this woman’s work

I love logic problems. I used to buy those books when I was a kid because I loved them so much. “Carrie has a blue dress. The person in the green dress wore yellow sandals. What color was Elaine’s hat?” Mmm, good times!

I think writing is a lot like that. For marketing writing I go to my client and they say, “We’re going with urgency here and we have an image of a snake.” So then I sit at my laptop, thesaurus at the ready, and brainstorm. Urgency. Danger. Fear. Blah blah blah. Then I type up, “Don’t wait for danger to strike! Act now and secure your safety!” I send it to my client. He says, “Mmm, too scary. Urgency without fear.” And back I go to write up, “Be prepared. Act now before something really awful happens.” Etc. etc.

Sometimes I have to write something wrong before I can know how to get it right because maybe my client doesn’t know what he wants until he sees what he doesn’t want.

Creative nonfiction is really similar in some ways. I was telling Brett that one of the things I like about it is that you only have the truth to work with — you can’t make something up — but you have too choose which truths to share and how to share them to give a broader, more subjective truth. So if I’m writing about the frustrations of motherhood, I’m not going to share the same stories as I might if I were writing about nostalgia for my kids early years. You could read one and see a disatisfied mom or read the other and see a total maternal figure and they would both be true even if they seem contradictory.

The more complicated, more nuanced a topic is then the harder and more fun it is to write because then there’s room to shade stories with a little paradox but again, it takes artistry to know what to leave out and put in and how to highlight something without taking attention away from your central theme, etc.

I love writing. (happy sigh)