What You Leave Out
Memoir, our teacher, Abigail Thomas said, is all about what you leave out. Any book is. You have to write as one person in one time. A wife with a husband who is hit by a car. You leave out yourself as mother, the person you are as daughter, as a sister, your teacher self. Mostly, when you write a book, you are leaving things out not putting things in.
A great example of this is the fabulous memoir, recommended to our class this summer by Abigail Thomas, My Family and Other Animals by Gerard Durrell (the famous naturalist). (If you are a fan of The Alexandria Quartet, you’ll especially love the portrait Gerry paints of his brother, Larry; Larry isn’t quite as interested in bugs, bats, snakes, ducks, magpies, scorpions…). You have to read this book! It’s light and funny and wonderful. It’s called on the back cover “an idyll.” I’m not sure exactly what that means, but whatever an idyll really is, yes yes yes. This is perfection in the form of a book.
It’s rich and wise and reminded me of two things about making a good book. One. It’s about what you leave out. By positioning his family members as “animals” under study, like his collection of turtles and fish and dogs, a young Gerry-narrator keeps the book about one thing. He’s surrounded by inexplicable but fascinating beasts—his teenage sister Margo (whose suitors parallel much in the animal world Gerry studies assiduously), his generous worrying indulgent mother, nudging her brood this way and that, etc. You get the crazy kid adventures in the animal world on a Greek island and you get the family—it’s all the same stuff to Gerry. As beginning writers, we keep making this mistake. We keep putting in more. One idea per book.
Two. Kindness and love for flawed annoying people. We are all so in love with a variety of flawed people and literature exists to explain how that works and why.
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I saw you last week at the MC3 writer’s conference and you were just spectacular.
I’m a fairly serious writer (working on second novel, published short stories etc) and I found your thoughts on productivity and writing habits so right-on.
Plus you are super funny and an absolute delight to listen to.
So I’ve been reading your blog and came upon the website and hells-bells, you ride a Bianchi just like me. Beautiful celeste. Mine’s a campione, about five years old. Yours?
Anyway, just thought I\’d tell you that you did a great job and got this writer nicely jazzed.
Julie O.
Thank you, Julie! I love my Veloce. I rode INSIDE for the first time in my life last night. That is how much I love her. I also got out my Bedazzler and put rhinestones all over the block. I’m riding in style to nowhere.
(Some comments from Gemma, from Canada:)
I only had a few minutes the other night to start reading through your new text and it’s
all I think about at work and I came home so late last night that I couldn’t do anything
but feed the cats and take my make-up off. Now I am getting ready to leave for work,
but I think I’m going to cut the day short so that I can finally get back to writing and
reading some of your new books.
I’ll keep you posted and I promise to hit the page tonight–I miss my book so much and
find myself having a more difficult time looking forward to work because it is taking up
so much of my time and I allow it to interfere with my writing (no fault but my own I
know) but still, I need to focus a lot more right now. I don’t think your books could have
arrived at a better time. Inspiration arrives at funny times.
So–thanks again and I’ll keep in touch. I’d love to attend a writer’s conference that you
host sometime.
Until next time
Gemma Z, Canada