Vincent Zandri's Blog - Posts Tagged "permanence"
Biting the Nail: The Discipline of Writing
Biting the Nail: The Discipline of Writing
By Vincent Zandri
“Where do you get your discipline?”
That’s the question I’m asked most frequently about my solitary writing life. Most people who work according the programmed schedule of job and career find it inconceivable that a person can actually roll out of bed, face a blank page, and begin to make words. Yet, as writers, that’s what we do. We create and in order to create we have to have discipline. Discipline to work alone, according to our own rules, according to our own high standards, according to our own priorities and curiosities.
Acquiring discipline isn’t so hard when you are passionate about your work—when you have a desire not only to write well, but to do it better than anyone has done it before. At the same time you have to develop a skin of armor in order to feed the obsession. The first most important lesson of the disciplined writing life is learning that you’re not always going to be successful. Most of the time you will fail and must face the resulting rejection head on. That’s the most difficult thing about discipline: carrying on with your work unabated, even in the face of rejection.
So where does my discipline come from?
As clichéd as it sounds, I can only tell you that it comes from deep inside. It’s not something I have to work up, so much as it’s something I have to feed on a daily basis. Discipline means waking up early every day, day in and day out, and writing. It’s writing everyday in isolation no matter what’s happening in my life. Be it sick kids, angry spouses, insolvent bank accounts, a broken toilet, a terrorist attack… I write no matter what. Hemingway called this sometimes impossible but necessary process, “biting the nail.” And anyone who has the discipline to write every day no matter what, understands what biting the nail is all about. Writing, like the discipline it requires, can be an awfully painful process.
Back in 1992, I wrote in my published essay, A Literary Life, “In the morning, weariness begins with darkness. It surrounds me inside my kitchen like a weighted shroud, cumbersome and black. It continues as my fingertips search and locate a light switch next to the telephone, above my son’s hi-chair. White light stings my eyes when I flip it up. There is a clock above the sink…I interpret a big hand and little hand that have not yet made 6:00AM.”
Those were the days when I wrote in the mornings, worked a fulltime job and received rejections everyday. But still, I crawled out of bed and wrote. I guess all these years later, I can truthfully say, discipline is what I had in the place of sleep, in the place of comfort, in the place of security and success. Discipline was and remains the bedfellow I seek when I am at my most lonely.
Eventually the discipline would reap its rewards.
In the 12 years since I’ve earned my MFA from Vermont College, I’ve published three novels, with one on the way this winter. I’ve been translated into numerous languages. I’ve published almost two dozen short stories, countless articles, essays and blogs. I’ve traveled “on assignment” to China, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Africa and more. Along the way I’ve met wonderful people, seen wonderful things, witnessed atrocities, unspeakable disease, hunger and corruption. I’ve written about much of it. Some of it, I’ve simply stored away in my brain for some future story or novel down the road.
For all its rewards, discipline demands stiff payment.
Because of my priorities, I’ve failed at two marriages and many more relationships. I’ve lost friends and lost the faith and trust of family members who have come to think of me as unreliable or flaky at best. Because after all, I tend to use a holiday like Christmas as a time to work, and when family events like birthdays come up, I might be traveling or locked up in my studio with my significant other…Well, you know her name. It starts with a D.
I have managed however, to find a way to balance time with my kids. Not that it’s always been easy. Children are a distraction, no bones about it. But they are also fuel for your discipline. I’m not entirely certain that I could have achieved any kind of success without them. Children open up emotional vaults that would otherwise remain sealed shut. You need to expose the contents of these vaults in your prose.
My writing simply wouldn’t be the same without kids. Now that they’re almost grown up, I still keep them as close as possible without smothering them. When it comes to my children, my philosophy has always been, hug them, tell them you love them, and make them laugh once a day. You’d be surprised how well this works. Also, don’t be afraid to tell them the truth. They know when you’re lying. If you can’t spend time with them because you have to feed the discipline, be honest about it. They will appreciate you for it and come to respect you.
