Editor’s Notebook: Don’t be so greedy! Maybe.

March 2023

I’ll say it again: Life is short and getting shorter.

Last month, I mentioned that I’ve been gorging on post-pandemic PLANS. What I didn’t say is that all this activity is in the service of my current writing project, which, lately, I’m daring to call a book. I’m still in overdrive, both with regard to my calendar and writing. Every new experience and crowded page is deeply satisfying but I’m hungry for the next and the next after that and the next again. And I’m starting to wonder if Greed is driving me. At least in part. Greed for validation? Readers? Recognition?

Well, I hope so. Because as Suzanne points out in her essay on writerly Greed, the latest in our 7 Sins of the Writing Life series, it’s a sin that can breed success. I’ll let her say more about how that might work. Here, I’ll share thoughts on writerly Greed from my friend Lisa Mayer, who answered the questions Suzanne posed to a few writer friends in preparation for her essay.

What, if anything, do you feel most Greedy for? Name recognition? Earnings? Contest wins? Ongoing book deals? Solicitation of your work (i.e., lack of need to submit)?

OK, I’ll be nakedly greedy: I want to be David Sedaris. There. I said it. 

I want to write my funny little memoirs and POOF! My team—agent, publisher, publicist, and personal snack maker—sends me on the road for six months every year to perform them. Across the country, and then around the world. No hustle, no mustle.

Even five months. Four. Three.

I am SO ready.

Then I call my mother, and read her my latest. And she laughs and laughs until she cries. She forgets her troubles. And that’s enough for me.

Maybe that’s my problem.

Does Greed ebb and flow as writers move through different life stages?

Oh yes. When I was 22, I started in the Advertising Biz in New York City, and there was crazy greed among the writers to be the one to come up with THE BIG IDEA. To be poached by a cool boutique agency and become Creative Director and make THE BIG BUCKS. We still reminisce on Facebook about the good old Madison Avenue days.

I can’t believe I was ever 22.  

Now my greed is pitted against TIME, the scythe, dementia. I’m desperate to get it all down, get it all out. Stories, plays, songs, operas lately and a million-zillion memories. I wake up every morning, and lay awake every night, bulging with ideas. 

It’s a curse.

Do you think you could ever be satisfied as a writer?

Well, that’s a hard no.

Thank you, Lisa, for sharing your Greed with us! I’m sorry you feel cursed but it’s a sorry-not-sorry, because I’m glad for whatever drives you to write and share more of your stories.

Next stop: Wrath.

May you indulge and enjoy all writing sins forevermore. And may you write well today.

—Claire Guyton

Editor’s Notebook: Have another slice of pie! Hello, Gluttony

February 2023

Life is short and getting shorter. The pandemic planted that sentence in my brain, and I’ve uttered it many times this year as I’ve jumped into new interests and challenges. While the world has settled into its more usual rhythms and we’ve returned to pre-Covid habits, I’ve been in danger of gorging on PLANS. And, in the countless hours of feverish, late-night writing I’ve been doing—I’m acting like I’m in my early 20s, again—I’m definitely gorging on words.

In her Gluttony essay, the next in our 7 Deadly Sins of the Writing Life series, Cheryl talks first about her over-indulgence in… fewer words. I’ll let her explain how that works. She’ll share, too, how a few other writers encounter Gluttony in their writing lives. These writers answered a handful of questions on the subject, and the answers inform the essay. Given my own recent months of Gluttonous writing, I decided to take a crack at Cheryl’s questions myself:

How does a writer learn when to walk away from a piece and not over-indulge in revision? How do you know when a piece is finished?

I’m lucky in that my writing-Gluttony never takes the form of over-indulgence in revision. I’m a “vertical” writer, so I think deeply about what I’m writing as I move along, and continually double-back to revise. For that reason, my first drafts tend to be very clean, and I typically need to do only 1 to 3 revisions to get myself to a final. I’m done when what I’ve written overlays perfectly the vision I had for the piece. How I know I’ve matched my vision is a bit of a mystery that’s difficult to articulate. When I’ve done it, I feel a kind of quiet euphoria. A rush of satisfaction and faith. I’m so sorry to say this but the answer really is… I know when I know.

Learning to see your vision with clarity that can’t be clouded by someone else’s opinion, and trusting that sense of satisfaction when you’ve created what you envisioned, is key to avoiding losing yourself in unnecessary revision that will only dilute your work. Of course you have to care more about nailing your vision than getting published, which is a big ask for some.

What do you do with those pieces that have been suffocated by your over-revision? Do you revisit? Try to revive them?

As I said above, I’ve never had this trouble. That might be because I’m actively testing revisions as I go. If I cut text I really like but might not fit, I don’t delete it, I drop it at the bottom of my Word file. As I continue with the piece, I’ll periodically jump down to the bottom of the file to revisit chunks I’ve excised. It’s not unusual to realize I’ve got a perfect new place for one of the them, or to be inspired into a tweak of a removed bit that makes it work where it was before. In other words, whenever I make a substantial change to a story, I retain the original material—sometimes I create a new file so I can page back and forth between the two versions—so that I can rework and re-integrate good material anytime.

