Is your work happy to see you coming?
Just back from an incredibly inspiring Masterclass with author, Claire Keegan in Ireland
Just spent last week in Ireland with the generously genius author, Claire Keegan on her Quiet Writing Days Retreat. She was so wonderfully warm and wise, and to say that it was an awakening for my work is the proverbial understatement. It was not just a masterclass on writing good literature but really a masterclass on how to be human as well.
Among the many gems she taught us, these are a few of my favorite take aways:
All feelings are accurate. Never anything wrong with a feeling.
Is your work happy to see you?
Like being a good hostess, you have to take care of the work.
Follow the feet of your characters it always leads to what they desire. As humans we can’t go more than sixty seconds without desiring something.
You have no right to complain about something you’ve chosen. But it is all right to struggle, writing is not always easy.
Point of view is what you notice and what you notice is your life.
All deceptively simple observations, but really game changers when it comes to your work. Claire is interested in fiction, in good storytelling, in helping people be better readers. To slow down and read closely, that is how you become a better writer. The way you write is informed by what you read. We did a fascinating exercise where we typed out a short story and then edited it ourselves. I’ve never dared to edit another well known writer’s work that has already been published, but it was quite freeing to see if you could make it better.
It’s been famously said that Joan Didion wrote out all of Hemingway’s stories and that was how she learned to write. And indeed reading this moving piece by Leslie Jamison’s about finishing her friend’s Rebecca Godfrey’s novel about Peggy Guggenheim in last week’s New Yorker, she does exactly that; she discusses how she couldn’t just copy and paste but actually had to retype the entirety of the novel in order to get Rebecca’s voice. It’s a bit like Yellowface, by Rebecca Kuang if the narrator had been a good and true friend as Leslie is to Rebecca.
What this means for my own work, is that though I read essays throughout the day, and whichever book I’m reading before bed, I can easily dismiss reading as not writing and therefore put it off. But reading is writing. Now I’m thinking that my absolute all time favorite pieces of writing, I will type out and that this may be the best way to mimic and to deeply understand what makes them so good.
Claire also said that one of her favorite all time novels is still The Great Gatsby, which I just recently started to read after our lovely evening at the Fitzgerald Bar during the Writers Retreat. Though I think I came to it with a chip on my shoulder, knowing how poorly Scott treated Zelda, but the separation of art from the monster will have to be for another day. I have so many friends who say that The Great Gatsby is their favorite novel, so again I think I’ll have to give it another try.
There is nothing I love more than talking about writing, thinking about writing, reading excellent writing and doing the actually writing. All the famous writers that I’ve met so far, who have won all the awards and all the things, all say that the actual writing is where they get the most pleasure. The pleasure of writing one good page, and by all the accolades that Claire’s received it’s clear that because she is so concerned with writing good literature, with what makes a good story, so focused on making the writing the best that it can be, that that pays off. This is the best way to reach your readers.
This is why I’m so excited about the class I’m teaching this January and can’t wait to dive into the work of authors who I so admire. Every story/essay has to have a beginning, middle and end, another way to say this is that every story/essay follows this structure: an intention of the main character/narrator (you), an obsession (what they desire, what their eyes notice, where their feet go) and then a confession what happened when they got what they wanted, the point of no return. We’ll be looking at how writers have used these three elements not only to create excellent work but also to create excellent lives. Have you already signed up? Not yet? The link to sign up is here!
Our first class is Saturday, JANUARY 6th and then the three following Saturdays (13th, 20th & 27th in January from 5PM—7PM CET
(8AM—10AM PST, 11AM—1PM EST)
I hope you’ll join us! Keep writing my friends!
xox,
Augustine
p.s. How’d you all do with the 30 Days of Writing Prompts? I’d love to know! Was it helpful? The 30 days are over, but it was so much fun, I might just keep going….
