◩ The secret is probably to be productive, to mark out a period of time each day in which work needs to happen, in which you need to write. If you do that, you will at least produce something like this—fragments, intended to fill space, when my brain feels scorched… But the secret is also to persevere. You must ◢
◩ I have told every woman that I have ever fallen in love with that they should write a novel. This was because I admired them, because I was curious about inner lives that I feared I could never otherwise access, and because I feared I could never write one myself. I would have been happy with a short story. I would have been happy with an essay. Poetry, even, might have satisfied me. I suppose, especially when I was younger, that I was mystified by how anyone could get through life without spilling into a Word document or a notebook at least some of their private thoughts, a few observations, a couple memories, a clever turn-of-phrase… All of them told me the same thing: “I don’t know how to write.” I wasn’t convinced that writing was a skill to be learned, except beyond the most rudimentary level. I’m still not sure. (I know now that they meant only that they had no interest in writing, just as I have no interest in painting. I would say the same thing to a painter: “I don’t know how to paint!”) ◩
◩ Sometimes friends or readers will ask me to read something they’ve written, whether for a critique, a rough opinion, or an edit. I can edit, I hope. I can pull out sentences that need to be rewritten. I can spot errors. I can add in some extra commas. But my opinion, or my critique, is always that it looks too much like everything else. “You know how to write.” I would like to be horrified. ◩
◩ These are my writing tips. I am writing these for myself. I am writing for the myself that wants to make money by writing. □ I understand that nobody wants to come out and say what they mean. I prefer to hint. I prefer to gesture. I prefer to hide the argument. I am dishonest and timid. I would rather be misunderstood than be forced to justify an opinion. This must be rooted in both self-loathing and pride. But nobody knows what you're talking about. You have to say it! □ You can only edit by reading aloud into silence. □ Don’t get in the habit of trying to write an introduction. Better writers start from outlines. If you won’t do that, then at least begin halfway through. I have the bad habit of spending hours typing and deleting the first lines of an essay that has no body. Instead, you should jot something down, then move on. □ If you feel that something you want to say is too embarrassing, or too shameful, or too vile to put into an essay that the world could see, it's better to include it. You should overcome your self-loathing and your pride. A good editor will cut out unnecessary excesses. If an editor is not going to read a piece of writing, the only fear is that someone you know will read it and think less of you, in which case, they should love you enough to forgive your private thoughts, or you can tell them it was a fantasy or a lie. (There are exceptions. Don’t admit to crimes. You can hint at those, if you must. Don’t tell tales about other people, especially if they might be identified, unless they have given you their permission. And if you fear explaining a particular statement to, say, a state security agent, you should probably do your best to conceal it [but it is more likely that nobody cares, and you’re only spooking yourself].) □ There are so many things that I assume other people learn in creative writing courses. You should go through and scrutinize every use of "but" and "although." You should avoid passive voice. By the time a draft is submitted, the em dashes that served as temporary scaffolding should be removed. □ There are so many things that I wish someone had told me before. A good editor is valuable. You should always send a note if your draft will be late. It feels more comfortable to remain silent, to hope they imagine you buried in work, but the truth is that they probably won’t mind rolling back the deadline. They might worry about you. They are human, too. You shouldn’t argue too much with editors. You can sulk over the changes later, by yourself. You should let them bring up the subject of a fee, but feel free to press them later, whether to ask for more, or to speed up a wire. ◩
◩ I wonder sometimes if I can write anymore. I am out of ideas. □ No, I’m out of energy. I remember when I was young. I wrote at least a short story a week. □ Three were published. For one, I was paid three thousand dollars. I won a contest. It was the first time I had ever sent my story to a magazine. ▤ It was a sad story about a flood and about Richmond Public Market and the temples along Steveston Highway, based on a vision that I had after a ■■■■■ ■■■■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■■ (maybe it was fortified by the mold in the basement of a growhouse in Chilliwack, the pesticides scattered from a jug…). I thought I was writing a science-fiction novel about Vancouver. ▤ I wrote it in one of the study carrels at the public library. I remember telling Xinran, as we were pulling into the gas station in front of the Superstore on Thatcher. To this day, she has still never read the story. She told me this just a month ago, almost a decade after we divorced. I bought her a camera with the money. I told her to write a novel, too. □ For another, I was paid a hundred dollars. ▤ I wrote it at work. I had taken a job as the assistant manager of a liquor store in St. Albert. A week or so after taking the post, the manager, who had seemed to me deeply troubled, stopped showing up to work. ▤ There was not much to the job. I had to make up a schedule for the seven or eight part-timers. Someone had to be there to open the store at ten or eleven each morning, and to close it at two. The amount of money deposited in the safe for pickup at the end of the day had to match the register’s take. We needed to avoid selling liquor to government auditors, who would pose as minors. ▤ One of the duties was to count once a week by hand every bottle in the store. The actual inventory needed to match a database. The discrepancy was called shrinkage. There was an ideal number for shrinkage each month. If we didn’t hit the number—the loss of however many bottles, or however much in dollar value—it would be proof to the regional manager that counts weren’t being conducted. Since the store was in an affluent suburb, where nobody was shoplifting, and we seemed not to drop as many cases as our sister stores, we made up the quota by taking bottles from the shelf and drinking them. We became connoisseurs of old Alberta rye. ▤ I had a good time. I had just turned thirty, I think, or I was about to. I spent a lot of time hanging out with twentysomething burnouts. I smoked and drank too much, and played Super Smash. My mother took me to the Ford dealership and co-signed a loan for a car. I had free time. I was ■■■■■■■ ■■■ ■ ■■■■■ ■■■ ■■ ■■■■. I told her years later that I slept with a half-Turkish Boston Pizza waitress in the laundry room of an employee’s apartment. We took bong rips and she kissed me. She was impressed that I had been to Istanbul. Maybe I was lying. But I had been to Anatolia's Gate in Burnaby, and I remembered the sour cherry juice and pide. She was probably twenty. When I drove her home in the morning, she asked how old I was. I was too ashamed to say, so I handed her my driver’s license. She said, “That’s cool. My friend is dating a guy that’s forty-five.” I called her and she never called me back. She texted me to say she was on a ski trip. She didn’t answer my reply. She never thinks about me, but I still think about her. I would have told her to write a novel, too, if I’d had the chance. ▤ I wrote a lot at work. The afternoons were slow. I submitted a short story to a literary magazine about my mom’s third husband’s suicide. It was fiction, but it had some things in it that I didn’t want anybody to know about, like the fact that I ■■■■■■ ■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■■■■, that I had ■■■■■ ■■■■ ■■■ ■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■ ■■■■ (■■, ■ ■■ ■■■■■ rubbed coconut oil into her stretch marks when she had brought me a Diet Pepsi from the Tim Hortons on the hill), or that I was ■■■■■ ■■ ■■■■■ the whole thing ■■■ ■ ■■■■■. I couldn’t think of a title. One of the kids at work—Joe, his name was—said he wanted to write a book about dip, called Skoal vs. Copenhagen, so I stole that as the title. By the time it was published, I didn’t really care. I was on a train to Shaoguan. I wish I could have told Joe that I swiped his title. He might have liked the story. □ Nobody read these stories. They are in provincial archives, I suppose. They meant something to me. It’s good to persevere. ◩
◣ continue, even if fitfully, only jotting this or that down, only occasionally adding to a Word document, for as long as you can. I’m talking about years and decades. Maybe you feel like you need to do that, that you would do it, anyway, whether or not anyone actually read a word. Nobody says that, I think. ◩