Writing is Rarely Easy
For someone who loves to write as much as I do, I find writing quite hard. I love that saying from Thomas Mann: “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” After all, who else but a writer would spend 20 minutes adding and removing the same comma to see if the sentence is better with or without it?
Writing first drafts has always been particularly difficult for me. While I’m writing my first draft I have this odd desire to pop my eyes out with spoons or pluck my hairs out one by one. Fortunately, I’ve written a number of first drafts while maintaining my eyesight and my hairline. I’m not sure what it is about the first draft that irritates me so.
My best guess is that I have such a clear idea about my story when I begin writing but then the first draft I produce looks nothing like that.
The second draft is slightly better. At least now I’m able to shape my sentences into something resembling the story I want to tell. Then, in the third draft, I’m able to find the poetry in the prose. When I find the flow, that’s when the fun of writing begins for me.
How do I find the flow? It’s a challenge, one that started many years ago.
What is a Cliche and How Can We Avoid Them?
In 1999, Oprah Winfrey interviewed Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, for the Oprah Book Club. Fitch talked about how a writing instructor told her that a “cliché is anything you’ve ever heard before—so never use a description anyone has heard.”
As I remember it (it was 1999), Fitch spoke about a time she challenged herself to describe a tree with her own unique phrases. I was already well into fiction writing at that time, and her words struck me as truth. I too came to believe that writers should reach to find their own descriptions and they should never be lazy and allow others to do the work for them.
In a 2006 interview for O Magazine, Fitch explained that when she began writing fiction she had to work on word choices and the music of language. That’s what I wanted too. I wanted to work on word choices and the music of language. I wanted to avoid clichés “like the plague” and create images “as sweet as pie.”
It’s a lesson I still hold close to my heart, and it’s one I try to impress upon my writing students. When I’m molding sentences, I stretch, hands out, fingers pointing there, there where that inchoate image waits, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, for me to probe my vocabulary for the exactly right string of words to illuminate what I see the way I see it.
Avoiding Cliches Takes Time and Patience (and a Thesaurus)
If I’m describing a storm, a small town, a person, an emotion, I need to find a way to describe that storm or that town in a way I’ve never heard before. In their 2006 interview, Oprah mentions to Fitch that such a stretch “seems as if it would be quite difficult.” Fitch responds, “It is. But it means that everything you give the reader is absolutely fresh. We read so that we can be moved by a new way of looking at things.”
I learned a lot from Fitch in 1999, again in 2006, and I continue to learn from her whenever I read one of her novels. Reaching for phrases I’ve never heard before becomes harder with everything I write because while I don’t want to repeat phrases from other writers, I don’t want to repeat phrases from myself either. This is where a thesaurus comes in handy.
I’m feeling the weight of that challenge now as I’m completing The Duchess of Idaho. With everything I write, I have to find a new way to describe things, but that’s the part of writing I thrive on—creating poetry in prose. And when I do finally find the right words, that is when I love being a writer.
If you’d like to lose yourself in the poetry of Janet Fitch’s prose, check out her novels or the short pieces on her blog. The 2006 interview for O Magazine can be found here.