Write Life #2
On doubt, being living poems, the personal/universal, and lessons from a book proposal
Alongside my regular free posts, these ‘Write Life’ posts are a place for more personal insights about writing and the creative life. Here, I’ll draw on my work as a writer, and as a coach, and my experience as a magazine editor. I’ll also share insights into the book I’m working on. I’m sending this edition to all subscribers, but if you’d like to receive future Write Life posts, plus some other things — as well as support my work — you can upgrade here to a paid subscription. Whether you do or not, I’m grateful that you’re here.
On some level, I have doubted that writing is enough of a contribution to the world. With charity work, with public service, I could see the impact I was having. It can be hard to see that impact with writing. You write, and send your words into the world, and then? — often silence. But sometimes, that silence feels more true than the noise of the world. That silence lets you hear what it is that’s yours to bring forth.
I kept writing through this doubt. I kept writing around the edges of project documents, and in notebooks, and as I tried to walk paths that were not mine to walk. I became a magazine editor, and a ‘proper’ writer myself. I stepped away from operational charity work, and my local political term ended, and I became a mother, and I write and I always have. People pay me to write words, but the drive to write was there even when they didn’t. Now, almost 40, I feel finally able to say ‘I’m a writer’.
The Christian story says that “in the beginning was the word”. I think this is the beginning of my story too, though I ignored it for some time. The word: the thing that calls existence into existence; the thing that breathes life into the darkness. This is what writing feels like to me. It calls forth light, it spins a line between swirling potential and actual living. The Christian story also speaks of humans being god’s ‘poetry’ (it got translated as god’s ‘workmanship’, but I read that poetry is more accurate. One word, a world of difference). This feels true to me, and clarifying: we, in all our beauty and flaws, in all our confusion and clarity, are poetry. Not machines, not units of economic productivity, not static beings, but poems.
If we’re poems, we’re made to be read and felt. We are a piece of this improbable existence and we get to translate it — through our eyes, through our lives, through our words — into something that speaks to others. This is work that I want to do.
The temptation, especially in life writing and memoir, is to share everything — the unedited version of the poem that we are. There’s a difference though between sharing our whole selves and sharing the edited poem; the one that makes space for the reader, the one that translates the personal to the universal, the particular to the general.
When I was an editor, I remember the pitches and pieces that stuck with me. They were the ones that — though I may not have directly experienced what the writer was writing about — left space for me to enter in. They were the ones that touched a bruise, or made my heart sing, or recalled a specific instance from my own life. They illuminated the world a little more, and my own existence a little more. They made me feel clearer not just about the writer or the topic they were writing about, but about my place in our one shared world. I’ve been thinking about this as I work on the proposal for the narrative non-fiction/memoir book I’m working on.
I’d written a book proposal before my daughter was born and there was some good stuff in it, but something was missing. After she was born, a thread emerged which — after I wove it into what I’d been thinking and writing about — re-made it. It seems now to sing with a wholeness that wasn’t previously there. It feels more alive, and the process of creating the proposal has at times felt like sitting down and simply translating what I was hearing. One of the things that makes it feel more alive, I think, is a better blend of the personal and universal. I had been reluctant to put much of myself, my poem, on the page. Now, having had encouragement and feedback, the bits I do share drive the beat of the book and act as a springboard to better explore more universal themes. It gives, I hope, reassurance to the reader with its three-part structure, and leaves room for them to hear their own story within this, whilst also speaking to our shared existence and leaving room for me to roam.
Here’s a few other things I’ve learned in writing a book proposal:
Having an idea and writing an essay about it is fairly straightforward. Having an idea that you can sustain for a whole book is harder.
A proposal has to work hard. It needs to sell my book to multiple people — it’s a (lengthy) summary of the book, but also a sales pitch, an argument about why I’m the person to write the book, and guidance as to where it sits in the market. It needs to convince others that it is something I can write, and something that other people will pay to read.
Writing a synopsis of the book is hard. It’s like trying to condense a whole song I can hear in my head to just a few short bars that represent the feel, structure, theme and tune of the piece.
A proposal needs other eyes on it, not just yours. And not just your spouse / best friend / mum, but someone who is distant enough from you yet can draw out what you’re trying to say and give useful feedback. It pays to get it right — you’ve got one shot when your proposal lands with an agent or publisher.
Whenever I open the proposal document on my laptop, I get a flutter of excitement and an urge to just write the book. I can already see the book in bookshops. I can picture who will go and pick it up and read the back and then choose to buy it. These things are, I think, good signs.
Thinking of writing, or want to improve your writing? Here’s some books that I return to:
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott
To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction, by Philip Lopate
The Art of Memoir, by Mary Carr
The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard
Several Short Sentences About Writing, by Verlyn Klinkenborg
The Science of Storytelling, by Will Storr
Thank you for reading my words. I’d love to read yours. What do you think about the idea of being living poetry? Would you like to hear more about the book I’m working on? Do you write? If so, what books do you turn to for advice?
Love and poetry,
Elizabeth
P.S. For those interested, I offer writing coaching which draws on my coaching, writing and editorial (and life) experience. There’s 10% discount for all RedLands subscribers — message me for details. I’ll also draw from this experience in future Write Life posts.
I love this Elizabeth and especially the idea that we are all poems designed to be read. So beautiful. This is a really generous post full of you, your advice and experience, and lots of space for us as readers and writers; that lovely balance of the personal and universal that you talk about.
I’m learning much from you as a writer and a human while we work together and am grateful that I gifted myself, and my writing, the possibility of your coaching brilliance :)