Sunday 12/22/24
You can make someone care in so few words if they're the right words. True words that belong where they are, doing what they're doing; words that have to be those words and not any others.
If you're going to write something great--truly great, not publishing industry "let's lie about this godawful, meaningless dreck" great--this is what you must do.
That's how it has to be. No one can teach you how to do it. At all. You can't learn how to in an MFA program. You can't learn how to me from me.
The words someone reads anywhere that they look in a work--even before they read the work in full--should make them care.
Not as much as they'll care later with everything in full. In how it all comes together. In how each part adds to the rest. But care all the same.
And they should know that there's much there for them to care about. That they're in store for something big. Something that may make them feel as they've not felt before.
That's the test. Or it's a test. There are many. (How do you think the people of the publishing system would fare with this test? How do you fare with it if you call yourself a writer?)
But it's a test that a truly great work passes every time in every part of it.
"Now remember, it was cold at the beach that morning, and the wind howled, and the sky was all gray. It didn’t look like a happy day. But that’s for a person. Or for most people. I like days like that because I can snuggle with you and we can still go outside and have fun and take a walk in the woods with daddy in our jackets with our nice warm hats and our gloves…”
“And get hot chocolate.”
“Yes, and get hot chocolate.”
“But the penguin didn’t have any hot chocolate.”
“No, she didn’t. But she had something else, this big, amazing thing, and something else to do, too."
Comments