Monday Motivation! With Laura Dern
Welcome to our second installment of Monday motivation! This is a one-month interlude of motivational fun, as I’m doing some traveling and unable to write the regular bi-weekly news column. Enjoy! Regular Lit Mag News news roundups will resume in August.
“Chances are, if you’re worried about being an asshole, you’re probably not.”
This is something I often tell submitting writers. (If you’ve attended any of my monthly lit mag info sessions, you’ve probably heard me say it at least once.)
I say this because so often writers find themselves worried about asserting themselves in the face of anyone who has access to any sort of gate. Should I follow up about that submission that the magazine has had for two years? Should I check in with that editor who said they would print my story in May, which was two months ago? I want to ask about the payment they promised me, but I’m nervous to approach them. I’m really confused about something in their submission guidelines, but I don’t want it to work against me if I contact them and ask for clarification.
These concerns are perfectly understandable. We hear all the time about how editors are over-worked and underpaid (rightly so, because they are). Thus no one wants to be that writer. You know, that writer, the one who is a pest, a nuisance, who everyone snickers at behind their back because of how annoying and out of touch they are.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Writers can behave like wretched monsters. Here is Don Lee on receiving death threats written in purple crayon and bags of feces outside his door while he was editor of Ploughshares.
But most writers, I wager, do not behave that way. And, I think that if you are the sort of person who is worried about behaving that way, then you’re likely not behaving this way. In fact, more than likely, you’re holding back.
If there is something you need clarification on, you have every right to ask, so long as you do so professionally. I can’t guarantee that you’ll get a response. But what I can guarantee is that sending a polite email to an editor because, say, their website says one thing and their Submittable account says another, or you are following up on a submission after two years, while thanking them for their time, will not get you put on a big List of Horrible Toxic Unpublishables. (And if it does, that is surely not the magazine for you.)
So, what does this have to do with writing and motivation mojo?
Well, I have found that the above statement also tends to apply to writing. I can’t tell you how many times I have spoken to a student in a fiction workshop about what’s happening in a scene, expressing my confusion or lack of connection, to hear them say, I didn’t want to be too obvious.
I get it. I’m sometimes the same way in my own work. I hold back. I try to be subtle. I’m afraid of being too obvious.
What I say to submitting writers thus applies equally to writing writers. That is, if you’re worried about being too obvious, you’re probably not. Just as the submitting writer worries too much about being a jerk in the publishing world, the writing writer often worries about being melodramatic on the page. Melodrama, we’ve learned, is the stuff of soap operas and cheap paperbacks. It is absolutely not the stuff of Serious Writers Who Write Serious Writing For Serious Literary Magazines.
This kind of holding back can do a massive disservice. Firstly (and most obviously), it makes our work boring. It can also occlude important points. (What we think is too obvious is not clear at all.) Also, we miss the chance to roll up our sleeves and get into the mucky emotional mud with our characters. We miss the chance to feel them fully, to be inside their skin when their hands are shaking with anger, when spit flies from their mouths as they fume in rage, when their whole bodies are thrumming with lust, or torched by jealousy, or incandescent with fury.
This, friends, is where Laura Dern comes in.
You see, recently I was watching the second season of Big Little Lies. The HBO series contains no shortage of drama, but one scene in particular really astounded me. I think my jaw actually fell open while I was watching it. I was so taken by it I even went on to describe the scene in full detail to my partner (something I rarely do, lest I be that conversation partner), who then agreed it sounded like a great scene (in spite of Big Little Lies being of absolutely zero interest to him) (and in spite of him having no real idea who Laura Dern even is).
Why is it so great?
Well, I think it’s a scene every writer can learn from, but most especially those writers who have a tendency to hold back in their work. As you will see, here is a character in a state of rage. But more so. Here she is coming completely, unapologetically, wildly and gloriously unglued.
In this scene, Reneta (Dern) is coping with multiple stresses—her husband Gordon (Jeffrey Gordling) has driven the family into financial ruin and they are on the verge of losing everything they own. Meanwhile she is keeping a horrible secret that, if revealed, could destroy her entire life. Oh, and she has just learned that Gordon has been shagging the nanny. THE NANNY!!!
The scene thrills. (Warning: Lots of F-Bombs here. If that’s not your thing, feel free to skip it. Otherwise, consider yourselves warned.)
But more than that, on a craft level, it delivers. The entire incident, just about half a minute, perfectly encapsulates the tone of the show—serious but satiric, ludicrous yet heartbreaking, poignant but vaguely comical. It’s a train wreck you cannot look away from, and you enjoy being unable to look away from, and the show itself, with all its comedic elements and wry asides, seems to savor your complicity in being unable to look away from it.
Yet all that alone is not what makes this a great scene.
It’s the final gesture here, the climax, the consummation if you will, that renders it so powerful. Big Little Lies is a show about keeping secrets. And here you will find an act that illustrates that theme perfectly (while also hinting at other themes like sex and power). Thus the final gesture here resonates on every level—tonally, emotionally, symbolically. In ways that are both big and little.
So now. You’ve heard enough from me. Watch it for yourself. (Again, F-bombs! Again, you’ve been warned! Viewer discretion advised, etc.)
This moment begins in the courthouse, where the nanny (Nelly Buchet) reveals that Gordon has been paying her for “stress management.” Then it moves to the car, where Laura Dern does her thing.
Click this image to watch the video:
Link also here: https://www.loom.com/share/30c21d18b98f4d679dd255ec9d57e831?sid=306d926c-caef-4dc4-865c-34a718cd36a8
For this week’s motivational mojo, I say to you, dear readers: Go for broke.
Don’t try to be subtle. Don’t worry about being that writer. Don’t fear being melodramatic. Don’t Write Serious Writing for All the Serious People Reading Serious Literary Magazines. Write for the wild. Write for your inner animal self. Be a beast.
Unravel your heroines. Unhinge your heroes. Unwind your sentences. Loosen your lines.
Don’t worry about being too obvious. Be obvious. Be big. Be loud. Be bright. Be untamed.
Bonus points if you make use of an object in your writing in some way that is shocking and surprising.
Go on, my friends. That’s it.
Don’t waste another moment. The field is yours. Go now and write your beautiful hearts out.
My motto: keep all the bile inside. Never write a sentence to an editor that you'll be ashamed of -- nor tremble over should it be read back to you in a courtroom. :-)
As with every author, I get annoyed when zines keep my submissions unjustifiably long.
But my approach is to challenge myself to stand out & surprise the recipient (in a good way).
EX: A message I sent to PCC Inscape Magazine got a reply from the editorial director within 2 hours.
Here's what I wrote -- via Submittable:
Dear J _ _ _ _ S _ _ _ _ _: Is everyone OK there on campus? There seems to be this dreadful curse going around: someone pricks a finger on a spinning wheel and falls asleep until awakened by a kiss.
Enclosed: 100 KISSES to break the spell. A reply would be so thoughtful.
I let loose in writing a bit differently a few months ago and it was very satisfying. I saw a woman from the back, she wore a clingy black lace top with a million little metal hooks and I couldn't stop looking at them wondering how the hell she managed to fasten that (not alone, obviously!). I obsessed about it for days, then I wrote the story. I had to get it out of my mind, exorcise it. I write crime, so it turned out sick and fascinating. And I did a happy dance because I nailed it. Shotgun Honey took the story, it'll be out in August. There's freedom in "going there".