A Guide to Greatness

The following is from my October 2023 newsletter. Sign up here to subscribe and get monthly writing tips and first dibs on my workshops delivered to your inbox.

You know that old notion that what you find most irritating in others is probably what bothers you about yourself?

In writing, an inverted variation of this saying is also true: What you find extraordinary in another’s text is what you can, with time and effort, achieve in your own work.

If you believe that, then you have a guide to greatness. Choose a model text, identify a feature you love—for example, how the musicality of the narrator’s voice in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” reflects the story’s setting, mood, and action—study the text to pinpoint choices the author made to achieve that feature, and then experiment with similar methods as you aim to create similar effects.

A model text exemplifies the spirit and style of what you aspire to write. It’s work you wish you had written. It both inspires and intimidates. You want to read it slowly to make it last. Or read it many times.

A novelist friend told me recently that he’s rereading Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House a fifth time as he composes his new book. He wants to capture a similar narrative stance and diction. But your model text needn’t belong to the same genre you’re working in. A memoir could inspire your novel. A poem might spark ideas for your essay.

Keep your model text close. Read an excerpt before your next writing session. Turn to it when you need a boost. Study it as you consider craft—not necessarily the type of studying your high school English teacher advised. There are no wrong answers to the questions you’ll come up with, such as, What makes the structure of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen perfectly suited to the book’s theme?

And then… what if you studied your model text even longer, even more closely?

Harvard art historian Jennifer Roberts asks her students to study a painting of their choice for three hours straight.

She writes in an article about this method, “The time span is explicitly designed to seem excessive.” And while students protest that they can’t possibly benefit from such a prolonged view, “They have been astonished by the potentials this process unlocked,” Roberts says. “What students learn in a visceral way in this assignment is that in any work of art there are details and orders and relationships that take time to perceive.”

What if we spent a half hour on the first page of our favorite memoir? An hour on a flash story? It could be powerful. I’m going to try this on a 600-word essay I’ve admired for years, Linda Hogan’s “Porcupine.” Odds are, I’ll notice details and techniques that have escaped me even after more than a decade of rereading this piece.