Five Things I Learned About Writing From My Poet Dad

 

            Dad was prominent as a poet.  When I was young, I longed not to be a poet. 

I’d be anything—a quarterback, an FBI agent, a ship captain.  But in my soul, I knew I would be a chip off Dad’s block.  Alas, I was a word-smith, too. 

            So I watched Dad, to learn how. 

           

        One

                                                            Read, read, read. 

 

Read any style, content, genre, author, date—it doesn’t matter.

“We pour our souls into these words, Dikkon. You need to learn to identify writing that’s worth that effort and writing that’s not.”

Once, after Dad breezed through an erotic novel I showed him, drily he responded, “Chaucer did it better.”

 

Two

Start.

 

“I can’t write it,” I moaned, regarding my short story assignment in high school. “It’s too hard!”

Dad caught Mom’s urging eye, put down his pipe, and asked me, “What’s your story about?”

“When they’re choosing up teams, the boy wants to be picked first but maybe he won’t be.”

“And?”

“I don’t know!  Maybe he isn’t picked first, but maybe he hits the home run.  It’s due tomorrow!”

“Try making the story about his thoughts.”

“About his thoughts?”

“Yes.  Try starting with the word ‘maybe.’”  Dad grinned.  “Maybe the story is about maybe.”

So I wrote the story and submitted it on time.  Its first sentence was “Maybe I’ll be picked first but maybe not.”  

 

 

        Three

                    Bring the reader in.

 

“Do you like it?” Dad asked. 

“It’s assigned.” 

“Not what I asked.”

“Then, no.  It’s boring.” 

“Do you think maybe he’s just writing for himself and maybe for his closest friends?”

I hadn’t thought of that as a possibility.  The author was a major name in modernist English fiction—the focus of my college class. 

Dad pressed on, “Do you think it’s important that you be drawn in?”

“Who?  Me?”

“You’re his reader, aren’t you?”

I laughed.  “I wouldn’t be his reader, not if I could help it.”

“So…that’s my point.  Yes, the reader must come to the writer, but the reader only will come to the writer if he’s drawn in, not forced in.”

“That’s not happening here.”

“So when you’re a writer….”

I nodded.  “Bring ‘em in.”

“Atta boy.”

 

           Four

Don’t go to sleep until you know what happens next. 

 

“No,” Dad said.  “I don’t believe in writer’s block.”

“It’s my first novel, Dad.  I can’t get past the point where I am.  You’re a poet, not a novelist.  How could you know?”

“What’s the last scene you wrote?”

I told him.

“Go back and write it again.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Doesn’t matter.  Probably nothing.  But write it again—create it again.  Your juices will begin to flow again, and you’ll speed on.”

Turns out he was right—I sped on.

 

Five

Don’t let it fester. 

 

I called Dad.  Two days before, I had finished my second novel, doing its last sixty pages in an eighteen-hour burst of ecstatic—almost holy—writing.  “It’s done, Dad.”

“Congratulations!”

 “I’m exhausted.”

 “Of course. Get a rest.”

 “Tell Mom.”

 “Of course. So…what’s next?”

 “I read it over.  I think it’s good.  Gotta do some tweaks.”

 “Do that.  But then—get it off your desk.”

 “What do you mean?”

 “Don’t let it fester.  Get it out into the world.  If you tweak it too much, you could kill it.  Now let an editor tell you what to do. ”

 

HERE’S A BONUS FOR LISTENING!

 

A Sixth Thing I Learned

Keep trying.

 

Sitting in our garden, Robert Frost turned to me and remarked, “Dikkon, the work of the poet is to write at least one single poem that they can’t get rid of.  They’ll try.  But don’t let ‘em.”

--Copyright, Dikkon Eberhart, 2016