📿 How to Write

The writing advice you simply should not take

A portrait of the artist as a young (hungover) man

Many years ago, while living in New York City, I popped into the Barnes & Noble in Union Square.

I rode the escalator upstairs, which opened into a massive book reading. It featured someone I did not know interviewing someone I had heard of but not read—James Crichton or Michael Patterson, someone like that. It was packed. I went about my book perusal, but the speakers were turned up loud enough that my shopping was bombarded by their interview.

I largely ignored it until the author was asked about his writing process. 

“Well, everyone knows that if you’re going to be a writer, you have to write every day,” he said.

I perked up. I did not know that, and I had, at that point, written two books already. My inner imposter syndrome perked up. The well-known author went on to describe his morning routine and what it was like to sit down and give himself space to put words on a screen. It was less interesting to me and thus not memorable.

I walked away from the shop without buying any books that day, feeling a little less authentic in my title as a writer. I wasn’t doing the thing that everyone knows you’re supposed to do.

I remember mentioning this to my dear friend Susan Piver (another author, who I am about to sit down with for this month’s edition of Extra Laundry, a casual conversation we have on topics near and dear to us available to all paid subscribers). When I told her that we were supposed to write every day, she replied, “I don’t do that!” She was less affected by this best-selling author’s conviction than I was. I began to relax.

For what it’s worth, here is my process for writing: I turn my mind to a topic and then, like preparing a good meat or tofu dish, I leave it to marinate for as long as possible. I let it haunt me. I let it work itself out in my mind, so when I do sit down to tap away at my computer, the words tend to flow out of me.

My wife has called me a mutant in that regard— when I have given a topic a lot of thought I can hammer out 3000+ words in a short period of time.

Then, when I’ve generated the words I have available in me, I walk away. I let the topic haunt me some more, letting it stew in my brain and continue to do its thing until my fingers begin to itch and I have to sit back down and keep going at it.

Compared to what I received at Barnes & Noble that day, I actually hold onto one piece of writing advice and one piece only. My favorite novelist, Raymond Chandler, once said,

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”

Earlier in my career, I took this literally, as I was in my twenties and would wake up hungover (see photo above, taken by my publisher in her office, where I am diligently writing a full chapter of The Buddha Walks into the Office while chugging Gatorade).

More realistically and currently, this means to sit down and just type. When distractions arise (as they literally just did; Adreanna texted me, and a bubble popped up on this screen), acknowledge them and come right back to the writing as quickly as possible.

In that way, this is no different than mindfulness meditation. I sit down on the cushion with the intention to be present, and when thoughts arise to distract me, I acknowledge them as quickly as possible and come right on back to the breath. In that way, I am just realizing as I type this, the practice has aided my writing technique all along.

Then, in the afternoon (or as is often my case, the next day), I come back to the writing with fresh eyes and clean it up. I refine the word choices or take out a repetitive paragraph.

Here’s one trick that I have found helpful: I edit with the same gentleness I would express to myself in meditation.

When I get distracted from the breath in meditation, I don’t want to yell at myself: “You jerk! You’re thinking again.” I acknowledge that I drifted off in thought, and with the same gentleness I might use to coax a scared dog out from under the bed during a thunderstorm, I simply say to myself, “Thinking.”

Through taking this kind, loving approach with myself during meditation, I once more realize as I type this, I have been training in being kind and loving with myself when I write absolute garbage.

[A peek behind the curtain: I walked away from this piece at this point to give myself a half day to marinate on the topic some more]

Decades ago, the poet Allen Ginsburg was a student of the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He meditated with a notebook by his side. The story goes that he would sometimes perk up in meditation and quickly reach for his notebook to capture his inspiration. Trungpa Rinpoche would see him and promptly say, “No!” 

I wasn’t there, but in my mind, this sounds similar to when I need to tell one of our dogs to stop jumping on a house guest. A very stern, “No!” Allen would put his hand back on his lap and resume meditation.

The notion behind this was twofold.

First, the point of meditation is not to capture your good thoughts and get rid of your bad thoughts. It’s to become present to things as they are, letting thoughts come and go without judgment. So the instruction is always to acknowledge the thought and come back to the breath.

The second point here was that if there was such a brilliant thought that needed to be written down and eventually released into the world… it would still be there at the end of meditation.

While at the dentist’s office today, two strong ideas on how to bring this piece home popped into my mind. The hygienist’s drill started up, and my attention was diverted from them. They are now gone. Oh well. If they were half as genius as I thought they were in the moment, they would still be with me.

With thoughts in meditation, we are told not to label them as “good” or “bad.” With writing, however, I do believe I generate good and bad writing. It’s not the imagery or the syntax that determines this for me, though.

It’s the authenticity. When I sit down and clean up the writing every noon, I don’t try and determine if the writing I threw up was beautiful, just that it is genuine.

The idea from the dentist’s office just returned to me.

It’s that there are said to be three ways we absorb and integrate the Buddhist teachings: hearing, meditating, and contemplating. Some of us can hear the dharma, or Buddhist teachings, and, boom, get the meaning. Other people have to meditate and bring about the realization in their own experience. Some of us need to contemplate them long enough for them to take root in us. 

Me? I have to write a whole book on a topic just to get my mind around it. I am simply that dense. Writing has a processing quality for me; through writing about a topic I figure it out for myself in a new and genuine way.

The trick of the title of this piece, “How to Write,” is that I don’t know how you should write. I know how I write, and that I enjoy the process, get a lot out of it, and that I am proficient at jotting down a significant number of words that feel authentic to who I am. 

I think most advice on how to write is bullshit; it doesn’t matter if you write every day or once a week or just when inspiration strikes you. So my writing advice is to avoid writing advice. Just because something works for me does not mean it will work for you.

As I noted, the best “how to write” advice I hold onto is to throw up onto your keyboard or journal. Don’t try to write anything that others would consider “good.” Just try to make it true to who you are.

After all of that, it may surprise you that I am, for the first time ever, offering a small spiritual writing workshop this fall. It’s less “write like Lodro” and more “write authentically like you.” There are a handful of seats available as I am not so interested in lecturing and more interested in diving into your writing. More information can be found here.

Whatever type of writing you do, I hope you don’t give into the imposter syndrome I mentioned at the top of this piece. I hope you write something true to your experience, with the aspiration that it will be of benefit, and find like-minded readers who support your work. On that note, thank you so much for reading.