Ancient City Writing Workshop

Ernest Hemingway advised that when stuck to write one true sentence. He wasn't talking about factual truth, but emotional honesty. That single honest sentence can form the nucleus of a great story or novel. To prove this, just look at a few powerful literary works that began with a single true sentence. I'll do this from memory, so please forgive and correct me if I get any of them wrong.

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Fahrenheit 541, by Ray Bradbury: "It was a pleasure to burn."

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville: Call me Ishmael.

1984, by George Orwell: It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking 13.

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson: No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. [This one I had to look up to get it right].

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway: "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish." [I had to look up this one as well].

The Snows of Kilimanjaro, by Ernest Hemingway: "The marvelous thing is that it's painless," he said.

What are some of your favorite great beginnings, or great endings, in literature? Or, for that matter, great lines anywhere in the midst of a story?

One peculiar aspect of Florida life is that of roadside turtle rescue. While driving, I often see turtles crossing the road, and make it a point to stop and get them to a safer location. I like turtles (and what kind of monster would I be if I didn't like turtles?).

I either pull off to the side of the road or stay in the lane and click on my hazard lights, depending upon traffic. From there, I have two methods of turtle removal. If it's a non-snapping turtle, I simply pick him up and carry the creature to safety. If it happens to be a snapping turtle, I tap him on the butt with my shoe, and this will generally get the turtle to pick up and hurry on across the road. Some snapping turtles, the soft shell in particular, are able to stretch their necks all the way around to their behinds, making it a bit risky to pick them up.

One time I came upon a turtle while on County Road 214 and pulled off to the side of the road. It was a snapping turtle, not the soft-shelled variety but definitely a snapper, but still I figured this would be a routine turtle rescue mission. After all, he wasn't very big, weighing maybe ten or fifteen pounds (turtles are solidly built and surprisingly heavy, so it's tricky to estimate).

I go with the standard tap to the back, with the intention of prodding him along. Instead, he did something completely unexpected: jumped up, spun about, and lunged for me. In my experience, this is atypical behavior for a turtle. Startled, I jumped back, barely escaping his attack.

Being a rational creature of logic, I decided to take a little time to decide upon my next move. The turtle, however, was not hampered with such higher orders of mind. And so, while I stood in uffish thought, he redoubled his attack, charging me yet again.

He came at me and I backed away. Around and around we went like this. Even though he was a ten-pound turtle, and I was a 150-pound human, I am sad to report that he, not I, was the alpha male of County Road 214 that day.

I dashed to the car and retrieved an umbrella and held the end out to him. Fortunately, he took to attacking the umbrella instead of yours truly, and I was able to convey him away from the road once he latched onto the steel tip.

Now, was I angry with the turtle for coming after me when I was simply trying to help him? Did I hold animosity for the creature? No, of course not. Instead, I sought to learn from him and emulate his determination and tenacity.

When I find myself blocked on a novel, I have merely to wonder what the tenacious, little turtle would do. Would he stop and think things over? No, of course not! He would attack the keyboard with his little turtle claws like Jerry Lee Lewis at the piano. Would the turtle give up, simply because the project looked overwhelmingly massive? No way!

So when you're tempted to put off a writing project for another day, don't. Be like the tenacious, little turtle instead.

Okay, anyway . . . NEW MEMBERS WELCOME. Please contact me with any concerns or questions. We will be sharing and critiquing each other's works. Also, please respect the venue by ordering at least one food and/or drink item. Thank you.

I have this wonderful, little book titled Rooms of their Own: Where Writers Write, by Alex Johnson (illustrated by James Oses), and decided to make that the theme for this meeting. Then synchronicity kicked in and I happened to click on a video in which Stephen King spoke of that very topic: "Like your bedroom, your writing room should be private, a place where you go to dream." It seems like he also once said a writing room needs to have one thing more than anything else, and that is a door you can lock.

A WRITING ROOM! Yes! And why shouldn't a serious writer have a special space dedicated only to his or her craft? It seems that having a consistent time and location for writing helps condition the writer to be productive. Going to this certain place, at a set time, signals the brain that it is now time to write.

Writers are, by nature, wildly creative beings on the one hand, but this wildness, this creative fire, must also be grounded. Reading over this book about where writers write, I find that many wordsmiths are creatures of habit and routine. Does the word "routine" conjure images of boredom? Does it somehow imply a lack of spontaneity? Au contraire! It instead opens the door to freedom. It gives the creative person a safe space in which to spread their wings.

Another wonderful book, and one I've found immensely helpful on a practical level, is Atomic Habits, by James Clear. This book points out that systems and habits are the friends of productivity. They eliminate the dreaded "decision fatigue" that plagues busy people. That is to say, without systems and habits, we must each day rework our schedule. We must spend time and energy deciding when to do everything: when to write, when to exercise, etc. It's exhausting, and can be eliminated by adopting a more consistent schedule.

