The Writer’s Toolkit
Our job as editors and teachers is to make writing feel less ephemeral, to show you tangible ways to improve your writing. While I am always seeking ways to demystify and clarify writing, I still appreciate works that hover around the fuzzier corners of creative practice. Amina Cain’s A Horse at Night: On Writing dwells more in this space. Rather than a writing manual, Cain engages with the writers who shape how she thinks about writing. In essence, it’s about reading like a writer, or like this particular writer.
Cain returns to her literary touchstones in A Horse at Night, seeking to understand why they resonate and what they can tell her about her own writing practice. What does she glean from reading Marguerite Duras, Rachel Cusk, or Elena Ferrente? What do they accomplish with their writing and what does it mean for the writer reading it? And, ultimately, what does she want to accomplish with her own writing? Here’s how she describes this endeavor:
“After one gets out of the bath the feeling stays for a while. The same thing happens with reading, of course. When one closes a book it doesn’t mean the feeling of the book closes too. Maybe it’s this way our favorite books have of staying with us, but I find myself returning always to Clarice Lispector and Duras, and now Ferrente and Townsend Warner in my thinking, but also when I write, and I’ve realized that it might make sense to focus on them through writing for an extended period of time.”
For Cain, this is an exercise of discovery, an exploration of her writing habits and those of the work she admires: “Part of what I like about Cusk’s writing is that she writes extensively of emotions, but without being emotional.” She goes on to say, “I want to write more of closeness and intimacy, especially given how much in the past I have written of awkwardness and distance. I don’t want to stay on the surface of language, the surface of sentences. I want intimacy and sentences both, which is why I love the work of writers like Cusk, Ferrante, and Suzanne Scanlon. All three have changed what I thought I wanted in writing.”
Who are these writers for you? What works have changed what you thought you wanted in your writing? Whose language, or narrative structure inspires you? What scenes do you return to over and over? What works inspired or impacted your current project?
The intention of this exercise is for you to deeply read a deliberate selection of those texts. As you hopefully know, we don’t like to offer writing exercises that distract from the real work at hand, and I recognize this could be a particularly tempting rabbit hole. But when you are stuck, or when a section in your writing project isn’t coming together, having a collection of sample texts can help you write your way through the issue.
I do not mean to suggest that you mimic Ferrante or Cusk (or whoever your book goddesses are), but rather that you engage with your selected texts like a writer. That you reread them to better understand how they do what they do, and how that might inform what you want to accomplish in your own writing. Think of them like a toolkit—a selection of well-crafted instruments to help you repair what’s not working. While some writers may always stay in your toolkit, your example texts will likely shift from project to project, or as your needs shift.
Make a list of the pieces you want to reread like a writer. These can be favorite writers within your genre, a list designed to support the challenges of your current manuscript, or a selection focused on specific questions you have for your writing more generally.
Before you reread each section, briefly describe them from memory. What details have stuck in your mind? Is it a small image, a leaf floating through an open window and landing in a cooling bath, or a larger plot element made vivid? A feeling the scene evokes? The tone or setting? Now go back and reread the section. Note how your memory of the scene does or doesn’t reflect the actual text.
Look now for what you may not have noticed or remembered as clearly. How is the scene or narrative structure constructed? What techniques did the writer use to create those details you drew from memory? How would you describe the tone, voice, tense, or point of view? Free write around this—what is it about this writer, and this particular text, that you adore or admire? What lessons can you take from it?
Repeat this with all of the sections or writers you want to add to your toolkit. Once you have a collection, note any similarities in the sections. Are you fascinated by description? Language? The twists and conflicts of plot? Emotion? Deft use of sources and documentation? Handling of tricky situations?
As you revise and rework your drafts, come back to your toolkit, adding to it as needed. Ask questions and explore the answers within it. Sometimes these will be very specific (how does Carver handle dialogue? How does Orlean incorporate primary sources? How does Carr write about her mother?), and sometimes it will be broader (How does Cusk create tone? How does Ferrante use pacing to create tension?). Understanding how another writer approaches a similar challenge can unlock your own way forward, or at least shine a light in the right direction.