Over the years I made the mistake, time and again, of thinking that I understood what my students were experiencing as they approached writing the first, full drafts of their stories.
I assumed that having gone through much of what they were going through when I was younger, and having edited hundreds of student stories, I was in a position to make sense of what stood in their way when they made the leap from writing weekly reporting letters, to the first 100 words of their stories, to drafts.
Looking back I can see that I committed the original sin of journalism: I didn’t ask.
Now, I have.
We’ve just completed the one-on-one edits of their stories. (I don’t believe in editing what Anne Lamott calls “shitty first drafts.” Instead we sit down together and go through their stories, with me reading it aloud from beginning to end and making suggestions as we go – better, I’d argue, than my sending back stories marked up in red with edits that taken together reinforce every bad thing they think about themselves. And yes, they can push back.) These drafts were preceded by two months of letters in which they’d been telling me what they’d learned, where their stories were changing and how those stories are taking on lives of their own.
I’ve come to believe – and here I was drawing on what I’d heard over the years from students – that characterizing what they were writing as just “letters” gave them the freedom to write in their own voices, unencumbered by the burden of having to get it right.
I’d give them weekly feedback – focusing not on the writing (the means) but on what they were using their writing to say (the end).
That’s your voice, I’d tell them. And I believe they believed me.
But then, inevitably, came the time to “write.” And too often those wonderful, sparky, inventive, engaging, and thoroughly relaxed voices would vanish. In their place would come writing that brought to mind the 1968 classic song by Archie Bell and The Drells - Tighten Up.
I felt as if I was somehow failing as a teacher, that I was unable to find a way to help them bridge the gap from letters to story. I had ideas and assumptions and theories.
But each year the same thing would happen.
And so the time had come to ask.
To their credit, my students were only too willing to help – as much to distill things for themselves as to offer some advice to those in similar straits. I asked if they wouldn’t mind putting their thoughts in writing and thankfully they didn’t.
Here is what some of them they had to say:
Standing in between my memos and my story was none other than self-consciousness. My letters to Michael were not self-edited, but instead were a way for me to explain what I was learning in real time. When it came time to write, I felt the pressure of eyes other than Michael's suddenly reading through my piece. Also, to no one's fault but my own, I always assume that my reader sees the worst in my writing, as opposed to assuming they might see the best in it. -Chloe Appleby
During the period in between writing my letters to Michael and writing my piece, I started overthinking every conversation I had with those within the photograph. Instead of trusting the story that I was developing through months of reporting, I was trying too hard to please each source. I had too many voices in my head. It wasn’t until I took a step back, and let the pressure fall away that I was able to jump in and see the story more clearly. -Alexa Foust
When the memos turn into "real" words, the feeling is weird. It is like rehearsing for a show, and then you have a real audience in front of you who will scrutinize and have an opinion about your work; which can be really intimidating.
The memo's idea works well because it pushes you to write every week, even when you don't feel like it or have little to tell. It's a way to see where you stand with your work: if you need to write more, if you need more information from an interview, or if you need to dig more into a specific topic. Who doesn't want to see that? And with feedback from a professor who knows how to write? That's the dream.
In that moment, my brain doesn't overthink. I just wrote what I had, and the words flowed easily. But when I had to write a draft of 100 words, the pressure started to appear. I became too aware of what I was doing, and it didn't go as it should. My memos were better than my article, and it was because I started to overthink what I was doing. I realized that talking about my family was too intimate, and I didn't want to expose them. But it was late, and I had the information to do it: the memos proved it.
So I wrote, and it wasn't good. I did it again, and it was better.
