More Metaphysical Bullshit

Honesty is funny. Bluntness is funny. Specifics are funny. Don’t try to be funny, but if you happen to be, don’t fight it.

Pour your physicality into your stories until you run out of life. Think on the prism of isms: don’t let the isms drive you, but take advantage of the tension they give. Don’t use stereotypes as a free ride, use them to add depth. Don’t write a character that is racist because he’s a redneck, explore the connection between the redneck’s social identity and his beliefs. Keep things surprising. If you feel too strongly about something, or want to use your story to further some pet ism, stop. Don’t corrupt your writing in that way.

Facts are not truth. But sometimes you can present both fact and truth, in a single statement. “Leaning on another person for the first time in her entire life –” is this a fact or a truth? Though in context it is a physical action, it also has metaphorical ramifications; it is both fact and truth. Poetry is known more for its double and treble and quadruple meanings, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get that out of fiction. We write every line, we want our readers to read every line, so we should revise every line to have the most weight for its word count, to have clout.

Don’t be restricted by the forward flow of time. You can riff off of what’s already happened in the middle of showing what’s going on, or you can look forward to what your characters have yet to experience. You control the timeline, work it. You don’t have to say everything, and you don’t have to reveal everything, and neither do your characters. Let them say something, and then continue the line of thought internally. Let them say one thing and think another. Let them say one thing and do another. Keep something back.

Learn to use your whole language, not just the words you use every day. You will have an ear for the language that you speak, the language that your parents speak, the language you grew up with. You will also have an ear for the language that you read, the language in which you think you should be writing. Use them both, balance them and play them off each other. You don’t have to write like an Englishwoman, in a café, or on handmade paper. Write like you speak. Write like other people speak. Write the stories that you feel pressured to write, pressured from the inside rather than the outside. Take an idea, repeat it, expand it, like ripples in a puddle, seeing how far you can stretch it. Don’t let your fear get in the way.

There is an inverse relationship between the cleanliness of your house and your word count.