5 Lessons I've Learned about Writing

1. Have something worth saying. In his book Culture Care, artist Makoto Fujimura tells a story he confesses may be legendary about a Yale student taking Hebrew from the great Old Testament scholar Brevard Childs. The student, discontent with his grades, asked the scholar how he could raise them. Childs’s answer: “Become a deeper person.”Peggy Noonan writer of seven books on politics, religion, and culture, and weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal, was at one time the speech writer for the man considered The Great Communicator. In her book Simply Speaking, she says that what moves people in a speech is the logic. The words “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev” are not all that poetic when taken at face value. But they express something that resonates in the human heart. In the words of Robert Frost, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”In the same way that logic is what moves people in a speech, logic is what moves people in writing. And to have logic, to move people, we must have something worth saying. In fact, probably about 90% of writing is having something worth saying. And how do we get something worth saying? By expanding the world of ideas to which we expose ourselves and by cultivating a rich inner life.2. Decrease your vision. That is, “think local.” Start with your family. Doug Bender, the bestselling author of I Am Second: Real Stories. Changing Lives. wrote a book for an audience of one. When Doug’s wife had a miscarriage, it grieved the Bender’s little girl. So Doug wrote a child’s book about death and loss just for her.My husband’s favorite seminary professor told his students, “Stop thinking you will go out and save the world, and instead become the best family member you can be, the most grateful child of your parents, the greatest and most dependable encourager in your church, the best contributor to your community.” We influence the world one small corner at a time. Cherish the small.In the days when Abraham’s descendants had been carried off from Israel to Babylon, their prophet, Jeremiah, sent a letter to King Nebuchadnezzar for the surviving people in exile. Jeremiah’s counsel: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce…. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile” (Jere. 29:1–7). Seeking the good of the city where we live is always good counsel. So write for your kids, if you have any. Contribute good columns to the local paper. Donate some book reviews for your favorite local web site. Do readings at the library. And do so simply to give back and because you wish to make your corner of the world a better place.3. Read or listen. A lot of people say that to be a good writer you have to read. But that is not totally true. Not everyone can read—even among bestselling writers of worth. Bodie Thoene, who has sold millions of books, has dyslexia, which makes it nearly impossible for her to read. My own husband, who holds a master’s degree from a rigorous program, can hardly read without falling asleep, due to a mild form of dyslexia. But he watches a lot of National Geographic shows and keeps up with the news in non-written forms. Some say that Emily Dickinson's meter draws not on the cadences of authors she read but of hymns she sang.Those who cannot read can listen. And even those of us who do love to read can benefit by hearing. These days I learn aurally from NPR’s book reviews, the weekly podcast of the New York Times Book Review, and at least one Audible book per month. In the past six months, I’ve switched my drive time from passive radio listening to more active listen to books on audio. The list has included mostly fiction such as The Goldfinch, The Invention of Wings, Lila, Gone Girl, and The Fault in Our Stars. But I’ve also enjoyed Unbroken, Quiet, I Am Malala, and Bonhoeffer. I would never have had time simply to sit and read those books.4. Write what contributes to human flourishing, not what you perceive as the next hot market. Trying to predict what will sell is like leaning on cobwebs. Just about the time you find a post to rest against, it gives way. By the time you finish writing a book to meet demand, the market will have left you in the dust. So write what you love to write and/or what you can write with excellence. (Sometimes we must write what we do well to pay the bills, even if it’s not our favorite.) Of the twenty or so books I’ve authored or coauthored, the one that continues to bring the most income is Sexual Intimacy in Marriage. There are fifty shades of books available on the topic of sex that sell many more copies than the one I coauthored. I could have turned up the steam and helped people live less fully human lives. And I probably would be making a lot more money. But the world needs more beautiful relationships, not those that are more hollow.5. Measure success accurately. You will be tempted to measure your own success by a number of externals that have nothing to do with your worth. Tell yourself they are lies.Someone once told me that the only human-made structure visible from space was not the Golden Gate Bridge or the Eiffel Tower or even the tallest building in the world, but only the Great Wall of China. Think of all the amazing structures that “failed” to make that list.But that does not make these structures failures. It just means that when measured by one narrow definition of success, they failed. As writers, any number of false measures can make us feel like losers. Did our last book fail to earn out its advance? Did we do a book tour? Did the work gain rave reviews in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal? These are not accurate measures of whether we can write. Lots of crummy books sell big. Many divergent books make their authors lots of money, but that does not make the books or the authors successes.At one time, I thought doing a book signing would indicate I had really arrived. Imagine my humiliation when I had to share a book-signing table with a famous person who had a long line of fans lined up out the door while I had nobody. Well, okay, one person. But she probably felt sorry for me. Still, that book itself changed some lives for the good. The humiliating signing experience had no correlation with the book’s success or mine.So measure not by money or fame, but in influence on human flourishing. And of course, that is impossible to measure. Which is precisely my point.

The 10,000-Hour Rule

Because my nephew is getting married next month, my sister-in-law has little time to listen to books on tape. So she offered some of her audiobook points this month. I love her (and free stuff)! I just finished listening to Malcolm Gladwell read his book, Outliers. It’s a non-fiction book in which Gladwell analyzes factors that contribute to people’s success. The topic interested me particularly because I sometimes have to persuade my skeptical writing students that the folks who work hardest tend to emerge as the best writers. I don’t know why, but often with the arts people seem to assume success depends only on in-born talent. But if we need such talent to succeed as writers or visual artists or musicians, the non-talented among us may as well give up and go learn to sell shoes or something. In what I found to be the most compelling chapter, Gladwell examines why most Canadian ice hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year. If the cut-off date is December 31, the kid born January 1 may miss out the first year (“Wah, I missed the deadline”), but when he does get to start playing, he has a twelve-month advantage over the kid born December 28. Yes, he works hard, but he still has a big advantage. That advantage tends to follow him all his life. Once he gets chosen as having potential, he gets the good trainers, the good camps, the advantages. So the initial leg-up has a cumulative effect.Though Gladwell doesn’t say it, I felt he made a good argument for being thankful for our blessings and being humble, because we didn’t get where we are without some opportunities other folks didn’t have. I have long believed I did well in school because the September cut-off date meant I was almost seven when I started first grade. One of Gladwell’s favorite phrases seems to be the "10,000-Hour Rule." He claims another big key to success is logging about 10,000 hours of practice. Want to write? Spend ten years in obscurity. Want to be a rock star? Spend 10,000 hours playing your guitar and learning from your voice teacher. From Bill Gates to the Beatles to Mozart, he looks at an array of famous “success stories” and demonstrates how their secret is not so much talent but “logging the hours” of practice. Gladwell goes on what one reviewer described as a “meandering intellectual journey” to arrive at conclusions that are “so obviously self-evident as to be banal.” Well, maybe they are self-evident to some, but if my students are any indication, we need to hear them repeatedly. And it doesn't hurt that Gladwell makes the journey interesting. What do you want to do with your life? Do you want it enough to spend 10,000 hours practicing before anybody notices?