Dennis Cass Wants You To Be More Awesome

You with me on that?

Have a fine weekend.

Screengrab from the HBO documentary "Living Dolls"

While I understand the sentiment, I’ve always felt that the old writing saw “kill your darlings” suffered from being both overly macho (Ooh, you big bad killer you) and poorly timed (Why not help prevent me from making darlings in the first place?).

Now look at the picture above.

Don’t we all have a story tucked in a drawer somewhere that reads like this poor kid looks?

You’re the boss of your work. You can make it be anything you want it to be. You are in COMPLETE CONTROL.

But don’t be a pageant mom, okay?

The hands of our next great novelist?

Many years ago I heard a radio interview with Scott Turow about his experience working as a mailman. This was in the days before businesses and organizations were obsessed with efficiency, and there was an unwritten rule that if you finished your route early, it was okay not to come back to the post office until your shift was officially over. Turow used the extra time (he said he’d finish his route in five hours) to go to the public library and read Joyce and dream about being a writer.

Ulysses was going to teach him about the novel, but he’d already learned an important lesson about having the right day job. Lately, as I’ve been advising Carleton students about how to start a career in the arts, I’ve been encouraging them to consider money work that will either give them more control over their schedule, or keep their mind free, or help fill the pot with experience.

Personally, if I were doing this all over again, I’d go with hair stylist.

First, you’ve gotta love the hours. You might have to open early once in a while, but no one is expecting you there at eight. I like the idea of getting up at six, writing for two or three hours and still having plenty of time to get to work.

Second, cutting hair is social. Bartenders are supposedly the great collectors of our collective confessions, but I tell my hair stylist all kinds of personal, self-revealing things. What could be better than having a variety of (non-drunk) people bringing you their lives?

Third, working with your hands keeps you mentally (and creatively) engaged without burning out your language centers. (Matthew Crawford’s new book SHOP CLASS AS SOULCRAFT argues that physical work may even be better for your soul. Click here for Michael Agger’s take on it in Slate.)

Fourth, you won’t get rich chopping hair, but unless we move into some kind of post-apocalyptic bullets-and-spring water economy you probably won’t go broke either. You’ll make a good living, but not so good of a living that you risk selling out the dream.

Final thought:

From talking to a friend of mine who is a stylist, your biggest worry is probably staying clean and sober. It’s a boozy, druggy business, and if you’re young it may be hard to refuse all that fun. But if you can get your ass home and go to bed at a reasonable hour, then I don’t see any reason why cutting hair couldn’t be your before-you-make-it dream job.

A big thanks to Wolverine for stopping by my class the other day. We’re listening!

Click image (then click again) to enlarge

Forgetting the basics

If you’re writing about a person, then can I please have their age? It may not seem important to you, but in my experience there’s a difference between an forty-year old skydiver and a five-year old skydiver.

Too much connective tissue

If the movies made writing more cinematic (visual scene-setting, jumps cuts, flashbacks, etc.) can you imagine what the Internet is doing to our sensibilities? The hyperlink has prepared your reader to make bold jumps in content, logic, etc. so you don’t have to hold their hand through every transition. As the old saying goes, the shortest NASCAR track is 0.526 miles long.

Being afraid of the big knife

I know from experience that it’s hard to make drastic cuts, but every first draft is probably 25% overweight, and you’re not going to get it down to size by tweaking and massaging. Sometimes working on your “craft” means acting like a butcher.

No risks

You are not a writer. You’re a riverboat gambler with ice water running through your veins. You bet big and you bet often, and you don’t care about your hand, or if you win or lose, because you can talk or shoot your way out of anything.

Thinking the point is having an insight or making an observation, as opposed to taking said insight or observation and putting into play so it bumps into and rubs up against other insights and observations.

Know what I mean?

A reader writes:

Here is my major malfunction. I’ve been vacillating between (item A) I have a good job and two good freelance gigs and should be okay focusing on it right now & not having much time to write, because we’re in a recession, DAMMIT, and (item B) I’ve got all of these ideas right NOW, while I’m young, hip & alive! What if someone takes them before I get them out there! What if I’m old news by then? What’s the use of a straight job when there’s ARTUCATION to make??

I’ve been thinking that for some time now and am somewhat hot and bothered that I’m sitting here with good ideas while time ticks by while I try to make ends meet. Like some sort of career version of a biological clock, except instead of menopause, I’m trying to beat . . . I don’t know, exactly . . . my youth? Someone else who does the amazing things I want to do before me?

How does one reconcile this? Should I pitch a project? Should I get an agent? Or just REALLY focus on taking the two or three hours I have at the end of everyday to work up the smaller articles/stories (and never really see my boyfriend again, even though we live in the same house)?

First, thanks for having the guts to lay it bare. I don’t have an answer as to whether or not you should quit your day job, but I do have this insight for you:

That feeling that it has to happen right now, and that it has to be big, and if it isn’t NOW and BIG, then someone else is going to get the NOWNESS and the BIGNESS?

That feeling never goes away.

We are in the business of self-doubt, dissatisfaction and delayed gratification. Right now, if she’s awake, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison is on tour for A MERCY and thinking, “I’m doing pretty well . . . but I’m doing Shakespeare well.”

So if you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to live with that feeling.

Point two:

When we think of our careers we tend to focus on getting the big break. But an equally important part of getting the big break is being truly ready for the big break.

Ever since I was a teenager I’ve wanted to make a movie. I even have what I think are some excellent ideas for a movie. And if Universal Pictures called today and offered me a movie deal, I would be completely f*cked, because there is no way in hell I know how to make a movie.

Nervous energy can dangerous. My advice for you is to give yourself the week off. After your mind settles, focus on how you can use your desire to steadily and surely develop your talent so you can actually execute those ideas.

Be cool, my friend. It will happen. The break will come. And if you’re ready, then you will absolutely crush.