Jeremy Stelzner
Stay Close to It
I’ve sat through hundreds of lectures on craft and writing workshops with authors of all sorts. Here’s what I’ve learned. Writing tips will ultimately contradict each other, craft essays often imply their way is the only way, and online publishing pirates will never stop trying to exploit your hope and take your money. But maybe the most important lesson I’ve learned in 20 years of reading, writing, and teaching fiction is that building a story is really fucking hard.
Now don’t fret. With focus, you can silence all that other bullshit and find your way into a purgatory of creative thought. I find my way in with the scribbled touch of a pen on a blank yellow page. For me, the sound of that scratching is like a meditative mantra. The walls of my office dissolve, the light of the world dims, the house goes quiet, and even the St. Bernard next door with social anxiety quits his husky barking. Suddenly, the spotlight in the theatre of my mind ignites, and I find myself sitting in a scene amongst the rising tension of an argument being waged by characters I’ve created.
It’s a powerful sensation, like getting a chance to peek through the doors of paradise. Spotting the lint on a character’s clothing, smelling the subtle musk of their perfume, delighting in the music of their dialogue. But from the moment we enter that almost spiritual space, forces are conspiring against us to sabotage the work and drive us out of this paradise.
It could be a conflict at work, a busted boiler, or even a forgotten item on a shopping list. These saboteurs might seem benign at first. Don’t be fooled. They’re not. Each is secretly plotting to pull you farther and farther away from paradise and down into the inferno.
Maybe you tke a day off from writing to settle that conflict at work. Maybe you take another to handle that busted boiler. Maybe you take another to seek out that missing item on your shopping list. As a writer, the more you remove yourself from the scene, the more difficult it’ll be to find your way back.
Force yourself to write or edit every single day. Stay close to it. Don’t let it out of your sight. Six hours, two hours, twenty minutes, it really doesn’t matter. Even if you have to scribble character development easter eggs or plot points on Post-it notes during a lunch meeting at work. Even if you have to record voice memos on your phone with lines of dialogue or a narrative twist while you’re sitting in traffic. Even if you sketch a stanza of blank verse in crayon on the back of your kid’s placemat at Denny’s. So be it. Stay in that place for as long as you can. Put on your orienteering hat, chart landmarks on your own secret writing pirate map, and note the methods that best help you tune out the noise and find your way back to paradise.
Jeremy Stelzner’s stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, journals, and anthologies, including the 2024 Coolest American Stories, Across the Margin Magazine, The Jewish Literary Journal, The After Happy Hour Journal of Literature and Art, and Prime Number Magazine, where his story The Thin Line was awarded runner-up for the 2024 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction. He is a graduate of the Creative Writing program at the Harvard Extension School and teaches high school literature and journalism in Maryland. You can find his work at www.jastelzner.com or reach him by email at [email protected].
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