“I think I have a story to tell. I just do not know how to begin. Can you tell me how to write a book?”
Most often I hear such a comment during the question-and-
answer session after I have given a reading or a talk. The
question also appears in some of the letters from people who
are kind enough to read my books and kind enough to write
me after they have read them.
The question comes up more and more these days. The
digital age has changed so many things about the way writers
and publishers find each other and ferret out access to
sales and media outlets. And more and more the writer must
not only make the art but deliver the audience as well. The
whole process can seem a little daunting.
I always take the question seriously. I was once in the
same spot and grateful for any help that might move me
along toward learning to get a story down on paper.
Henri Nouwen was right when he said, “As long as we
have stories to tell to each other there is hope.”
Sharing the things I know about how a person goes
about telling his story seems only right. Perhaps it is even, as
the old prayer book says, a good and joyful thing.
—
My father came into my office one day at the publishing
business the family owned and handed me a stack of cassette
tapes and a stack of manuscript pages, and then he gave me
an assignment. “I met this young woman in Canada,” he said.
“I liked the things she was saying when she was speaking
onstage, and I told her we would help her make a book out
of it. I have been working on it some, but I cannot seem to
capture it somehow. Why don’t you give it a shot?”
The book I helped the young woman make in those
early days of my wordsmithing career is considerably different
from the books now published under my own name. But
it was the first chance given to me to learn how to make the
only art I ever wanted to make—a book.
It was my first ghostwriting assignment. I was nineteen
years old.
Many years and many books later, I found myself leaning
on my best friend’s doorjamb on a warm afternoon. I
was half conversing about writing a book and half watching
the roses blooming in our back garden. Out of one eye I was
also watching the fountain beside the path that leads to the
studio where I write.
I always enjoy conversations about writing and writers.
To be sure, the first joy of keeping such a conversation going
is rooted in the fact that any conversation that keeps a particular
writer from the burden of trudging back to the studio
and back to writing sentences is a welcome conversation.
The subject hardly matters. What counts is the ability to put
enough words into the air to delay the inevitable.
My friend told me about her recent conversation with a
sweet woman we both know. Our mutual friend had been
thinking she might try to write a book. The two of them
thought a book might be down in there somewhere, hidden
in one of the stories of her life, but the one who aspired to be
the teller of the tale did not know how to begin.
“What should I tell her?” my friend asked. “What does
she do to begin? How does one go about writing a book?”
—
The summer sun dropped down another little bit, and to get
it out of my eyes, I shifted from the left doorjamb to the
right and went into my best artist-as-teacher pose.
“This is the first thing I would tell someone who wants
to make a book.”
And then I began to expound, and the first thing and
the other nine or so went on for a bit. I am a writer. Embellishing
is one of my gifts. I also know how to stall when my
own writing is not going well.
I described the steps I take when I begin to make a book.
Some of them are habits stolen from other writers, writers far
better than I am. Some of them are practices discovered on
my own after years of dancing on the head of a pen. Some
are disciplines I stumbled upon to feed both the caliber of
the writing and the work of being a writer.
After some forty years and nearly twenty books, I have
learned I do not know a lot about a lot of things, but I do
know how to write a book.
“I think I have a story to tell. I just do not know how to begin. Can you tell me how to write a book?”
Most often I hear such a comment during the question-and-
answer session after I have given a reading or a talk. The
question also appears in some of the letters from people who
are kind enough to read my books and kind enough to write
me after they have read them.
The question comes up more and more these days. The
digital age has changed so many things about the way writers
and publishers find each other and ferret out access to
sales and media outlets. And more and more the writer must
not only make the art but deliver the audience as well. The
whole process can seem a little daunting.
I always take the question seriously. I was once in the
same spot and grateful for any help that might move me
along toward learning to get a story down on paper.
Henri Nouwen was right when he said, “As long as we
have stories to tell to each other there is hope.”
Sharing the things I know about how a person goes
about telling his story seems only right. Perhaps it is even, as
the old prayer book says, a good and joyful thing.
—
My father came into my office one day at the publishing
business the family owned and handed me a stack of cassette
tapes and a stack of manuscript pages, and then he gave me
an assignment. “I met this young woman in Canada,” he said.
“I liked the things she was saying when she was speaking
onstage, and I told her we would help her make a book out
of it. I have been working on it some, but I cannot seem to
capture it somehow. Why don’t you give it a shot?”
The book I helped the young woman make in those
early days of my wordsmithing career is considerably different
from the books now published under my own name. But
it was the first chance given to me to learn how to make the
only art I ever wanted to make—a book.
It was my first ghostwriting assignment. I was nineteen
years old.
Many years and many books later, I found myself leaning
on my best friend’s doorjamb on a warm afternoon. I
was half conversing about writing a book and half watching
the roses blooming in our back garden. Out of one eye I was
also watching the fountain beside the path that leads to the
studio where I write.
I always enjoy conversations about writing and writers.
To be sure, the first joy of keeping such a conversation going
is rooted in the fact that any conversation that keeps a particular
writer from the burden of trudging back to the studio
and back to writing sentences is a welcome conversation.
The subject hardly matters. What counts is the ability to put
enough words into the air to delay the inevitable.
My friend told me about her recent conversation with a
sweet woman we both know. Our mutual friend had been
thinking she might try to write a book. The two of them
thought a book might be down in there somewhere, hidden
in one of the stories of her life, but the one who aspired to be
the teller of the tale did not know how to begin.
“What should I tell her?” my friend asked. “What does
she do to begin? How does one go about writing a book?”
—
The summer sun dropped down another little bit, and to get
it out of my eyes, I shifted from the left doorjamb to the
right and went into my best artist-as-teacher pose.
“This is the first thing I would tell someone who wants
to make a book.”
And then I began to expound, and the first thing and
the other nine or so went on for a bit. I am a writer. Embellishing
is one of my gifts. I also know how to stall when my
own writing is not going well.
I described the steps I take when I begin to make a book.
Some of them are habits stolen from other writers, writers far
better than I am. Some of them are practices discovered on
my own after years of dancing on the head of a pen. Some
are disciplines I stumbled upon to feed both the caliber of
the writing and the work of being a writer.
After some forty years and nearly twenty books, I have
learned I do not know a lot about a lot of things, but I do
know how to write a book.
For National Poetry Month in April, we’re highlighting a selection of classic and contemporary poetry collections and novels-in-verse. Poetry Month – Middle School Titles Poetry Month – High School Titles Download free thematic educator guides: Middle School Guide on Teaching Poetry High School Guide on Teaching Poetry
