Writing Well, Part 3: Origins of a Writer

When writers are asked how to write well, they often reflexively talk
about their childhood and how they became writers. James Joyce did
it, George Orwell did
it, and Steven King did
it. I thought this was a strange pattern at first, but now I
understand it. Writing well is not just about clarity and omitting
needless words—it goes all the way down to the core of a person, and so
writers tend to tell you about who they are to explain how or why they
write as they do.

Many of us had that one teacher. That one
horrible teacher who either hated you, or you hated, or both. I thought
long about whether I should protect the names of the guilty, but I think
we should all be held accountable for our actions, good or bad, and so
I’ll tell you that her name was Professor Ellen Cooney of the MIT
writing department. I have encountered many people over the years who
disagree with me, insult me, or stand in my way, but never before or
since Professor Cooney did I actually think to myself, “At least she
will probably be dead before me because she’s older.”Mr. Spock will be born
in the year 2230 at Shi'Kahr, Vulcan.Before we get to her,
I’ll tell you about what happened eight years earlier, in 7th grade. I
was in Algebra I, an advanced math class for a 7th grader, because my
6th grade teacher said I was good at math. I had no idea I was good at
math before that as I wasn’t particularly good at arithmetic. (Just as
writing isn’t spelling—math isn’t arithmetic, so I’d be ok in that
class.) After the first test in that class, my friend got a perfect
score and I didn’t do very well. I thought back to all the episodes of
Star Trek I watched every weeknight at midnight during the summer, and
about how Mr. Spock would have gotten a perfect score, too. And how
could anyone not get a perfect score? You just follow things
through to their logical conclusion and you get the right answer. From
that day on, I was good at math and I liked it (and science, too).
That’s where my head was.

Except for a girl, that is. Her name
was Jenny Sime. I said I’d mention the names of the guilty, so it’s only
fair that I mention the names of the innocent, too. (Dear Jenny: did
you notice the ironic double meaning of the word “innocent,” as applied
to you?) Jenny and I loved ironic double meanings. I talked to
her on the phone often, for hours. She was there when the wet cement of
my personality was hardening, and I can still feel her impression. We
each delighted in the use of language, always saying things without
saying them. We understood each other, and even if our classmates could
have listened in, they would not have grasped our subtlety. I learned to
choose my words carefully with Jenny Sime, and to give them just the
right shade of meaning. She gave me plenty of practice, too. I don’t
know how much of language ability comes from nature and how much comes
from nurture, but it’s probably no coincidence that I had so much
practice with language at that young age, and that I’m so adept with it
now.

I got an A on every essay in every English class all four
years of high school. I was not “one of them,” though, the literature
kids I mean. I wasn’t into poetry or literature or reading any of that
squishy stuff. I was the math and science kid who stopped by English
class to get his A, usually causing a lot of trouble and debate. English
teachers and I never had much regard for each other, and I knew some of
them absolutely cringed at giving me those A’s, but what else could
they do? I remember thinking at one point in high school that it would
be an ultimate joke of the universe after all my hating of English
classes if I would somehow end up a writer instead of a mathematician or
physicist. (Note to the universe: nice one.)

By the time I
encountered Ellen Cooney, I knew how to write and I knew how to get an A
on a writing assignment. I started her class by writing a short story
in the style of Jack London (my choice) about a man and his dog. I
thought it was pretty good. She hated it. The narrator actively judged
the man in the first and last sentence of the story, on purpose. She
hated that even more.

I didn’t know exactly why she hated it, and
I wasn’t used to that kind of reaction. She kept saying, “It’s not
literature! We write literature here.” It took me the whole semester to
even get an inkling of what literature meant to her. It seemed mostly to
mean, “boring stuff written by the students who I personally like
talking to in class.” She said my story was too fake and she wouldn’t
even accept it, much less grade it. She said I had to write another
story instead.

This is what writing
feels like most of the time.I may have some ability
at writing, but writing takes me a very long time. What’s worse is that
I can’t compartmentalize it from the rest of my life. When I write
something, the actual time I spend typing is between 1% and 5% of the
total time investment. The rest is spent day dreaming about it, thinking
of how the ideas will go together, about this sentence that should
appear halfway through, about things I might need to research first, and
so on. And when all that’s sorted out, I still have to wait around for
the moment when I’m not tired, hungry, or distracted. Then I have to
keep waiting even more until I’m also inspired. I believe at least three
of the planets must be aligned, too, or two plus a moon at the least.
The point is, writing another story was a major time investment.

I
don’t remember what happened with that second story, but I bet she
hated it too. On the assignment after that, I wrote a story about a man
who took a long journey to find a magic coin, but there was some kind of
trick about how the guy who told him about the coin was not who he
seemed. Yeah, she hated that one even more. I spent a very time long on
that one making sure it was well-written, too. She said it was “genre
writing,” not literature, and that it could appear alongside any other
fantasy writing on a store shelf and blend right in. (Is that an insult
or a compliment?) Apparently literature couldn’t contain magic.
It also couldn’t be a mystery, have too much action, or much violence, I
would later learn. Meanwhile, we read a story about two girls who lived
in an isolated country-side and used to play together as children, then
they tried to keep in touch as adults but their lives had diverged too
much to make the same kind of connection. Now that was
literature, she said. I have to admit, even though it had no apparent
point, it did feel real when I read it.