Case and point: it’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I’m writing this article. My children are home, just outside the closed door of my studio, where I can hear them engaged in some sort of friendly argument. I’m not doing anything with them per se. But I’m here with them, for them.
This month alone I will write and published 36 short architecture and construction articles, three major blogs, present a revised version of The Concrete Pearl (my fifth novel) to my agent, write one or two features, engage in pre-publicity for Moonlight Falls, and maybe, if there’s time, pen a new piece for my personal blog. In between all this, I’ll juggle time with the kids, time for exercise, time to tip some beers with friends, time for a few road trips, time to be by myself and read. Have I mentioned the discipline required to read books?
One word of warning, the discipline, no matter how beautiful a bedfellow, does not always respond lovingly. Even after you’ve scored a major book contract or two. During my second marriage, I suffered through a writer’s block that lasted five long years, a period during which I published not a single word. The block just happened to coincide with my oldest son’s nervous breakdown and the onset of severe depression (see “Breakdown,” http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/11/12/B...). At that time, as I came close to going broke (after receiving a mid-six figure advance for As Catch Can), I never once stopped working, never once veered from the discipline of waking up every morning and trying to write. “Trying” being the key word here.
Looking back on those difficult years, I realize I wasn’t writing so much as I was just typing, but the process helped me cope with some very difficult and serious issues in my life. If nothing else, the discipline to write can be a mighty powerful therapy.
Eventually the damn breaks, as it did in my case, and I made a return to good writing and publishing. I’m not making millions by any means, but I make a decent living as a freelance journalist and novelist, and that’s all anyone can honestly ask for.
The late great Norman Mailer also understood about the financial ups and downs of being a full-time writer. But more importantly, he understood about the discipline of biting the nail. He wrote 2,500 new words a day right up until the end when his kidneys failed him. It wasn’t the disciple or the talent or the mind that gave out, it was the 84 year old body. I’m told he died with a smile on his face. Not the kind of smile that accompanies peace of mind, sedated painlessness, or “going to the bright light.” But the kind of smile that only a disciplined writer can wear; the sly grin that means you’re about to embark on a brand new adventure, and that you can’t wait to write about it.
By Vincent Zandri
“Where do you get your discipline?”
That’s the question I’m asked most frequently about my solitary writing life. Most people who work according the programmed schedule of job and career find it inconceivable that a person can actually roll out of bed, face a blank page, and begin to make words. Yet, as writers, that’s what we do. We create and in order to create we have to have discipline. Discipline to work alone, according to our own rules, according to our own high standards, according to our own priorities and curiosities.
Acquiring discipline isn’t so hard when you are passionate about your work—when you have a desire not only to write well, but to do it better than anyone has done it before. At the same time you have to develop a skin of armor in order to feed the obsession. The first most important lesson of the disciplined writing life is learning that you’re not always going to be successful. Most of the time you will fail and must face the resulting rejection head on. That’s the most difficult thing about discipline: carrying on with your work unabated, even in the face of rejection.
So where does my discipline come from?
As clichéd as it sounds, I can only tell you that it comes from deep inside. It’s not something I have to work up, so much as it’s something I have to feed on a daily basis. Discipline means waking up early every day, day in and day out, and writing. It’s writing everyday in isolation no matter what’s happening in my life. Be it sick kids, angry spouses, insolvent bank accounts, a broken toilet, a terrorist attack… I write no matter what. Hemingway called this sometimes impossible but necessary process, “biting the nail.” And anyone who has the discipline to write every day no matter what, understands what biting the nail is all about. Writing, like the discipline it requires, can be an awfully painful process.
Back in 1992, I wrote in my published essay, A Literary Life, “In the morning, weariness begins with darkness. It surrounds me inside my kitchen like a weighted shroud, cumbersome and black. It continues as my fingertips search and locate a light switch next to the telephone, above my son’s hi-chair. White light stings my eyes when I flip it up. There is a clock above the sink…I interpret a big hand and little hand that have not yet made 6:00AM.”
