M. Molly Backes on writing

I'm taking a break from Murdoch/News Corp. coverage for the day, since I haven't seen any huge news emerge from the Murdoch/Murdoch/Brooks show in the House of Commons. There's probably something worth blogging about there, but having just seen Jon Stewart eviscerate Fox News for its craven attempt to paint the ongoing phone-hacking saga as a manufactured conspiracy, a pile-on by the liberal media, I feel that anything I could write about today's developments would be deadly dull.

So ... more writing about writing. Why?

Well, the last time I dipped my toe into these waters, I felt the result was, um, deadly dull. No, it was worse: not just dull, but pointless. First write clearly, then worry about writing well was the gist of it, and even then I knew at some level that it was a stupid argument. What the hell does it even mean?

I know what happened. I liked the first part of the book review, disliked the second part, had to guess at what the book itself was about from the review, invested so much time that I was damned if I wouldn't get something out of it, and ... well, from such rotten foundations was a lousy blog entry born.

Enough of the past, though, and back to the question: why more writing about writing?

The Browser pointed me to M. Molly Backes' blog entry, "How to Be a Writer", in which she attempted to give a budding writer (or rather, the budding writer's anxious mother) tips on becoming a professional writer. Normally I don't believe in airy-fairy, non-step-by-step "advice." If it's not a recipe that anybody can follow, the advice is useless as far as I'm concerned. When it comes to creative expression, though, I make an exception.

Backes gives Mom a bunch of what sound like jokey tips for how to encourage her daughter, the would-be author: "Let her be bored"; "Insist she spend time with the family." But Backes is serious, and I get what she's driving at. Being a writer is all about chewing on experiences and emotions, and you don't introspect if you're constantly processing new stimuli.

Backes has other good tips, but I won't reiterate them here: get them from the source, not an intermediary. Hers are the words of someone who has written for pay, who understands her own writing process, and who knows that writing is hard, intimate, revealing work.