Happy 20th Anniversary to Writers at Work! This important literary organization, founded by Terry Wolverton, offers poets and writers opportunities in all phases of the writing life: workshops, readings, networking, and publishing. In September 2009, Terry published my poem, “The White Chicken Gives a First-Hand Account,” as WAW’s Poem of the Month. It was subsequently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. I am forever grateful.
I tell students that it is the job of every writer to determine and shape your own writing practice—how often, when and for how long; where and with what tools and under what circumstances? There are many writers who offer advice about these matters, but I find it’s mostly useless, because each writer needs to figure out what works for you.
How Often
Many well-known writers will tell you that you need to write every day, and I respect and understand the powerful discipline of that daily practice. That doesn’t mean I adhere to it. Like most writers, I juggle earning a living; running a household; paying attention to my partner, friends, animal companions and family; attending to other interests and community commitments; self-care and more. There are things I do every single day—meditate, email my mother—but writing is not one of them. There have been particular books or writing projects that I did work on daily, but I can’t claim they got done faster or were any better than books for which my practice was more irregular.
When
Find the time of the day when your energy is best. For those who have demanding jobs, I often suggest they write first thing in the morning, when they are fresh and before other demands assert their claim on you. One novelist used to get up at 4 a.m. and write for 60-90 minutes before getting ready for work. For others, writing in the early morning would be unthinkable; they’d rather burn the midnight oil. I know parents who schedule their writing around chauffeuring their kids to and from school, game practice, the dentist and playdates. While we’d like to find the optimal time of day and write then, sometimes it’s a matter of finding any available time in a crowded week.
For How Long
I’ve heard writers claim that it’s not even worth it for them to start writing unless they have a 3- or 4- or 6-hour chunk of uninterrupted time. I would never write if I waited for that. My personal attention span is about two hours at a stretch, but I’ve also learned to work in smaller increments. It’s possible to do something even in 15-30 minutes. I once wrote the first draft of a novel in a half-hour a day. For some writers who have a lot of competing demands, shooting for smaller increments of time makes it possible to keep going with their work.
Where
I’d rather not write at home, although I sometimes do. I feel more distracted by all the other facets of life—email and social media and the ringing telephone and my cat jumping into my lap. Other writers seem better able to insulate against those distractions. But neither do I like to write in public, except maybe on an airplane. I know other writers who love to write in coffee shops; a student at Writers At Work used to say she loved “writing out” (like eating out, but literary) but the noise level defeats my concentration.
Some writers have created perfect havens in their home—their desk, their bookshelves, their special candle, their window. I imagine that for myself sometimes, but in reality, my workspace is cluttered with the debris of other work, bills to be paid, unopened mail, unread copies of magazines I hope to get to, things to be filed. I am fortunate to have a workshop space that allows me to have writing dates there.
With What Tools
Other artists sometimes envy writers because the tools of our craft can be inexpensive and portable. Paper and pen—that’s pretty simple, right? But of course, these days one eventually needs to get it into the computer and print it out, and that starts to be more costly. However, most public libraries offer free (if time-limited) access to computers and printers. One fiction writer I know writes on his phone, and I’ve seen plenty of poets stand up at readings and read from their phones.
I have found that my practice changes depending on the book or project I am writing. Some works seem to require that I draft them first by hand, and by that, I mean in actual ink on actual paper. With other projects, it feels okay to draft directly on the computer, but I am aware that for me they are very different kinetic experiences that definitely influence the way my brain is working. The computer is a good tool for me to get ideas down, but if I am trying to woo a voice for or craft the diction of a work, that needs to be done by hand.
When I work on paper, I like to work on lined pads of recycled paper, preferable white, and with an extra-fine point Pilot pen. I need to feel like every sheet is easily disposable; a bound book or something with fancy paper just shuts me down. I’ve known writers who would only write with fountain pens, or who love those bound books, or who haven’t written anything by hand except their signature in ten years. The point is to try things and find out what works best for you.
