Then again, what is creative writing? Why do it at all? We should ask an expert:
"It is the unknown that you carry in yourself: that is what writing reaches. It’s that or nothing.
To write is to try to know what you would write--you only know it after. Before, it is the most dangerous question you could ask yourself. But it is the most urgent one too."
(from Marguerite Duras, “Writing”)
I was alone when I found that quote, in the first few weeks of quarantine in March 2020. I sat in my apartment in Philadelphia where traffic had ceased during the day, listening to birds and wind, and other noises next to silence. Usually there would be exhaust, trucks shifting, clanking in the street. The unknown was hovering everywhere in an unusually cold spring. She’s right, I think.
Duras was an acclaimed novelist born in 1914, in what, at the time, was French Indochina. It's now Vietnam; she writes about love and alcoholism and power and passage. I had never intended to translate her work, but then I ended up making my way through an entire book of her essays, including that one.
I said I was alone; the most memorable moment of Duras’ writing, for me, however, wasn’t the solitary choices about wording and how best to turn French into English; it was sharing what I’d done with my friends. This includes Anna, Ian, and Erica, of Bookclubz fame.
I copy and pasted too-long excerpts from my project into iMessage and texted them. This was met with bemused but welcoming optimism and surprise; perhaps because I’ve never published a word of fiction or translation in my life. The rest of the Duras is still waiting in a Word Document. Informally showing it to people I trust, and writing this to you, might mean it won’t stay there forever.
My point: writing is meant to be shared, and there is no one right way to do this, nor schedule to do it on. And even if writing doesn’t come naturally to you, it can still change your life for the better.
Speaking of schedules, I was inspired to write this post by National Novel Writing Month, popularly abbreviated NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is a huge and fiercely loyal squad of authorial endurance athletes who aim to complete a 50,000 word project in one month by November 30 at the stroke of midnight. Some beautiful recent work, Water for Elephants, for example, began its life in NaNoWriMo.
You’re too late to be a Wrimo now (that’s what they call themselves), but, really, a month is a social construct. You can write anytime. And, crucially, if you’re a part of a book club, you don’t need a new community of writers to belong to necessarily, although November 2022 isn’t so far away and, honestly (speaking of quarantine), we all know that spans of time no longer correspond to our concepts of “long” or “short.” So go be a Wrimo “soon.”
In the meantime, however, I’ve interviewed some authors close to Bookclubz’s heart to help ease your book club into sharing creative writing with each other. We currently don’t have any writing clubs on our platform: you can rebrand your existing club and pioneer the very first right here at Join a Book Club.
Why? I'll tell you why. People, if your club feels like it’s losing the spark; if you’re tired of each other’s faces and want to escape to something mysterious, passionate, and forbidden; if you're losing sight of why you joined a club in the first place, then try writing for each other.
You can always go back to just reading if it gets too intense. Here’s how to do it:
Writing is Both Very Hard and Very Simple
Amanda Skenandore, author of the novels The Second Life of Mirielle West, and Between Earth and Sky, compares writing a novel to chiseling a block of stone. If you join our Bookclubz Author Chats online club, you’ll never miss interviews with authors like Amanda, and you’ll get to hear first hand what goes into producing the work you usually just consume.
Publisher’s Weekly enthused over the diligent research and empathetic unfolding of Mirielle’s tale in The Second Life, as she endures medical isolation after being diagnosed with leprosy, and is sent to a communal hospital in 1920s Louisiana. But Amanda is very clear: diligence comes later.
“The first draft is quick and dirty. I don't reread what I've written. I don't edit as I go. All of that happens on the back end. I like to have a complete story--imperfect and ugly as it may be--before I revise. It helps to have something complete I can hold in my head, a rough-hewn story I can examine from multiple angles before going back in with my chisel,” she writes, in an email to Bookclubz.
It sounds daunting to suspend one’s judgment of one’s self that way--or even to take oneself seriously enough to write a story. Children invent stories, then we grow out of it. It may be exhausting or remarkably arid, like picking at dry ground, when you try to cultivate anything worth putting down. But simply put something down.
Consider yourself worthy, or creative, or important enough, and just do it.
Click the link to hear more of Amanda’s reflections and advice here in our interview.
Or Maybe You Tell Yourself Stories Constantly
That’s the thing. Many of us (me) are constantly imagining how things might have gone, or will go, or what the people around us in our environment are actually thinking. A lot of this just means we have to do more mindfulness exercises. Writing is such an exercise because it forces your thoughts into a definite shape.
But you shouldn’t feel penalized if it’s not intuitive how to get there.
“Long before I begin writing,” Skenandore says, “I let the story churn in my brain. I envision different characters and play out alternative scenarios and trajectories. Then I outline, chapter by chapter, beginning, middle, and end.”