Those were the days when I wrote in the mornings, worked a fulltime job and received rejections everyday. But still, I crawled out of bed and wrote. I guess all these years later, I can truthfully say, discipline is what I had in the place of sleep, in the place of comfort, in the place of security and success. Discipline was and remains the bedfellow I seek when I am at my most lonely.
Eventually the discipline would reap its rewards.
In the 12 years since I’ve earned my MFA from Vermont College, I’ve published three novels, with one on the way this winter. I’ve been translated into numerous languages. I’ve published almost two dozen short stories, countless articles, essays and blogs. I’ve traveled “on assignment” to China, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Africa and more. Along the way I’ve met wonderful people, seen wonderful things, witnessed atrocities, unspeakable disease, hunger and corruption. I’ve written about much of it. Some of it, I’ve simply stored away in my brain for some future story or novel down the road.
For all its rewards, discipline demands stiff payment.
Because of my priorities, I’ve failed at two marriages and many more relationships. I’ve lost friends and lost the faith and trust of family members who have come to think of me as unreliable or flaky at best. Because after all, I tend to use a holiday like Christmas as a time to work, and when family events like birthdays come up, I might be traveling or locked up in my studio with my significant other…Well, you know her name. It starts with a D.
I have managed however, to find a way to balance time with my kids. Not that it’s always been easy. Children are a distraction, no bones about it. But they are also fuel for your discipline. I’m not entirely certain that I could have achieved any kind of success without them. Children open up emotional vaults that would otherwise remain sealed shut. You need to expose the contents of these vaults in your prose.
My writing simply wouldn’t be the same without kids. Now that they’re almost grown up, I still keep them as close as possible without smothering them. When it comes to my children, my philosophy has always been, hug them, tell them you love them, and make them laugh once a day. You’d be surprised how well this works. Also, don’t be afraid to tell them the truth. They know when you’re lying. If you can’t spend time with them because you have to feed the discipline, be honest about it. They will appreciate you for it and come to respect you.
Case and point: it’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon and I’m writing this article. My children are home, just outside the closed door of my studio, where I can hear them engaged in some sort of friendly argument. I’m not doing anything with them per se. But I’m here with them, for them.
This month alone I will write and published 36 short architecture and construction articles, three major blogs, present a revised version of The Concrete Pearl (my fifth novel) to my agent, write one or two features, engage in pre-publicity for Moonlight Falls, and maybe, if there’s time, pen a new piece for my personal blog. In between all this, I’ll juggle time with the kids, time for exercise, time to tip some beers with friends, time for a few road trips, time to be by myself and read. Have I mentioned the discipline required to read books?
One word of warning, the discipline, no matter how beautiful a bedfellow, does not always respond lovingly. Even after you’ve scored a major book contract or two. During my second marriage, I suffered through a writer’s block that lasted five long years, a period during which I published not a single word. The block just happened to coincide with my oldest son’s nervous breakdown and the onset of severe depression (see “Breakdown,” http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/11/12/B...). At that time, as I came close to going broke (after receiving a mid-six figure advance for As Catch Can), I never once stopped working, never once veered from the discipline of waking up every morning and trying to write. “Trying” being the key word here.
Looking back on those difficult years, I realize I wasn’t writing so much as I was just typing, but the process helped me cope with some very difficult and serious issues in my life. If nothing else, the discipline to write can be a mighty powerful therapy.
Eventually the damn breaks, as it did in my case, and I made a return to good writing and publishing. I’m not making millions by any means, but I make a decent living as a freelance journalist and novelist, and that’s all anyone can honestly ask for.
The late great Norman Mailer also understood about the financial ups and downs of being a full-time writer. But more importantly, he understood about the discipline of biting the nail. He wrote 2,500 new words a day right up until the end when his kidneys failed him. It wasn’t the disciple or the talent or the mind that gave out, it was the 84 year old body. I’m told he died with a smile on his face. Not the kind of smile that accompanies peace of mind, sedated painlessness, or “going to the bright light.” But the kind of smile that only a disciplined writer can wear; the sly grin that means you’re about to embark on a brand new adventure, and that you can’t wait to write about it.
