How Should You Write?

Aspiring writers must search for their voice. Test, try, experiment, adjust. Finding a voice can be one of the most arduous tasks for a writer, but once it appears and sharpens, (and only then), should a writer go about producing published works aggressively. That's not to say that a writing voice cannot evolve, it most certainly must as the writer grows, learns and develops.

For me, sitting down and writing my Hurricane Katrina book in 3 1/2 weeks crystallized my voice; at least it sent me well on my way.

Today, short bursts, as found in blogs, can help shape a writer's voice too. Sometimes you shouldn't think too much -- just let it flow.

Generally, I prefer an economical style, where significant effort is put into writing concise sentences that convey powerful meaning without wasted words. But also, sometimes, a long, flowery sentence is called for: it is the only approach that will fit for the art of the story, and its rhythm is called for at precisely that point in the work.

Bukowski, if you read his novels, opines that a sentence should be as short and full of punch as possible. He believed that all those extra adjectives and long sentences and paragraphs merely mask the fact that a writer can't find the precise words they are looking for, so they hope the reader will somehow find the meaning the writer intends in a puffy, vague sentence.

If you read Hemingway, his prose is noticeably terse and efficient, but now and then he departs from his usual style. F. Scott Fitzgerald does it naturally and perfectly, only using a few extra words when they are absolutely needed, to add to the richness of the story and lyricism of the sentence and paragraph. Flaubert and Checkov are also economical in their use of prose.

That is not to say that there is only one way to write. Take Tom Robbins, for instance. He developed his own style. He leans toward using long sentences and fabulously obscure words. But it works. And as Robbins said, "In fiction, there are no rules. That's what I have against 'teaching writing' in academia. In fiction, what works, works."

And take Kerouac: he found his voice by writing quickly, nonstop, tapping his brain (and some amphetamines at times) to rattle out stream-of-consciousness truths. Of course, he meticulously revised his work, although he didn't let that fact out much.

A writer should try different approaches. William Burroughs even experimented with physically cutting out words and sentences and moving them around, pasting them where they really didn't belong -- all in the interest of discovering a new way to construct words. I believe it is the writer's responsibility to use words in ways they have never been used, or even to invent new words or forms of words. Hey, Shakespeare did it. Supposedly he used a vocabulary of 20,000 words, some of which hadn't been invented yet. The average person might have a vocabulary of 4,000-5,000 words.

Another unique writer was John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces), who had a brilliant style all his own, full of juicy descriptions that hit the mark. No one can imitate his work!

You should go out and find your style, your voice. And you do that by writing, writing, writing. But the absolute worst thing you can do is to try to imitate another writer. That only makes for pathetic reading.

So, what is a writer? One who writes (not one who quotes others' writing or simply talks about writing).

Chekhov Was A Funny MoFo

I'm reading some of Anton Chekhov's stories. You wouldn't think a Russian author would be comedic, but he weaves his smart-ass dark humor into many of his stories; but also, he seems to write about disease and death quite a bit too. Maybe that's because he trained to be a doctor first.

Here's a funny opening line from Rothschild's Fiddle, a story about a casket maker: "The town was small, worse than a village, and in it lived almost none but old people, who died so rarely it was even annoying."

Another story called, Sleepy really draws you in, your eyelids may get heavy, but then he just shocks you at the end with a horrifying act. Chekhov had a wonderfully sick mind, and he could write with such vividness that it makes his writing very powerful.

In New Orleans when I was talking with the novelist Richard Ford, he talked about teaching a writing class at NYU, and that he really didn't talk about writing; he just had the students read good writing, like Chekhov. So that piqued my interest in reading him -- even if it did sound highfalutin at first.

Another thing Richard Ford said, "You have to leave a place to write about it." He went on to say that when you live in a place you are "too locked in to the grid of it" and that when you get away you remember only the important details, with the proper perspective. I thought about it and figured he was right. Since I was writing my New Orleans novel (something he said he'd never write about because it was "just too hard, too difficult to capture any better than has already been done") I decided I'd leave, for the sake of the work.

And he was right.

Chekhov died young of tuberculosis -- being a doctor he delayed going to one -- and it reminds me of Walker Percy, who also had TB, and wrote most of his works lying down.

Walker Percy, the Pulitzer-prize winner who edited A Confederacy of Dunces, like Ford, said you had to leave New Orleans to write (he moved across the lake into the country) and that the French Quarter was great for inspiration, but you couldn't get anything done there, succumbing to "French Quarter disease," meaning the alcoholic-artistic inertia that hits most people there keeps them from producing.

And he was right.

The Greatest Kind of Writing

More about my new writer/filmmaker friend Roman: about 15 years ago he was the most prominent journalist in Croatia, so much so that the cafes and bars would bubble with discussion about his bold and controversial columns.

Then he wrote "the one" that made him "Public Enemy No. 1" of the totalitarian regime. He called for the political overthrow of the government, a peaceful, legal overthrow -- not a military coup (I read the translated column online). He pointed out their greedy, criminal, murderous ways to the public. And unlike previous columns he'd written, there was dead silence. No letters, phone calls, no discussion or opinions from his readers.

The government stated that his dissent must be stopped, and then they killed his wife with a car bomb. Then Roman had to scurry at night from friendly house to house, hiding while they tried to track him down. When war broke out, he saw his friends killed and wild pigs let loose in the streets to eat the flesh of the freshly dead, while Serbian snipers waited at the ready on rooftops. So the dead could not be retrieved without risking additional deaths. Ten of his friends decided they'd make a go for it, calling him a coward for not wanting to. They ran out, and seven of them were shot dead within seconds.

Some more of his friends were crucified, actually nailed to trees alive, with a booby-trap grenade rigged so they couldn't be moved, or anyone within 100 meters would be killed from the blast. "Can you imagine watching your best friends nailed up there, dying slowly in agony, and there is nothing you can do?" he asked me.

It was not until the Americans came, with advanced technology and tactics, and they were able to drill delicately through the back of the trees to defuse the grenades and let some men down. Even baby Croat boys were killed, or the breasts of the mother were carved off so the baby would starve and die.

Can you imagine what hate would propagate such acts?

He was eventually able to slip out of the country to the United States. To gain US political asylum, you must "prove" that you would be killed if you returned to your native country. So, the CIA agents and immigration officials questioned him at length, and then a CIA agent asked the final question, "How can you prove you'd be killed if you return?"

Roman pulled out an internal CIA report stamped, "Top Secret." It stated, quite simply, that he, Roman "XXXX", the dissident journalist, would be killed by the Croatian government if he were found. The agent asked, "How did you get this document?"

"What? You guys think you are the only spies? It's a war! Everyone is a spy."

His political asylum was granted.

I have the deepest respect for Roman. He had the courage to write the truth, and ultimately, when the totalitarian Croatian government came down, his writing helped change the world.

That is the greatest kind of writing.