1. Shut off the phone and . . . find the time to write.

You know that little button on the side of your phone? Push it, and a startling message will appear: “Slide to power off.” 

Really, it’s okay. You can turn it off. Not just the ringer, the whole damn thing. It’s exhausted. Let it have a rest. 

It’s now longer a gateway to the rushing, compelling, demanding world outside your writing; it’s now your magic concentration device. 

2. Shut off the internet and . . . find the time to write.

See, at the top of your screen, the little triangle thing that means you’re connected? Click on that, and shut it off. 

Feel the flicker of anxiety when you do this; what if you miss something? What if some further catastrophe is happening in our world and you’re not the first to know? What if your friend Marie has a new hairdo she’s showing off on Facebook? How can you bear to not be connected? 

Instead, you’ll be connected to your writing, your work, your self. 

Wait few seconds, and you’ll feel a wash of relief: You don’t need to know whatever is happening in the world right now. 

What you need to do is get to work, and write.

3. Close the door and . . . find the time to write.

Tell your partner/spouse/mother/child not to interrupt you until you come out. Some people (children, in particular) respond better to this if you give them a time, like “I’ll be out in an hour,” instead of “I’m not coming out until I get some depth to this character.” 

This may help you, too: setting a timer for 40 minutes can alleviate some of the anxiety of writing. You know there’s an end in sight. 

If you don’t have your own room with a door, tell the people around you that when you’re wearing your Yankees ball cap, or when you’re wearing your headphones, or when you’re sitting in a particular chair, that’s your writing time, and you are not to be disturbed. 

4. Don’t even look at your email before sitting down to write.

No, not even a peek. Not even to check and see if there’s something from the publication you submitted to yesterday. 

Take a deep breath. 

If there is something of interest waiting in your email, desperately banging on the bars of the cage so you’ll read it, it’ll still be there in a couple of hours, or 15 minutes, or however long you’re going to give yourself to write.

I know these first four may seem impossible; what helps me is to think of someone in a job where they really cannot be disturbed. Because we’re writers, we’re often at the computer, phone at our side, appearing available. But we’re not. We’re writing. 

You wouldn’t want the surgeon, scalpel in hand, to suddenly need to check the airfares to Mexico, or to answer a call about this weekend’s plans. 

A low-wage worker in a big-box store can’t suddenly decide to do a little job search on their phone, or see if an important email has come in with a coupon from Bed Bath and Beyond. 

You are the surgeon. More to the point, perhaps, you are the low-wage worker. 

5. Once you’re sitting in front of the work, let yourself relax into the bubble you’ve created.

If your mind is still flying all over the place (pandemic, climate collapse, racism…who can blame you for feeling anxious and distracted?), just sit at your desk for a moment. 

Look around you, name five things you can see (clock, plant, other pair of reading glasses), then four things you can feel (the fabric of your shirt, the floor beneath your feet), three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. 

And then, get to work.

Sarah Van Arsdale’s first poetry chapbook, Taken, is forthcoming at the end of this month from Finishing Line Press in October 2021. Click here to order a copy. She is the author of four books of fiction and a single book-length poem, titled The Catamount (Nomadic Press, 2017), illustrated with her watercolors. Her other books are: Toward Amnesia, In Case of Emergency, Break Glass, Grand Isle, and  Blue, winner of the 2002 Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have been published in widely in literary magazines. In addition to teaching in the Antioch/LA low-residency MFA program, she has taught with Art Workshop International in Assisi, Italy, at New York University, and with Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. More of her drawings, short films, and writing can be seen at sarahvanarsdale.com

The post #5onFri: Five Ways to Resist the Inexorable Forces Pulling You from Your Writing appeared first on DIY MFA.

1. Borrow from Real Life

In his memoir, Rushdie writes his father cried out, “What am I going to tell my friends?” when he told him he was going to be a writer. A similar scene appears in the novel, The Satanic Verses, with a main character telling his father he’s going to be an actor. Fourteen pages later, he recounts an experience I recognize from the novel Fury, which includes a character, whose physical description is based on his ex-wife, Padma Lakshimi. 

These are just a few real life elements that made it into his fiction. I used to avoid including anything from my life in my writing. I thought people might think I was hiding behind fiction to write about myself or them. 

More importantly I thought it would make me a fraud—fiction is supposed to be made up. 

I realized Rushdie, and most fiction writers, frequently include details from their lives in stories. They give fiction that bit of truth it needs to be believable. And some stories are too good not to use.  

You don’t have to include intimate details or base a whole character on someone you know. Including pieces of a real conversation might bring your dialogue to life. Try expanding a childhood accident or a bad work experience into a traumatic event for a character’s backstory.