I can hear detractors objecting, proclaiming, in very righteous tones, oh, but that just isn't how life works! Things come up, you know! Shit happens! And yes, this is true, but do you really want to be primarily controlled by things coming up and shit happening, or do you want to be in the driver's seat? I know this is an oversimplification and a general principle, but it's worth considering.

I started off writing about rooms in which to create but got off topic because I'm just sort of winging it here. A room in which you will not be disturbed is vital to the writer's craft. And yes, I know it's important that the serious wordsmith be able to produce work anywhere, under whatever grueling circumstances he finds himself in, but the room and the schedule conditions the writer's mind. Then when the writer finds herself in some odd circumstance, she is still able to produce because she has spent so many hours in that room training herself. Does this make sense? Let me know. Please feel free to comment. Please join the conversation so I'm not just talking to myself in a closed room like a lunatic. Which reminds me of a favorite quote:

"Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing." -- Margarette Chittenden.

Some writers prefer to work not in a room at home but in a cafe or coffee shop. I often do this myself for a couple reasons. There is something about the open space and the ambient noise that helps me to focus. Also, I feel less "on call" when in a coffee shop than at home. At home, I'm constantly available. Anytime my puppy dog wants to play, she comes into my office and lets me know and really, how can I say no?

Okay, now I'm not just off topic but downright rambling. Bottom line: writing is serious f'ing business, so let's treat it as such. Carve out time and space for it in our busy lives. Make it a priority. That said, I'm going to go off and stare at the walls for a while.

There is a great line in the 1926 novel The Silver Stallion, by James Branch Cabell: "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true."

This bit of wisdom is worthy of a bit of deconstruction. It would seem that living in the best of all worlds is a good thing, and yet that would also mean that it can't get any better.

Mankind has been puzzling about the concept of an ideal society, or Utopia, for ages, but has yet to nail down just what such a world would entail. It seems that meaning and purpose largely goes hand in hand with strife, hardship, and suffering. Certainly it is during times of upheaval and uncertainly that great works of art and literature flourish.

Maybe the ideal world would be free of all disease, but how would that impact the millions of doctors, and aspiring medical professionals? I'm not being facetious here. Countless children grow up yearning to be great physicians, or maybe caring nurses, or brilliant medical technicians. From the fulfillment of these desires their lives take on meaning and purpose. What would happen if everybody around the world was spontaneously cured? Suddenly the services of these medical professionals, who dedicated their lives to the practice, are no longer needed.

Similar analogies can be made concerning crime and law enforcement personnel, and other such combinations of good and evil, but you get the picture. Heroes need villains and Samaritans need victims.

Way back in 1954 Jack Williamson wrote a brilliant story titled "With Folded Hands," later expanded into his novel, The Humanoids. In this story, humanoid service robots arrive on Earth and cater to every human need. Also people are no longer allowed to do anything at all dangerous, and if a person must be modified a bit (that is, lobotomized) to keep him or her safe, well, that's the price of a perfect world.

Of course it's a far from perfect world. In fact, it's an existential nightmare and it sucks and with the rise of ChatGPT it might be closer to us than we think. On a side note, this is some very sophisticated science fiction written by a man who, as a young child, moved with his family on the westward expansion across the U.S. To protect him from rattlesnakes and other hazards, his folks kept him penned up pretty tight, and from this he extrapolated a world in which machines protect humans to the nth degree.

Oddly enough the solution to all our problems might just be worse than the problems themselves. Who and what are we when we have no more regions to explore, no more hardships to overcome, and no more challenges to take on?

Would we even be content with Utopia? In the "This Side of Paradise" episode of the original Star Trek, the Enterprise arrives at a planet in which it's believed that the inhabitants were all killed. Such is not the case. In fact, the settlers are alive, happy, and in perfect health, due to alien spores.

It therefore falls upon Captain Kirk to wake these people up and remind them that enjoying perfect health, getting along with neighbors, loving everybody, and being happy all the time is no damn way to live. What the hell were these people thinking? And once the effects of the alien spores were eradicated they quickly saw the error of their ways (and thank goodness, right?).

It's been said that there are two great tragedies in life: 1) not getting what you want, and 2) getting what you want. Long ago I read an Asimov tale (don't recall the title offhand) about a writer (I think it was a writer, anyway) who lamented the multitude of inconveniences of life, such as waiting for taxis, standing in lines, and so on. Somehow he was able to get a wish granted and he asked for these pesky nuisances to be done away with.

You might think that he'd be happy and content after that, but then there would be no story, would there? No, he was downright miserable. Everywhere he went a line of taxicabs followed in his wake, ready to pick him up. Lines at the grocer disappeared at his arrival. And so on. The problem, though, was that even though he detested all the inconveniences of daily life, such times also gave him time in which to think and ponder and come up with ideas. I guess the moral is that there is just no pleasing human beings (especially writers).

Okay, what is the point of all this? And what does it have to do with literary production and the development of our writing craft? Hmm, let's see. Oh, hey, I know: don't wait around for conditions to be perfect before getting down to work on that story, novel, screenplay, etc. Yeah, sure, that's what I was leading up to.