Elizabeth Barrett's Blog

I will fall for a book with a unique, compelling narrative voice—or voices—every time. Maggie O’Farrell’s This Must Be the Place. Amor Towles’s A Gentleman in Moscow. North Woods by Daniel Mason. And so I fell for the first-person narrator of I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger, who starts the book by telling us “Here […]

Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) was a British author who wrote poetry, short stories, and novels, among other things, including a biography of T. H. White. I have a collection of letters between Warner and William Maxwell, an editor at the New Yorker, to which Warner submitted poetry and short stories. They were both terrific writers, […]

In my little New England town, we had several inches of snow a few days ago, which preceded a shocking drop in temperature. January is the coldest month, traditionally, but this was bitter cold. The combination of snow and cold reminded me of something I taught in my writing classes years ago. I searched through […]

A couple of years ago, I started a book that is a sort-of sequel of an earlier book. I knew my main character but wasn’t sure what the story should be about, so it wasn’t surprising I kept running into dead ends. Every time I hit one, I went back and tried a different beginning, or a different narrative voice, or got rid of this or that character and added a new one. After the third or fourth try, the story was finally perking along. I was enjoying myself, my characters seemed to be having fun, and then—another dead end. Actually, not completely, but I’d landed my protagonist into an unexpected situation. She had options for what to do, but I honestly didn’t know what she should choose. Or what any of the wonderful secondary characters should do. The road ahead was lost in fog.

Let it sit, I told myself. You’ll figure it out. In the meantime, how about that story idea you’ve been tossing around for a while now?

So, in that creative lull, I started a new book. This is not something I’ve ever done before, begin a new project when another one is unfinished. But this new book truly had been simmering in my brain for years, and once I started it, I was transfixed. The story is different for me, focused tightly on the friendship between two women rather than a more traditional plot with a beginning, middle, and end and a substantial cast of characters. Within a year, the first draft was done and a writer friend agreed to read it.

I want to let the book rest, not look at it again until my friend shares her thoughts about it. So, what else to do but return to the book that I left half done? I reread it—it’s about half the book—and am pleased that it is a good story, that it has fun and sympathetic characters and a page-turning quality. And yes, it ends with a scene that makes me ask: What happens next? I’m still not entirely sure—still a bit foggy up ahead—but I’m ready to get back into this book and give my muse free rein. And I might be surprised to find that in this intervening year, my muse has come up with plenty of intriguing ideas.

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For my birthday last year, a friend gave me a book, one that I probably would not have bought for myself because it’s a memoir. I don’t tend to read memoirs. But I loved the title: All the Way to the Tigers. Who wouldn’t be intrigued? And the author’s name rang a bell—Mary Morris. I checked to see what else she had written and recalled that many years ago, I had read one or two of her novels. So, I thanked my friend and looked forward to reading the book.

When the book finally reached the top of my to-read pile, my anticipation was rewarded. Morris is an excellent writer, and this is not a typical memoir. She largely focused on two times in her recent past, a bad accident in 2008 when she shattered her ankle, and then the trip she took to India—all the way to the tigers—a few years later. Interspersed were ruminations on her childhood and her parents; the wonderful story of how she met and fell in love with her husband; and other tidbits, particularly information about tigers. About two-thirds of the way through is a brief section, a few paragraphs, that doesn’t connect with what comes immediately before or after, and that contains the title of this post. I read it once and then read it again. And again. And bookmarked it. And wrote it down in my book journal.

To quote the beginning of the passage: The Tahitians don’t have a word that means “art.” The closest expression in their language translates to something like “I’m doing the best I can.”

That’s it. Not, as Morris notes, perfection. Your art requires only that you do the best you can. And then there’s her writing goal: “write a good scene every day or so.” This is significant. No, you don’t have to write like William Faulkner, or Toni Morrison, or Maggie O’Farrell, or whoever your writing hero is. (O’Farrell is one of mine.) And you don’t have to write for hours every day. You don’t have to write twenty pages every day. Challenge yourself to write one good scene a day. And then write another one the next day. And even if it’s not a “good” scene, don’t stop writing. Go back and try again.

It’s the best we can do.
 

“I tore the couch apart and vacuumed up all the crumbs, and five minutes later the kids are sitting there pounding down chips.” So said the woman beside me in the hair salon. She certainly caught my attention with her opening remark: I tore the couch apart. Why would anyone do that? I wondered. Ah, […]

When successful writers write books on how to write, the books tend to be one of two kinds: actual how-to books or how-I-did-it books. I find the former highly useful, and many of them have sat on the bookcase in my office for years, frequently revisited for use in my classes. But the latter tend […]

During a recent class, I discussed rhythm, starting with a passage from Ursula Le Guin’s excellent Steering the Craft, and moving on to Virginia Woolf’s equally excellent explanation: “Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words.” Simple, right? I then read aloud one […]

Two of my clients are publishing books this summer. First up is David Flinn’s Climb Like a Mzungu, which is available through Amazon starting Friday, June 23. My other client, Jasmin Attia, won the 2022 Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature. Her book, The Oud Player of Cairo, will be published on August 1, […]

Editors read differently from people who are not editors. A part of our brain holds an imaginary red pen and corrects punctuation as we read, chooses stronger verbs, strikes out adverbs, and always, always, fixes typos and misspellings. The red pen doesn’t get too much use in published books, but I am not surprised when […]