where do you find pleasure in writing?
a birthday writing prompt inspired by Emma Eisenberg, with assists from Claire Dederer and Louise Penny
Hi there! This is the very first entry in a new series, sparks, that will offer prompts and ideas for your writing practice.
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It’s my birthday! I wanted to share a fun post about finding pleasure in writing.
This summer, I was at a great reading—Emma Eisenberg, who writes the great newsletter
, in conversation with Tess Gunty at great Philly indie H & H Books—when Emma said something that sparked (ha) exactly the right part of my brain for the chapter I was working on. Emma said one of her favorite things to do when she’s reading is to try to figure out what brings the writer pleasure, and she made a couple quick predictions about Tess, based on her National Book Award-winning Rabbit Hutch.I loved this question because it reminded me that writing can be pleasurable—and that even if you’re writing about hard things, or you’re struggling in your writing, there can still be pleasure in that process. I thought of some of the writers whose work I love, and I felt immediately sure I could answer that question. (To give two examples: Louise Penny: good food, dogs, long friendships; Claire Dederer: talking and big ideas, art, water and urban spaces.) And I can answer it for myself: deep research, just a little bit of snark, the satisfying click of syntax when a sentence comes together.
So, today’s prompt: where do you find pleasure in writing?
It might be content—maybe you need to look for a thin slice of joy and write about that—but it might be process, too. I’ve found, with the book I’m writing now, that I love thinking about structure in big- and small-scale, so I’ve been working on ways to do that—moving around note cards to think about the connections between scenes and ideas, printing out drafts and cutting them and pasting them back together.
(This idea of writing toward pleasure is an extension, or maybe a cousin, of the idea of finding ease and fun in the process, which is something I’ve really been working on.)
Think about something that’s pleasurable for you in your writing, and work toward that.
a few more sparks, from the Write More archive
a revision exercise: making it matter
on making small changes to enrich your writing life
and a note on seeking joy in your writing life
Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. Have a victory or an epiphany in your writing life you’d like to share? A struggle you’d like help with? Reply to this email, comment below, or find me on instagram (@nancy.o.reddy).
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Thanks for this thoughtful and inspiring piece, Nancy. My pleasure in the writing of my fiction at the moment is where I have that really good feeling that I managed to create just the right--and right amount--of interiority for my character, deepening her emotional narrative arc at just the right place in the story. The more I revise, the closer I get. And the other pleasure is when I have whittled down a memory or flashback or piece of backstory to its essentials, another challenge that when you think it's working, is so pleasurable. I like what you said Nancy about being more visceral, the use of notecards and cutting up pieces of scenes/chapters and putting the papers together where they fit best, like a jigsaw puzzle. You are encouraging me to get more tactile. There is so much we can't see, so much intuition I think I am probably missing, when I am only looking at my writing on the screen.
Happy Birthday, Nancy! enJOY!