The mind can be tricky; sometimes, we have to get loose and act like the text is a memo. And stop overthinking. -Carla Mandiola
I think I struggled to go from a series of memos to a cohesive short story because of the volume and range of information I had gathered through my reporting. In two months, I had learned so many fascinating tidbits through research and speaking to eight different sources, and I wasn’t sure which parts I should use and how they would best fit together. I wanted to use all the “good stuff” that I had gathered (details, quotes, etc.), but in reality I could only use a small fraction and I had to push myself to prioritize the reader’s experience. -Sarah Komar
For me, the challenge in transitioning from writing a weekly memo to writing a story lay in curbing the “reporter's voice” and owning my natural voice. I was more focused on explaining what I knew as opposed to embedding my reporting and writing with authority. I also kept trying to perfect my first 100 words before moving on to write the entire story. But once I let go of that pressure, each paragraph started flowing and I got the hang of it. -Surabhi Sundraram
I think for me the challenge was when I attempted to remove myself from the story and tried to recreate a world where my characters could exist on their own. In the memos, I was just retelling my discoveries in relation to me and narrating it to Micheal. But when I tried to remove the link and not give myself space to appear, I think the story turned quite disjointed. -Amulya Hiremath
I think because my reporting was non-linear, the story in my head formed in a manner where I saw it as going back and forth on the backbone of a walk, and the little details that I added embellished the day for me little by little. So I think I struggled with structuring it. I also feel like because I knew the event, the drama for me lay in the peripherals and I didn’t realize that the readers needed a more clear explanation of what had happened. I also feel like because I had spent so much energy reporting, I got a little paralyzed while writing and wanted to play it safe, and ended up second guessing myself. -Nishtha Shanti
My memos were a sort of enlisted ideas and doors to rabbit holes. I wanted to focus on finding a structure for my story, so I left the technical details of my findings aside. I also found myself talking about my past and what motivated me to write this story in the memos which I found useful but overwhelming to do without a horizon. With the first 100 words, I had an unsuccessful attempt to provide a glance at what the story was like: my memories and technical details about the world that surrounds me. I feel that avoiding structure drove me to collect information that in the end was completely unnecessary. My rabbit holes were not connecting, and I was still missing a narrative structure. I wish I had made a chronological structure that guided me to the next steps from the beginning instead of realizing too late there were things that I was missing or unnecessary. -Astrid Useche
I think what I dabbled with the most while writing my final story was knowing how much to include in it. Given the structure of the memos, over the past several weeks, I have written about everything that, according to me, played a role in my story. However, I couldn’t do that in my final piece—it would just make no sense and go on endlessly. I needed to figure out what the most important angles were, and just incorporate them. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know what some of the most important factors were from the get-go. It was just about reminding myself of that again, and writing something that, hopefully, reads like a story and not a saga. -Oishika Neogi
I struggled whittling all the information I’d learned down to the final product. There are so many rich details that I would’ve loved to include, but didn’t have a place in the story. The theft of my great-grandfather’s chickens, my Uncle Jake’s brush with death while in the Air Force, and so on – all unfortunate but necessary casualties of the editing process. - Joseph Strauss
What was most difficult for me was transitioning from the first 100 words to the entire narrative. I had a very clear cut opening scene in my mind that came from a conversation I had with my grandmother which I immediately knew wanted to be the entry point into my story. But when it came to writing the rest of it, I was stuck. The information I gathered in my memos was scattered and nonlinear, creating a mental jumble that stalled my progress for days. And then it is always a little bit uncomfortable, writing a story about your own family, there’s that fear of not doing justice to it and the worry about their reactions. Sorting through what to include and when, while letting go of these concerns, proved to be tricky. But once I got over that fear and just started writing from my memory of the memos, the words found themselves. In hindsight, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a rapid and organic writing process. -Mila Tanghe
Prior to this project, weekly letters were not a part of my writing process. Now on the other side, I can say it was an extremely fruitful addition. And while over-reporting is impossible to many, I think I came as close as possible. I was able to pick up and highlight so much information through my weekly memos that it was even more challenging to decide which morsels to include in the final piece. Every anecdote that strayed from the main storyline was interesting to me, with the subject being my grandmother. It took some time to chip away at my first writing attempt to reveal what the story really was in its simplest, most compelling form. And, of course, the desire to do my grandmother’s story justice remained a motivating factor throughout the process. -Jolie Tanner
Writing is unpredictable. It can come with ease -- when it works, it works. When it doesn’t -- well. It’s like a temperamental friend. They can be great – you talk and it’s easy and time flies and you never want it to end. But they can also be a bitch. Contrarian.
You need a contingency plan for the unpredictability, like a buffer zone. When that buffer isn’t there, the next best and most logical alternative often seems to be a meltdown.
Hemingway stole a urinal and Kerouac washed down amphetamines with his morning coffee. If those are considered actionable options, I don’t think anything went that wrong in our class. It’s just how writing goes sometimes. -Vanda Meyer
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Nothing good ever came from writers punishing themselves. We know writing is hard. We’re here to show that it doesn’t have to be torture. Writerland, The Delacorte Review Newsletter comes out every week.
God, you've come so far since I had you as a first year teacher in 1990.
You were great then, now you're a damn master teacher and a genius at what you do.
You should be editing America's best literary journalists.
Best teacher and best editor I've had in a 35 year career as a journalist.
Vanda Meyer and Alexa Foust are going to be impressive journalists if they fight with their editors if they try to rein them in and they write freely, using their natural unique voice when they get out there; I'm going to look for their bylines.
All your students here, Michael are so very smart and perceptive and such good writers; beautiful to see.
Great work Michael. The memos are a brilliant idea and you're so right about how you handle the shitty first drafts.
You made me such a better writer and reporter in 1990, in 2024 you're still doing it but at a stunningly higher level.
Amazing teacher.
Kevin Heldman --
in awe and wishing he was young again and a Michael Shapiro student.