Writing Inspiration for Real Life Writers

THERE IS AN OLD expression in journalism that states, “go with what you’ve got.” It’s a dictum I live by. It does not mean that you do shoddy work or publish something that is half-done. It means that under the circumstances of every day, no matter what they are, you acknowledge that while there may be much, much more that you could research and report, you get the very best, as well as the accurate version of the story you can by a given time, write it well, and turn it in. “Go with what you’ve got,” serves as writing inspiration for my professional life.

Perhaps the most important phrase in my thinking above refers to the circumstances, “no matter what they are,” since, in a career knowing journalists, and having worked at The New York Times, I observed many people reporting in a crowded newsroom and from war zones, as well as from places of extreme and harsh conditions, who work every day to bring the truth to your doorstep.

In my many years of working with writers as a memoir coach and memoir editor, I have appended this thinking to another phrase, which is “from here.” We write from here, and after I say that to a memoir writer with whom I am working, I usually tell a terrible tale on myself. It’s this.

When my child was very young, I was writing a book that required spending two years behind the scenes in the wide, wild world of the forensic sciences. In that time, I attended what is known as “bug school,” in Rensselaer, Indiana, where law enforcement agents learn about the role of insects in crime scene investigation. I gained entry into other venues where agents learn forensic geology, forensic psychiatry, reading crime scenes, and more. I spent time with the world’s greatest minds in the world of forensic science. The reporting was a thrill as much as it was an education.

Perhaps the most howlingly wild of theses experiences was what is known in the trade as “blood school,” taught in Corning, New York, where a one-week course includes throwing, tossing and dipping hatchets, hair and clothes into enormous amounts of human blood and then analyzing the results. Those who are trained at this school can then reliably testify in court. The human blood is expired and donated from blood banks. And yes, you’ve probably never seen anything like a huge room of various experiments where people are throwing around vast quantities of human blood. But I have, and then I had to come home and write it up.

In the moments as I drove away from blood school, I called my agent in New York and told her what I had witnessed, and that it might be the best chapter of the book. I think it is. But note that line above, that I had to go home and write it.

At home, I had a small child, a spouse, a house, a dog, various responsibilities including the long-term care of an aging friend, several boards on which I sit and more. I go to the gym. I garden. I have a sister and friends, and, well, you get the point. And the chapter kept not getting written and, as any writer will tell you, even with the best of notes – and I take copious notes and transcribe them as soon as I get home – some of the details were slipping away from me. The time just never seemed to be there to sit for the work.

Then, one night, while giving my small child a bath, a lede for the chapter started to percolate in my head. This happens a lot. Usually, I am either cutting vegetables with the most dangerous knife in the drawer or driving my car – two equally hazardous places to write – when something begins to unwind using the myriad details of what I observed. There I was, balanced on the side of the bathtub, shampooing the tiny head of the person I love most.

My first thought was that I am one evil person, thinking these bloody thoughts there in rubber ducky land. One crazy human, I remember thinking. Awful, perhaps. Or maybe not. Maybe I am merely one…writer. Yup. That’s right. Because, as we all know, the gratitude of having anything at all to write should quickly be the emotion you go with, no matter where you are. And this is why we keep notebooks everywhere, right? In my little book on how to write memoir, I devote an entire section to another dictum I use, which is “be hospitable,” meaning be hospitable to your talent and keep an index card, notebook, half sheet of paper – or any other thing onto which you might make a mark – handy at all times.

But in this case, my hands were wet with shampoo, my child was giggling and I was rolling out in my head a long and enticing depiction of walking down the street in Corning NY and noticing little white pieces of cardboard spattered with small red dots that had been tucked under the windshield wipers of cars along the way. These were the parking passes of anyone attending blood school, set on the car windshields to designate to the police that fifty or so of these cars would be there all day and should not be ticketed.

My child was happily splashing and I was shampooing while battling the voice of every non-writing judgmental in-law and other mother I know who would be horrified at the internal workings of my mind. But I wrote it in my head, and began repeating what are now the opening lines of that chapter, chanting them silently to myself until I could dry my hands and scribble them down. After all, you go with what you’ve got. You write from here, sometimes sitting on the edge of the tub, up to your elbows in suds, while blood school pumps through your tired head.

Why do I tell you this? Because otherwise you think that other writers are luckier, or less busy; you will continue to believe that other writers are richer than you are or that they have fewer commitments. They don’t. I don’t. Instead, we must learn to write from here, from where we are, maybe nodding nicely at our beautiful child, or merely seeming to listen to a spouse, or training a dog while we have blood on our minds.

So go with what you’ve got, writers. Go from here. And write.

Want more help? Come see me in any one of my online classes.

Memoirama: Live, 90 minutes. Everything you need to write what you know.

Memoirama 2. Live, two hours. Limited to seven writers. What you need to know to structure a book.

How to Write Opinion Pieces: Op-eds, Radio Essays and Digital Commentary: Live, 90 minutes. Get your voice out into the world.

And keep in mind that I am now taking names for the July-December 2021 Master Class, the prerequisites for which are Memoirama and Memoirama 2. Live, once a month. Limited to seven writers who are determined to get a first draft of their memoir finished in six months.