Those Brits at The Guardian.  Always coming up with lists, aren’t they?  100 Books That, If You Haven’t Read at Least 50, You’d Better Get Cracking.  Or the 10 Best Films of the Decade and By The Way You Should Like the Coen Brothers.   This time, though, they’ve done something marvy: compiled the top ten pieces of writing advice from some truly excellent authors.

They started with Elmore Leonard, probably because his 10 are so pithy, but I’m going to veer off course for a moment and say I am sick of Elmore Leonard.  Sick of his hoopdetootle!  (You can only be wowed so many times by the word hoopdetootle.)  Sick of his maniacal opposition to adverbs!  As one of my educations profs used to say, most either/ors are usually both/ands.  Phonics vs. Whole Language?  Who said there can’t be both?

I am digressing, I know, and that’s probably enough dumping on Elmore, although I’ll also sneak in the fact that I don’t think anybody reads his fiction, so I don’t know why we listen to him.  But the reason I really came here was to nominate my favorite piece of writing advice in this stack:

From Anne Enright, Description is hard. Remember that all description is an opinion about the world. Find a place to stand.

I like this because frankly, I have a hugely hard time writing description.  Well–not of what people do when they talk; that comes alarmingly easily, as if I’m describing a screenplay.  (ps, Hi, Elmore–I just used two adverbs, and I think they worked great!) 

No, I have a hard time describing the background.  Oy.  What’s going on behind, around, and in front of the characters?  Don’t always see it right off and definitely, at first, do not care.  Yes, of course what’s happening on the street can enhance the action; why, in ch. 4 of Nice and Mean, poor Sachi is almost hit by a taxi, and it’s all metaphorical and nifty. 

But aha–that’s because, a la Enright, I’ve found a place for her to stand.  It’s not just, “Oh, the air was humid and cars rushed everywhere….”  Snooze.  I don’t think Sachi cares.  If it’s already hot, though, and a car lunges for her and stops close enough that she can feel the heat off the bumper–I think she’d care. 

It took me a long time to figure this out.  I’m still trying to picture things around the characters more than I already do.  But I also think I’ll do better if I stand where I usually stand–in their shoes. 

What’s your favorite (or least favorite) piece of advice from the list?

Good night, Elmore!

(Good night, Gracie.)

(Well, except that there are people, too. It’s not a about elk. I won’t even pretend that sounds interesting.)

I’m loving writing it, but I don’t always get to write it, because I keep needing to re-outline. I’ve come up with a sort of metaphor. (Actually, now that I’m rereading what I wrote, I realize it’s a simile.)

Writing a first draft is like trying to cross a wide, rushing, rock-filled river. If you’re me, you know where you want to land on the other side–ie, the end of the book. So I can cross in a few ways: charge across the river, freezing cold. You cut your feet on the rocks, get pushed by the current and have to scramble over debris, but at least you land on the other side pretty soon after you started.

You can also gather stones around you on the bank and toss them into a path across the river–at least, as far as your throwing arm will let you. This would be the outline stage, and for me, it’s more successful than the dingle-doodie shamble-run across the river because I’m more likely to land where I want to and less likely to end up stranded in the middle of the river, blocked by a big honking tree branch.

However, I can’t always land the rocks perfectly from the shore. There may be an obstacle I can’t see from where I’m standing. But I’ll get impatient and want to get to the other side–maybe there are some foxes nipping at my heels where I am–so I step out onto the rocks as far as I can go. Drafting–yay! View of the river! The rush!

Then, of course, you know what happens: I may still run into that tree branch. I may see that some of the rocks landed wobblyly (I now dub this an adverb), and I need to shore them up. Or I may realize that they’re not in an arc that will let me land where I had planned to, and I may need to retrace my steps and start again-over and over and over.

At some point, I start to ask myself, should I just abandon these rocks and charge across the river? Am I being wimpy, throwing stones instead of running? Maybe I should run. At least I’ll be able to say I’ve gotten to the other side.

But then I think, if my feet are all bloody, is it worth it? And oh yeah–did I mention that I’ll need to use that same path to get other people–readers–across the river? At some point, it’ll need to be navigable for them, too. So I keep up my rock-throwing, hoping my aim will improve and that eventually, I’ll have the path.

What about you guys? Do you see first-drafting like this at all? Are you a rock-thrower or a mad dasher? Or somewhere in between? That’s where I am now: in between. Maybe I’ll see you there.