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The Only Writing Lesson You Really Need

If you read and/or listen to this little show, you’re likely a writer of some kind.

In an age of life hacks and the seduction of short cuts and quick hits, we often seek answers to questions that will take out the growing pains, smooth over the pavement when what we really need to do is drive over those potholes and feel the chassis rattle.

And I guess what I’m saying is the answers are already on your bookshelf. I’m looking over at mine right now. Who do I most want to emulate on my way to finding my voice?

Pull down the book.

Get in there and read it with intention. Stew over it on a low heat. Stir the words around. Write in the margins. Take a big-picture view of the structure of the book then the micro-structure of each chapter.

The answers to how to do this are in the books. They aren’t how-to or prescriptive in the traditional sense. Rather, it’s a whole lot like Jeopardy!

The books have already given you answer: You now have to engineer the question. And it’s along that journey that these books will teach all you ever need to know about this silly little game.

Writing Retreats are BS

By Brendan O’Meara

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OK … so I don’t have an issue with writing retreats, per se. It’s nice to have a place to go and write free of distraction and really focus on the work.

But my sense of retreats is this: It’s a status symbol. I earned this retreat or I won this retreat, so look at me.

I doubt people truly get that much work done on a retreat.

But more importantly: I think a writer of a certain mindset feels that if only I earned a writing retreat or bought my way into one, then I will be able to write my book, finish my book, and be a capital W writer.

It looks good on Instagram. A great peeve of mine is the bucolic vistas writers take as if THIS is the writing life. Look at the dappled light. Look at the mountain. Look at the trees. I don’t know about you, but seeing that outside my window makes me want to go climb stuff and not be at the ledger writing paragraphs. That’s just me.

My point is this: You don’t need a retreat to write. Yes, you need time alone. Yes, you need time away from distraction. You can do that in your basement. You can do that at a hotel in town. You can get an AirBnB if you really need to change your context.

But don’t be fooled by the writing retreat industrial complex and the graduate school industrial complex that preys on the insecurities of the impressionable artists.

Pick a spot. Make it special. Do the work.

Adding More Weight

By Brendan O’Meara

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In order for me to understanding something, or to make sense of something, I need to dumb it down into athletic and physical terms. Sport metaphors work real well for me.

I was scribbling in my journal this morning about my inability to gain any kind of altitude. And yet I do the same thing every day expecting to generate lift. Isn’t that the definition of insanity?

But something more apt came to mind: weightlifting. This is my favorite form of exercise. It’s objective. Lift more weight, you’re stronger.

Say you’re squatting 135 pounds and it’s hard the first week. You do it the second week and it’s easier. Third week easier still. At some point, you need to add weight to the bar to test yourself, to stretch yourself, to test your limitations.

I know this is true for me regarding my writing, career, podcasting: I’ve just been squatting the same 135 pounds day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year and wondering, why am I not getting any stronger?

The real question becomes: What’s the equivalent of adding weight to the bar in a progressive manner that doesn’t create injury but still gets us to where we want to go?

Episode 246: Jenni Gritters on the Freelance Life, Not Waiting for Perfect, and Sh*t Sandwiches

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By Brendan O’Meara

Jenni Gritters is here.

She’s a freelancer and she is not a struggling freelancer in the ways that many of us identify as a struggling freelancer, which is to say: we po’.

Jenni, @jenni_gritters, along with her co-pilot on The Writers’ Co-op Podcast Wudan Yan, are thriving. Through strategy and rigor, Jenni is a six-figure earner, this during the pandemic, this when many writers are struggling to make a go of it.

She turned her skill into money, which allows her to double down on her skill and do more projects that are more personal-driven.

I like to think of some content/branded writing gigs like when Jake Gyllenhaall does a blockbuster movie so that he can then do the art-house stuff he probably wants to do. Book your Marvel movie, then go write your memoir. Haha.

Slow = Fast

By Brendan O’Meara

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I may have said this before but it bears repeating: slow is fast.