Southern City Mysteries Interview
This is from the latest interview I did this week with one of the hottest mystery/thriller blogs in the states:
http://southerncitymysteries.blogspot...
Moonlight Falls
http://southerncitymysteries.blogspot...
Moonlight Falls
So I Finally Went and Published It Myself!
The following blog is now appearing at The Vincent Zandri Vox in slightly different form: http://vincentzandri.blogspot.com/201...
A lot of people...readers especially...associate me directly with Indie Publishing. There's good reason for this since for the past two years I have been publishing with arguably the hottest indie-based publisher in the country, StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink (Get the full story on my indie journey here at SUSPENSE MAGAZINE). And I've done very well with them. So well, I've landed a major deal with Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint. But that doesn't mean I won't continue to work with the StoneGates.
Not by a long shot.
But it also means something else too. For ages now I've been preaching that for an author to be successful he or she needs to engage in a variety of publishing methods. Those methods are, and I repeat: Traditional major, indie-based small press, and self-publishing. I've engaged in the two former methods sometimes successfully and other times dreadfully. But the latter of the three, self-publishing, has eluded me for some time now, even if a whole lot of people out there assume that's what I've been doing for a while now.
But now, I have gone and done it with the re-publication of my literary psychological suspense novel, Permanence, first published in 1995. For my first venture into the world of DIY, I wanted to make sure I did it right, so I hired the best editorial and conversion pros I could find. I also hired a great cover artist, and just one look at the stunning woman-in-the-water book cover might make you realize this is not going to be your everyday thriller.
I also rewrote some of the book, having added a brand new plot point towards the end. I know some fans might consider this cheating, but to be perfectly honest, I'm a better writer now and I wanted to give the reader his or her money's worth. That includes well written sentences and a well developed plot.
This is not your everyday Vincent Zandri thriller. It's a bit of an experiment and the narrative relies heavily on image. Something I was very into at the time. Through the years, some of my fans who read the original version have called this my best, most powerful book. I'm not sure about that, but who knows. Like I said, it was a departure when I wrote it and now, in this second edition published by my own Bear Media label, it remains a departure. But a good read nonetheless and an important stepping stone in the evolution of my noir career.
I hope you think so too
WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
Permanence
A lot of people...readers especially...associate me directly with Indie Publishing. There's good reason for this since for the past two years I have been publishing with arguably the hottest indie-based publisher in the country, StoneHouse/StoneGate Ink (Get the full story on my indie journey here at SUSPENSE MAGAZINE). And I've done very well with them. So well, I've landed a major deal with Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint. But that doesn't mean I won't continue to work with the StoneGates.
Not by a long shot.
But it also means something else too. For ages now I've been preaching that for an author to be successful he or she needs to engage in a variety of publishing methods. Those methods are, and I repeat: Traditional major, indie-based small press, and self-publishing. I've engaged in the two former methods sometimes successfully and other times dreadfully. But the latter of the three, self-publishing, has eluded me for some time now, even if a whole lot of people out there assume that's what I've been doing for a while now.
But now, I have gone and done it with the re-publication of my literary psychological suspense novel, Permanence, first published in 1995. For my first venture into the world of DIY, I wanted to make sure I did it right, so I hired the best editorial and conversion pros I could find. I also hired a great cover artist, and just one look at the stunning woman-in-the-water book cover might make you realize this is not going to be your everyday thriller.
I also rewrote some of the book, having added a brand new plot point towards the end. I know some fans might consider this cheating, but to be perfectly honest, I'm a better writer now and I wanted to give the reader his or her money's worth. That includes well written sentences and a well developed plot.
This is not your everyday Vincent Zandri thriller. It's a bit of an experiment and the narrative relies heavily on image. Something I was very into at the time. Through the years, some of my fans who read the original version have called this my best, most powerful book. I'm not sure about that, but who knows. Like I said, it was a departure when I wrote it and now, in this second edition published by my own Bear Media label, it remains a departure. But a good read nonetheless and an important stepping stone in the evolution of my noir career.
I hope you think so too
WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
Permanence
