Hello again,
It’s been an August month and I know I don’t have the most delightful of subject lines today. I’ll explain real soon.
But first, relief. I’m sublimating a pet peeve in an essay I am writing: That’s a great question - is not a great answer. I get a visceral reaction every time someone says this in a meeting. If you do too, feel free to email me any thoughts you have on the subject.
Speaking of visceral reactions, back to vomiting. I want to share a powerful idea that I’ve heard thrice in recent weeks and from three entirely different places.
I’m now 28,464 words into writing my book, Name, Place, Animal, Thing. That’s 9,578 words since my mail from fifteen days ago. I’m quite chuffed with my progress and the only reason it has been possible is that I’ve permitted myself to write what’s called a “vomit draft”.
As the name suggests, at this stage I’m simply pouring out words on to the page with zero self-judgment on how they sound or look. This is a mind-blowingly simple but powerful concept - something I’m repeatedly relearning from varied sources of insights into the creative process.
We are our worst critics. We are. It is impossible to be a half-decent creator and an impartial judge at the same time. Trying to simultaneously achieve these polar opposites in a singular mind is the reason many of us prematurely stifle our creativity even before she has a chance to raise her uncertain hand.
Don’t.
Really, please don’t.
Vomit it out first, however ugly that may be. Editing aka cleaning up can come later. Much later. You may not even be the best person to edit your work. Chances are, neither is your friend, wife, daughter, mother, or son - however much they love you.
In my writing community, we are strongly encouraged (almost threatened) never to edit our work at the vomit draft stage. My co-writers have come up with some creative ways to implement this - all true stories:
One pretends the backspace key is hot lava. No touchy, as he says. Another writes only in strikethrough mode while a writer in Florida writes with black highlights so she can’t see what she wrote. Another ‘function key hotshot’ simply dims his monitor down so he has no clue about what’s happening on screen. The grand prize goes to the gentleman who sought and bought a manual typewriter on eBay - only because he couldn’t resist the lure of the backspace siren.
So, whether it’s a blog, painting, sculpture, online course, dance routine, poem, musical composition, design, essay, pot, haiku, app, toy, game, product prototype, stitching project, book, or any other creative output you’ve had in your head, do lock that editor in, and vomit it out.
As Hemmingway said, “Write drunk, edit sober.”
Because our world needs more creators.
PS: if you know someone who’s had something in them for a long time but perhaps hasn’t poured it out yet for the reasons described above, do forward this newsletter to them.
On Voices.
Like a bat, I’ve been reflecting a lot on voices (OK, that was a really bad joke).
I’ve decided that while I don’t consider myself to be racist, sexist, or ageist, I’m certainly a ‘voicist'. I was sold on my first job by our chairman, Amitabh Bachchan’s voice. If you don’t know who he is, ask any Indian - you have over 1.3 billion to choose from. And earlier this year, a month before the lockdowns began, my wife, Tina, and I did a two-day mini-pilgrimage in Montreal where we explored all things related to Leonard Cohen. My favorite podcast host is Guy Raz, and not just because he interviewed me.
What’s common to Mr.Bachchan, Mr.Cohen, and Mr.Raz?
They all have amazing voices!
Two talented women died this month, the New York Times’ obituaries tell us. Their work-lives were all about voices.
First, Ann Syrdal who was the force behind the female computer voice we hear everywhere today. Think Alexa, Siri, Cortana. In the nineties, rather than generating sounds from scratch, she and her colleagues developed ways of piecing together snippets of recorded human speech to form new words and new sentences on the fly. Previous approaches thought a female voice was just a higher frequency version of the male voice.
Second, Christine Jahnke, a speech coach for women in politics, who died of colon cancer at the young age of fifty-seven. A backstage fixture at Democratic conventions, she helped speakers work with the teleprompter, read the audience, and sharpen their message. Among many others, she helped Michelle Obama on her delivery before she addressed the International Olympic Committee in Copenhagen in 2009. CNN said that Mrs. Obama “clearly took the gold with an emotional speech,” outshining her husband. Ms.Jahnke, in her training, frequently quoted Kamala Harris as a great example of speaking done right with special mention of how Ms.Harris had a Jedi-master’s command of pacing. As Ms.Jahnke’s friends lamented, she died on August 4th, exactly a week before Mr. Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, announced that Ms. Harris would be his running mate.
Earlier this month, I spent eighteen hours over three consecutive days learning how to improve my speaking voice. I will be launching a podcast in September and thought my guests deserved a better voice from me. I wanted to add ‘voice’ to the storytelling I wrote about two weeks ago.
Additionally, I didn’t like how I sound on my voicemail greeting. It’s not self-loathing. It just doesn’t sound like me. I now know that this is normal. Conductive hearing through our bones is how we hear ourselves. Others hear us OTA - over the air. Bones and air are different media. Different media, different sounds.
Thanks for indulging me while, in an attempt to find my ‘voice’, I vacillate between various styles for this newsletter. At one extreme, I’m inclined to share a truckload of hyperlinks I’ve discovered that I think you’ll also like. At the other end, thoughts and reflections like today’s newsletter- on vomiting, and voices.
I’m still experimenting! What do you think is better? Either? Neither? Mix it up?
Special thanks to those of you who gave me feedback on the last one. Please keep it coming.
PS: upon further research after ten paragraphs ago, the quote “write drunk, edit sober” is often misattributed to Ernest Hemingway who, as it turns out, rarely wrote drunk. He wrote in the morning and didn’t start drinking until the afternoon.
Don’t believe everything you read :)
Great newsletter. Such useful information and it is unbelievable and heartening that you know people who go to such lengths to not self-edit. Coming from someone who cannot make it past a paragraph without reworking it entirely sometimes! So, wondering about rapping a whole book out on a typewriter is not so crazy after all ! (I've thought of it, however I don't think anyone at home would be happy with the incessant clattering of keys. On the other hand they all have airpods! ). But here's the one line that gets me back to writing every time I'm blocked or discouraged, and I believe it is Hemingway who said it. "Write one true sentence."
Lux, another piece of feedback, answering your question about formatting the newsletter. My preference is your current format, and this 'vomit' letter had a good balance of reflection and info. But I love intriguing links too, so to prepare us for the rabbit hole of link-clicking, how about a newsletter devoted to links over and above what you usually provide. Maybe every few weeks. You could organize them by newsletter, provide a link to each one, and an associated list of fabulous and useful links . Call it the rabbit-hole something something...:)