I read a great quote thanks to the brilliant NITCH account, from the actor Viggo Mortensen:

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was: go slow to go fast. We live as though there aren’t enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.

That’s so spot on.

And if you’re a fan of Cal Newport’s work and his concept of Deep Work, it means turning off the notifications, turning off the WiFi and methodically going about the work. Don’t check Twitter or Facebook or IG as it’ll spike the cortisol and make you feel like crap. It’s like a candy sugar high. You might get a bump, but the crash isn’t worth it.

Try five super deep breaths if you need a moment. Try a short walk. Then get back to the work, bit by bit, drip by drip, and you’ll feel much more accomplished.

The Narrator in Memoir

By Brendan O’Meara

After reading “The Body” by Stephen King, a fictional memoir of four pre-teens tromping off into the woods to find the dead body of a boy their age hit by a train, I was struck by how the narrator comes into the picture.

Gordie Lachance is grown up, professional writer looking back at this experience. On the one hand, he stays in the moment of his childhood, but then, at times, he swoops in and offers introspection, rumination, meaning from maturity and the distance between the current day and what he’s reflecting on.

It’s much like Ralphie in A Christmas Story or Nick Caraway in Gatsby.

The story element is very tight, very focused: Labor Day weekend for The Body, the Christmas season for Ralphie, and one summer for Caraway, and so when the narrator from the future pops in, he pops in to reflect on a very tight window.

I think of this a lot. How much should we stay in the moment and how much should we offer the reflection of the guy who made it out alive to tell the story. It’s a fine balance, but all three have this in common: the narrator from the future has a very light hand. He and it is a he in these three cases, largely stays in the timeline of the story, probably 75% of the time.

That’s a good number to aim for.

An Editing Hack

By Brendan O’Meara

With a hat tip to the writer and editor Glenn Stout, a great editing trick is this:

Change the font and the change the size of the font.

I typically compose in Times New Roman, but to change the “eye level,” to borrow a baseball term, I then edit in Comic Sans size 14.

I know, there’s all kinds of hate for Comic Sans, but let me tell you, I almost never miss a mistake.

Convert it back and ship your clean draft. Easy peasy.

Subverting Social Media

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By Brendan O’Meara

This isn’t a tip on writing, but then again maybe it is.

I won’t bore you with what you likely know, but social media as we know it: Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and others are doing way more harm than good. The details of which I can’t and won’t get into here.

My real quandary is how do we get notices and broadcast our work if we’re in the digital sphere. After all, I make podcasts and blog, so how can I get the word out if I’m not findable in the context of social media?

Chopping Onions

By Brendan O’Meara

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Watching “Chopped” several years ago, I remember one young chef talk about his time coming up in the kitchen. He obviously had skill. He was on Chopped.

But I suspect like most prestigious schools and the entitlement that comes with having graduated with what amounts to a worthless piece of paper, there’s a tendency even in the chef ranks to think you’re above a certain task.

Not this guy. I wish I knew his name.

In one of his testimonials, and I’m paraphrasing, he said, “If there was a pile of onions I had to chop, I was going to be the best damn chopper of onions.”

Man, I loved that sentiment. He wasn’t “above” cutting onions. How many thousands of onions had he chopped to that point? This was a job the dishwasher could do in a pinch. Here’s a trained chef being put on onion duty and he embraced it. The mundanity of chopping hundreds of onions in a shift, hunched over a pile, trying to make them as uniform slices and dices as possible, no doubt eyes burning the entire time.

In our work, no matter our experience, our privilege, our education, how can we embrace chopping onions? How can we get lost in the most banal of tasks that have overreaching implications?

He wasn’t really chopping onions. He was become more skilled with his knife. In the meditative trance of cutting onions, he was writing recipes. He was dreaming. He was developing rigor.

Again, he wasn’t really chopping onions. Not the winners, not the people seeking to make change, anyway.

Lessons from ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ Part 2

By Brendan O’Meara

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Halfway through The Queen’s Gambit, Benny Watts, the top U.S. chess player with swagger, confidence, and sharp wit, asked Beth why the Soviets were so dominant.

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