One Writing Skill Every Writer Should Practice

I CONSIDER TALKING TO MYSELF one of the great luxuries of my life. First off, I get to actually finish the sentence before someone else jumps in. Next, I win every argument. And after that, of course, there is that ultimate luxury of actually thinking something all the way through to some determination, even when that determination is, well, indeterminate. And so I talk to myself and think of it as one writing skill every writer should practice.

But there have been painters, plumbers and carpenters at my house for weeks now, all in a massive effort to – how  shall we say? – catch up on things. In one great effort we are trying to do so now, so there are legs sticking out from sinks and people banging on pipes in some kind of regular signal to someone else along the circuit. There seems to be someone right there all the time, in fact, and each of them has caught me talking to myself, each with the same response.

They stare. I’m not sure what they think writers do, but now they know that we talk to ourselves. I consider it a perk of the job.

My husband and I long ago addressed this constant chatter.

“You do know you talk to yourself,” he stated early in the marriage.

My husband is from South Dakota, whose state motto is, “Under God the People Rule,” which, I’ve heard myself say to myself many times, sorely lacks a comma. And it does. But in those early, unripened years of our union, when confronted by his observation on my soliloquies, I might have politely kept my reply to “Yes.”

I come by this writers’ skill organically. My father, a sportswriter of many years, would gasp as he wrote. I had a New Yorker cartoonist friend who let go with a mashup chant and moan as he drew. Perhaps it was the pen-chomping, arm-swinging, hair-twirling, Rolodex-spinning of The New York Times’ newsroom early in my career, that assured me that writers do whatever it takes get it on the page. Any psychoanalyst worth her couch would have swooned eyeing that newsroom of hundreds of people, all flailing while typing on deadline. I found it a hotbed of reassurance. We talk to ourselves. We bite pencils. We chew straws. We get the work done. This convinces me that talking to oneself is a writing skill every writer should practice.

But no one told my painters, and so the dazed expression as I looked up from typing the other day to see a man’s face in my third-floor office window.  I’m not used to seeing people there.

“It’s nothing,” I wanted to say, but I was in the middle of another sentence to myself and afraid to lose my train of thought.

I’m not sure what the neighbors think. Having lived in the same house in the same neighborhood for the length of time it has taken to write three books and raise four dogs, we’ve had to desensitize each pup to this in-motion interlocution as we leash train. After all, I really do not expect them to know how to open the piece I’m trying to write or reply to, “What is this damn thing about?” The neighbors? Well, they can think what they want.

What I think is that if there is one writing skill every writer must have, it’s the confidence to talk to yourself, whether or not you do it out loud, though I can offer that actually giving voice has real advantages. People give you a wide berth. Few will plop down next to you on the train – that I do know – and only choice few will bring it up twice. My husband has never mentioned it again. The dogs always get over it.

The painters, well, what can I do? Oh, right! I can write about it.

 

Want to learn how to write a memoir in any form? Come study with me. Classes begin all the time.

• Memoirama: The everything-you-need-to-get-started-writing-memoir class. Live, online memoir class with Q&A. 90 minutes. This is the class to get you started writing what you know.
• ​Memoirama 2: Book structure. Period. No one is born knowing how to structure a book and no book can exist without structure. Book structure was taught to me by four of the best editors in NY publishing for my four published books. This course gets your structure up and supporting your story. Two hours. Live. You and six other writers.
• ​How to Write Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary: Live. Ninety minutes. Co-taught with a former Pulitzer Prize juror, newspaper editor, weekly newspaper columnist and host of a nationally syndicated public radio show. How to write memoir in the form of commentary. Get your voice our into the world.
• ​The Master Class: How to write memoir at book length. Seven writers. Six months. Once a month. All live. Get your first draft written.

And don’t forget to listen to my podcast. It’s called QWERTY, and it’s by, for and about writers.

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