“Second place, a long time ago you stopped listening except to the answers to your own questions. You had good stuff in too that it didn’t need. That’s what dries a writer up (we all dry up. That’s no insult to you in person) not listening. That is where it all comes from. Seeing, listening. You see well enough. But you stop listening.” Hemingway in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald in response to, “So what did you think of Tender is the Night
I suppose that sitting in Madison Square Park, waiting for my dining companion, was as good a place as any to start my article this week. I was just rereading The Picture of Dorian Gray when I asked Chelsea Leigh Trescott if she wanted to meet for dinner. So, when I saw there was a restaurant called Oscar Wilde right by the address where I’d be, it seemed like kismet.
It was a fabulous dinner and Chelsea makes a very charming companion. It was moments since she stepped off her flight from L.A.X. and she regaled me with stories of what any red blooded, tall and attractive 30-something with an Alfa Romeo would be doing in L.A. Raising hell.
But with more class than that pastime usually employs.
I left Chelsea with her drink and made it to the last bus from New York to New Paltz with a minute to spare. It turns out, however, that kind of stress is incredibly helpful to me in many ways. As I sat there in my seat listening to the protracted announcements from the bus driver (he wasn’t doing a great job of covering up the fact that he was an unbearable control freak), I was struck with a very focused plan for my next four chapters. And man, I needed it. I had been struggling with this new novel all week.
So after clickety-clacking the entirety of the idea in the notebook app on my phone, I stared out the window of the bus and began to feel very poetic and sentimental about the highway, the streetlights, and the way Springtime makes me feel. And I took a deep breath.
Allow me to present you with the only knowledge I picked up, since I spoke to you last, that is even worth passing on:
Speaking strictly from my own experience, the 10,000 word mark is right about where a person will initially consider throwing the manuscript in the garbage can.,
I have no empirical evidence to back up this claim, but thIs is where I always fall into a pit of despair. I’m two for two on this score. This is not due to some inexplicable magic. It’s because it takes that long to build a foundation for an idea. Then it takes 10 more seconds to think, “maybe my idea isn’t that great, after all.”
There is a remedy for this.
I continued to get up at 3:55am and got my cup of coffee and sat at that desk. There were four or five days when I was lucky to get 150-250 words written. Eventually, though, it hits me.
Suddenly, and seemingly out of nowhere, I figure out the next whole section and how I am going to build crazy good suspense. For the next couple months, I am popping out of bed, dying to get to that laptop.
We kind of went to Kalamazoo via Madrid and Copenhagen, but my sincere hope is that, at this point, the opening Hemingway quote is making sense. What I think he was saying was “when we run out of ideas, we’re not paying attention to the right things.”
Regard that as one of those very basic concepts that we spend 45 years thinking “I know..” and then realize as we turn 50 that, no, we didn’t “know.” We only thought we did.
Oh, and I am not delusional, I realize that since I left Elephant Journal, I traded in thousands of people reading my stuff to, now, hundreds. I have no problem with that actually. Many of the people who read (and especially those who comment on) Elephant Journal are straight nuts. And this is not me grousing uncharitably.
There were countless incidents where I’d write obvious humor pieces and get serious rebuttal in the comments. Or I’d get labeled a that or this because I chose a catchy title. Truthfully, I’d rather talk to 300 people with a good grasp of reading comprehension than thousands of people whose worldview is revealed to them from the inside of their own butts.
But listen, I don’t need to tell you that knowing what one is talking about has never really been a prerequisite to saying awful things on the anonymous web. I’m just saying that if there are three people who go on to write novels and they remember this anecdote, it was worth the time to write this.
And even if you’re not a writer, it would not take much ingenuity to apply this lesson elsewhere. If it’s nothing else, the idea is universal and true across the board.
It can only improve our lives if we stop thinking we know everything (like Fitzgerald) and embrace how really little we do know (like Hemingway.)
Oscar Wilde
I don't always read your things the day they come in. Just read this while sipping coffee this Memorial Day morning. And oh yes, also applicable to being a therapist. The best thing I can do with my clients usually is to listen carefully and attentively to what they are saying. “Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” — Shel Silverstein
Oh, this is good Billy. I had a good laugh when I read your Elephant readers comments. Yes, I would rather have few people read, but understand when I am serious vs amusing, and leave great comments, than thousands of readers and some condescending comments from people who misunderstood or did not obviously read it since their comment was out of context. More later, I am inspired to finish a piece I started, walked away from, went back to it two days ago and still unsure if I will submit it. It's a trippy one. 😎