Under What Circumstances
I know writers who listen to music while they write. I’d rather have quiet. Some like to write outdoors; that’s not my first choice. Some people say they can only write when they are in a certain kind of mood. Some write to avoid other tasks; a poet once told me, “I always write a lot of poems when I’m taking a math class.” Others turn toward those tasks for avoid writing; reports one, “My kitchen is always very clean when I am working on a book.”
My own practice is greatly assisted by proximity to other writers. For decades now I have been making writing dates, wherein another writer and I sit down to work on our individual projects. Solitude is not one of my favorite things about writing, so I appreciate the companionship a writing date offers, as well as the accountability. Also I find that in the company of another artist working on their work, the creative juices multiply exponentially. I have had some incredible breakthroughs in the middle of a writing date. But I know other writers who cherish the solitary time writing provides; nothing could be less appealing to them than having another person in the room while they work.
One poet I know likes to pair writing with exercise; she gets her energy going and then moves to her desk. I teach a workshop, “Meditate/Create,” in which we start with some warm-up stretches, move into meditation, and then turn our attention to writing. Meditation can be a good way to gather focus before a writing session.
Some writers like to start with a warm-up exercise. That might be a few minutes of “fevered writing” (spontaneous writing, writing without intention), it might be the “morning pages” recommended by Julia Cameron in The Artists Way. It might be finding a prompt in a book or a news headline and starting with those words. It might be recopying a passage of your own work to get yourself back into the flow of that project. One novelist tells me she never ends a writing session by concluding a segment or chapter; she always likes to start the next one to give her a little boost for the next day.
When you write for a while, you begin to discover what most stimulates your creativity. It’s part of your job to figure that out, and then see how you can give yourself the most ideal circumstances possible in which to do your work.
Text by Terry Wolverton
Photo by Yvonne M. Estrada
Thinking about joining a writing workshop? Writers At Work offers weekly, ongoing opportunities for writers of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, as well as creative counseling and manuscript review. Learn more at http://writersatwork.com/education.html. In 2017, we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary of inspiring, encouraging and empowering writers.
My experience with Writers At Work began with Terry Wolverton in 2003. It was not through a class but I had gone to Terry for help with a novel I was struggling with for several years before I met with her.
At our first session, after she had read it, she gave me the best piece of advice I could have received at the time, “This is going to take you a long time to complete as a novel.”
I didn’t believe her. I should have. I would have been kinder to myself if I had, not be in such a hurry to get it done. It is a complex story with complicated characters amidst a backdrop of 2 different countries and 2 different time periods.
But she also added at the end of our conversation, “You need to write this story.”
Since then I have been a participant in the workshop for writing the book-length work, which I returned to after having dropped out of writing and the class for a while. Today in 2017, I am still working on my novel but with feedback from Terry’s incredible insight and experience with what writers need to get their stories out in the world, along with critiques from a fantastic group of bright, intelligent writers I have met through W@W and with whom I am proud to be associated and some even friends, I am much, much closer to seeing my novel become a published reality.
Writers at Work changed my life. And my pants.
I’ve always been a writer, but I’ve spent my work life in advertising and marketing, doing promos for TV series. A few years ago, longing to write something longer than 60 seconds, I began penning essays about my childhood, and a friend suggested I get into his writing group, Writers at Work.
There, I discovered a community, and a mentor; and they were so encouraging, it made me pee. With the help of Terry and the other writers, those essays became a memoir, Where’s My Wand? which was published by Penguin Random House. My second memoir, Excuse Me While I Slip into Someone More Comfortable will be published in May, 2018, and a third book, Rake That Shag! in spring, 2019.
Without Terry’s inspiration and guidance, and the support of those wonderful writers (a number of whom I’m still friends with, even though I’ve moved away from LA), this may never have happened. Sure, I wouldn’t have ruined some perfectly good pants, but I also wouldn’t have realized my dreams.