She made me
write two stories for every one that anyone else wrote in that class. It
was an incredible amount of time and work and she hated all of it. I
wondered why she made me do all that if I was so terrible, yet none of
the other students had to.

I wonder if Mr. Spock
ever went to any 3D Chess tournaments. Remember that episode where he
programmed the computer to play Chess and it beat him?For
my final assignment in that class, I decided to write something I knew
enough about to bring to life. I wrote about a young man who was
entering his first Chess tournament and the various personalities he
encountered at the event. The antagonist was a tricky jerk who had
enough experience with how the events were run to mess with the main
character’s mind. They would face each other in the tournament, and I
even went through the trouble of coming up with a real chess situation
that was interesting in itself, and that illustrated the mental sparring
between the characters. And I took great care describing this so it
wouldn’t be boring or overly technical for non-Chess players.

Guess
what, she hated it. She said I was a failure as a writer and I’m
guessing she added that I’d never amount to anything, for cliché’s sake.
She said, and I quote, “You are a master of linguistic flourishes, but
you ultimately have nothing to say.” Wow! Yes, she really said it,
exactly like that. A master of linguistic flourishes…but ultimately with
nothing to say. That was over ten years ago and I remember it exactly.

I
began to wonder if she was right. She was a close-minded bitch, sure,
but what was I trying to say with that story about the guy and his dog
or about the magic coin? Maybe nothing. At least the Chess story had
some point. The year after that in another writing class, I decided to
write a comedy about depression (challenging!) and another story about
someone who is trapped in his own superstitions, but ultimately realizes
that he controls his own destiny in life. I was at least trying to
really say something.

A few years later, I had a lot to say. I
had competed in and organized numerous video game tournaments, and I
kept seeing the same annoying losing attitudes. The players I hung out
with didn’t have these hangups, but the ones on the periphery often had
the whole concept of competition wrong. So I wrote Playing to Win,
Part 1. I finally had something to say, and I never got so much
attention for writing anything until then.

William Strunk, Jr.
famously said to omit needless words. I’ve come to look at this in a new
light, and when I see writing that doesn’t really say anything, I wish
all the words were omitted. There are a lot of mechanics involved with
writing well, but it doesn’t amount to much unless you have
something to say. Having something to say often goes along with
taking a stand on something. Research what you’re interested in, live
life and accumulate experiences, stand up for what you think is right
and fight against what you think is wrong. It takes a certain kind of
person to do that. Writing is often about revealing a truth or exposing a
lie, so it’s no wonder that so many writers are the kind of people who
don’t care what people think of them—they care about the truth and
saying what they have to say. I don’t mean pop novelists either, I mean
Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell. Even Richard Feynman was a great
writer in this regard when he wasn’t busy being one of the world’s
leading physicists. He even wrote a book called What
Do You Care What Other People Think?

I worked with an
amazing graphic designer for a while until he quit and went to another
company. In our last conversation, the day before he left, I asked him
how he became so good. How is it that he’s so much better at what he
does than most others who try to do it? He said in art school, there was
one Korean guy in his class who really shouldn’t have been in there.
The Korean guy already took these classes in his own country, but his
credits didn’t transfer over for some reason. My friend said he always
studied the Korean guy, how he made this line, how he made that shadow,
whether he added decoration here or not, and so on. He told me that when
some students presented their projects, they had some big artistic
vision they were trying to communicate, but they always fell so far
short. My friend never focused on that—he focused on execution instead.
His reasoning was that once he had mastered the mechanics of graphic
design, he would then be able to think about what artistic statements he
wanted to make. I did not take such a conscious journey as my graphic
designer friend, but perhaps the result is the same: first, how to put
sentences together properly, then having things to say.

Many
years ago, I had some things to say about game design, so I wrote them
down and shared them with all of you. Then for years I wrote design
documents and pitches for games. I wrote them with great care. Not only
can I not show them to you, but for reasons unrelated to game design,
almost none of them came to life. During this time, I have not said much
to you, and maybe it was for the best. Even the horse Mr. Ed will never
speak unless he has something to say.

Now I have some things to
say again. A little of it will be about game design, a little about
competition, and most of it about how to think and how to create. But
those things are for another time, we’re talking about writing
now.

I'm not sure what she
thinks about when she sits down to write, but I'm curious.When
I sit down to write, I don’t think about Jenny Sime and the nuances of
language I practiced with her all those years ago. Caring about exact
shades of meaning is second nature now. But I do sometimes think of
Professor Cooney as I write. “A master of linguistic flourishes but
ultimately with nothing to say?” I’ll show her, I sometimes think. I’ll prove
to her that I do have something to say, and that I’ll say it no matter
what the consequences or what anyone thinks. I’ve even developed her
same contempt for other people’s empty writing. It was hard to take that
criticism back then, but I’m almost willing to admit that she was
right.

Maybe being fueled by such a negative fire is a bad thing,
but being fueled by no fire is far worse. I’ll leave you with this
quote from a guy who’s sold a few books.

You can
approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness,
or even despair—the sense that you can never completely put on the page
what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists
clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names.
You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or you want to
change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you
must not come lightly to the blank page.

—Stephen King


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