2. Characters Need Distinctive Voices

When asked, Rushdie advised writers to give characters their own distinct voices, explaining that while reading passages of character dialogue you should be able to tell the difference. Each character should have different vocabulary, syntax, attitude, and body language. 

Rushdie focuses on voice. This stems from the advice of a history professor at Cambridge: “You must never write history until you can hear the people speak.” He remembered it and thought it was a valuable principle for fiction as well. He writes in his memoir you need a sense of how people speak to tell their story. The way characters speak reveals a lot about them.

Think about how your characters speak. Do they use short or long sentences, are they slow and deliberate or do their words come out quick and garbled? Maybe they use a lot of slang or technical jargon from their work. 

Remember to read dialogue out loud to really hear the character’s voice.  

3. Do Your Research

Rushdie’s novels take place in a variety of locations in the world and in time. It’s hard to believe that he could recreate these settings in his fiction without doing at least some research. 

Before writing Midnight’s Children, he left his job to travel through India for as long as possible. Much of the story is about India itself and it’d been over a decade since he’d lived there. He describes the trip as “plunging into the inexhaustible Indian reality, so that [he] could drink deeply from the horn of plenty and then come home and write.” 

He mentions a variety of media he consumes as he developed The Ground Beneath Her Feet. He had a friend in the music industry review it to point out related mistakes. 

The clearest evidence of his research was the four-and-a-half-page bibliography included in The Enchantress of Florence.

You don’t need intimate knowledge of every setting. If you can’t manage a visit, there are other options. Key details can be found on the internet using local newspapers, blogs, maps, and satellite views. 

When writing an era other than your own, look up cultural norms, technologies and language quarks. 

Lastly, reach out to friends, family and colleagues that might be willing to fill you in on their areas of expertise or knowledge.

4. How You Write Is as Important as What You Write

You can tell Rushdie pays careful attention to language and how he uses it to tell his stories. One moment from the novel Fury has always stuck with me. When the narrator is introduced to the female love interest, he loses touch with reality describing her. It’s four long paragraphs that verge on a philosophical lecture on her beauty: “Extreme physical beauty draws all available light toward itself, becomes a shining beacon in an otherwise darkened world. Why would one peer into the encircling gloom when one could look at this kindly flame. Why talk, eat, sleep, work when such effulgence was on display?” 

The long rambling sentences made me slow down, pulling me into the long, drawn-out moment, which was abruptly interrupted by a piece of dialogue from narrator’s friend. 

I remember the first time I read it. I had to stop for a minute to collect myself and remember where I was. It felt a lot like how the character was snapped out of his own thoughts and brought back to reality.

Think about what your characters are going through and how your writing might reflect what they are feeling. 

Short sentences with abrupt changes in topic mimic the rapid thinking of anxiety and panic, while the same words in longer sentences feel like being lost in thought. An elaborate explanation or description where a few words would have sufficed might cause suspicion.

5. Keep Writing

Right out of college, Rushdie knew he wanted a career as a writer. It’d take almost thirteen years to really get his start. In the meantime, he worked as a copywriter and wrote what he describes as “unbearable amounts of garbage.” 

His first novel, Grimus was dismissed or ignored by critics. 

For him, Midnight’s Children was his last try at achieving his dream. He thought it was more likely to fail than succeed and took five years to complete. Fortunately, the book was a success and he enjoyed continued success until publishing The Satanic Verses. Labeled blasphemous by Muslim leaders, there were violent protests against the book and it was banned in several countries. A fatwa—official death sentence—was issued for him and anyone involved in publishing the novel. He had to live in hiding under police protection for nine years. His personal and professional life suffered as a result of the controversy surrounding the book. 

There were moments when he considered not being a writer. Progress was slow and he would go long periods without writing fiction, instead focusing on efforts to defend his work and speak out for freedom of speech and expression. It would have been easy and safer for him to stop writing, but he didn’t.

It’s easy to get discouraged. Writing is not easy and sometimes the risk is greater than the reward. But there is joy in the process of creation and seeing the result of your hard work. Focus on that joy and keep writing.

Alexis Collazo, sometimes LexC online, is originally from Brooklyn but currently lives in Pennsylvania where she has worked at the Public Library for the past four years. Her favorite part of the job, other than being surrounded by books, is leading writing workshops. She is passionate about helping others improve their writing and sharing their unique stories with the world. She enjoys creative work that bends artistic boundaries and crosses genres, and is currently working on a mixed genre memoir combining essays, poetry and poetic prose. You can find out more about her by visiting her website, or by following her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The post #5onFri: Five Writing Lessons from Salman Rushdie appeared first on DIY MFA.