For me, the Future of Publishing Think Tank was an action tank. Writers at Work convened a smart group of local publishers, booksellers, writers and literary advocates, and together we sought to find a way forward for literature in the internet age. It was 2007 and the industry was being turned upside down by blogs and online shopping. Twitter and Facebook were still in their infancy, and the first smart phone hadn’t even been released. Encouraged by the Think Tank to experiment, I developed a series of workshops about social media and podcasting that I taught at Writers at Work. Later I modified them and took them on the road for other audiences. I was also inspired to create GuerrillaReads, the online video literary magazine that is still going strong, having featured more than a hundred writers in its nine-year history. Tuesday nights in One Page At a Time is where I honed my craft. The Future of Publishing Think Tank is where I carved a larger place for myself in the vibrant world of literary Los Angeles.
About 20 years ago I dropped into a Terry Wolverton Writer’s at Work session just to check out the vibe. My background was journalism but I desperately wanted to be a serious writer. I stayed and struggled and discovered that I wasn’t very good. One day Terry suggested I try poetry. “I hate poetry,” I said. I became a founding member of the Women’s Poetry Project and haven’t looked back. I am poet because of Terry Wolverton.
The first time I read publicly was for a Writers at Work reading at, I believe, Skylight Books. I can still see Terry sitting in the front row, raising her eyes slightly, then pulling her hands apart while slowly gathering her fingers as a way of suggesting that my reading would be much more effective if I could find some way to speak half as fast.
About a year after that reading, I was standing in the Hollywood library waiting to check out a book—this was before it could be done electronically—when a man walked up to me and asked if I’d read at Skylight Books the year before. Why yes I did! I said, proudly. Well, keep writing, he said, because I really enjoyed the piece you read that day.
I floated out of the library, having passed into some new state of being where I now experienced myself as a writer.
Written on the board that Thursday night, was a prompt that would change my life.
I’d been searching for a unique name for my record company and had struck out after a year of looking up domain names. They were all taken or for sale for thousands of dollars.
I sat down, middle of the table, facing the door, back to the window, took out my notebook and pen, and looked at the prompts to choose from. I chose “dreaming wild.”
The exercise was to write for two minutes faster than you could think.
I scribbled “dreaming wild,” writing in a passionate fury. I never breathed during the two-minute exercise. I loved it because it spawned word associations I wouldn’t have thought of.
I finished and read my paragraph. Then it hit me! My record company name, right in front of me, on the paper, pulsing into my eyes!
I drove home with anticipation. Surely this would be taken already. I opened my laptop in my studio, typed in the name, and waited; eyes closed, tight chest, heart beating hard.
I whooped when I saw AVAILABLE. How could it have never been thought of, or held for the highest bidder? It was free and clear and mine!
I never moved so fast in my life to grab all of the possible incarnations of the name.
It has remained the name of my record company since 2007. I’m so grateful to Terry Wolverton, and the Writers at Work community.
I drew up my first Will and Power of Attorney when I was twenty-eight. Not because I expected to die but because I wanted to be sure my wishes were carried out. As a lesbian, I didn’t want family members to be responsible for my creative work. Not because they are terrible people, but because they would be clueless about its value, about possible venues for making it public, and because they would be embarrassed, if not scandalized, by the content. If they were left in charge, I knew, my writing would end up in a box in the basement or in the trash can.
In the late 1980s and 90s, I taught a writing workshop for people with HIV and AIDS. These were the years before the “cocktail” made survival more possible. Many of the writers I worked with were sure they would die, and many did. While some workshop members were just looking for a creative outlet, several were serious about their work; they were publishing or working toward that. Some were already creating legal documents designating health care preferences and end-of-life decisions, and naming a literary executor.