Only then does she feel free and invested enough to begin that headlong rush through the first draft. Spontaneity takes some preparation, some relaxation and planning. Miles Davis once said that it takes a long time to sound like yourself.
My point: not only have you been “writing” long before you actually sit down and do it, but you can make a sketch in a low-pressure way before you turn to what really counts in a high-pressure way.
Write To Learn Things You Didn't Know You Already Knew
Which brings us back to Duras, and the unknown within yourself. You may not have a “story” in mind, or anything in mind, before you set your pen to paper. What you write may not be a story at all; it could be an impression you had of something that happened to you, or a description of a memory, or just an angry opinion. Length certainly does not mean quality, necessarily, either.
Lauren Mouat, the editor of the Open Doors Review, a bilingual literary magazine based in Italy, and the author of a debut short story collection to be published in 2022, agrees. When I shared my Duras quote with her as a potential writing prompt, Lauren seconded that Duras’ unknown is important to her own creative practice too, through the act of journaling.
Journaling, Lauren says, begins an “indirect dialogue with myself,” one full of surprises. Journaling, for her, is “the raw material, the forming of thoughts into words that aren't designed or part of a story. Journaling can be incredibly therapeutic. This is where surprises can pop out of your subconscious directly onto the page and surprise you. I often have the sensation of reading these pages and having no memory of writing them.”
Lauren sets a timer for 20 to 30 minutes, with the rule that she’s not allowed to stop writing until the timer goes off. That’s a lot less intimidating than an entire novel-writing month. You can bring it down to 10, or 5, or 1. It doesn’t even need to be sentences. It’s something.
Then Make Yourself Presentable in Words
But, as we all know, we gain perspective from time and distance. William Wordsworth called poetry emotion recollected in tranquility. That’s certainly not all poetry is, but a good note nonetheless.
Lauren wrote to me that the more she understood the difference between journaling and “the organized craft of writing,” the better she felt as an artist.
Once you switch from pouring it out to craft, "you are working on something to be consumed by others and you can’t use this time as a therapy session,” she reminds us. Therapy comes first, communication and action come after.
While editing, shaping, making presentable: you are the CEO of whatever you’ve written. No change is out of bounds. No decision is impractical, although it may turn out to be wrong. And once you share it with others, you’ll know whether you were right.
People do enjoy beginnings, middles, and ends. Stories have those, although some start in the middle, and others don’t end. But the structure you want to give your writing is completely up to you. You just have to pick one.
Maybe turn to your club’s profile on Bookclubz, find a book you’ve read, and steal its structure. Or if you’re not sure what “structure” is, look at some discussion questions from Bookclubz and note what parts of the books they’re asking about.
All “structure” means in writing is what you choose to be there, and what you choose to take out. As long as it’s intentional, as long as you have a reason for the decisions you’re making, then it counts as structure.
Four Crucial Writing Club Guidelines
Everyone loves lists, so here we go:
One: Set boundaries. Everyone can buy into “writing club” more easily if you all agree on what you’re going to do ahead of time. Maybe you all agree to journal for ten minutes a day every day, and then shape it into something for next month’s meeting. Maybe you all want to try to write a sonnet. It doesn’t matter.
Two: No exceptions. The only way Writing Club works is if everyone writes. No one is on the sidelines. That way everybody understands first-hand the vulnerability and difficulty that goes into the work.
Three: Read aloud. Go around the room, and read whatever you have. Or, email it ahead of time so everyone can see it and print it out. Then you can explain your “raw material” and your “structure” to them.
Four: Respond. Every single person must react verbally to every single piece. No exceptions to this rule either. You have to be respectful, obviously, but you have to say something real, too. “I liked it” doesn’t qualify. Why did you? If you’re not sure why, say that and then search for the words together with your club.
But Bookclubz can make this even easier for you with...
Quality Writing Prompts
In her novels, Duras shares her answers to the most urgent and dangerous questions she could ask herself. Her biographer, Alain Vircondelet, compares her writing to a ship on a black ocean at night. You may know what those questions are for yourself, but you don’t have to answer them for everyone unless you want to.
These prompts might tend more towards dry land and the daytime:
Pick an item in your field of vision and tell the story, real or imaginary, of how it got there.
Recount the last time you were enraged.
What won’t you be patient about?
What relative in your family are you most like?
Describe a neighborhood in an imaginary city.
Why can’t they be together?
Go for a walk outside, find an animal, and describe what job they would have if they were human.
You have to get to the geographic center of the United States in 24 hours and you can’t use your own vehicle, a commercial flight, a bus line, or an Amtrak train. How do you do it?
These are just a very few of the many writing prompts you can find. Email me if your club wants a custom one and we can work something out. Or tell me how your writing experience is going. If it is at any stage of success or decay, I am happy to help.
Try it! Good luck to you all. And thank you very much to Lauren and Amanda for their help with this piece!
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