How about the over-indulgence in an admired writer’s feedback? How does their critique influence your revision?

I always take feedback seriously until I don’t. Meaning that I will make a good faith effort to incorporate feedback but I remain very tuned into my vision as I do so, and the instant I see that a suggested change doesn’t support what I’m trying to do, I abort. I have never over-indulged in feedback.

Is there something else that you over-indulge in when it comes to writing?

I will write until I drop. It’s not strange at all for me to write 8 or 10 hours straight, and often enough during a productive period I will write for 12 or 15. I love being in this kind of flow and will neglect just about anything to keep it going. Most of the time that serves my writing well, if not always my sleep routine or housekeeping or familial duty. And that’s the problem—the neglect of other important things. If I let myself consistently over-indulge in writing time, my life gets out of balance. That’s obviously a problem in itself that needs addressing but of course once I get truly out of balance, the writing will begin to suffer as well.

Is this more of a sin for beginning writers?

Gluttonous revision and solicitation of feedback? I think so, yes. You have to get your writing legs under you before you fully trust your own instincts about when and how much to revise, what writing habits work, how to identify and use good feedback.

As for over-indulgence in writing itself, which is the only kind of writing-Gluttony I experience, probably that’s more of a temptation for experienced writers.

Many thanks to Cheryl for inspiring me all over again, 10 years later, to think about writing-Gluttony.

Next stop: Greed.

May you indulge and enjoy all writing sins forevermore. And may you write well today.

—Claire Guyton

Editor’s Notebook: Oh, Lust. Come here.

January 2023

We have arrived, Writer Friends, at the sin that mostly doesn’t feel like sin at all: Lust.

What can we possibly mean by Lustful writing? A Lustful writing life? Suzanne is delighted to consider the possibilities in this next installment in our essay series, 7 Sins of the Writing Life: Lust.

Some of her writing friends are happy to explore the concept, too. As part of this project, Cheryl and Suzanne generated questions exploring each sin; they asked themselves these questions, then posed them to other writers. Each essay is informed by the collection of responses, and quotes some of them. As a result, the series makes space for a kind of guided conversation.

Well, the more the merrier. As we leap into 2023, why not hear from one of our Waterwheel Review writers on these same questions? Hazelle Lerum’s “ballad of tribades / song of sodomites” appeared in Issue #2, October 2020. I asked her the questions about writing-related Lust that Suzanne put to her writer friends ten years ago, and she was kind enough to share her thoughts:

Do you ever burn to write but can’t?

Creative nonfiction and essay writers, those whose poetry errs on the side of the confessional: we all know the pain of wanting to make something beautiful out of an experience, but sometimes you just can’t. Sometimes you just have to confide in your notebook and bide your time. 

Do you ever intellectually know you need to write and sit down to do it, even without the burn?

Sticking to a daily freewrite habit has helped teach me to overcome that procrastinatey/‘waiting-for-inspiration’ impulse, because it’s taught me that writing, especially when I don’t feel like it, often has the handsomest results.

One of the things I do to try and combat an insufficient desire to write is to add a level of sensuality to my rituals. A candle with a curious design. Coffee and bubblegum (the bitter washing over bites of sweet is wonderfully stimulating in the morning, and relieves a sore jaw for a chronic teeth-grinder like me). Sometimes, if I need to finish a project, I’ll give a friend a valued object to hold as collateral until the project is complete. This enables a bit of power-play between me and the friend, and is also how some of my trinkets have summered in Seoul while I yet have not.

Do you ever desire to crack an inner ring of “true writers” but fear that you can’t because you hold a job, raise a family, watch television and movies, etc?

The internet has done an excellent job of puncturing the myth that there are such things as ‘true writers.’ If I read a great book, I can Google the author and find their day job. It’s like the more uplifting version of looking up your high school friends on LinkedIn.

Has Lust for other things ever hindered your writing life?

I once wrote an 80,000-word novel (single-draft, solidly in the trunk) about crows in the posthuman apocalypse. Microsoft Word tells me I spent almost a couple hundred hours toiling in that document. But in that same year, I spent nearly double the time playing Halo: The Master Chief Collection (a popular alien-bashing saga). While a part of me longs to be a super-soldier with a heroic shot and a great body, the rewards of this planet prove to be much richer, so I’m planning on reducing my time spent in the virtual realm.

Have you ever Lusted for other writers? For their work? For a writing environment?

It’s easy to quote Dead Poets Society here: “Language was invented for one reason, boys—to woo women.” It’s true! I have an entire trunk novel I wrote just to impress one writer I dated in college. It was just as romantic as you could imagine: stealing kisses in the library, going to poetry readings together. Infatuation provides ample motivation, so long as you don’t find your writing energy diverted.
 

Many thanks to Hazelle for adding another layer to our essay on Lust.

Next stop: Gluttony.

May you indulge and enjoy all writing sins forevermore. And may you write well today.

—Claire Guyton