Even specifying your wishes can have its limitations. One writer had left some money to have a collection of his poetry edited and printed, but left his family ultimately in charge of his estate. His sister contacted me, and I edited the work, hired a designer for the cover, and printed 500 copies. I arranged a public reading and enlisted local writers to read his work. I outlined a series of steps for them to take to get the book distributed to other LGBTQ bookstores, to libraries, and to publications that might review the work. But the effort stopped there. Whatever books did not sell at that initial event are, I’m sure, in a box in the attic or have already been disposed of. Not because his family didn’t want to carry out his wishes; they were consumed by their own grief and loss, and knew next to nothing about poetry, the HIV/AIDS community, or what this book might mean to others, even those who had never met the poet.
This is not only an issue with the LGBTQ community. For a few years, I worked with a student who’d been diagnosed with cancer and given a very short prognosis. But he refused the recommended treatment and lived years beyond the doctors’ expectations. During that time, he started writing a book, a memoir about dying, about not following the doctors’ protocols, about finding a richness to life such as he had never known before. His voice was bold and humorous, his declarations provoking and his research meticulous. He asked me to help him finish the book, and I tried to put him on a timeline that would allow him to see the finished product, hold it in his hands before he died. As that time grew nearer, he chose to travel and have more experiences, rather than writing; I don’t blame him. He died with the book unfinished, but close enough that it could be edited and published. One of his friends told me that he left some money for me to do that, but his family is in charge of his entire estate, including his literary output. They’ve never contacted me.
We need these provisions not only for after we die, but in case we become unable to manage our own affairs while still alive. I’ve been thinking about this a lot because a former mentor and friend of mine was consigned to an assisted living facility when she became unable to care for herself. A visual artist, she produced paintings and sculpture and two movies, as well as lots of documentation of her life and her community. I recently found an archive that agreed to take the documentation and ensure that others would continue to appreciate her artistry and her legacy. However, I learned that the family member who had been designated to hold on to the artwork had disposed of almost all of it, as well as the documentation. They could not appreciate the value of my friend’s life’s work.
Periodically, I talk to students about this issue; it’s a hard conversation to introduce, because none of us likes to think we are going to die. But if you are a writer or artist and you care about your work surviving you, it’s essential to consider it.
Understand that if you do not specify an executor, the legal default will be your closest living relative. That might be the brother you adore, but it might end up being a distant cousin you’ve never met. If no relative can be located, the state takes possession of your estate.
I’ve heard writers say, “After I’m dead, I won’t care what happens to my work,” and that’s a reasonable attitude. But if you do care, if you want people in the future to read your writing or appreciate your artwork, then figuring out who will help you do that is an important step to take.
Text by Terry Wolverton
Photo by Yvonne M. Estrada
Thinking about joining a writing workshop? Writers At Work offers weekly, ongoing opportunities for writers of fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, as well as creative counseling and manuscript review. Learn more at http://writersatwork.com/education.html. In 2017, we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary of inspiring, encouraging and empowering writers.
When I joined QueerWise in October 2016, Michael Kearns asked me what I wanted to get out of participating in the writers group. I replied, “I want to find my voice.” This was an odd response, given that I have been a community activist for almost three decades, and I have passionately spoken for myself and for the “voiceless,” whether it’s LGBTQ folks, immigrants, youth, people of color or the poor to name a few. Nevertheless, I had an inkling that there was more to it than just finding my voice. A few weeks later, I said “Michael, I know I came here to find my voice, but instead, I have found my soul.”
What’s more, in QueerWise, I am learning the craft of birthing voices that can also speak for themselves while nurturing and activating their souls. The pen is no longer just a tool that smears ink on paper, but instead is a chisel sculpting an ever-expanded identity of who I am and of the fictional characters that I bring into existence. Writing has been a catalyst and given me the confidence to go back to school after 30 years of absentia to get my Masters in the Humanities with an emphasis in Jungian psychology. Writing has become a magical process that takes me into an unending journey, giving voice to my soul, body and spirit—the holy trinity of wholeness.
Writers At Work 